Narrative Nancy

I GOT ACCEPTED TO OSU!!!
I knew my Home state wouldn't let me down!! 
Cannot breathe need help!! 

Shortlist for Emory in Comparative Literature. They have invited me to visit and meet faculty (all paid so good?). 

I received word last week that I had been admitted to the comms program at Illinois! It's a MA/PhD program in communication, but the concentration is in rhetoric and public discourse. Really excited about this one!

Just got an acceptance from Minnesota Comparative Literature! I applied to the CSDS program in the same department, but I had a lovely phone conversation with the DGS where she recommended I switch to Comp Lit. My first acceptance--I'm overwhelmed!
The pain from Chicago is healing.

I think it's worth remembering that just because one may not fit in University X, it's not a necessary indication that one won't fit in University Y. There are so many variables of which, by necessity, we're unaware, so I wouldn't count yourself out just yet, @WildeThing. I had a friend one cycle that got rejected by 15/16 schools, but the one that did accept him was his first choice. I imagine this isn't too comforting, but still, have faith!

Accepted to Literature MA at Alabama (not Strode) with assistantship and Loomis scholarship.

I got a Duke Literature interview!!!!!!!!!

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!
I just got waitlisted for a Gender Studies program -- first non-rejection in two years; I suddenly feel like maybe I have a chance. 

ACCEPTED TO ILLINOIS AND NOMINATED FOR A FELLOWSHIP!

Hello Everyone,
Got a call yesterday from the head of English Graduate Admissions at Notre Dame with an invitation to fly out (at their expense) for a "recruitment" weekend.
Can't help but feel this is a good sign, yes?
 
 

Today at 4:54 pm, I was called by an unknown number. The area code matched an area code for one of the schools to which I have applied - I know this since I made all list of all the possible areas codes for all the schools to which I have applied and I keep it on my person at all times because Constant Vigilance.
So, I have my phone in my right hand and my list in my left and I realize that the first 3 numbers in the phone number are the same as the first 3 numbers of one phone number on the page.
I reject the call, naturally, because I am scared. 
I then stare at my phone, waiting for the voicemail notification, and think to myself - after about 15 minutes - "wow this is a really long voicemail, they must be really excited for me. maybe I got a double scoop of funding."
It is now 5:59 pm - I will admit there is no voicemail notification, but I'm just not confident that there is no actual voicemail. It's probably stuck, like a text, and is on its way. 
While I wait for it get unstuck, I'm going to fashion a "One Week of Waiting" chip for myself out of two beer bottle tops and a glue stick. 
Semi-related, hello and welcome to the deadzone, @Dogfish Head - I made it one week before collapsing into the third rail. May you make it at least 8 days. 

Nebraska (Early Feb)         
Northeastern  (Early March)
Northwestern   (Late January)
Notre Dame     (Interview requests send in Mid-Late January)   
NYU       (Middle February)

Ohio State     (Late January)
Oklahoma      (Early February)
Oklahoma State (Early March)    
Oregon  (Late February to Early March)

Penn State   (Late January to Early February)
Pennsylvania     (Mid to Late February)
Pittsburgh         (Early February)   
Princeton             (Mid February)
Purdue   (Late January to Early February)

Rice       (Early February)
Riverside     (Early February)    
Rochester     (Early February)       
Rutgers  (Mid to Late February)

San Diego            (Early February)
Santa Barbara    (Mid February)
Santa Cruz           (Mid to Late February)
St. Louis               (Seems to be notifying as early as Jan 12)
Stanford              (Early to Mid February)
Stony Brook        (Early March. Interview requests may be sent to some applicants in Late Jan.)
Syracuse             (Mid March)
           
Temple  (Early to Mid February)
Tennessee   (Early February)
Texas A&M       (Early to Mid February)
Tufts      (Mid to Late February)
Tulsa (Mid February)
     
UCLA     (Mid February)
UGA       (Mid February)
UI Chicago   (Late February)  
UIUC   (Late January) 
UNC- Chapel Hill    (Early March)        
University of Texas- Austin   (Early February)
Southern California-  (Mid February)
UVA- (Mid February)

Vanderbilt      (Late Jan to Early February)
 
Wisconsin-Madison     (Late Jan to Early February)
Wisconsin- Milwaukee  (Mid February)       
WUSTL  (Early February)

Yale      (Mid to Late February)
 

I know I'll find bloopers galore if I dig, but I'm holding myself back from looking at any of my documents for sanity's sake. 

