Stormborn

Hey, y'all! Have you seen this beast? @Warelin has picked up the effort from years past to update a funding package spreadsheet. If you've got updated info, please drop it in the file. If you're worried about at the tracking, you can add to it anonymously.

Yes, I did! Here is the email I received back (perhaps rightfully snarky), below. So I'm not sure what to make of the Caleb Smith phone call but this gives me a tiny tiny bit of hope:
The admissions committee for the English graduate program has not made any decisions yet. We will notify applicants as soon as the process is complete. In the meantime, we appreciate your patience.

I think I read on one of the posts that someone contacted them--apparently they have not made or released decisions yet. So I think there is hope yet!

Thank y'all so much! I honestly keep looking back at the email to be sure they sent it to the right person. My undergrad is a small, unranked university; I didn't go to a top 100 program for my MA, and my GRE/GPA aren't really a lot to write home about. Anything is seriously possible! 
Also, this was me opening that email:

Hi, I'm a long-time lurker and a current Princeton undergrad; I'm also applying for U.S. English PhDs/Oxbridge Master's programs this cycle.
I just spoke to one of my professors who sits on the Princeton graduate admissions committee, and she said results should be coming out this week (I assume at the end). I'm not applying there but wanted to pass along this (admittedly vague) information for anyone who is. 

Also just got a UT Austin acceptance! (Same deal, email with PDF attached.) First acceptance after a few rejections -- feels good! Congrats to @unicornsarereal -- perhaps I'll see you around!!

Also just got a UT Austin acceptance! (Same deal, email with PDF attached.) First acceptance after a few rejections -- feels good! Congrats to @unicornsarereal -- perhaps I'll see you around!!

Also just got a UT Austin acceptance! (Same deal, email with PDF attached.) First acceptance after a few rejections -- feels good! Congrats to @unicornsarereal -- perhaps I'll see you around!!

Congrats, potential Austin...nians...nites... people from Austin!

aaaahhhh party in austin

I GOT INTO AUSTIN- HOLY SHIT. I'M SHAKING. THIS IS MY TOP CHOICE- OH MY GOD

When I saw an email about an application decision, I was bracing myself for a rejection from Chicago or Berkeley (per the projected schedule) and was totally shocked by my Austin acceptance! 

@Stormborn yayyyyyyay!

Also just got a UT Austin acceptance! (Same deal, email with PDF attached.) First acceptance after a few rejections -- feels good! Congrats to @unicornsarereal -- perhaps I'll see you around!!

Also just got a UT Austin acceptance! (Same deal, email with PDF attached.) First acceptance after a few rejections -- feels good! Congrats to @unicornsarereal -- perhaps I'll see you around!!

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.