towonderland72

Also waiting on the rejection from Yale. Any idea what's taking them so long, since they already sent a round out? I mean... I assume we'd know if we were on a waitlist?

Haha, shotgun not me. I don't want to pay for an international call Thanks for the info, though. I really liked BU when I visited last spring, so this one's got me anxious!

I'm also still waiting on BU. I only applied to four programs (!!) so I'm now very anxious to hear back so I can make a plan... Any idea when BU send their notifications out? Fingers crossed for us both!

Sorry to hear about that. I just saw those Yale rejections on the results board. Wish they'd send me something already! I still haven't heard, and I want to move on with my life *claws eyes out a lil bit*

Just adding my voice to the Harvard freak out. I haven't heard anything... and am dying for more info!

Yeah, no kidding! Even for a form letter, it was pretty cold.

Just got a rejection from Brown. Sad times. Has anyone had good news?

February is finally upon us! Good luck, everybody

Sorry to hear that! So, three of your PhD apps were to UMN? Fingers are crossed for you with your last option there. Where else did you apply?

*internally screaming* The more action there is on the results page, the more antsy I get. Someone posted that they got waitlisted for Minnesota! (Congrats on your English interview btw, @kekology4. Fingers crossed for you!)

Hey! Congratulations on the acceptance! I did my masters at USC, and while I can't speak to the American Studies department there, I can confirm that it's a good school, with some great work happening there! It's a good place to be if you're interested in social justice, as it's a place where a lot of conversations are happening about that, especially in the graduate community. Activism at USC is definitely alive and well, even when it comes to students looking critically at the institution itself (there's an interesting ongoing debate about the building of walls around USC, and its physical and symbolic isolation from the community surrounding it.) LA is also a good city to go to if you want a holistic learning experience--I personally learned a lot about race, gender, and sexuality outside of the classroom on the streets of LA. I was also there as an international student (from the UK) and they put a lot of effort into making you feel at home there, if you sign up to attend international student events. If you have any questions about the campus or area, feel free to send me a message! For example, USC has an awesome campus, but isn't in the safest part of LA--do you know anyone in the city? Have you thought about housing at all? Have you had a chance to visit? From what you've said about the program and your interests, I'd say go for it! But if you want to know more before making the decision that's smart too A x

Another acceptance- Purdue. Congratulations to the applicant... but EEP. It's all happening!

Congratulations!! It's so exciting to know that someone has had a response!

According to the results board, UT Austin contacted someone else yesterday to waitlist them for their American Studies program. Eep.

Okay, ignore that question. I just discovered the 'results' section of gradcafe! Still, seems unusually early. I'd like to think it means there was a smaller applicant pool to sort through this year and therefore WE might also hear sooner, but I'm thinking it's just likely that the accepted person is a strong candidate.

Aaargh. I don't know if that makes me feel better or more afraid! Congrats to whoever that is, though. Where did they post that?

I looked at Minnesota and Michigan, but location factored pretty heavily into my decision. My entire family is in London, so I didn't want to go too far away--being in California taught me that it wasn't right for me. This time I really thought a lot about the time difference, ease, and cost of being able to travel back to the UK. I'm 24 and my family is pretty tight-knit, so it's important to me to be able to do so if I need to--especially since all of my grandparents are alive but sickly. I did like the look of UT Austin, so that's a good call, but it's a way more difficult and expensive move, and I wouldn't do well in the Texan climate either (being in California made me terribly sick, and I started getting cluster headaches). I was really looking for somewhere on the East Coast with a proper winter! It was also important to me to be somewhere that there's a lot of hockey being played (so Minnesota and Michigan would have been great there). I also liked the East Coast because culturally, it's more like home, and I'd be less homesick. If I don't get in anywhere next year, I'm going to think seriously about what I could afford/handle, and see about widening my parameters and reapplying. This year, though, I was constrained by what I could afford and where I could see myself living, as well as the programs themselves.

YES! Check, Please! OMG, I've been a backer since the start and it's one of my favorite things. Definitely interested in this!! I'm involved with the CWHL and NWHL too (I've done some editing for the latter, and am in the editing pool of the former), so it's been interesting to look at how those growing fandoms express themselves versus fans in the AHL/NHL. But yeah- I'm definitely interested in how fans (with the increasing presence of a hockey fandom on Tumblr, which acquired a lot of BNFs from TV/film fandoms like Harry Potter and Teen Wolf) are queering traditional sports narratives and how this is affecting the league's interaction with fanbases. Especially interesting when this butts up against issues like the Patrick Kane rape case last year, seeing how the two different types of fandom reacted.

