cowgirlsdontcry

I'm heading to UA this fall. I think right around campus within a mile are a lot of stores, coffee shops, hangouts and even a mall. No public transportation to speak of, except campus transport that goes to some apartment complexes. My house is a few blocks from stadium and English department is behind that, so it's .7 mi to the English dept and that's too far to walk in the pouring rain, which there is a lot of in T-Town. My guess is you could get by without a car if you live on campus or in one of the nearby complexes, but if you ever want to get away from campus, you need a car.

At my MA school, which is a smallish state school (10,000), the grad school only wanted a total GRE score. After reading these posts, I looked at the remainder of the public universities in the state. All of them, asked for a total score and none of the departments, except for LSU asked for verbal or quant. scores. For reference, I only checked English/History Departments. I had a mediocre (read that awful) quant. score and a 163V and was accepted into a PhD program with full funding. The only thing I think you can read into that is that other things are at work in committees and there is no guarantee of any admission or rejection.

I did not even get waitlisted at UT-Austin's English Program. Not sure what the problem was as they don't tell you. My stats are GRE V 163, GPA undergrad 3.82, MA 4.0. Out of 9 applications I received 2 admissions, 2 waitlists and 5 rejections. Had two major conferences under my belt, but no publications. I had excellent LORs because the two schools I was admitted to stated they were stellar. Three different Americanists read my WS and made suggestions. Based on all of that, I should have gotten something from UT because every one of my stats were at the very top or higher than those they admitted for the 2016 round of applications, but I didn't. That says other factors are at work. It could have been something as simple as they had already admitted their quota for my area, by the time they got to my application. You can only do your best. There is no such thing as a sure thing or a safety school. Look at each school as somewhere you want to attend. Don't worry about the math. I didn't even look at the math portion when prepping for the GRE. Humanities departments don't care about quantitative. I received a fully funded offer from a top 50 university and will begin in the fall.

What you have said about finding your way is so important--more important to me is to be somewhere that I can really grow into the scholar I want to be, rather than simply one who can get a tenured position. This is more about me and what I want to pursue as a scholar. Although I'm now firmly entrenched in contemporary American literature, I feel both the connection and the draw of the early works, because that is where we find the beginnings of what was to become both the country and its literature. They are completely intertwined and McCarthy recognizes that and uses it. I also have that interest in Southern lit, which meant I was going to end up in a Southern university, so I could pursue that to some degree. My final foray into other interests includes late 19th C, very early 20th C (prior to the rise of modernism) Brit lit. I adore Conrad, Lawrence, Foerster, as well as Yeats, even though he was Irish. There are also those authors who pursued the rise in the horror genre towards the fin de siècle. Love Richard Marsh's The Beetle. But that's what's so interesting about our field, we don't have to give up our little loves. I think that your idea of an English department that has a strong film section was probably best for you, as from what I can see, you like combining film with printed text and a pure film study degree would have eliminated the textual portion. Studying the comparison of how film and text get a particular scene across is fascinating to me, although I only took a few film classes. I was RA to a film professor in the English department as part of my MA assistantship, and the research she had me do was quite interesting. Finding our niche in the field is somewhat helter skelter. It's important to look at everything and take a wide variety of classes in order to find that place.

That's true Takeruk. I applied primarily to large flagship state universities and the one I ended up at has a student population of over 37,000. I think rent is reasonable, but in the humanities, stipends are lower, so I'm fortunate to have outside income and can afford to live alone. The one private school I applied to has options similar to what you discuss, but their shared cost was almost as high as renting off-campus and living alone--$1,000 a month (shared grad student apartments) compared to $1,000-$1,200 per month (living alone) in the surrounding area.

