renea

This is potentially also my situation. I'm from Tx as well, and my husband and I moved away to pursue my MA in Michigan. This past year and half living across the country has been tough, but we have both honestly enjoyed living on our own in a new place. This season, we did choose to apply to one school in Texas. Originally, I did not want to tell our families we were applying, because I also didn't want to get their hopes up. It's not our top program, and it would mean moving really close to our family (which has its benefits, but also its drawbacks). Husband accidentally told his mom, and now we get *subtle* comments about how when we get in (bc our families think that's a given) they're excited about us moving home. My mother-in-law in particular makes a lot of comments. If we talk about other programs, she basically says that there's only one program they care about. I think that it depends on your family dynamic. I know for us, my family was mad when we first made our decision. My grandmother was openly unhappy about my acceptances. I realized though, that anger is usually just a cover for sadness and confusion. I'm first generation. No one in my family has gone to college, much less graduate school. No one in my family moves away either. For some families, graduate school or moving away is totally normal. Families expect their kids to go to college out of state, they expect study abroad, grad school, moving away for jobs. But for other families, these choices look like turning your back on your family or thinking you're better than them. Also distance is a lot easier for middle to upper class families. My dad doesn't get paid vacation or time off. He doesn't have a retirement fund like a lot of other parents of my cohort members. Coming to see us means taking off almost a week and paying for travel. So we have mostly been going to see them, but that's also hard on a grad student stipend as well. For my husband's side of the family the dynamic was a little different. They're all pretty highly educated, but they mostly stayed in the area. My husband was basically shut out, so he took a gap year and worked while I did my MA. We graduated college, got married, and moved away for my program all in a 6 month span. I see his family's sadness/passive aggression as tied mostly to him growing up and leaving them to start his own family. Overall though, the anger can be really hard to deal with. It belittles your accomplishments. It makes you feel guilty. It causes tension in your family. Sometimes it results in growing apart. No one has perfect relationships with their families, and grad school is just another wrench thrown in. But at the end of the day, we both know our families are good and loving. They want what is best for us even if they don't like or understand our decisions. They also started trying a lot more once we actually moved, I think because they realized the decision was no longer up for negotiation. For anyone struggling with your family, just know that if your family loves you they will support your decisions, we just don't always get to choose what that support will look like or how long it takes them to get there. On the bright side, my dad just told me a few days ago he would be taking off work to come see my graduation, eventually most people come around.

Rhet/comp is such a small field- honestly ppl's facebook's pop up on my feed all the time anyways just from mutual friends at my current my program. First step, facebook stalking. Maybe one day I'll actually have the confidence to approach them in person.

This honestly sounds like something I would do. I'm not sure how to help you, I definitely used FB to stalk professors at my potential universities to determine whether I should apply so I clearly don't know boundaries

In all honesty, most programs will be happy you understand theory at all. If the program is a good fit and you're a good candidate, your major will be a program's last concern. Most programs look at your SOP first, your LOR second, and then your CV or Writing Sample. Your transcript is used mostly to look at your GPA and coursework, but from what I understand is not the first thing they look at. Wow them with a good SOP and LOR and you won't need to worry. If you are familiar with the area of theory that you are interested in working in (in rhet/comp) then it shouldn't be an issue. I did a double major in philosophy and english in my undergrad, and I would say my theory background was very helpful for my MA. While there are of course huge differences between philosophy and rhet/comp as a field- as an undergrad you're exposed to the broader concepts and there's a lot of overlap between the disciplines. Most MA programs are open to people coming from different backgrounds- so long as you can demonstrate that you understand the field and fit their program. Your biggest concern will be making sure you apply to a rhet/comp program and not a lit program. Many lit programs will require subject tests or expect you to have taken lit classes. Many Rhet/comp programs don't have those same expectations because rhet/comp undergraduate programs are not very common. If you are concerned when selecting a school, reaching out to the director of the graduate program about your concerns will be surest way of knowing whether they expect applicants to come from an English program. My biggest suggestion would be using your SOP to explain why Rhet/comp is your chosen field, and to use a rhet/comp paper for your writing sample. If you are not incredibly familiar with rhet/comp papers- then I would suggest reading some rhet/comp papers- depending on your research area we have plenty of journals that would be available through your university- and lots that are even open access. Also, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to answer any questions, and we have a rhet/comp thread going on the forum- there are several rhet/comp ppl on the boards and most are happy to help answer questions.

ehh it's ok. I'm hoping they've been reviewing prior to that and the email is a polite reminder for applicants to not bombard the department with emails asking about their status. The boards indicated mid to late February, so I wasn't expecting anything too soon---although an early decision would be nice.

