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fj20

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Everything posted by fj20

  1. Regarding Buffalo's decision process: if you haven't been notified by them yet, I'm pretty certain it means they're considering offering you an MA spot--but not a PhD spot. I was in this position last year, and when I called to ask they said that "PhD admissions had been decided upon a long time ago," but not MA admissions.
  2. Probably no one here can answer this question, but: is there any possibility that Brandeis is still making decisions? Two acceptances were posted, and 1 waitlist was reported just a few days ago. And, since some rejections were received a while ago, I'm inclined to (foolishly) think those who haven't been rejected may still have a tiny chance.
  3. respect. i'm thinking peace corps--you can teach university with just an m.a. in the peace corps.
  4. I don't know, but I think the earliest acceptance reported last year (on the results board) was in March.
  5. I agree, it does seem like the Interfolio process requires a great deal of time. However, the application instructions on Binghamton's website say that you can just electronically upload your transcripts, even though your department will probably prefer an official transcript mailed directly to Interfolio. So I think you can still apply to Binghamton, fast-approaching deadlines notwithstanding.
  6. Yes, I'm pretty sure they don't contact MA applicants until quite a while after the PhD letters go out. (This is confirmed by the results from past years.)
  7. When I sent my transcripts to the schools I'm applying to, my midyear grades (from my current MA program) had not yet been added to the transcript. Now that they've been reported, should I send a second transcript, or just let it go? Since my grades were pretty good, I wonder if I'm selling myself short by not reporting them to these schools.
  8. ". . . these forums are simply evidence of our very human impulse to understand what's beyond our control." [i don't know how to quote people on this forum, but this is from lifealive's post two posts up.] A legitimately profound statement--doubly impressive seeing how shallow the subject matter can often seem.
  9. Thanks, I'm glad I read this, because I was planning on cutting out a section of my paper and giving a brief summary, in a footnote, of the bit of analysis I had left out. So I guess I'd better not do that.
  10. [i'm afraid this is another rather finicky question that should really be directed to the admissions committees in question, but that's partly what this forum is for, right?] What are people's thoughts on this subject? In particular, I'm concerned about Yale's writing sample, which, unlike most, is only 10-15 pages. At the moment, I have just over 16 pages, and I'm inclined to think that will be okay. Also, it just occurred to me that they may not find out you're over the limit until they get to the end, whereas if you cut out important passages, they'll find out fairly early on that your argument has holes in it. A related question has to do with excerpting longer papers. Some departments explicitly say it's okay to submit excerpts as writing samples, but others do not (Yale for instance, as far as I can tell); I don't know of any that say not to. Any thoughts?
  11. This isn't really about formatting, but it is about MLA guidelines. Looking through the MLA handbook, I was surprised to find under the section about using italics that MLA advises you not to use italics for emphasis (that is, not to italicize words you want to place special emphasis on, as I just did with the word "not"). They say it "rapidly becomes ineffective," and "is rarely appropriate in scholarly writing." Really? (joke) I agree, you don't want to italicize too many words, but I hardly thought it was considered unprofessional to do so occasionally. A more pertinent question: for those of you who write on Shakespeare, what's your policy with citing act and scene and line numbers when you've already made it clear in the text that you're quoting from Act 2, for example? Will you still write the full citation, 2.3.58-59, or will you just write 3.58-59?
  12. Here's the statement from Cornell's website: "Your writing sample must be between 3,000 and 7,500 words (12-30 pages), typed and double-spaced." As far as I can tell, 30 pages of double-spaced type can get up to at least 10,000 words. Has anyone else come across a discrepancy between a department's length requirements in terms of pages and their length requirements in terms of words? I'm thinking that so long as I'm under 30 pages, I'll be alright, regardless of the word-count. Any thoughts?
  13. Actually, Chesterton's right, that first question I ask is pretty much the same one that is addressed throughout this thread. But I actually do ask at least one quite different question, namely "Is it problematic to claim [in your SOP] that you have two distinct subjects of interest (while at the same time being quite specific about your interest in at least one of those subjects)"?
  14. A related question is: just how much do the writing sample and SOP have to align? The writing sample I'd like to use (because it's my best work) is on Milton, and in my SOP I discuss my (growing) interest in early modern lit., but also say that my primary focus is on Romanticism (although I'm considering tweaking this to suggest that I'm equally interested in both). So this presents two problems: 1) Is it a problem that my writing sample does not discuss Romanticism, when it is my stated area of interest; and, perhaps more seriously, 2) Is it problematic to claim that you have two distinct subjects of interest (while at the same time being quite specific about your interest in at least one of those subjects). Any thoughts?