Quick question about your interests. By early modernist, are you talking about early modernism or early modern novels (i.e. Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year)? I took a film class as an undergrad in horror genre and we watched the rage movie 28 Days Later. That same semester, I was taking research and the professor's specialization was the long 18th C. As a result, we read Defoe's JPY. In the film class, I ended up doing a comparison of that early 18th C novel with 28 Days Later--same plot, for my final paper. I really like how you word the idea that grad students need to "show the potential to develop further." My MA thesis was on 3 texts of Cormac McCarthy and I believe I can expand that nicely into a dissertation that encompasses all of his books and screenplays. I knew I wanted to be an Americanist, but not exactly what time frame. I went into high gear as I entered my MA program, looking at various topics I might pursue for my thesis. I thought for a while I might end up an early Americanist, but then discovered McCarthy and here I am in contemporary American lit, although I do belong to SEA. I haven't given up my early American interests because McCarthy is known for his use of other authors' works ("books are made from books"). I also have a deep interest in Southern lit (where McCarthy treads also).

I lived off campus during my MA and will do so also during my PhD. However, I did an exchange during undergrad and had to wait for a signup day because I was accepted for the exchange after the first round of room picks. Some universities will give you a link to grad student housing after you apply. When I investigated those links, I learned that if I was admitted and wanted grad housing, I had to get on a waitlist and some lists were as long as 2-3 years out. So I figured out quickly, before I ever received admission for this fall, that wherever I went, I would be living off campus and started saving every penny to put towards rental and utility deposits. The English Dept where I will be located gave each new incoming grad student a list of organizations, where we might be able to find housing. I was actually contacted by a graduating grad student in the department, when I posted my need on the dept gso list-serv. His landlord was a former English professor and the house was only a few blocks from campus. We talked on several occasions and I ended up with a house. There are usually FB pages too. I see huge numbers of sublets and requests for roommates. In the case of sublets, students are usually trying to get rid of their rental at greatly reduced rates over what the complexes charge. Many universities have apartment complexes nearby that put roommates together and charge "by the room/bath." Just have to be careful to state you want to live with other grad students so you don't end up in the animal house party apartment. Overall, finding housing was relatively easy. Now I'm packing for the move at the end of the month--not so easy! Good luck.

While not in your field (English-American lit), I was accepted into a PhD program for this fall. Here are my stats: GRE V163, Q145, AW 4. GPA: Undergrad 3.82 overall, M.A. 4.0. I was told by the DGS that the committee was very impressed with the package I put together and they only accepted 5 PhD students this year. That says to me that every part of our application package is important. This is a second career move for me. As a non-traditional student, I was very concerned about age being a factor and overshadowing all of the good things I worked to put together. But there are ways of turning potentially negative factors into pluses on the SOP. You don't say if you are looking at master's or PhD programs. I used Magoosh to boost my verbal scores. When I started using Magoosh I was steadily scoring in the mid-150s on verbal practice tests. I was able to raise my score to 163. I have only taken the GRE once prior to entering my MA program that was at the same university where I did undergrad. Not too expensive and easy to use online. Nice explanatory videos. Helps you understand why certain answers are better. This is really helpful in taking standardized tests. I didn't have time to study the math at all and am not a math person. I also did not prepare for the AW. Don't remember if Magoosh has practice on that or not. One thing I learned is that the AW is not argument driven, which as an English major is where I head. It's analysis driven. I'm sure that drove down my AW score somewhat. My verbal score was high enough that I saw no reason to retake the test. I applied to 9 programs. Accepted at two; waitlisted at two; rejected at five. The results were a fair showing I think. Maybe there are students who get accepted to most or all of their applicant schools, if you go by what you read on GC, but I have talked to professors at several different universities about their results and those applying since the 1990s overwhelmingly received fewer admissions.

It's not unusual to think about different kinds of literature. Even as an entering PhD student, I have different areas that I like, although I know what I want my specialty area to be. Are you looking at the entire field of renaissance or just one country? Would you start at Dante or wait for Petrarch and Machiavelli? Just curious there. I wouldn't think an undergrad would have a huge handle on exactly where they would position themselves. Liking both areas could lead you to applying to the University of Alabama's Hudson Strode Renaissance Program. UA also has a diversified literature program, which would allow you to pursue a sub-area such a Victorian literature. I am an entering PhD Lit student there this fall. You must have a master's to apply to UA's various PhD programs, but their various masters' programs encompass the same areas as their PhDs. I decided to get a master's before applying to PhD programs. It helped me mature in both writing and knowing where I wanted my specialty area to be. The path to a PhD in English is about the same length whether you do an all-in-one program or get a stand-alone MA and then PhD. Most English programs will transfer in some of your classes so that there are fewer classes to take in the PhD. I have hopes of being able to complete the PhD in four years, which will mean six years total. Don't panic! You have another year before you graduate. However, you would need to apply in the fall to various programs, whatever way you wish to go.

