CanadianEnglish

Although my visit to Brandeis was cancelled, after talking to the faculty and students I have decided to accept the offer from Brandeis! I'm excited for this new journey to begin! Thank you everyone for your supportive words of wisdom throughout this application season. Good luck to all of you in your future endeavors and I hope to meet some fellow Grad Cafe members in the future!

What I learned was that fit is the most important (according to my own acceptances/rejections). The schools that I got rejected from were ones where there was POI who did work in Caribbean Literature, which sounded great but their theoretical lens was much different than mine. I got focused on the region of literature rather then the theoretical framework that I would interact with. The 3 schools that I got accepted to/waitlisted by are ones with a POI that works in Caribbean Literature and uses gender and sexuality studies to frame their work. I got accepted by some top programs that had a perfect fit and rejected by lower programs with okay fit. I went to a large, public, university with an unranked English program for my BA, and receiving my MA from a larger, public, low ranked English program, and got into a high rank private institution, so I do not believe that my previous universities really mattered all that much. I would like to stress that this does seem to depend on your region/time period/theoretical lens of literature from looking at this board. As a world literature scholar with a specific region in mind, this was my experience.

Yeah it might be the waitlist for the waitlist. I would recommend emailing the DGS of UNC or any program you're still waiting for that usually has sent out acceptances by now or had a super early application deadline. It never hurts to ask and all the DGS that I emailed last week sent out responses right away. Obviously, be very respectful and understanding in your emails, but definitely doesn't hurt to ask! The UNC DGS was especially nice over email!

@politics 'n prose and anyone else who is waiting for UNC Chapel Hill: I inquired about my status/when news would be released and the DGS wrote me a nice email about how my application is still pending because "while we have not decided to deny your application, at this moment both the admit list and the wait list are full. If from that larger pool we cannot create our incoming class, we will add your name to the waitlist." SO I gathered that since they have their acceptances/waitlists ready they should be sending out information soon. I would imagine tomorrow or early next week. If you don't hear anything, I would also assume that you are like me and are on a waiting list for the waitlist (lol what a concept). I do not know if the waitlists are by overall rank or by interest or by POI. Hope this helps!

I just emailed UNC Chapel Hill's DGS to inquire about when they are sending out news. Will update if or when I hear back. Hope every gets a bit of good news for the rest of the week!

If you would like to chat with someone with in a similar situation, DM me! I went to an unranked English program at a mid-size public university for my BA (3.0ish student) and now I am finishing up my terminal MA at a large, kind of ranked public university (4.0 student now). I wasn't prepared or good enough to go straight into a top tier PhD program so the terminal MA was a good fit for me. Feel free to DM me with questions about my experience!

Only three more schools to go on my list. Let's hope this agony ends this week (looking at you, UNC and Boulder who usually notify by this week).

I ran out of reactions for today, so congrats!!!! This is amazing!! Michigan is absolutely incredible!!!

Yay! Go us!!!

That's awesome! So excited for you!!!!!

I’m in at Brandeis!!!! I am still in shock. Really thought I’d have a shut out this year. This is in my top 3 so I am so completely overjoyed. Now to figure out how to live in the Boston area with graduate student stipend ?

Anyone heard anything from Brandeis? They usually send out acceptances/rejections by the first week of February but there's only one rejection on the board. Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Yes! Me! I totally get you - especially since I'm just editing now, which I find terribly boring, so all I do is check my email. I actually have to set timers for myself: one hour of focused work and only then can I check my email and GradCafe for 15 minutes, then back to work. Good luck on waiting for news and thesis writing!

If the person who posted on the results board the University of Manitoba MA English acceptance is reading this, feel free to contact me! I'm originally from Winnipeg and can answer your questions about living in MB! Or if anyone is thinking about going to school in Canada, I'd be happy to answer questions!

Brandeis started contacting last week and will *hopefully* contact the rest of us this week. CU Boulder was early last year, but usually they send out news in late February so they might come in this week. UNC Chapel Hill has sent out news around this week in the past as well. At this point, I'm not holding out for news this week - I keep getting disappointed that I don't hear back from anyone by the end of the week so I'm going to play it safe and say that this will be another 7 days of radio silence. Hooray for anguish!

A poster on the results board wrote that they were accepted to the Joint English and Education PhD program, but @hamnet in tights replied to my post saying: So that makes sense! Thank you for the clarification @hamnet in tights!!!! I didn't realize that the programs would have separate acceptance/rejection news release dates.

I’m confused as well - it seems like a couple of my schools are doing a couple admit or reject a day. Maybe schools are adapting the “sending out information in waves” strategy? Pitt, Penn, Michigan, and now Brandeis have all released just some news, but not to every student yet. Just frustrating being in the dark of it all. But the poster said it was a generic email so maybe there’s hope for us since we didn’t get it? I’m assuming Brandeis will contact more people tomorrow since they’ve sent out news the first week of February for the past couple years.

I'm in the same boat! Some of my programs have already sent out acceptances (Pitt and Penn State) and I've got radio silence. But no news must be good news! Hopefully next week is the week that everyone starts hearing back from somewhere.

Does anybody else read literature completely outside of their field of interest for fun? I don't know about ya'll, but I cannot read my field of interest (late 20th century female Caribbean narratives) as a fun hobby. I read just absolute trash YA novels or a fantasy series that doesn't make me want to do a character analysis. I'm currently reading Name of All Things by Jenn Lyons as a way to procrastinate editing my thesis and to distract myself from refreshing my email every 10 minutes. Would love to hear about your field and what you read for fun! (Hopefully more strange dichotomies).

Has anyone else heard from UPitt? There's only 2 reports on the results page (an acceptance last week and a rejection today). I haven't heard anything from them and my application portal doesn't have any updates either. Has anyone else applied and not heard back yet? I haven't received a single thing from any school yet so I'm just antsy. Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday!!!

I don't know which programs you're looking into but from my list it seems like Brandeis, Pitt, and Michigan mayyyybe Penn State will be this week. Penn State does their acceptances and rejections in waves (2 years ago I officially got rejected from Penn State in April?!). I'm pretty sure I've already gotten rejected from Pitt since another Caribbean postcolonialist got in last week and there's a slim chance they take two of us in such a specific field. Pitt also sends out their rejections via post which is so strange to me. I feel the second guessing too, it happens at this stage and especially when you see everyone else getting news. But I'm hopeful for all of us!!!! Good luck during this week of potential news!

https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/ At the top of any page on this site there are tabs called "Browse" "Activity" "Results" and "Leaderboard" Click on the "Results" tab to find results posted by others. You can even search specifically "English" or "UNC Chapel Hill" to sort through all the results.

I would also love to know! I almost had a heart attack when I saw that on the results board.

Saw that Duke and UNC Greensboro sent out acceptances and rejections. Here's hoping that UNC Chapel Hill will jump on the NC-sending-out-early-decisions train! I still have another 2 weeks until any of my schools even start to send out decisions. THE AGONY.

I'll be presenting a chapter of my Master's thesis this upcoming March at the CEA conference! This will be my second conference and the first where my paper is actually good (the first was a junior undergrad research paper that I presented last year which I look back and cringe over).