I'm tired of being trolled by departments. Monday FSU's graduate program assistant sent out a mass email titled "Application Review" just to notify me that reviews have begun and decisions will be out later this month. yeah thanks for the heart attack. Also apps were due on December 15th, so it feels weird to just now be reviewing applications. Today I open my email to this from GSU: WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?! I need some way to block all unimportant emails and telemarketers, because this past week every notification has sent me into panic mode.

Ahh, got it. Not necessarily giving up hope, more like the department sent out a mass email earlier this week saying they wouldn't be notifying until late feb, and I was going to be a little peeved. Congrats on the acceptance though!

Out of curiosity, when did you get an acceptance from FSU and what track? I applied there too and they said they wouldn't be notifying until late February

When I was applying for my MA, I contacted 2 programs for decisions, but it was in late March/early April. I was assuming rejections and just wanted confirmation so I could officially accept my offer. Surpise suprise though I never officially got a decision. Some schools wait until the last minute to send out their last round of rejections, but some are still figuring out their decisions, so in my opinion it's too early to contact them.

I totally agree with this. A couple of years ago when I was applying to MA programs, I made the mistake of telling my boss that I was planning on going to graduate school. Later when they were hiring for a manager position (which I was very qualified for), my boss kept talking about promoting me. She'd practically promised me the position, I started taking on extra manager duties, and then she decided to pass me over for the job because I might be leaving in 9 months. She ended up hiring someone else who quit before I even moved away for my MA. I fully believe that if I hadn't said anything, I would have gotten the promotion. I'm lucky I did get into a program, but if I hadn't I would have screwed myself over. I wouldn't say anything unless they ask or you're ready to leave.

I got mine in early (at this point, I already had my materials for everywhere else), but I agree their website is super conflicting. Their rhet/comp program says specifically (in more than one site page) that you need 2 letters of recommendation, but the English Q&A page says three. Not sure what's going on there, but the I emailed the DGS and they confirmed that it's three. Thie date thing is especially messed up because that could really mess up someone's application and they wouldn't even know it

Congratulations on the phone interview with Syracuse! Updates for me: I was rejected from MSU. Currently dying waiting to hear from: Miami (of Ohio), FSU, Virginia Tech, Texas Christian, and Georgia State. I'm thinking I'll hear from a program or two in the next two weeks, but most of my programs said they expect notices to go out in late Feb and early March so *fingers crossed*

I'm applying there, and I agree the deadline seems super late. I have no idea why (and according to results on gradcafe, it seems like they must have had earlier deadlines in the past), but I have a few guesses: They have a quick turnaround (like 1-2 weeks of solid reading and meeting for decisions) They may not have gotten as many candidates as they wanted with an earlier deadline so they pushed it back The committee has other department committments that makes a later deadline more convenient The dealines seems very late, but considering some programs don't notify until mid-March anyways, they might just be making the deadline later to broaden their pool and pick up applicants who were shut out by other programs.

See I was thinking the opposite: that they want to keep the gre cutoff quiet on the offchance that an otherwise exceptional candidate might apply in which they would make an exception (I'm thinking in the case of a person with an amazing cv and gpa but with like a 155V gre score when they usually accept only 160V up). While I think this reason is optimistic (nice and noble), I also feel that it misleads the other applicants who applied thinking their gre score wouldn't matter. So I guess, I'm thinking that admissions committees want to keep their options open in case they don't get as many stellar candidates one year or they want more variety of applicants (or so that they can decide whether or not to consider candidate's gre scores). Think about it, why would an admissions committee want less options? Of course, once again I am just speculating.

