claritus

Adding myself to the Hopkins admits!! I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit right now. @Sunsy and @piers_plowman, it will be great to meet you two

Adding myself to the Hopkins admits!! I feel like I'm losing my mind a little bit right now. @Sunsy and @piers_plowman, it will be great to meet you two

I thought this week was going to be the week, but it seems like English is moving at a snail's pace this year. I'm not sure if I can go another weekend without some sort of sign–even a rejection.

Not to worry. We got students visiting that got drunk the second night and could not do some activities on day 3. Not big deal. Just to clarify, it was recruitment weekend (they were already accepted into the program). One of them is actually a great student now!
I'm not sure what you are asking. It seems you either thinking you have a lot of freedom or you actually have a lot of freedom. Let me tell you that in some visiting weekends I hosted we received students that had graduated from our college and now were applying for a PhD after a Master's somewhere else. They used the visiting weekend as a party weekend with friends. I knew many of these because we took some seminars together. I thought it was really unprofessional to do that. They skipped meetings and events. Granted, they new the department, but still. They did not accept the offer of coming here. So, from my perspective as an organizer of these things, please try to attend everything you can and to stay where they tell you. If you have your reasons not to do that (for example, you may live nearby), then that is absolutely fine. But avoid skipping meetings just to take a nap (I know people that have).
It couldn't hurt to ask but I seriously doubt it. 
One of the best things of these visits is that you get a sense of the program, the department, the university, the city/town, and the environment in general. Disclaimer: I did not attend my student visit weekend but I couldn't have been happier. My experience is in weekends where students have already been admitted, there are no admissions interviews there. What we do is arrange interviews with other POIs, even from another department; invite students to a class, show them around campus, show them around town, have caucus parties, arrange meetings with librarians. All the labor is ours, the other graduate students, so you can get a sense of how awkward we are, how competitive we are, or how friendly because you simply spend a lot of time with us. 
They should know this. Be prepared because they may not cover all expenses (in my case they offered a refund of up to $800). 
Questions you could ask students:
Can you survive on this stipend? Do you compensate with something else? Can you work on campus? Questions about health insurance: Have you used it? What for? Do they include...? etc.  TA/RA responsibilities. What's your TA/RA experience in the department?  Resources beyond the library: Do you have a digital humanities lab? Have you used it? How do they help? Are there internships/fellowships there? Do you have a media lab/3D printer/software services/etc? The unsaid resources: professionalization workshops, lectures, support for conferences, etc. Are there any resources for TA or instructors? (I found out later I could use the Teaching for Excellence resources on campus). To students with your same advisor: How is she on a daily basis? How are her classes? Does she read your drafts quickly/send you good feedback/etc? Life: Do you do any sports/belong to any clubs? Do you participate in any organization on campus? How do you keep healthy? Do you attend religious services? etc etc etc  (I can't think of anything else)
 

Dude, some of those posts are 2-3 years old. Maybe you should lay off tagging people with advice

HA. 
I work as a technical writer and I spent about 20 minutes in Photoshop this morning whipping up an "I STAND WITH BOWLING GREEN" Facebook profile picture. I try not to be too political online, so I ended up not using it, but it kept me giggling for a few hours.

Emerging lurker here: I'm one of the people who was accepted, and yeah, had the interview about a week ago. I have no idea how these things actually work (first-time and international applicant), so keep hoping, maybe? Best of luck with your other applications, though! (I also applied to Oxford, and getting in there would be a long-time dream come true for me, though aiming acceptance + funding is probably a long shot).

Yeah, I am deeply attached to my "Berkeley self" even though I'm pretty sure I made myself sound deranged in the personal statement. It would be really hilarious if I wasn't so emotionally involved, because yeah, it does feel like a rejection even beforehand! The psychological push and pull of this whole process is surreal. 

CONTACT ME WITH YOUR DECISION, NYU. -- Sincerely, your secret admirer. 
What if I sent "Be my valentine" cards to every program I've applied to... is that an appropriate way to woo a program? 

This is so true. And the ones I really like are taking up a lot of brain space, but then I also realize that some of those were my worst applications, and it's like this weird rejection cycle before I even get a decision one way or the other.

I applied last cycle and both of these things resonate pretty exactly with how I felt during the process as well, that attachment to potential that becomes a little more real after a first acceptance especially.  Such an unusual phenomenon that I now feel I can process bc others have had similar feelings   I remember how difficult this waiting period was for me last year, and am now feeling strangely nostalgic about it since I was ultimately accepted and very happy in my current program so far (which is why I'm back here reading the boards haha).  Wishing everyone here luck in the remaining months of the acceptance season!

I swear too that submitting so many applications inevitable involves a sort of benign split personality situation. I mean, you're speculating on multiple potential futures; even though you only need/can choose one— it's hard to not feel invested in so many subjunctives. It's likely I'm overthinking it, but I see myself becoming a different scholar at each program I applied to, so I'm uniquely attached to each?

Well I'm just applying for the free vacations, so I'll definitely be back next year even if I am accepted somewhere  

Yeah. I'm not a comp lit person, but you really can't start really worrying until you see other results on the board. Until then, you just have to assume that they haven't notified yet. Truly, save the panic for when it counts.  

Email them. I applied to Berkeley English, so different situation, but as far as I can tell they're running a bit later this year.

Also, just to reassure - almost every English PhD program has some representation in post-colonial, and Anglophone literature from South-East Asia is one of the most popular regional literatures represented in it (probably because the field as a whole was largely responding to British decolonization). I'd start by looking in English departments for sure, since you're more likely to poco scholars there who work on Indian anglophone (Comp Lit would probably combine Indian anglophone literature with readings in Hindi or Urdu). Also keep a look out for departments with strong representation in "World Literature," and "Global Anglophone" as those are the hot fields right now. Indian literature in English is represented strongly in both. Poco as a theoretical framework isn't as popular as it used to be, but the literature that Poco brought into the canon is still being studied from the perspective of world and global lit.

I'VE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND! Thank God!
I cried in my office for an hour because this is the best news I've heard all year. 

Oh for sure—you're not going to get any hard and fast cut-offs from the available data, but it is one of the only places where any modicum of data is available. Mostly I'm just curious about it as a statistical grouping. That being said, there may be cases in which no applicants have been accepted into a program with a score under X. I think thats where it starts to get interesting, though definitely not conclusive in any way. 

Wouldn't it be nice if programs just stated that they weren't interested in applications below a certain score? I'd imagine it would save a lot of application fees and agony.

I did have a nice conversation with Penn State though. They said that I'd have to raise my current 164V in order to be competitive for their PHD program.
In a way it makes sense though. They only accept 1-2 external PHD students per year since most of them continue from the MA program. They also assured me that a lot of employees are related to graduate students. This makes sense considering Penn State's location.

Congrats to the UCIrvine interview applicant.

These interviews from universities seem common this year as opposed to previous years.

So if trends continue, tomorrow is when shit really starts getting real. Best of luck everyone! 

So if trends continue, tomorrow is when shit really starts getting real. Best of luck everyone! 

Erhm--I'm not sure you'll find the help you need, since it's also your job to do the research  
But basically, all PhD programs are usually fully funded. That's why they're so competitive!

But the restrictions also apply to dual-citizens, people with green cards, etc. There are Canadian and British MPs who would no longer be able to enter the country. It's completely unprecedented, and if this is happening only days into Trump's presidency I expect much worse to come.