Thank you for elaborating Paulwece. Ten pages is not very much for a master's thesis. My advisor told me when she agreed to take me on, that she wouldn't accept less than 60 pages and no more than 120 pages. In my area, PhD dissertations run around 300+/- pages.. I don't believe it's unusual for professors who are off in the summer and "abroad" to not correspond. As she is back this week, when there are still 6 weeks before fall semester beginning, I'm sure she will be contacting you to discuss this more in depth, rather than sending emails back and forth.

It's relevant because students (even master's students) have issues with working under another student. He simply says it's not his area of interest or expertise without elaborating why the professor wanted him to work on the project for one of her PhD students, which seems to indicate he may have issues more than what he states with the whole thing. He also seems at odds with having to get the PhD student to get "his words" through to the professor. Looking at the other post he made, it seems that he took on this internship for the summer. If that is the case, then he is obligated to work on the project that the professor requested and is extraneous from his thesis proposal. I did not say that you implied he should file a complaint. He discusses wanting to file a complaint and obviously stop the professor from getting tenure, which also suggests an immaturity with regard to this whole thing because it's so vindictive.

Lemondrop, Paulwece first says that they agreed on a thesis topic, then writes that he "mentioned 3 possibilities." As you know, having written a thesis, the topic must be nailed down and discussed in detail with the advisor before submitting a proposal. To simply narrow it to three possible choices is not enough, even though he has talked to the advisor about them. He also does not state what about the proposal was rejected. Was it the topic or was it more about how he was approaching the topic? Some of the things he states, he contradicts. He also does not clarify exactly why the advisor wanted him to work with her PhD student. Was it for guidance in research techniques, or ideas for topics? He doesn't say, just that he didn't want to work on that project for the reasons he gives. As a TA I would get papers of undergrads to review and occasionally would get one that was so bad, there was no fixing it. I would tell the student they had to rewrite it. Of course, that didn't go over too well and invariably they would go to the professor and ask him to review the paper again, hoping to override what I had told them. Perhaps Paulwece doesn't want to deal with a PhD student. That happens. He can change advisors. That also happens, but it all depends on what his schedule for thesis looks like as to whether it's a good idea. I think filing a complaint, is the last thing he should be doing, especially if he hopes to go on to a PhD program or even get a job and desires good LORs from some of the other professors in the department. I had a professor who was also a recommender, who gave everyone in a class an "I" because she couldn't open any of the submitted final projects. I freaked out because I was a GA/TA and an Incomplete for a reason beyond my control, would have caused me to lose funding. After that, she failed to submit any LORs for me. If I hadn't been on top of my applications, I might not have noticed, and quickly got someone else to submit the remainder of LORs.

You first say that you agreed on a thesis topic, then you say you mentioned three possibilities. Which is it? If you agreed on a topic, then pursued a different topic and submitted a proposal, I can see why it was rejected. You say "She wanted me to work on another project for one of her PhD student." Was that a suggestion for a thesis topic or did she just want you to work with the PhD student to develop ideas? I just finished my MA thesis in the spring semester just ended. A master's thesis proposal is due before the semester in which one writes the thesis begins. When is your proposal due? If it's not due until end of fall semester, with the writing of thesis in spring semester, you have a lot of time and have worked yourself into a tizzy over nothing. If you write in the fall, then you should have dealt with all of this in the spring, nailing down your topic and getting your proposal submitted and approved before she left. If you don't even have a topic, what about the huge amount of research and reading required before writing a thesis? When will you do that? I can tell you that writing an approximately 100 page document in one semester is enormous and if you expect to do the research, read and write it all in one semester, then you have another think coming. It's just not possible, to produce something of quality from start to finish in that period of time. Ideally, in my own little opinion, agreement of topic with advisor, research, read, proposal, write is the order one should pursue in developing a thesis. I started looking around at topics and doing preliminary research at the beginning of my master's. It took that whole school year to decide on a topic. At the end of May, 2016 I had decided on a topic and met with my advisor for lunch to discuss everything and get her ideas because she had already been there. In some ways, it seems you have procrastinated (don't we all?) and now expect a professor who does not work in the summer to be at your beck and call to fix this for you.

