cowgirlsdontcry

All you need to do is make sure your recommenders have everything they need now, such as your WS, your SOP and if they ask for it, an unofficial transcript. Then when they receive the email from the applicant school, all they have to do is fill in the appropriate information on the LOR already created and submit it. But you need to stay on top of it all. Tell your recommenders when you have finalized each application so they can be watching for the email to arrive. I can tell you that grad schools lose things. I had my GRE scores sent in October last year and I had a ginormous headache over making sure those scores got into my file, even to one university having set up two files for me.

There are state universities all over this country that do online degrees (especially in the humanities) and do not differentiate between online and in person. You have a master's and that is all that counts. Be sure you attend a "real" university, not one that only exists in the cyberworld. My degree does not look any different from any other MA. It is from a state university and simply says Master of Arts in English. Most of my MA was done as online classes even though I worked as a GA on campus because a majority of the grad students in English (80 in fact) were scattered all over the world. I began a PhD program this fall and got full funding. I did have the benefit of being able to pop in a professor's office and ask a question or two, but they are usually available by email also. Small state universities are doing a lot of online classes. Big state universities are doing some online classes, as well. Even the Ivy leagues are getting into the online class business. It literally costs nothing, except for the professor's salary and as such, is a big money maker. I haven't looked at many universities for online MAs, but did look at University of Louisiana at Monroe and University of Louisiana at Lafayette, because they had both History and English MAs and before I chose to get a master's in English, I was looking at a dual MA in History and English.

At my PhD university, I receive a scholarship, in addition to other funding (i.e. stipend, waiver of tuition, insurance and monies for conferences). I think the others have covered the basics pretty well. While we receive a contract for the entire year, it's based on good reviews at the end of each semester. I also do not receive funding for summers, so will need to teach as an adjunct at least one summer session to cover my cost of living. Every university is different. The fellowships I've seen at various schools work in different ways. Nothing about funding is uniform among universities, or even between departments. Your funding will be spelled out in the official offer letter you receive. Do not think there will be additional monies in any form coming other than what is listed. Fellowships will stretch the monies you receive in most places. For instance, if you have guaranteed funding for 5 years and then receive a fellowship for two years, you will have funding for 7 years. Although I have an MA and expect to finish my PhD in 4-4.5 years, I do have 5 years of funding. I was recently told that some PhD students who don't complete their programs in 5 years, apply for a fellowship in a particular scholars program at this university, then teach in that program until they finish their dissertation. I am attending a conference next summer in Paris. All graduate students accepted for presentations will be considered for travel funds by the society. Sometimes you receive additional funding in that manner. I expect the cost to attend to be in the $5,000 range. My department will contribute a sum, with a contribution from A&S. Then the grad school will provide matching funds. As a result, the majority of my trip will be paid for, as this sort of thing lends prestige to the university in addition to the student or faculty.

I haven't seen the CV of any professors here at my PhD university but I have seen the CV of several full professors at my BA/MA university. Their CVs were in the 30+ page realm. Makes my 4-page CV seem puny by comparison. However, I'm in the process of readying two papers for publication, presenting at a major conference next summer in Paris, and teaching, which will take it to the 5-page realm. It takes time to build a CV. You do want extracurriculars and work experience detailed if they are relevant. If they are not relevant, a one-line reference will do. I was a paralegal for 20 years prior to returning to school and going to grad school. I made a reference to that career at the end of the section on experience. There are many examples online. You should pick one, create a CV and then ask for assistance. The career center at your university would be a good place to start.

A mentor professor told me to look at graduate students currently enrolled in programs I was interested in. If my accomplishments were a fairly good match, then the program should go on my list of programs to apply for. I looked at Harvard's English PhD students, and their accomplishments were so many, that I knew there was no way I would be competitive. Most had published in journals prior to being admitted, and they had many presentations at notable conferences, as well. I knew that although I had one major conference, the rest were smaller regional conferences. As a result, even though I had excellent GRE scores and GPA, I did not apply to Harvard. I have no idea what the current students in HDS look like or even how to assess their abilities, but it's your field.

It might be possible to increase your GRE scores by that much, depending on the amount of time you have to invest. The quan. test involved primarily algebra and finite math. However, I'm not the greatest math student ever and when I took finite math, I did most of the work with an advanced calculator (never learned the formulas). You must learn the formulas because all you get to use during the GRE is the onscreen calculator. I actually remembered some of typical problems because they were the same ones I encountered in the math class, but since I had not learned the formulas, I could only make an educated guess, which is why my math score was not high. Whether you can learn all of those formulas in one month is an unknown.

