wintergirl

You rang? (I kid, I kid...)

Living in this thread today this week. Hello, friends.

That stinks, Timshel. But at least you have the "honor" of winning our pool? Where shall I send the chocolate? ; ) Hang in there!! Haha, so true. And today I switched my school email account to enable it to come to my phone. I'm sensing this might've been a bad idea indeed....

Sort of like Match for med schools? I'd be down with that. The drawn out torture waiting is almost unbearable!

I've heard (on this forum) that that statistic is way out of date and that is more likely HALF of that number. Still more than other programs, but it's probably why they don't offer everyone funding.

Yes, am also working on my thesis. I'm defending in April and have 60-80 pages to write by March 2nd. Drafts of my first two chapters are due at the end of January--eep! Broadly put, my thesis is an ecocritical reading of California literature. I used a chapter as my writing sample so now I "just" have two chapters (and intro and conclusion) to write and tons of reading to do. :| But it's much easier to think about thesis now that all the apps are done and out of my hands. Wheatgrass, I don't know how you finished your thesis and defended while working on applications! Damn!! It was hard enough to write my proposal and defend it the day before my first 4 applications were due. Glad to know others are also dealing with this while waiting on pins and needles for the ax to fall...

more doggie-friendly thoughts/suggestions: My rec for Boston: try Somerville (next door to Cambridge). I never had a dog when I lived in Boston, but I was supposed to get one and found housing in Somerville near Tufts that would have worked. When I didn't get the puppy, moved to the North End instead which I LOVED. Whoever was asking about New Haven, definitely look to the East Rock area--a.k.a Grad Student Ghetto. Downtown New Haven (and Yale's campus) are not dog friendly but East Rock has more family homes and yards and is close to hiking/walking trails. I lived there my last year of undergrad. Hearing about Austin makes me wish I'd applied to UT! I mean, I already knew it was super fun and a bastion of liberal values, but a huge dog town?? Even better. : )

That's good to hear!! Have you been researching that for yourself? Or have you lived there before? I'm surprised by how affordable St. Louis is. WUSTL's funding also seems very generous and it seems like a great program.

Also a dog-owner here. Not looking forward to trying to find a student-budget-priced, dog-friendly apartment with charm and fenced in back yard. Perhaps I should just look for a needle in a haystack instead. ; )

Thanks for the feedback, @rainy_day, @perrykm2, and @marlowe! I'm going to run it by my advisor tomorrow then . . . call them? email them? And who? The dept itself? Or the DGS? So many questions!

I didn't think I'd have anything worth even asking this question, but I found out this afternoon that I was nominated for and won my department's grad student researcher of the year award--I'm in a MA program--and am now up for the university-wide competition to decide the top three grad researchers in my large state university. But since my university's very research heavy (especially in the sciences), chances are a lowly lit scholar won't win the university wide thing. So is this something worth notifying my schools about? I don't know when the university-wide thing is decided and, even if I win that, it'd likely be too late to alert my programs. I don't want to notify them about something "piddly" (the dept award) and have them think I'm ridiculous. However, if this is something that might help my application I definitely want them to know! What would y'all do?

At this point I just want someone to rip the bandaid(s) off. / now back to looking at Craigslist rentals for college towns where I'll probably never live...

That's my drink too! Maker's and ginger ale. Nom nom nom.

Also a Netflix addict fan. And the season two episodes of Downton Abbey are now available (for free!) on PBS.org. \O/

I'm in. And what about a runner up prize for the most rejections? With 12 applications out, I feel good about my chances for that prize. :/

Wow. That's quite a generalization to make!

I applied to Stanford. Last year they notified about interiews in late January. They're my earliest school for any sort of notification.

FYI, I checked the website today and my GRE score is finally showing up as "received" by Cornell. Huzzah!

I have trouble coming up with an answer to this post on my own (more of a worrier, personally), but my best friend last night had this to say about my anxieties of not getting in anywhere: "But you're fascinating! You're the most interesting person I know! They have to take you!" Hahahahaha, bless her dear sweet supportive heart. Do you think the adcomms would take a late extra LOR from my bff of 12 years??? ; )

This is me exactly. Read the first three chapters for required class as a freshman, skipped the rest, and been lugging it around ever since as my own personal literary albatross.

Oh lord. I'm presenting at a conference that day. I'm going to be such a distracted mess!

As I understand it (and from looking over last year's results board), of the schools I'm applying to only Stanford offers interviews. Seems like interviews for lit/humanities aren't standard like they are for the sciences. Last year's Stanford interview notices went out around the 24-25th of January--so about 10 days from now. :/

Trying my hardest not to think about it = installed LeechBlock through Firefox so I can only access the boards for 10min a day and the forums themselves for only a brief period of time in the evening. We'll see how that goes! : ) But to clarify: I got my numbers from the dept websites themselves or on postings on the results boards that specified news like "10 admits out of 350 applicants" or something. I would definitely not try to go through and count the responses on the board. I'm obsessed but also math-challenged lazy! ETA: Thank you for sharing that with us, lolo. I'm hoping for good news for all of us too--especially those of you going through this insane process again! I feel like I did as a kid at Disneyland on the original Pirates of the Caribbean ride, moments before plunging over the waterfall not knowing whether good or bad surprises waited at the bottom...

This is me exactly. Except I made a decision when I started my MA last year NOT to have my school email account (the one I used for all my applications) synched to my phone for sanity purposes. Now I'm questioning that logic. I'm also already checking my snail mail box every day, when I used to neglect it for weeks at a time since only junk mail would be waiting for me. No need to remind me that letters (if they come) won't start showing up for another month. Again: logic fail!

Two separate (contradictory?) reality checks on my mind today: I searched through department websites and the results board to compile a list of admission statistics for my programs. Turns out that, statistically, I have a better chance of being admitted to Yale's American Studies program than to CU-Boulder for English based on last year's admit numbers ... and I think I have less than a snowball's chance of getting a Yale acceptance. Yet I keep obsessively checking the board when I know that English and AmStud results won't even start trickling in for another 3-4 weeks. So now I'm worrying about how I'm going to handle it when I DO see an acceptance for one of my programs. Have y'all thought about this as well? Thank goodness for that big bottle of Maker's Mark in my pantry! : )