BelleOfKilronen

First of all, congrats to all of you! As someone who went through this process a couple of years ago, I just wanted to chime in with a few thoughts that I hope relieve a bit of collective tension. For those of you anxious about deciding which offer to take, try not to worry about it. Your campus visits will most likely make the "right" choice clear to you. Meeting with professors and students in person will really help you develop a strong sense of where you want to spend the next 5-6 years of your life. And those of you with one acceptance are not the beneficiaries of some strange fluke in the application process! A program isn't going to accept you--and support you, financially, professionally, etc--unless they really want you. The folks at your accepting institution think you're pretty darn awesome, and you should share their enthusiasm for your accomplishments. Lastly, if you can, try not to overthink it if a school that you thought was the perfect "fit" rejects you, while ones that you thought were a stretch accept you. The ever-elusive "fit" issue, while important, is out of your control in ways that, as an applicant, I know I myself never imagined. Grad committees rotate in many (most?) schools; in some cases, there's a good chance that not one person you want to work with is even reading your application. And some schools that read like they're great fits for us aren't in reality. (There may be great schools that, when it's all said and done, you're actually grateful you didn't get into, based on what you later learn about their program, important faculty changes that you weren't aware of when you were applying, etc. It's sort of like when you really like a guy but he doesn't want to go out with you, and you later realize it never would have worked out anyway, even though he was totally hot.)

In my program, it's understood that, with the exception of those nearing retirement, the profs all take grad students on, so students are essentially the ones who choose who they work with, and not vice versa. My program is pretty student-centered, so maybe this isn't the norm? (Though I hope it is!) I'd be interested in hearing others' experiences with this. Just another opinion to add to the sea of them, but I think that your rationale for not doing a thesis (and for doing the capstone and theory-based independent study) makes a lot of sense. You've clearly thought a lot about the way you've structured your last year of undergrad work, and adcoms will appreciate that. One more thing ... RE: PhD/MA dilemma: If your mentors are behind you, and you know you want to do a doctorate, then I say focus on kick-ass doctoral programs this time around just like you've planned. Sure, it's a gamble, but reapplying isn't the end of the world, and you can certainly consider MAs then. You're clearly focused and thoughtful, so don't let this anxiety-inducing process make you second guess yourself

Hi, Timshel, Just wanted to second what Truckbasket said RE: generic letters of the "Dear (unspecified) Admissions Committee" variety being the norm. It's thoughtful of you to go the extra step with your students' letters, but it's not going to hurt your application in any way if the letters aren't tailored, even in the most basic way, to each school.

I'd call the Grad Admins for the departments, Timshel, just to make sure. Chances are that they will accept it, but it'll make you feel better to know for sure. As for choosing the date, you might want to take a practice test if you haven't already and decide based on how you do. (Find one here.) You may find that you do pretty well on it, in which case you might want to keep the studying to a relative minimum and just get the thing out of the way. I know that there are folks who would disagree, but I really, truly believe that 1) the Subject Test is the least important part of your application, and 2) dramatically improving a decent score is much more of a time (and mental energy!) commitment than it's worth. I hope that helps. And good luck!

Another thing for the Early Modernists on the thread to consider is whether or not the school is a member of the Folger Consortium. Students at consortium schools can apply for free travel and lodging for Folger conferences and seminars, and tuition and most fees are also waived. A friend of mine applied to a weekly seminar through the Consortium and, in addition to waiving his tuition, they paid for him to fly to DC each week. The seminar was super helpful for him--he honed in on a dissertation topic, met other folks with similar interests, and got to utilize the research library. ...annnnnd you get to write on your CV that you got a grant to hang out at the Folger for a semester, which isn't such a bad thing

Glad to have helped in some little way, Grizbert-- I found myself facing a very similar conundrum last year during acceptance time. The fact that you're asking these sorts of questions before you apply means to me you're ahead of the game ... or at least doing better than I was at this stage