I think it's very cool that both you and @NoirFemme have that confidence, and I bet it'll serve you guys well wherever you end up. Wish I could say the same. I went to Cambridge and USC, but still suffer from perpetual 'am I good enough' syndrome when it comes to academics. I feel like I'd thrive at the schools I applied to--why apply otherwise?--but am more scared than excited. Second guessing myself, like- should I have applied to more 'safe' schools? Should I have applied to more schools in total? (Rhetorical questions, obviously.) Going off of your post, @NoirFemme: do you think programs are more likely to accept students with good-not-great grades from top schools than high flyers from 'no name' schools? Asking mostly because I'm curious, not having gone through the US system as an undergrad. At Cambridge, the grad students I knew were not always the most diligent bunch in terms of production and proliferation of research. There was certainly a difference between those who were also undergrads at Cambridge--despite being intellectual powerhouses, they didn't seem to work so hard--and those who went there to grad school having been the Wunderkind at some other place.

Similar concerns! My issue, I think, is that I haven't zeroed in on just one 'project'- my doubts lie almost entirely in that. Being on here is not making me feel less nervous... that said, looking at the profiles of current students in the programs I like (Brown, especially), I do think that a lot of them seem to have diverse interests, rather than just one pet project from the outset? The more time I spend on this forum, the less I think I'm getting in anywhere, so I may be the wrong person to give you advice! What other programs are you applying to? An aside: my interests are in exploring gender and nationalism in American sports (specifically hockey); in the gendering of fan communities (I liked Kristina Busse's work on this) and expressions of fandom in sports (the hypermasculine) versus TV and film (often queer and critical spaces); but also, unrelated, in memory, memorialization and whether there is a 'search for a usable past' (Robert G. Moeller's term, describing postwar Germany) in US popular culture. I do have something of a pet project, in that I've been working with the Women Vietnam Veterans organization to talk about their untold story, and want to help them make their history known, but it's not the only thing I want to do. I took a break from academia for two years and have been working in publishing, editing military history books for DK in the US. I also worked on the books for the new African American museum... my work there has been pushing me to think about America's relationship with its own history and its creation of historical figures (my undergraduate thesis was on the creation of Pocahontas as an American heroine in 19th century literature).

That... is terrifying! Hopefully it means good things. Also, now I'm wondering if I should have an academia.edu page. *cries*

Haha, that is a good question. I did look at history PhDs, but was concerned that I wouldn't be able to study as widely as I wanted. In the UK, a History undergraduate degree means three years of doing nothing BUT History--I never took classes in anything else! So, really, I wasn't looking for a course where I'd have to take a lot more History classes. When I was doing my masters at USC, I also taught Writing 140, which was an oddly broad course. I could choose to set essays on anything I wanted, really, and most of mine, I realized later, probably fell under the jurisdiction of American Studies, which got me thinking about applying for PhDs where I could focus more in that field! I wouldn't say my interests have shifted- actually, I might have gone for American Studies as an undergrad if it were a more respected (and better taught) discipline here in the UK. Truthfully, I'd always wanted to go to Cambridge, and they don't offer it. Now, my interests are an interdisciplinary mix between culltural History and American Studies, so... that is my answer. Haha. Edit: d'oh, I just read further back in this thread. Everyone's work sounds great! I admit, before I applied, I aggressively stalked the 'current students' sections of all my schools and got SO SO jealous of all the projects people were working on.

Lurker here. I applied back in October (!) and have finally resorted to obsessively stalking gradcafe, so I thought I'd say hello. I applied to Harvard, Brown, Yale, and BU, and am now totally kicking myself for not applying to more places. I'm a bit skeptical about the whole process, as I'm British and have very little frame of reference for how this works beyond what I did for my masters (somewhat off the beaten path, I did the now-defunct MPW at USC). My undergrad isn't American Studies, either- I have a History degree from Cambridge (graduated in 2013, so am about to get my conferred masters degree from there, but that's a whole 'nother story) with a dissertation in American History. TL;DR I'm driving myself nuts. When do we get put out of our misery?!