not as common in the humanities, but my husband is applying to math/physics programs and I second this. His CV and transcripts have all his relevant information, and while I understand that some people may not list those things on their cv, perhaps making that part of the form optional (as in, if you do not supply this info, please fill out this form), would be far easier than making him type out every assistantship, class, job, textbook, and skills. It's the same for job apps. I remember the last time I was looking for a job and had to fill out those stupid online apps and they make you give them your resume, but then retype all the information on the form. I emailed a DGS about a program this cycle and she emailed me back a brochure (that was not anywhere online) for the program which had all the faculty listed. I talked to a professor later who then mentioned that a professor who I was interested in working with was leaving . I understand that people make decisions last minute or are not aware that they are leaving sometimes (not really the case with people retiring though), but please update the website or brochure. It's not like he was the only faculty I was interested in working with, but had I not known I would have listed him on my SOP and perhaps not have been accepted because of that

True, but if the program only accepts 5 people and you have a few years of data on gradcafe showing 2-3 people each cycle with 167/160/5.5, are we really supposed to think that is a coincidence. We can speculate all day long though, the point is that if some of the data (that is already available to departments) was shared, we could be the judge of whether or not we feel we want to take the risk and apply.

Haha, I got tricked on the last google doc that was floating around, but I'd *hope* that the funding for different tracks in the same department wouldn't be that vastly different for the same assistantship, but you never know.

Me: dammmmmnnnn look at all this information *realizes there are sections and I'm looking at lit section, moves to rhet/comp tab* Me: oh. nevermind

Yes! I have no understanding of why data isn't published when it's available. Programs want to claim that these things don't factor into decisions, but data is telling and when all the applicants being accepted have 4.0s and 168s upward on the V gre score, it might help me know if this is a reach school I want to invest an application in.

YASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Congrats!

I believe Illinois State has a childrens lit program that might be worth looking into

When I was in undergrad, I was under the impression that you did have to do "one thing" and I very much made my SOP into a singular subject area: indigenous rhetorics. I wanted to study indigenous rhetorics (especially as they related to environmental philosophy). I applied only to programs that fit with that interest and very luckily ended up in a program that has (alongside indigenous studies work) a lot of faculty doing various projects. I was given the advice to look at what I spent the most time talking about and doing in my spare time and turn it into a project- and here I am doing a thesis now over the rhetorical affect of online food icons. From there I've completely branched out and have like a billion research interests which rotated based on which school I was applying to. Overall, I want to specialize in digital and cultural rhetorics. However, my work pertaining to food and social media means I also end up writing a lot of about visual rhetorics, multimodal composition, and literacy. I'd also like to do some sort of technical writing project about food labels and food laws, but alas there is not enough room on my *plate* right now.

I got rejected from my own program. It's the only result I've received so far. I'm optimistic about the other programs (I've reminded myself several times that one decision in no way affects the decisions of other programs), but I don't expect to hear from any other schools (applied to five others) at least for two more weeks, and for some of my top picks potentially a month. It's been really hard, because even though staying with my current program wasn't my top choice (and prior to the rejection I really wanted to move away and start somewhere fresh), knowing for sure that isn't an option anymore without hearing from other programs has been rough. Plus it's been just a teensy awkward that all my professors this semester are on the admissions committee and my thesis chair is the DGS who sent out the rejection letters....... Also this is a whole other vent...but I really am not looking forward to moving or trying to find a new place to live. It's only been 1.5 years since we moved across country for the MA program and now we're most likely moving across the country again and I don't want to sell all my stuff, but I also don't want to pack it. Plus I don't want to have to deal with finding a rental over the internet again.

Glad it's not just me

yessssssss. I hate the generic, we place 100% of our graduates. Like, where? In what position? Placement means different things to different people, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with placing students in non-academic jobs- I'd just like to know where. I can't imagine a program that has no clue where their students have gone, and if they really don't it makes me wonder what type of relationships they foster with their students after they graduate. I want a program that I can keep touch in, faculty who will continue to network and collaborate with me after I leave. If you tell me you don't have any information on your previous grads it's a red flag.