Hi, Grizbert, I'd recommend, if given the option, not choosing a school based on a "perfect fit" potential advisor for a few reasons, the biggest one being that, unless you have intimate knowledge of the department's goings-on, you have no way of knowing whether or not this person will be at the institution for the duration of your time there. I have several friends in my program who applied in order to work with a specific faculty member who, in all likelihood, will be leaving at the end of this year for reasons that they were not privy to as applicants. (We also have a fabulous new senior professor who moved here from a great program this summer, and his old institution still has his faculty profile up on their site. Yikes!) On a more personal level, I ultimately chose the program I did because there isn't anyone here exploring the same questions I am interested in. Instead, there are a lot of really awesome, open-minded faculty members who are interested in my (admittedly inchoate) ideas despite the fact that they don't align neatly with their own. This set-up gives me a bit more room to develop my own ideas without falling into the scholar-worship I might have if I were working closely with someone whose work was directly influential to my way of thinking; at the same time, it means that I have to work a little bit harder to convince my advisors of the validity of my arguments, since, while interested and supportive, they don't necessarily gravitate to the same theoretical frameworks that I do. Though I can only speculate at this stage in the game, I'm anticipating that this sort of "cross-pollination" will make my writing stronger once I start publishing.

I know how you guys feel. Last year, I applied to 6 PhDs, got four rejections in a row, and was resigned to it being an unsuccessful application round. (I even got so frantic after receiving one notification email that I accidentally clicked on the wrong embedded link and was led to some generic "welcome to grad school" site that, for half a minute of euphoric delusion, I thought meant I had been accepted. File this under "Top Ten Ways to Start Your Morning Crying a Little.") Then, on the last day of February, I got The Happy Call from one of my remaining schools. A week later, I got a call from my second school, and suddenly everything changed. I went from feeling hopeless and helpless to the enviable dilemma of having a choice in the matter, all after I had pretty much given up. Bottom line, it's still really early in the admissions game, even though it doesn't feel that way when you're the one waiting. There are lots more acceptances to be given out before the Admittance Fairy flies away 'til next year, and we're all rooting for you

Congrats on your interview! I visited two schools last spring, one as part of a new admit event, the other on my own. While both visits went well, the comprehensive meet 'n' greet type event gave me a much better sense of the program. All the faculty members I wanted to talk to were on campus, and I got to spend time with the students who would eventually become my cohort and the students who were already working with the professors whose work I was most interested in. From your post I gather that there might be some considerable practical/financial concerns for you surrounding travel to/from these visits. If you do decide to do a visit on your own, I'd suggest 1) confirming that the two or three professors you'd most like to work with will be able to meet with you during your visit and 2) emailing students working with these professors before your trip so you can set up time to talk to them during your visit, too. At both of my school visits, I found current students to be refreshingly candid and very open to answering my (many) questions. (Also, financial assistance for travel seems to vary quite a bit from school to school and even year to year. I'd explain your situation as a candidate/admit from overseas who would love to come visit during their event but is having difficulty gathering funds, ask them if they could help you defray costs, and then just see what they say. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. Good luck!)

The common wisdom on these boards is that your "future research" section should be quite specific when applying to PhD programs, and I would agree based on my personal experience. I basically wrote a (super)micro dissertation proposal that explained the theoretical base I wanted to work from and the questions stemming from it that I wanted to explore. (As silly as it may sound, no one expects you to stick to the research plan you lay out in the SoP. It's more of an exercise that shows the adcomm that you are capable of formulating interesting questions in dialog with important thinkers in your field.)

I don't think we disagree, actually-- I think that it makes sense for the OP to contact the department's office anonymously via phone. What I wouldn't recommend would be either calling or emailing the DGS, unless the graduate admin refers the applicant to s/he directly. Apologies to the OP for not being more clear the first time.

When I applied last year, I kept this in check by only including names of authors and critical texts that had directly influenced the proposal I was presenting in the SoP. (I think I ultimately mentioned three or four in total.) So an example sentence would be, "Drawing from Author X's recent work on Topic Wonderful, I'd like to Blah Blah Research Project." Hope that helps a bit.

Seconding all this.

Just wanted to second (third?) the opinion that the best thing to do here is avoid anything that feels disingenuous. If naming professors at a program and thoughtfully linking their work to your interests feels forced, then it's probably going to sound forced to the admissions committee, too. And sounding like you're full of malarkey is much more likely to be a kiss of death than not naming professors in your SoP. Anecdotally, I applied to six PhD programs and received offers from two. One of those offers was from a school that had professors I was genuinely interested in working in--I knew their work and it was essential to the theoretical foundations of the writing sample I included in my application. I included these professors in my "fit" paragraph and meant everything I said about the possibility of working with them. The other offer came from the one school for which I didn't cite any professors in my SoP. Instead, I talked about how the department's overarching methodology was important to my development as a scholar. This was to one of the most competitive schools to which I applied, and, after the fact, I was worried that the application was dead in the water; in retrospect, I think writing something honest and unforced helped me. As for the ones I didn't get into ... well, I think I "shoehorned" professors into my fit paragraphs a bit, and, while I'm sure that wasn't the only factor that worked against my applications at those institutions, I'm quite sure it didn't help. (As an aside, I ended up going to the latter program, partly because there wasn't anyone here working on exactly what I am interested in, and I'm really glad that I did.)