Not exactly an English program (but lit theory related!), and not exactly an acceptance, but I just got word from UC Santa Cruz History of Consciousness that I am on their short list! I was not expecting to hear from them for a while, especially because they don't do interviews... but I'm thrilled! Final decisions should be out by mid February. Fingers crossed for good news.

Okay so this isn't an acceptance but my husband just received an email saying that he is on the "short list" for the University of Maryland and inviting him to a Skype interview next week! We are local to the school so he's going to offer to go in person (not sure if that's an option) but I AM SO EXCITED FOR HIM!
P.S. Any PhD interview tips would be super appreciated!

Love it! When I was applying to MA programs, I had this fantastic dream that Michelle Obama called me up on this stage in front of tons of people to tell me that I had pretty much been accepted to all schools ever and that she, Barack, and the whole country were all "so proud" of me. That dream left me so damn happy that I don't even care how silly it was. 

Oh, this reminds me. For the love of all that is holy, PLEASE, do NOT re-read old drafts of submitted statements. That's one of the best way to add useless agony to your life. Put them behind you when you're done and move on. (Caveat: unless you're back to work on new drafts for a new cycle. But even then, what's done is done.) Old statements will be embarrassing to you no matter what you do. For most people, all of their old writing is like that. It shows all their flaws and inconsistencies, or so they think. But the thing is, no one else resides in your head and knows these things, and anyway -- what's done is done. 

@Doll Tearsheet, I have to say I feel your pain. Throughout undergrad I did well in my English major but did not study with the intention of going for my PhD. In fact, I had very different goals throughout my four years in college, so I didn't seek out the classes or professors that would have pushed me to write more theoretically-inclined and research-heavy papers. When I went to apply for graduate school some years later, I realized that I had few papers that would really fit the bill of a good writing sample. I ended up revising part of my undergrad thesis, but I still didn't know how to turn this into a compelling writing sample (and I was rejected from most programs, both high ranked and more modest). Throughout the entire admissions cycle, I felt totally at sea and woefully underprepared to apply. I was also hanging out in an online community where people were much better prepared than I was and able to deploy the lingo. I was like, "I want to study the poetry of the Irish literary renaissance," and they were like, "I'm interested in how critical race theory intersects with biopower and is simultaneously transformed and displaced by eighteenth-century theories of communal midwifery." And I was like

  
Unfortunately, we all come to this process with varying levels of preparation, and this process very much favors those who were focused enough in undergrad to seek out that preparation, and those who went to schools where that preparation was abundantly available. Part of me really resents the fact that programs expect a very high degree of professionalization from students who have never even set foot in a graduate seminar. But that's the way it is, and things keep getting all the more competitive.  
Gripes aside, there are a few things you can do, and I'm going to give you the advice I wish I had received. 
Pick a paper that you've already written--something self-contained. In other words, don't just excerpt your thesis (as I did) unless it's a selection of your thesis that can stand on its own. I would advise that you pick a paper you really enjoyed writing and that felt particularly inspired to you (I know you say you don't have original ideas, but you probably do). Focus on turning this paper into a research paper, not writing a research paper from scratch. Keep in mind that you're actually not supposed to incorporate THAT much outside research. In fact, it's much wiser to keep the focus on your own ideas. Out of a 20-page paper, really only 3 pages should be a lit review (a section that is focused explicitly on laying out past research) and the rest should be your own close reading and ideas with the occasional mention of outside critics or footnotes to tell us how your ideas are different. Having said that, I'm a little surprised at the advice your adviser is giving you, that you should "read all the important critical literature and also be very aware of how [you're] contributing/interacting with it." I disagree with this statement. I don't think you should focus on reading ALL the things. Doing so will distract you from your own thesis, and you'll then be tempted to integrate everything or abandon your original idea. You'll lose your own voice. Instead: Pick two or three articles/book chapters that are relevant to your specific ideas and then use THEIR bibliographies to find the most useful specific historical/critical/theoretical sources. And if a particular work or critic keeps coming up over and over again, it's safe to say that they're probably someone you should cite in your paper. Figure out your critical lens, and focus on a few of the most prominent scholars of that lens. Integrate them into your paper, but do so sparingly. You also say that you're struggling with how to structure this paper. Gregory Semeza's Graduate Study for the 21st Century actually has a chapter devoted to how to structure a seminar paper. It's here.