I guess because I get to read as part of my career path it's like breathing, and I take for granted the pleasure I get from reading any book, whether it's for class or personal. The spring semester was difficult. I had one class, wrote thesis and worked as a TA to a professor working with all of his undergrad students in four literature classes, as well as teaching my own section of 1st year rhet/comp. I was still reading though, for class and scholarship for my thesis, and a small amount of personal when I could squeak it in. Yes Eigen, puppies and dogs take a lot of time.

My own personal opinion about this is that there is no need to look into less formal programs, unless that is what you want to do. Literature encompasses many types of media in the 21st C and most of us (lit majors that is) have strayed into the different realms. I have taken film classes and on my final paper in one, compared Defoe's early modern novel A Journal of the Plague Year with the rage movie 28 Days Later--same basic plot. I was RA to a film professor (and TA to an Americanist) and did a lot of research on various film techniques and producers (i.e. Coen Brothers). In my MA thesis, I had to delve into how movies have helped create a divergence in what was really the Old West into what the vision of it has become now, when I wrote the chapter on McCarthy's Blood Meridian. I took part in writing and creating a video about the girl sleuth Nancy Drew in a literature class that featured various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes. I have written a cookbook as the final project for my Southern Renaissance Class in the spring semester just ended, finding and using quotes about food to illustrate how the authors were able to envision class/race through representations of food, as well as including recipes to those foods. Food is a big thing in Southern lit and it is also seen fairly often in other genres of literature to illustrate culture. We can like a lot of different things and they bring knowledge to us that we then use in other ways. It's all just part of finding your way in your scholarly interests.

I have eclectic personal reading habits. I read literature every day for class, then thesis or now dissertation, so I tend to go with more popular contemporary authors for my personal reading. If you are looking for more literary novels, I can guide you in that direction also. Right now I'm reading The Blood of Emmett Till by Timothy Tyson. It's a look at the murder of a 13-year old black boy in the mid-1950s in Mississippi. I had read Anne Moody's Coming of Age in Mississippi in a Southern lit class where Moody discusses the fear Till's murder created among black people in Mississippi and wanted to read further about it. One of my literary interests is the way class/race are connected and necessary to keep propping up the planter-aristocracy illusion of the Old South. There are always 2-3 books lying around or open on my Kindle app. After seeing the movie Me Before You, I had to read the book. JoJo Moyes is a contemporary British writer who has been discovered over the last few years in America. I have now read three of her books and they are all good reads. Zadie Smith is a British writer whose post-modern offerings present great form and a look at immigration and post-colonialism. I like Elin Hilderbrand's ability to touch upon familial issues, but her writing is always connected to the beach/ocean. Her new release The Identicals: A Novel does that in a post-modernist way of going from one character's POV to another's. Dean Koontz's mysterious, slightly supernatural novels have always fascinated me. His new publication The Silent Corner: A Novel of Suspense is just that with the new protagonist Jane Hawk, since he has killed off Odd Thomas. Very good read. I recently went back and reread one of his novels from the 1970s--Twilight Eyes--discovered his books are timeless as one does not get any sense of a time period. Jenetta Penner is writing a YA trilogy in the vein of The Hunger Games, but I find her protagonist-heroine to be somewhat whiny and irritating. I love whodunits and the writing pair, Jefferson Bass with their Body Farm novels are the best. I used to read everything James Patterson wrote until he started pairing his name with unknown writers. Although those writers' offerings are OK, they have never been the caliber that Patterson's own early novels were. My MA thesis was on three novels of Cormac McCarthy. My work on McCarthy's texts continues, as I begin reading for a dissertation that will expand my thesis to include all of his work. I have begun reading The Orchard Keeper this summer. McCarthy's writing is difficult. I have to think about it and reread it several times. Sometimes I read scholarship on a text in order to better understand it, then go back and reread the book, thinking about all of things other scholars have written, which I may or may not agree with. He is a controversial writer and I find him fascinating. I know this is not light summer reading, but the truth is a literary scholar never stops analyzing texts even when they are reading fluff. Yes, I admit it--I read fluff and I like it. It releases my mind from thinking about Cormac McCarthy or some other writer. I am packing to move this summer and my breaks include reading a few chapters of some books. During the summer, I read at a slightly more leisurely pace (haha). This past week I read both the new Koontz novel (464 pgs) and Hildebrand's novel (432 pgs), as well as reading on the Till murder.