Ditto this. Last year, I was amazed by how much I was able to take out/tighten up without compromising content. It just takes time and a bit of merciless editing. (Having some objective advisers who aren't afraid to be blunt with you helps a bunch, too.) Good luck!

Absolutely! Having a graduate degree of any sort going into a PhD program is a good thing--it indicates that you have the maturity and focus to successfully engage in graduate study--and a Master's that's a bit different could actually help you stand out if, in your SoP, you're able to tie it to your future PhD studies in an interesting way.

While I reckon that, like diehtc0ke says, many adcomms would welcome a slightly shorter sample, I'd suggest calling the departments in question just to make sure. I was in a similar quandary last year, and one department that requested 20+ told me explicitly over the phone that my 15 page sample would be inadequate. They did, however, mention that I could submit a 5-7 page paper along with my 15 pager to make up the difference, which might also be an option for you should any of your potential programs be on the persnickety side.

Unfortunately, the percentile ranking that you receive at the time you get your scores is the one that stays with your test, and any official score reports that ETS sends will reflect the percentile ranking that you originally received. As bigdbp mentioned, pools of test-takers change for all sorts of reasons, and the percentile ranking they give you on your score report is configured in relation to whatever test-taker pool you were in when you took the exam. Though, all that being said, more and more departments--and good ones at that--are questioning whether the subject test even provides valuable information during the admissions process, so I'm not sure there are many instances during which a retake (and all the time that would go into studying for one) would be worthwhile. Save the $100+ bucks and use it on ... well, anything else, really. Stupid ETS.

I'd tend to agree with foppery and diehtc0ke that less tends to be more--both for the reasons they've stated and for the simple fact that, when acceptances start rolling in, you want to be able to meet them with unqualified excitement. When looking at your list of places to apply to, be honest with yourself about whether or not you would really want to attend each of them were you to receive a funded acceptance. Are the faculty members you'd like to work with there approachable and available? What's the academic environment like? Is the level of competition between students collegial or cutthroat? Is the school in a location where you would not mind living for the next half decade (or more ... sigh) of your life, and would it allow you easy access to the types of libraries, resources, etc, that you anticipate needing for your work? Finding answers to these sorts of questions before you apply will save you the time, money, and stress associated with applying somewhere that you might not really want to attend should you be accepted. I'm sure that for some there are a 10+ schools that pass muster in these areas; for me, my list ended up including 6 schools that had the type of faculty, academic environment, and, yes, location, that I was looking for. So I focused on this manageable (and financially feasible) number of applications, got into two of the schools, and can honestly say I could have seen myself happily studying at either.

Just wanted to second DrFaustus666's advice-- Those high-frequency vocabulary words are what make the GRE's verbal section harder than that on the SAT, and learning them really is the key to doing well on the GRE verbal section. All the usual test prep books--Princeton Review, Kaplan, Barron's, et al--will have slightly different vocabulary lists, and the sheer number of words to learn is a little overwhelming. When I studied for the test, I concentrated on the words on the "high frequency" lists and did very well. And, though Kaplan is generally my least favorite of the test prep companies, I found their iPhone vocabulary flashcard application really, really helpful. It was a convenient format that was easy to pull out when I was waiting in line at the post office, bored on the train, etc. And at least four or five of the words were on my GRE, which is enough to make a big difference in your verbal score. (Also, a side note: a 540 on the GRE verbal is not abysmal at all, since people tend to score quite a bit lower on it than its SAT counterpart. So, while it's great that you're going to work to get your score up for your English program apps, know that you're starting with a strong foundation.) Good luck with your studying!

