FeetInTheSky

Best of luck, everyone!

Hey all -- I'm in my first year of my program and I was thinking today about this time last year and my worries about my apps and my chances and all that. So I just wanted to drop a note saying to breathe. You'll be okay. Just work systematically and carefully. Focus on the sentence in front of you. You can spend a lot of emotional energy freaking out about your chances, but that actually won't help at all. The only thing that'll help is keeping yourself sane and working on the things that you can actually control. Spend time with your friends and family and know that this'll all be over soon. You can do it!!

This is great advice! Just to add on: 1. Get organized! I had a spreadsheet for all of my programs, color-coded by how good of a fit they seemed to be. This spreadsheet had my list of faculty of interest, special program notes (for my own interest and for mentioning in my SOP), journal articles by faculty of interest that I wanted to read, and then deadlines, app fees, special requirements, etc. You should design a system that works best for you. 2. Develop a plan for your recommendations as early as possible. Ideally, you should reach out to recommenders when you start researching programs. Update them on your progress and on your list of schools. Check in after the summer is over to make sure that everything is on the up-and-up. Remember that many online application systems do not send requests to your recommenders until -after- you've submitted your application, meaning that you should submit your materials in advance of the deadline so that your recommender can get their letter in on time. 3. (This is based on my experience as an undergraduate admission counselor). When reaching out to graduate students, which I 100% encourage you to do -- always ask open-ended, non-leading questions. So if you want a really collaborative culture, don't ask "is the culture really collaborative?" Instead, just ask how the student would describe the culture -- if they say "collaborative" unprompted, then it's much more likely that that is a defining feature of the program, rather than someone telling you what you want to hear. Also, just to add to @Old Bill's last point. The corollary to there being no safety schools is that some brilliant and energetic people get shut out. This whole thing can be a crapshoot. It's very easy to read a deny letter as a personal attack on your ability as a scholar, but for all you know, they only had space for one person in your subfield this year and they just happened to pick someone else. Don't go into the cycle assuming that you're going to come out of it with an admit letter -- you might not -- and so you should prepare for the worst without letting it destroy you emotionally. Which is of course easier said than done... Good luck

Welcome! I agree with @ExponentialDecay -- it's brilliant that you want to combine English and epistemology; I think that there are some really groovy intersections to explore there. Still, I'd say that you should try to get a little narrower. I'd encourage you to consider a period of literature (Victorian, Early Modern, Twentieth century, as examples) and/or a theoretical lens -- critical race theory, feminism, queer theory, etc, then track down some of the people in those fields whose work speaks to you and see if they work at schools that match your other interests (like your desire for a program that encourages interdisciplinary work). Even though some English programs are generally excellent, many are somewhat uneven in that they excel in a couple of subfields. Once you know your subfields, picking a school becomes much easier. (Also, based on your MA in English education and interest in epistemology, I'm going to make one quick plug for the field of rhetoric and composition.) Also, don't worry about the math on the GRE. It's essentially unimportant. Answer the questions you can answer without much trouble so that you get a somewhat respectable score, but remember that the GRE is an endurance test. If you burn a lot of mental energy on the math, you'll do worse on the English, which is what actually matters.

Yes yes! So exciting!

After a great visit with students and faculty yesterday, and a funding offer last week, I've officially accepted an MA/PhD spot at UMass Amherst! I'm so excited -- the rhet/comp community is just the kind of thing that I'm looking for, the faculty are really nice, and they just moved out of a crappy old building into a snazzy new one. Now to actually be a graduate student! Thanks so much, everyone, for your help through this whole hulabaloo. It's been a long, strange trip, but the reassurance and the advice I found here was invaluable.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is wonderful. You must feel so good!

@otobus, I wouldn't feel bad about calling the department at this point if they said "a few weeks," but maybe she wants to wait just a little bit longer. At this point I think it's fair game. **** In other news, I got the email today that says that I'm no longer on the waitlist for UMass Amherst!! I have an interview for a TAship soon, but I just got a lot closer to going to my #1 choice

I too wanted to mention this but didn't quite know where. The venting thread is certainly an appropriate place. Just all very icky.

I mean, it's also telling that US News doesn't even bother including either of those disciplines in their subfields drop-down... it's almost like those organizing the ratings have a vested interest in keeping established structures the way they are!

I was in a very similar situation recently; I emailed the second choice program and asked to have until April 15, and they agreed. I find it unlikely, though, that any program will give you until after April 15 to make a decision, so you might have to set the line there. Maybe someone else has more experience with this, but April 15 is kind of it for programs if you're not on their waitlist. At least, as far as I know.

I'm so sorry for the agony that this must have caused you, but it really did make me laugh out loud. Also, happy birthday!

