Rootbound

Heading to Rutgers! Pretty stoked about the program, and excited to join.

OMG CONGRATULATIONS!!!!

Turned down Indiana University's offer.

Best of luck! Glad to hear you are approaching clarity about the whole mysterious decision process, or at least as much clarity as any waitlist allows. Rooting for your Michigan result!

Turned down a PhD offer from BU. I genuinely did not expect to feel so agonized over sending these emails...no fun at all.

I saw the email and was immediately hopeful that the purgatory was over in some way, but nope, just official now.

Little bummed about this part of your post here. ‘scuse my close reading here, but by putting “read” in quotes it kind of feels like you don’t think people who are, oh I don’t know, working in retail to help pay back their undergrad student loans or just keep there head above the financial waters, aren’t really reading because reading only has value if you do it in an institutionally sanctioned environment. I don’t know if this is your view, or the view you believe adcomms hold, but I would like to add some further anecdata to the perspectives that @Warelin, @amphilanthus, and @punctilious shared. After getting shut out last year, I emailed a number of the programs for feedback on my application, and all of the ones I heard back from advised me to 1)continue to work on my current material, and see if anything is publishable 2) “read” 3) do something entirely outside of academia. In other words, adcomms told me there was benefit to interrupting my pursuit of an academic life. Of course, some people might need to stay institutionally involved in academia regardless of the short or long term cost, but I would like to add to the choir of voices saying that not only is it not necessary to go to an unfunded MA just to avoid academic interruption, but in fact academic interruption can be a good thing!! And, also, if you sell copy paper, you can be a skilled and productive reader.

I'm glad the MAPH program is working well for you, clearly there are benefits to it. But, I would be a little hesitant to accept this as one of the benefits; I was shut out last year (with only a BA), and came to a similar realization. As a result of my shut out, I spent a serious amount of time reading both recently published scholarship by current faculty in my area of interest and by current or recently graduated students. I also re-read my SoP and thought, "Wow, that's a cute lil narrative about my undergraduate experience, not really a great grad school application though." The point here is that just having the rejections as feedback ("you did not do this right") and the perspective granted by a couple months of not being in an academic environment led to my application being much stronger and more mature this year. I don't doubt that you have a much better understanding of the field currently than I do, but I also think admissions committees have different expectations for students with only a BA vs students with an MA of some sort with regards to their currency in their chosen field. I just think that to advocate going into debt in order to strengthen a PhD application is a little extreme, especially as there are other ways to strengthen it (the one that worked for me being time and reflection). Academia may be an elitist beast, but we can still try not to feed it.

I had similar questions, and I was actually surprised at the lengthy and interested response I got from a program I’m waitlisted at. The tone of the response actually convinced me to stay on the waitlist more than the answers themselves, which is helpful information to have. I say definitely go for it—if they don’t answer at all, or if they are dismissive, that’s good information to have too!

Glad you got good news!!

Outside of my research, but I read Samantha Hunt’s “The Seas” back in November while going through endless drafts of my SoP, and it was such a captivating read. Highly reccomended to one and all!

Well I would encourage you to desperately beg them for info because that's exactly what I did.

On the same kind of waitlist at UVA. I’m an early modernist.

Shaggy is still here! I am early modern, and also listed Clare Kinney.....I have no idea why they are doing it the way they are doing it. Seems like they send out ten emails and then the computer crashes for a week.