CulturalCriminal

Agree with everyone else here! Put the work into your SOP and writing sample! If your scores are this good, you could land a spot at an Ivy if you write compelling documents.

Wow, y'all managed to not read any of the women or Black writers...
That it's self might be an interesting way of spinning a topic though? "Find an Early American text from this period that I have failed to include and convince me why it should be included in future courses"
Why did you select these specific works (or did you select them)? It seems like you have some clear divisions here (i.e. creation myths, European contact, early settler colonies, founders, American Renaissance/Dark-Romantics) that you can have them analyze or compare/contrast. At the end of the day though, I imagine who ever charged you with teaching this class is the ultimate resource here.
That aside, if you teach this course in the future you should really consider fitting in the likes of Cabeza de Vaca, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Bradstreet, etc

Wow, y'all managed to not read any of the women or Black writers...
That it's self might be an interesting way of spinning a topic though? "Find an Early American text from this period that I have failed to include and convince me why it should be included in future courses"
Why did you select these specific works (or did you select them)? It seems like you have some clear divisions here (i.e. creation myths, European contact, early settler colonies, founders, American Renaissance/Dark-Romantics) that you can have them analyze or compare/contrast. At the end of the day though, I imagine who ever charged you with teaching this class is the ultimate resource here.
That aside, if you teach this course in the future you should really consider fitting in the likes of Cabeza de Vaca, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Bradstreet, etc

Wow, y'all managed to not read any of the women or Black writers...
That it's self might be an interesting way of spinning a topic though? "Find an Early American text from this period that I have failed to include and convince me why it should be included in future courses"
Why did you select these specific works (or did you select them)? It seems like you have some clear divisions here (i.e. creation myths, European contact, early settler colonies, founders, American Renaissance/Dark-Romantics) that you can have them analyze or compare/contrast. At the end of the day though, I imagine who ever charged you with teaching this class is the ultimate resource here.
That aside, if you teach this course in the future you should really consider fitting in the likes of Cabeza de Vaca, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Bradstreet, etc

Wow, y'all managed to not read any of the women or Black writers...
That it's self might be an interesting way of spinning a topic though? "Find an Early American text from this period that I have failed to include and convince me why it should be included in future courses"
Why did you select these specific works (or did you select them)? It seems like you have some clear divisions here (i.e. creation myths, European contact, early settler colonies, founders, American Renaissance/Dark-Romantics) that you can have them analyze or compare/contrast. At the end of the day though, I imagine who ever charged you with teaching this class is the ultimate resource here.
That aside, if you teach this course in the future you should really consider fitting in the likes of Cabeza de Vaca, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Bradstreet, etc

Wow, y'all managed to not read any of the women or Black writers...
That it's self might be an interesting way of spinning a topic though? "Find an Early American text from this period that I have failed to include and convince me why it should be included in future courses"
Why did you select these specific works (or did you select them)? It seems like you have some clear divisions here (i.e. creation myths, European contact, early settler colonies, founders, American Renaissance/Dark-Romantics) that you can have them analyze or compare/contrast. At the end of the day though, I imagine who ever charged you with teaching this class is the ultimate resource here.
That aside, if you teach this course in the future you should really consider fitting in the likes of Cabeza de Vaca, Rowlandson, Wheatley, Bradstreet, etc

I'm going to agree with all of this. If you want to go into a professional field that uses your writing skills-- and there are many-- get an internship, or look into certifications that will help you get an internship, or look into ways to specialize meaningfully within those fields (tech writing, etc), and get an internship afterwards, and really, at any cost, find yourself some actual professional experience.
A Ph.D is usually going to be a detriment in the professional world. A Master's might not even be looked at well; my profession (training) loves them, but it very much depends, and I have friends who left my MFA program having much better job success when they left their graduate degrees out of their resume.
I say this kindly: don't clog up the applicant pool in academia if this is your goal. If you need any advice on getting a corporate job with English skills, though, feel free to message me.