I took two years off and it was the best choice I could have possibly made. I've peddled this advice elsewhere, but I'd recommend getting a job at a university, especially the one at which you're currently studying. You have access to the academic community, which is invaluable. I got lunch with a dean (met him through my job in admissions) just to pick his brain on grad school, and he was the one who told me about rhet/comp. You also have access to guest lectures and special sessions and classes at a reduced tuition rate, probably. Some of this might be helpful toward you actually working on your application, but being part of the culture of a university is something I found important in keeping my brain limber. You also also have access to a library and all of its online resources, which was so key to me when polishing up my SOP and Writing Sample. (If you work at a school, you can also turn that into a professionalized angle on an SOP -- that you're used to the way that universities function, insight which is invaluable to a budding scholar... or some such talk.) Lots of jobs (especially ones at large universities) can be easily done by a recent undergraduate; I'm not sure what you've been involved with on-campus, but maybe some offices related to whatever that may be is hiring (again, that's how I got my job). If you want to chat about this more, feel free to snootz a PM in my direction. Yes, "snootz."

For those who were looking for an update to my recent kerfuffle, Nebraska has agreed to give me until April 15 to make a decision! The saga continues...

HEYYYOOOOO!!!

Thanks for saying so! I sent an email last night so hopefully something will come of it. I totally understand their perspective and, as someone on a waitlist, see the need to get answers to people quickly... but I do wish everyone was on the same page! Thanks for the support, everyone. I really appreciate it!

Thanks for chiming in, everyone... I'm going to process all of this when I get home from work and email Nebraska. Very exciting/strange/validating/confusing day!

Well, things have just gotten rather complicated for me... just got an email from UMASS Amherst and learned that I am at the "very top" of the wait list... They're my #1 program and I would love to go, but Nebraska (my #1 program until six minutes ago) needs an answer from me by March 15. My nightmare scenario is, of course, finding out that I get into UMASS on March 16. I guess this is a long way of saying that if you're in at UMASS Amherst and you have always admired the wit and goodwill in my posts and thought to yourself, "Wow,I wish there was a way to become this person's friend..." your opportunity is here!

Godspeed, all of you.

Way to go!!!!!

I got offered a spot in the UMD MA program yesterday Funding is questionable and I don't know if I'll take the offer given that I have guaranteed funding in Nebraska, but it still feels good! I'm sure lots of people get the "ok not the PhD but try out MA program" email (or consolation prize, as I've heard it called) but I'm still counting it as a win.

"Each night, without exception, you will pour your whiskey and take out your yellow legal pad and Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rolling Ball Machine and write." - My fiction writing professor, sophomore year. I swear, the man was sponsored by Pilot. He never used the word "pen" in class. He only said Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rolling Ball Machine. But I learned a lot in his class and so I too started using yellow legal pads and Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rolling Ball Machines. A little over a year ago, I was given a free pen at a school event with the school's name on it. It was a Bic Grip Roller, and it blew the PPV5EFRBM out of the water in every respect. It is my new pen of choice, after a four year romance with the PPV5EFRBM. The yellow legal pad has since been abandoned in favor of 9.5 in x 5.5 in spiral notebooks. I like the small size because there are so many instances where you just don't fill a full page with notes, so this feels much less wasteful. In terms of method... I know I've only been out of school two years, but jumping back into notetaking is actually one of my largest sources of stress for reentering school. My notes are professional now (i.e. don't write anything down unless someone mentions something that I need to remember to do later). There used to be lots of circles and arrows and lists and definitions and counter definitions and now it's just things like "ask Sherry about the panel." I also wonder about notes on the reading. As an undergrad I didn't take too many notes on what I read, even though I probably should have. I figure that I'm going to be reading WAY more as a graduate student and that I will be responsible for keeping track of individual scholars and their arguments in a much more intensive way. I'm thinking about writing quick summaries of things that I read, just so that later I can remember the broad points of texts so I'm not standing around my apartment trying to remember who made which argument. Does anyone have better/alternate suggestions for notes on reading specifically?

I used the 5 pound book and found it pretty helpful. The most important thing is to turn of fun that part of your brain that makes inferences when doing the reading comprehension and vocabulary and think as literally as possible. For the writing, it's best to just be formulaic. Five paragraphs. Three main ideas, one per body paragraph. Intro sentence and transitions. Basically I found it best to pretend to have the intellectual skills of an eighth grader with the vocabulary of an adult. I don't know if that advice works for everyone, but I got a good result.

Oh I did not find it discouraging. I would like the clerk to note that I was not discouraged. I just wanted to sort of say that I totally see what you're saying and that it's good for someone in this position (ie me) to be aware that those concerns exist. Everyone's got troubles!

Ugh, those darn youths and their rock music! But honestly, this is a fear of mine. I'm gonna be starting at 24. I work hard, man, but I know that my field values teaching experience, which I don't exactly have in spades given how I finished a BA two years ago. I definitely worry about people not taking me seriously, and I don't want to have to compensate for that, but I guess I will. Tl;dr this thread: entering this kind of work has challenges no matter what, obviously, and some of those challenges will be made greater by your age. But some things are harder for young people and some for older people and some for middle people. There's no challenge-free age for doing this.