cypressknee

I mispelled the name of one of the poets that I intended to write on in many copies of my SoP, so I'm sure you guys will be fine. 

I applied to 12.
Over the summer, I put together a list of the "top" 75 programs, and then went through every faculty bio at those schools to narrow it down to a shortlist of 20. Then I looked at those 20 more holistically (funding, placement, location, other resources, etc) and decided upon 9 that I definitely wanted to apply to.
But there were 3 more that I kept finding myself drawn to even though they were slightly less perfect fits, so I decided to apply to them as well because  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Ha, sorry to keep you all in suspense! I've been doing my winter travel and don't check this site nearly enough as it is.
So, I applied to PhD programs in the 2012 and 2013 cycles, and in Spring 2012 (I had my math slightly off in the first post!) I applied to NYUs PhD and was instead accepted to their MA. Being the bright-eyed and ignorant college senior I was, I thought it sounded like a great opportunity, but the price made me want to check it out first. I visited on a day when the MA students would meet up in the department for chat and coffee, and some of the things that I found unsettling only make sense in serious hindsight. 
To be clear, I don't blame anyone who does go to the program. It can be really hard to get honest information about whether paying for an English MA from a top program is worth the money, but I think the answer is unequivocally no. I met students that day who were excited to be studying in a wonderful program, but were also deeply stressed by the two or three jobs they were working to live in Manhattan, or the long commute they were making to keep costs down. Most of them had dreams of going on to a PhD, and the woman who showed me around most of the day was hopeful about her waitlist position at Harvard.
I also noticed that there wasn't really any effort on the department's part to have me interact with any faculty, which I think speaks a lot to the value that they place on their MA students. Most of the students I spoke to would talk about their advisor and somehow intimate that the advisor was "just so busy". FYI, a busy advisor is good, but they should never be too busy for you if they care about your career. And nobody seemed willing to admit that $100,000 total in tuition over two years was an absurd amount of money. I didn't really understand the job market and the very real devaluation of the humanities, but I did know that that wasn't a deal I was willing to take.
I ended up getting an offer of a one year post-bac fellowship from UPitt, and it was, IMO, the perfect example of what academia should be doing. They paid me for the pleasure of taking graduate seminars for the first time, and I had a wonderful advisor who was also part of the WGS program that vetted all of my PhD app materials, and gave me excellent advice about how to tell if something is a good offer. If they don't want to invest their time or their money in you, then it's just not worth it. I'm now an ABD 4th year at UT Austin, and I can promise you that I never would have had anywhere near this success if people hadn't invested time and money into getting me here. A PhD is an uphill battle, and your program shouldn't make it worse.