1. I don't think most places are expecting an honor's thesis from you (or really care tbh)
2. That you have writing center experience is a plus as an undergrad, so no worries about not having research experience yet
3. If I'm not mistaken, that score puts you above the 90% percentile. You good.
4. As long as you did researched writing of some length (i.e. 6-20 pages), I'm sure your LOR writers will have plenty to discuss.
5. I don't think GPA really matters, so long as you got over a 3.5 in English related courses
6. If you are unsure if what you want to research has merit, dig through online and physical library resources (i.e. JSTOR) and see where the scholarship is at the moment. Likewise, doing your due diligence in researching what faculty you want to work with will likely tell you if you are going in the right direction. For me personally, when I started thoroughly doing this step I realized that there really weren't many folks I could work with on the PhD level for what I originally was planning and had started working at in smaller projects. I ultimately switched course (slightly) to something more relevant to the current conversation in scholarship in my area.
 
I agree with some of the folks commenting here. It sounds like you have some research to do on how grad applications work and what programs value. Honestly, getting at all that info that makes a great SOP and making sure you've got it down on lock sounds like the main (and only significant) thing you need to work on. You can of course also start trying to get papers into conferences and relevant journals.
You might also consider MA if you don't feel that you are prepared for research yet. Not sure if this is still the case, but someone on here did recently indicate that Bucknell still has fully-funded slots open for the upcoming fall. Likewise, there are a few state schools that are still accepting applicants (though funding is harder to get by this point). There are also some MAs that accept in the Spring, but these often don't offer funding for Spring applicants. If these options don't work for you, you might also consider applying to both PhDs and MAs for Fall 2019. Better to be in an MA and develop as a researcher (and get funding to go to conferences) with easy access to profs than being shut-out and not being on/near university.

I understand what you're saying, but I think this sort of misses the point. Of course your accomplishments matter - but not for the reasons you seem to imply. They matter inasmuch as they attest to what sort of scholar you are, what sort of writing you are capable of producing and what sort of ideas for projects you are capable of conceiving. But it's the writing itself that matters - if your writing "consistently won awards," shouldn't it be able to speak for itself? First and foremost, your writing sample and SoP have to impress them, independent of knowing anything else about you. Then, they can look at your C.V. and say, "oh, okay, this awesome piece of writing was not a fluke - she consistently produces this level of work." The awards and pubs are ornamentation, "icing," as lily calls it, perhaps derived from something substantial (the quality of the work itself) - but without concrete evidence of that substance, it seems pretty hollow. Icing without cake (blech)!

And it's not about false humility. Presumably, you didn't spend time away from your kids' band concerts and games because you wanted to get an award, but because you were deeply invested in your work, the substance. The awards or the fact that you got it published are offshoots of that, but even without the decoration, the substance of the work would be the same. So that's what your SoP should mostly be talking about. But they do have your C.V., so it's not like it's totally absent from your application! It's thinking that it should carry more weight than that that seems problematic. Being too invested in what you got as a result of the work is perhaps what comes off as "arrogant" because it indicates that you think what matters is the icing, rather than the cake (to stretch the metaphor). Frankly, when I've gotten awards, I've been like, "Oh! Cool!" but what I really cared about was the piece I had produced, and what I said, the process I had gone through, and what I had gained as a scholar. That's the part that matters, and I suppose that is inherently more humble, but not falsely so - it's just less about the competition that you beat out and more about the inherent value of what you did. I mean, there is a good reason that people dislike arrogance: it indicates a focus on the wrong things.

This is actually one aspect of the admissions process I like - the part where they look to the substance itself, the product, rather than things that could be evidence of substance (grades, scores, awards, etc.).

With publications, I can see how it's slightly different in some cases, because it speaks to some sort of professionalization. If it's important to your narrative, I think it would be fine to discuss what you learned from preparing an article for publication and it wouldn't necessarily look arrogant. But it just can't be all about the end game.

Jae B's suggestions are good because they re-focus it back to the substance and content itself, not the ornamentation.

Applied to the MA in English Lit at the University of Arizona, hadn't heard anything at all, then two days ago I received a fully-funded acceptance into their PhD program! Though they were my top choice when I was applying, Rochester's offer-- for me-- is pretty much unbeatable. So if anyone is still hoping for a spot at U of A, I will be declining! 