I'd like to take diehtc0ke's great advice a step further. Your writing sample is where you show the adcoms that you're capable of doing graduate level research and that the research you propose to do is interesting, viable, and presents potentially novel implications for the ideas being explored within their departments. I think it would be difficult to do the latter with a writing sample that does not coincide with the research proposal you lay out in your SoP. So many people on these boards have written about adcom members lamenting the number of qualified candidates they had to turn away last year. With so many viable candidates to compete with, I think it's crucial that your research proposal makes the adcom members really want you at their school, and I think it would be quite a bit more difficult to inspire this kind of interest if your writing sample does not support your research proposal in some way. To give a personal example, when I visited the two schools to which I was accepted, the adcom professors at both wanted to talk to me about my writing sample and the ideas it triggered for them, both in relation to where my own line of inquiry could lead and how it could tie into/come into conflict with their own work. These profs seemed to approach my writing sample as the beginning of an ongoing dialog about a particular question, and I feel strongly that this was a big plus in the admissions process. All that said, I think foppery makes a great point that your writing sample doesn't have to be on the exact topic you're interested in. Does the 18th century topic you'd like to study share a theoretical framework with the Renaissance paper you'd like to use for a sample? If so, you can frame that paper as a springboard that helped launch you off into these other ideas. I hope that helps in some way, and good luck with your applications!

Are you already admitted into a program for the fall? If so, I'd suggest talking to current students to see what the language requirements really entail. For many programs, the language exams boil down to translating passages with the aid of a dictionary, and many other programs offer summer language courses designed specifically to teach grad students what they need to know to pass the exams--even in languages of which they have no prior knowledge. I hope that helps calm your nerves a bit, and good luck!

This is a whole bunch of great advice. For what it's worth, my SoP focused entirely on: ~ideas I had been recently exploring (reflected in my writing sample), ~how they led to the proposal I was suggesting for grad school, and ~why I wanted to pursue said proposal at their institution. The only mention of my undergraduate degree was half a sentence in the second paragraph, and the only mention of my MA in a related-but-not-quite-the-same field was a line toward the end, and both references tied explicitly to the outline above. I took the same approach with work experience, only mentioning it (briefly) if it was directly relevant. In fact, the whole essay hinged upon what, on paper, was a blip in my student record--a grad lit seminar I took as a non-degree student a year ago--since that course was the Pandora's box that, once opened, led to my current line of inquiry. And intextrovert brings up a great point about the methodology of a department being an important part of its "fit." To my surprise, one of my two admittances--and the one that I ultimately accepted--was from the only school for which I didn't list specific professors in my SoP. Instead, I talked mostly about how I liked the faculty's general approach to their scholarship, and how this approach would complement the project I was proposing. My other successful app did name faculty members I wanted to work with--and cited them in my writing sample, no less--so I'm not sure how typical the first response was. But I do think it illustrates that, at least in humanities-land, naming profs you love isn't the only way to convince an adcom that you're a good "fit" for their program. Just my two cents based on my own little bubble of largely subjective data, but I hope it helps.

Bespeckled, though I'm sure there are exceptions, most folks seem to do better the second time around. I think just knowing what to expect gives you a bit of an edge. That said, I would absolutely, positively not take it again unless one of the schools I was looking at had a funding cut-off that was above my combined score, or, like Northwestern, had minimum scores in each section. Though your prof said he thinks you'll be fine at the schools you're looking at, if it were me, it would ease my mind a bit to also contact the DGSs at my programs of interest and ask if the math score is taken into consideration, or if there is a cutoff combined score to be considered for school funding. If what they say goes along with what your professor said, I would absolutely put the GRE out of my head and move on to my personal statement and writing sample. Your verbal score is great, and no one's going to care about your math GRE as long as you hit the requirements. (Also, I hate the idea of ETS getting any more money than they have to. I shake my fist at ETS!)

My two (four?) cents, in mostly random order-- First, I think Branwen and Sparky's advice about Latin is excellent. Regardless of whether a program expects you to know it going in, it's going to help you with your work once you're there. Second, the most time-effective GRE-study tool I used was Kaplan's GRE vocab application for iPhones. (They have a Blackberry version, too.) It's got hundreds of words, is infinitely more convenient than carrying around a stack of flash cards (I know, because I tried), and at least three or four words that I wouldn't have known otherwise were on my test. As you probably know, three or four high-difficulty items on the computerized test can make a big difference in your score. Third, have you considered calling the schools you're wait-listed at to find out what they think you could do to be a stronger applicant? They clearly liked your application and have an interest in you and your work, and I'll bet that the DGS at at least one of the schools will be happy to talk with you. It might take some of the speculation out of the "what next?" dilemma, and I also think it'll reflect well on you if you decide to reapply in a year, since it'll show your commitment to your goal and illustrate that you welcome constructive feedback. Lastly (and most importantly) ... take heart! You're on two wait lists, and there is a good chance that everything is going to work out just fine this year. So, by all means, start thinking toward the possible future, but keep your hope alive, too. And best of luck!