Forget "completely original thoughts."  If your research concept doesn't overlap to some degree or another with other scholars in your area, you're either thinking too narrowly, or you're not in the area you think you are.
I've been writing the first chapter of my dissertation the last few months, and one of the most important things I've had to learn is that an intellectual discipline is a conversation.  You are entering into it to contribute, not to eviscerate your competition.
Read widely in your area, follow back footnotes, don't get defensive when you come across something that either seems to "steal" your idea, or contradict it.  Instead think about your place in the conversation.  Do not feel the need to recapitulate the secondary literature of your area in your writing sample - in fact, avoid this, using only what you need.  If you were already completely versed in your area, you wouldn't need to get a PhD.
My partner has recently been reading the book They Say, I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing and says it's been very helpful in this regard.  I plan to take a look when she's done.
Looking back, my writing sample wasn't even remotely original, but it showed that I had potential.  If you were capable of busting the lid off of your discipline already - again - you wouldn't need to get a PhD.  I recently got some advice about dissertation writing, "Do not think of it as the last great thing you will write, think of it as the first good thing you will write."  If that applies to dissertations, then put the writing sample in perspective.  Your originality is far less important than your potential.

Keep an open mind about the different classes you take and the different fields of specialization you come in contact with. The MA is a great time to really explore your interests and options. I started off in one time period/national literature and ended up applying to PhDs in a completely different specialization. In other words, you don't want to pigeon-hole yourself as the "contemporary American poetry person" or the "postcolonial Africanist person" too early. For the first year, be really open to all the classes you take and concentrate on generating good seminar papers.

Hi! I hope your MA experience is amazing and best of luck with your first semester! 
If I could sum up some of the things that I learned from my MA (in a way that is hopefully helpful to you), I would say - 
(1) Be open and engaged with professors; they're (obviously) some of your strongest allies in the application process. Getting to know them and asking their opinions on best practices towards applying during that first semester will (a) give you a network of awesome LWs and advisers and (2) help you figure out what adviser style works for you. Hitching your wagon to a superstar is great, but you risk detaching somewhere in the troposphere if the adviser is misaligned with you in a holistic way. It's a weird way to put it, but I hope I'm at least sort of clear.
(2) Be open and engaged with your peers; they're your second line of defense in PhD apps. Finding good friends means (usually) good and honest eyes who can read your SOP and WS. Moreover, I've some of my best app/scholarship practices from friends (and from reading their work.) 
(3) Focus on creating a great WS by keeping things simple. There are many opinions on what the WS is; I would say that the WS is the "workhorse" of your application - its primary goal is to prove that you can create and sustain an intelligent and engaged academic argument for 18ish pages. It's also good to explore a bit in your field, but the WS doesn't need to be the "showhorse"  that the SOP (with all its ambition and intellectual acrobatics) needs to be. I learned this in a lovely convo with a peer today, so - hey - friends are key. 
(4) Reach out for help if you need it - there are lovely folks on here willing to talk. There are lovely folks at your program (in the English department and elsewhere) likely willing to help. It sounds like a platitude because it is, but it takes a village (in some sense) to make this whole PhD app thing work. 
FWIW, I haven't stuck the landing yet in terms of apps, so please - take my advice with a lot of salt (well-intended, not Salty Salt), ignore whatever doesn't work for you, and PM if something does stick out. 
Best!

I took the GRE last week, and I think that I did pretty well. One step closer to being able to apply to programs this Fall .

Happy news here today folks! Woke up to an acceptance e-mail from one of my schools!  I'm shocked they got back to me so quickly, my second letter of recommendation just got sent yesterday, but I must have been "under review" until it came in. It's my #2 program so I'm really stoked!!!
 
I'm not sure if I should e-mail the adviser and let her know I'm waiting on the others or not, she sent me an e-mail about scheduling everything and acceptance (but nothing about funding... so I also want to ask about that.) 

Not to make things more difficult @Keri but I'd like to join as well @lit_nerd 

We will figure this out, everyone! Hopefully @lit_nerd checks back in soon
So far we've introduced ourselves, talked about our application goals, talked about our research, and keep each other updated on what  we've been accomplishing. I've been setting weekly/monthly goals and check in whenever I'm feeling good/need some extra encouragement. 
It's been helpful for me so far. Accountability is huge, and we can help each other cross the finish line!