Just so you know, your grades and GPA matter, but not nearly as much as your recommendations, your writing sample, and your personal statement. Your dossier just needs to resonate for several professors in a department -- the process is too unpredictable to not apply to Stanford, so if you think it is a good fit, do apply.

Guys, I successfully negotiated my funding package!  Heading to UT Austin's Ph.D program in American Studies. 

Wow! Good luck and I really hope you can get some clarity sooner rather than later.

Well, it is April 16th and I am still apparently on the waitlist. I called today to learn that it may be May before I hear anything more. This is really nerve-racking. While I am lucky in that I am nearby UT and not going to be moving soon, I need to get a job if it is a no. I didn't have high hopes for this cycle and expected to reapply to more schools next year, but I also expected to have clear answers by today...

Well, it is April 16th and I am still apparently on the waitlist. I called today to learn that it may be May before I hear anything more. This is really nerve-racking. While I am lucky in that I am nearby UT and not going to be moving soon, I need to get a job if it is a no. I didn't have high hopes for this cycle and expected to reapply to more schools next year, but I also expected to have clear answers by today...

Got into UT today-not much time to decide gah 

I’m resurrecting this thread partially since I imagine potential 2019 applicants might find it helpful, plus there’s probably more info out there

Just watching this forum slowly die since everyone is leaving after making decisions, while I am still on four funding waitlists...

I empathize! I, too, applied primarily to MA programs and am still waiting for updates...here's hoping we hear back soon! 

Officially accepted my offer from UT Austin, y'all. Where should I buy my cowboy boots?

You'll be busy enough with work (and lacking in money) that you might not notice that you've moved to a substantially smaller town!  
Bloomington is a substantial sized university and a substantial sized college town though, and it's a 90 minute drive from Indianapolis which gets major concerts and shows and has a wonderful art museum. I'm from a medium-large city and now doing grad school in a medium-large city and have always been impressed with Bloomington when I've had occasion to visit.
My fiancé has a saying, she says, "Bloom where you're planted."  It's pretty good advice for this profession, because you might end up on the market and only get interviews in Topeka, Tucumcari, and Tallahassee. You generally get fewer options as you move up the professional pyramid.

Thank you so much, everyone. I will definitely PM those of you with similar interests, and hello to you, @jadeisokay! Your advice has really helped me evaluate my approach, and I think I've been thinking of this whole process as similar to undergraduate admissions when it's clearly different. 

@Oklash My interests changed markedly just in the first month of my MA. Even then, my interests have shifted slightly (I'm focusing on a different genre and sprinkling space/place in). Programs expect these things to change. For PhD, I wouldn't be surprised--should I move up off the waitlist for the one program I've got good news on--if I'm pushed towards a parallel interest (false cultural memory, whiteness studies,etc); I wouldn't be the first person I specifically know that was nudged towards something else (I know folks at UCI and UCSC that had this happen to them, just as it did for the head of my MA exam committee when she was at Duke). Consider that even for PhD, they don't necessarily expect your stated research project to be the same by the time you finish it (though there is less wiggle room). The specificity desired of a SOP is more for the sake of showing that you're well-read and are engaged with a lens enough to create a narrow project, then it is for them to lock you into some sort of research project.
I do feel that there is a need to interrogate why research interests change, when they do. The jump from Modernist, African American Lit (relatively narrow) to 19th century/Victorian (much wider) is a big one. Are your interests turning transatlantic, or are you still interested mostly in American literature? What is making you back off from your original research interests? Do you have a methodology that is staying the same, or is that changing as well?

While it's certainly not a liberal and a queer enclave, I'm sure you'll be fine. There is some acceptance of gay men, and you will be in a department with mostly like-minded folks. Stick near campus and I am sure it'll be a safe and a mostly-friendly few years.
My trepidation at applying to Tech or eventually getting a job there is rooted in the fact that I'm a butch-ish trans gal engaged to a chicanx, non-binary person who teaches high school English. While I can probably deal with staying in the University bubble and wouldn't be all that worried about my research interests causing conflict (though WTAMU would be a much different story), my partner wouldn't have that comfort.
 

Anyone else here love just about anything Louise Erdrich writes?