punctilious

Colorado rejection letters seem to have gone out. But we haven't gotten anything. Perhaps they're considering husband for the MA?

Yayyyy congratulations!!!

He quoted Latour in his SOP so he figures he probably should read more than just “The Berlin Key.” Haha. I think Latour is the theorist he’s most drawn to.

WOW. I had never seen this, it's awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!

Just paste the link to the image or gif (the URL that ends in the file type, like .png, .gif, .jpg) rather than the embed code, and it will automatically show up, if that makes sense!

FTFY. THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!

Congratulations @a_sort_of_fractious_angel and @katie64!!!!

Awesome! To be clear, we have 2-3 years of college Russian and study abroad in St. Petersburg under our belts, so we're using it a bit more like a refresher course--I can't exactly speak to how it'll be for a beginner. But Russian is just wonderful, and if you have native speakers around, that of course is a huge advantage!

Happy venting! Our CFO has given the go ahead for me to work remotely! That means I get to keep my job! I'M SO HAPPY!

Thank you so much! Just put it in my amazon cart haha.

I think my husband has a few things he wants to read: We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour Getting back up to speed on Russian, using The New Penguin Russian Course and the Russian texts we own (novels, short stories, a book on Putin, etc.) I saw suggestions for a couple theory overview texts that he may pick up: The Routledge Companion to Critical Theory and Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction Perhaps not this summer, but he'll probably pick up French for Reading (as previously recommended by @a_sort_of_fractious_angel, I believe) to work on his second language requirement I think Harvard sends out its reading list for the General Exam sometime over the summer, so he'll probably get started on that, too! Excited to hear what other people are thinking!

Yup!

Got our Columbia rejection!

Imposter syndrome is settling in a bit for my husband. He’s afraid he doesn’t have a strong enough theory background. I’ve been saying that no one is going to know everything going into their PhD—that’s why you have years worth of coursework before the dissertation even starts! Anyone else feeling similarly? Any sage words of advice? Is anyone using the summer before the PhD to get caught up in areas you feel are your weak points?

Husband has officially taken himself off the Boston College waitlist. He was first in line in his field, so hopefully this helps someone!

I wonder, though, whether a school like Columbia or Harvard would be okay with negotiating funding packages. I'm pretty sure that Harvard says that everyone gets an equal funding package. So I'm not sure if it's kosher to try to barter with the Ivies? Edit: Just wanted to clarify that we don't plan on trying to barter with Harvard since the stipend is much higher than our other offer anyway.

Yeah, by the time we have our Harvard visit, the other visits we plan to or might attend will have already passed. So I'd imagine we'd have our minds made up. It would be nice to officially accept during the visit so that we could start our housing application if need be. Do students ever accept before the visit days, to your knowledge?

We're similarly curious. Husband's POI seems convinced that husband got into Chicago and Stanford or something, based on how he's been trying to sell Harvard. But like... do we play it cool at the visit? Or are we straight up like "Listen... I'm going to Harvard. Don't worry." Lol. To perhaps help a bit, on our POI call we went through the very same list of questions we had prepared for our UD POI. There's no harm in getting all the information you need, even if it's the only or clearly best option!

Sounds great! We'll see what they actually have on the docket for the Harvard visit (it's three days long, so perhaps something like you mentioned is included) and otherwise check things out on our own. He also got an email from a grad student recently so I'll definitely have husband ask about where grad students live and thoughts on different neighborhoods/university housing. This place is exactly what I was looking for though, so hopefully it's available and as good in person as it is on paper!

Is anyone planning to check out the graduate student housing during their visit(s)? I found a place I'd LOVE to live in through university housing but I'm not sure if it makes sense to visit while we are there (if it's even possible to take a look at grad student housing).

Congratulations!!! That's wonderful!

That's what I'm assuming since it looks like acceptances and waitlists went out.

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

I feel like the transformation of English departments into more open and interdisciplinary programs is happening now. Our conversation with our POI at Harvard indicated that it’s really the future of the discipline to move in this direction—Harvard is even doing it. The departments are realizing that they need to change in such a way. While my husband definitely has a particular period and region he’s interested in, his background is actually more in history than English, and he’s also super into creative writing, but Harvard responded quite positively to that. Another thing to note is that his two writing samples were on Charles Olson and John Donne, yet his proposed field is post-45 US fiction through the lens of Thing Theory. In my research, I found plenty of departments that definitely had scholars in the English departments focused on comics, graphic novels, film, art, science fiction, philosophy, digital humanities, etc. In fact, our Harvard POI said that these kinds of subjects are hot topics and only growing in the English departments, from my understanding. Edit: I’m not sure how I’d necessarily qualify ‘traditional’ versus ‘non-traditional’ or ‘interdisciplinary’ programs other than just thorough research and talking with students/professors. Some schools seem to clearly be more into it than others (like they say on their website that you can get an MA in a different field en route to your PhD, or that you can also take creative writing courses to count toward the PhD, or they have a cross-disciplinary Center in an area you are interested in kind of like UD’s Center for Material Culture Studies, or you see a lot of people in the department working across the boundaries of discipline in areas like sociology, history, philosophy, or gender studies). I’m not sure there’s an easier way to figure it out, at least in terms of English departments.

Congratulations!!! You’ve got a tough choice there!!