I found some time to read for leisure during my MA. You will find that it's a good stress reliever. Taking 3 grad level lit classes per semester, I found out rather quickly I was reading upwards of a thousand pages per week for classes and I don't expect it to be any less in my PhD program. It's important to continue doing some things for the pure joy they bring us. We cannot exist completely without them. I don't watch TV and I seldom go out with friends, but I do find time (usually when I'm in bed) to read for pleasure and allow myself to come down off the adrenaline rush in order to sleep better. It doesn't matter if you start the long book or one you will finish before semester begins, it just matters that you continue reading for pleasure.

This is a twist on the same theme. I grew up and live in the deep South. Many students have deep commitments of faith and want to turn every piece of literature into a liturgical device or sermon. As part of writing a paper, I have my students talk to me about their topic and argument. In the process, I discuss with them the real meanings and foundation of the prose or poem(s) they want to write upon. Hopefully, they will see that most of the time what they are doing is not an analysis. I tell them unless they provide support to their argument, their ideas are simply conjecture and their own opinion, which is what I tell any student who fails to provide support of their argument. I don't want to discourage their ideas as writers, but want them to understand what analysis is and that they must support every bit of their argument.

I think you edited your post by the time I started writing this, because I remember you posting actual practice scores. Online study programs such as Magoosh grade the tests for you. It was great at bringing up my verbal scores. When I began using the product, I was steadily scoring in the mid 150s on mock tests and ended up with a 163 in verbal on the actual test. It's good to watch the videos they use in order to understand why one answer is correct over the others. Since the GRE is a type of standardized test, understanding reasoning about how they set up the test and why certain answers are more correct are extremely important to scoring highly. Since I am in English, I paid little attention to the math portion, although if I had had the time to really practice, I can see there would have been great benefit also. My GRE math score reflects that non-use. But I was intent on being above the 90th percentile in verbals and I succeeded. DogsarePeople had some great advice.

I just created one to see if it would work. The link worked just fine prior to creation of PDF. When I tried to use the link on the PDF, I got a message that the link was broken. It could be because I print to PDF to create the PDF, but it won't work for me.

Just a thought here, but some programs want everything converted to a PDF, so links would not work.

Absolutely, Rising Star. My landlord/owner found me on the English list-serv through his current tenant, who was a graduating MFA student. We talked for a few weeks about various things with regard to owner/tenant stuff before he offered me the house. He knew I was an entering English PhD student (because I was on the list-serv) and because he had been an English professor. I filled out no application. We signed a lease and I have already given him the deposit, which is equal to a month's rent and a normal thing for a house.

I totally agree with you. Sometimes, I wish I could be an unfettered grad student, who is just beginning their adult life, rather than an adult with an established life (read that as a lot of stuff to pack). I'm only moving 5.5 hours away, but I still have to pack it all or most of it anyway (I own the house I now live in). I had to hire movers to load, drive the UHaul, and unload. I have some serious literature and criticism texts that I have read as part of my education. Getting rid of all the casual stuff and not moving those again, but moving all of the literature. I got a book catalog app and scanned every book into it. I have 200 books and they are now catalogued and I can just look at the way they are alphabetized to put them on the shelves as I unpack. Best $4.99 I have spent in a while. Good luck with your move.

I ended up with a house near campus that I found through the English Dept's list-serv, but I had applied at an apartment complex just a couple of days before beginning talks with my landlord. The complex required proof of income. I was told that if I could not provide it, I would have to pay some portion of rental costs up front. They accepted a copy of my offer letter, which detailed my funding. That is the only experience I have had with the rental process as a student. BTW, I was approved for the apartment, but ended up going with the house because of its proximity to campus. I also have no idea what other complexes do.