  15. Well, it is a one-year program, so I've only been taking classes with these professors for 2 months, and only one of them will have seen a significant amount of my writing. A lot of schools' websites specify that they want letters of recommendation from professors who know you well, so I don't think they would want all of my recommendations to come from people I've just met.
  16. My situation, which I imagine is not uncommon, is this: I applied to PhD programs last year, was accepted only to MA programs, and am in the course of completing my MA now. When I apply to PhD programs again this year, should I simply ask my last year's recommenders to send in the same letter they wrote last year, since they of course have not gotten to know me any better in the past year? Or should I send them my new SOP and writing sample? (I do have one new recommender from the MA program.) Of course, the obvious answer is that I should simply ask them if they'd like to see my recent work, and I will. But I was hoping someone could tell me what they think is usually done in this situation.
  17. "unless the paper is subsequently published." See, that is the one thing tempting me to do this conference: the paper IS subsequently published, and to me that does seem important. I mean, there are full professors at respectable universities who list just such papers, published by the "Inter-disciplinary Press," in their resumes -- should I really turn up my nose just because the press is not well known, when these professors have deemed such publication one of their accomplishments? Money aside, I'm a little surprised that the people who've responded would so readily pass up the opportunity to publish their work.
  18. This is more or less how I feel about it too, but I'm always hesitant to pass up an opportunity. (Conferences don't seem to me so easy to come by: this was the only one I found for which I had an appropriate paper.) I should also add that, though I don't know much about the group running the conference, it's not a scam: it's run by two fairly well-respected academics, and the small publishing press that the group runs does publish actual books. I guess what I find tempting about the conference is that, if you present a paper, it will also be published in a book released by this publishing press. Sufficed to say, it's not going to be a best-seller, but I've seen professors' resumes that include essays published in similar books published by this same group, which leads me to believe that for me to do so would be an accomplishment, and would be a small first step towards participating in academic discourse. The advantages of attending conferences might be dubious, but isn't getting published usually a worthwhile goal?
  19. I know that the general consensus is that academic conferences are a great way to gain experience of academia (and to strengthen your resume), but my question is: if the conference is abroad, and thus an expense of a couple thousand dollars, how can you be sure it's a worthwhile investment? To be more specific, I recently submitted an abstract to an interdisciplinary (that is, not exclusively literary) conference called "Making Sense of Suffering," run by "Inter-Disciplinary.Net"); I was invited to attend, but I'm hesitant to do so because it's in the Czech Republic. Will presenting there, and later publishing my paper in the book the conference releases, really make me a more attractive applicant to doctoral programs? Anyway, if anyone knows about this Inter-Disciplinary.Net group, I'd be grateful to get any further info on them--I've researched, but found little.
  20. Thanks for the responses; I was interested in the program because I'm doing an unfunded MA next year.
  21. I was just notified by the above-mentioned program that my application was rejected because my standardized test scores on "the standardized test that is required for entrance into the particular school or for the particular discipline that the student has selected for his or her education" were not in the top 10% nationwide. I was very surprised at this, because my particular discipline is English literature, and my GRE scores are as follows: Gre General Verbal: 790, 99 percentile Math: 660, 62 percentile WRiting: 6.0 98 percentile Gre Subject, in Literature 720, 97 percentile The only explanation I can come to is that I was rejceted because of my GRE math scores, but that's not fair, right? The GRE test in math is NOT the test required for my particular discipline. Moreover, NO one applying to English graduate programs scores in the top 10% on the MATH score - it's not their field. Don't I have a legitimate cause for protest here, and if so, any ideas on how I can rectify this error? Thanks.
  22. I was just notified by the above-mentioned program that my application was rejected because my standardized test scores on "the standardized test that is required for entrance into the particular school or for the particular discipline that the student has selected for his or her education" were not in the top 10% nationwide. I was very surprised at this, because my particular discipline is English literature, and my GRE scores are as follows: Gre General Verbal: 790, 99 percentile Math: 660, 62 percentile WRiting: 6.0 98 percentile Gre Subject, in Literature 720, 97 percentile The only explanation I can come to is that I was rejceted because of my GRE math scores, but that's not fair, right? The GRE test in math is NOT the test required for my particular discipline. Moreover, NO one applying to English graduate programs scores in the top 10% on the MATH score - it's not their field. Don't I have a legitimate cause for protest here, and if so, any ideas on how I can rectify this error? Thanks.
  23. I'm starting in an MA program next fall, and they suggest taking three seminars a semester, plus two core courses (on theory and general stuff I think, I think one of them is a real light preparation-type course). Since they suggest it to all incoming students, shouldn't that be manageable? P.S. Possibly a stupid question, but is there a major difference between an undergraduate lecture course-load and a graduate one? (I'm guessing the reading load is much bigger, and probably longer papers to write (although I would also guess there would be fewer short papers to write).)
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