If you are a first year like me, then you have been in your current program a month or less. That is not enough time to evaluate the program at all. How many credits are these 4-5 hour classes? A 3-credit course usually runs about 2.5-3 hours per week in the semester system (16 weeks). If you are on a quarter system (10-11 weeks), I could see the classes running for longer periods of time in order to be the equivalent of semester classes. My academic classes meet for 2.5 hours once a week for the semester. All of the GTAs I have ever known work 20 hours per week. If you are teaching, that is 150 minutes per week, per course. Of course, that 150 minutes is purely teaching and doesn't allow for creating lesson plans, doing admin stuff and grading papers, which is way more time consuming than teaching. The only thing I have to be on campus for are my own academic classes, and teaching, which is about 12 hours per week. The other can be done at home and, unless I want to get a study carrel at the library, must be done at home, as I don't have an office on campus. I get about the same amount of sleep (6-7 hours per night). I did a masters program (traveling 45 minutes each way) prior to entering this PhD, so I knew what I was in for. I was very stressed during the teaching orientation I had to attend before classes began. Once classes began, and I started teaching and attending my own academic classes, I settled down pretty quickly and have gotten in the groove of my work. Did you do any research about the cities where you applied for programs? DC is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Even saying that, I would also note that I am in one of the lowest (if not the lowest) paid fields. I spend 71% of my pre-tax stipend on housing because I refuse to live with others. Luckily, I have other income that gets me through. I believe each PhD program is autonomous from every other program and that there is no such thing as transference. You must apply all over again.

You discuss wanting to transition to academia, yet, also talk about gaining a I was a paralegal for 20 years before going back to school and the things you discuss in that skillset may or may not be necessary, depending on the type of law practiced. Are you going to practice law, or do you plan on going straight to a PhD program? I knew a professor in the social sciences who was a lawyer who gained a PhD and taught, so what you're doing isn't that unusual. You may find it difficult to go back to being a poor grad student after having worked as an attorney for a few years. Do you have student loans to deal with? As far as how programs would view your application, while I'm not in that field, and I'm looking at this from a general viewpoint , I would think that the difficulty and the tenacity it takes to finish law school, would be viewed as a plus. However, there is always the possibility that you could be viewed as the perpetual student

Editing companies may not have their own people who do the editing. When I was working on MA, the dept chair sent an email to GAs regarding an outside editing job. I got in touch with them. They were an editing company and soliciting assistance from English departments around the country to gain grad student workers who could help in the editing process. Many of these editing companies are foreign nationals, whose English may be no better than yours, which is why they are seeking to hire English grad students. You are much better off contacting the English Dept or writing center at your university directly, in order to learn if they have grad students who would like to work with you on an editing project prior to sending it to professors within your department for review. Just my own opinion.

The truth is the terms male/female could refer to any animal. Although I don't find it offensive, I do prefer to be called by a human term. Simply saying female instead of woman/women infers a lower order animal, that has been used in the past to relegate women to lower positions of power. It becomes a bullying tactic some men use in grad school towards women. I call my undergrad students men and women, because they are adults, albeit young ones.

I'm an older PhD student in my first semester at a very large state university. I have found there are many opportunities to socialize with other adults here. In fact, I have to make decisions about which ones I really want to attend, because I am here to finish my education and I also teach. Other than the various grad student organizations, individuals at my university seem to mingle some outside of their own departments. I'm going to a "house concert" this weekend put on by a math instructor and her husband/partner. Someone is always putting some kind of get together/event on one of the list-servs. While I am something of an introvert (as are most humanities peeps), I find the open invitations a good way to mingle and meet new people without a lot of pressure. The university is located in a city of approximately 100,000 people, which isn't a large city. Although ideal living conditions, it does lack a lot of amenities as far as cultural events are concerned. Perhaps that is one reason why faculty and staff at the university mingle as they do.

I have read that bedbugs are difficult to get rid of. When I lived in a dorm while on an exchange, I purchased bug proof mattress covers that zippered the mattress up into a plastic cover because I was paranoid, then covered with a regular mattress pad. I have heard of people who had to have their homes tented and fogged (gassed) by professionals. I believe that carbon dioxide dissipates rather quickly once windows are opened and a fan is turned on to blow out the window. You simply don't want to be in the room if you're using large quantities of the dry ice. Have no idea if that works

The reason they are saying to take it in October is because ETS can get backed up delivering scores to universities. While I took the GRE in mid-November and the universities received the scores prior to the December 15 deadline some of my applicant universities had, it's not a good idea to wait, because ETS clearly states it can take up to three weeks to deliver scores.

Thanks frank2243. Looking at everyone's background is informative. I would not have been accepted in my PhD program without a master's. It made my journey a little easier in the long-run and I will still finish in about the same amount of time.

I think if someone begins looking at a university's political policies as grounds for applying or not applying, rather than fit of the program, then for the rest of their life, that person is going to have real issues in the world. The U.S. is simply too diverse on every topic. I welcome diverse ideas and discussions, especially as an Americanist because we don't live in a vacuum and neither did the writers whose works we study. I would be very unhappy to learn that everyone in a department was either all left or right leaning. The world is not like that and the workplace in America is definitely not like that.

I don't create a formal outline within the chapters, but I have one in my head. Within the chapters,, I work in sections on complete thoughts about something, separating each section. When I finish a chapter, I read it through and sometimes realize that sections may need to be moved around to get the best flow and understanding of the chapter.

Don't psych programs want a higher verbal score? I think I've read that social science programs are like humanities in that regard. A verbal of 159 is in the 83 percentile. That is not a poor score, but perhaps the programs you were applying to had applicants with higher scores on average than yours. Maybe you need to retake the GRE.

I'm just starting my PhD this fall, but do have an MA. For the most part, I enjoyed grad school. There were classes I did not enjoy, but from which I gained powerful knowledge that is important to my research. Teaching is much more difficult. I love it when it all clicks, and then there are days that no matter what I try, they just sit there not saying a word. On those days, I worry that I'm missing the boat. Perhaps I am, or perhaps talking about writing is simply boring to them. No matter how much you try to incorporate active teaching, there are times when you are just going have to talk about it (and use the dreaded lecture) in order for them to get the knowledge they need to write a paper. Then there are the challenges to your teaching skills, which are difficult because they can become almost belligerent in wanting to do it their way. Overall, grad school has been a terrific experience and one I'm glad to be experiencing.

You didn't read what I wrote. When I asked about a missing LOR, they told me not to worry because they had all of the materials from my previous application. It had nothing to do with the recommenders submitting the same LOR as I used different recommenders. It means they had my previous SOP and WS, as well. They had everything that was submitted from two years previously.

Grad schools, at least some of them, keep materials from earlier applications. How do I know this? I emailed one grad school I had applied to as an undergrad for their PhD program because on my current application a LOR was not showing. The response I received back stated that they had not received the LOR, but not to worry because they had all of the application materials from the previous application, two years before. Eventually, they did receive the LOR before the deadline, but I was left to wonder whether they used my newly submitted materials or the old ones at that point.

It's not just students and universities. It's universities and faculty as employer/employee. I have never been ugly, mean or sexual on social media, but I have voiced my opinion in the past. No more. I really thought about it all and decided that with all of the time and money spent, I really need to mind my own business because employers can find out about you. So now, I follow the old adage of saying nothing if I can't say something good or kind.

My GPAs were BA-3.82, MA-4.0. GRE V-163, Q-145, AW 5.0. (English departments really only care about verbal scores.) I applied to nine schools last year. Was admitted to 2; waitlisted at 2; rejected at 5. My SOP and WS were vetted by five professors in the English department, three of whom went on to write LORs for me. I did not have any publications, but had a number of conference presentations, two of which were major conferences. English PhD programs are accepting only a few PhD students, while over 200 usually apply. My current program accepted five PhD students out of a field of 200, allowing for a 2.5% acceptance rate and required an MA.

Are you doing research on a university library database? If you run into articles on those that aren't free to download, it's because the university does not subscribe to the journal it's published in. Students in the humanities run into this a lot, unless they are at a huge university that subscribes to all of the academic journals. As an MA student, I would see an interesting article, but it wasn't available. I would follow the link and end up at the journal site, then get a message that my university did not subscribe to the journal. With that said, I could order a no cost copy through ILL. At my current university, the arts/sciences are combined in a college and share a library. If you need something from the medical library, you either have to trek over to the medical school or you have to go through their databases, which we have also have access to.

I did my school for fun. It did not list insurance, nor the scholarships for PhD students.

I used Magoosh and found I scored 1-2 points above on the real GRE. Others might have a different story. I think if you want a 166, you are going to have to work some more, because it's not 7-8 points off. You want to be scoring 165-166 consistently on the practice tests in Magoosh before you take the GRE. At least that is my perception of their tests.