Indecisive Poet

In at Chicago and out at Northwestern here too. I am grateful for Chicago's offer (truly beyond my wildest dreams) but I will have to turn it down because my partner was not admitted. It's a real blow, if I'm honest.

This is great advice. The SoP is not a research proposal – I wrote proposals for the two British programs I applied to, and they are very different exercises. Around November, I sent what I thought was a very good SoP to an acquaintance of mine currently attending a top-20 program and he told me it was well-written but too narrow; too focused on one methodology and not personal/voice-y enough. I did a top-down revision to broaden out my area of interest considerably and inject more of myself as a human being in there, and although at the time I was worried that it might be too general and too vague, I now see that that was absolutely the right decision and I'm very grateful for the advice. In fact, my final draft didn't have any wording that was explicit about what I might write my dissertation on – I just mentioned the general direction I want to go in, how it leaps off of my previous work, and a couple of different, more specific lines of inquiry I might look into (i.e. "For example, how does x author approach y?"). I didn't specify what might be a seminar paper, what an article, or what a dissertation. I think above all (and I emailed with a couple of POIs who confirmed this back in the fall), admissions committees are looking for you to have in mind the particular period you'd like to study and to display a strong commitment to (and ideally background in) that period. They want to know which authors you're interested in, which methodologies/approaches appeal to you, and how some of your academic experiences have helped to shape your interests. I do not think any (American) faculty members are looking for dissertation proposals or treatises on very narrow approaches to a period's literature.

Aw man – almost wish I hadn't read this post. I felt completely crushed when I saw the results board and now I won't be able to help but hold out hope! (Not blaming you ? – thank you for sharing this!!) I wonder if they'll be calling everyone else today then or if they'll be calling people through the whole day/evening on Monday as well. Anyway, HUGE congratulations to you!

Congrats on UCD! I wish that program had been a good fit for me – I would loooove to live in Davis.

In at UIC ? 6 straight years of teaching, though! Wooooah

Wonderful, thank you! BC's WI has been updated.

I've updated the stipend information for Boston College (it has increased by a considerable amount since it was last updated for 2017) but I'm not sure how to calculate the new wage index. @Warelin?

Congratulations! In at Boston College here too ? It's so nice to start off the season with an acceptance rather than a rejection.

This is so sweet – thank you! Fingers crossed ?

Congratulations on your two acceptances, @Cryss! It's wonderful to see you receiving good news.

Had my second video interview yesterday and it went so, so much better than the first! I feel really good about it and I'm glad I spent more time preparing and correcting for mistakes I made during the first interview. At the same time, though, the positive experience this time around really hit home how bad the first interview was. The faculty I talked with at this program were so much friendlier and more excited about my application. Ah, well – here we are.

Sorry for the confusion – my partner asked during his interview on Wednesday 1/22 what the timeline for decisions would look like and his POI said they would be sending out decisions "in a week." Since your POI told you it would be a few weeks and since Chicago sent out decisions around 2/6–2/7 last year, I've been assuming that the information given to my partner was not correct (POI is probably not on adcom, I guess) and that decisions will be out in the first week of February.

Have just worked out that I should hear from 10 of my 14 programs in the first and second weeks of February. Oof – those are bound to be a turbulent two weeks! On the bright side, the knowledge that so much will be happening so soon makes it much easier to relax my mind, stop checking my email, and accept that I won't hear anything this week.

I've seen a lot of people posting about how they're worried because they haven't heard anything yet – of the 14 programs I applied to, only one usually notifies in January. The rest notify in February (spread throughout the entire month) and even in March. It's far too early for anyone to start panicking!

Yes, yes, yes! I check my email much more than I care to admit during the week, but I barely look at my phone on the weekends.

Princeton and Boston do not. I'm not sure about the others, but a good way to check is to look through the GradCafe's results page from the last few years. If those programs normally interview, people will have posted in previous years about receiving interview requests. In general, most programs don't interview. I applied to a whopping 14 programs this year, of which only 3 normally interview.

I think you raise good points here, and I want to say that above all, an interview should be a natural conversation, you should not memorize specific answers, and you should not try to shoe in anything that doesn't come up naturally. This said, I think my interview would have gone much better if I had had more time to review my materials and to practice, and if I had had a better sense beforehand of what an admissions interview would be like. I had an 8-hour turnaround time between my notification and my interview and I hadn't even thought about my statement of purpose since the middle of December. During the interview, I ended up using a lot of vague and uninformed language about ideas that I know I know a lot about because of this (I even forgot who I quoted in one of my quotations!). I plan to do much more preparation for my next interview, not so that I can memorize answers, but so that I can remind myself what my more specific ideas and experiences are. Overall, I think my interview gave the impression that – yes, I am personable, open-minded, and we had a very natural conversation – but that I didn't know very much about my own ideas or about the program, neither of which is true. Both of those impressions, I think, could really have been rectified if I had spent more time reviewing my materials and practicing talking about them freely, and if I had remembered to speak about the program and not just myself. I only wish the dates of my two interviews were reversed, because I would much rather have messed up this next one than the first one ?

Oh, that's interesting! I think it could go either way then – no idea if my partner's POI is on the admissions committee or not (although lucky for him if he is!)

Take it as a strong (although not definite) sign that you will be accepted! Mine with Chicago was a trainwreck and my partner claims his was too (although I don't for a minute believe him). I imagine others who were interviewed feel the way we do, too, so you should feel really great that yours went so well. According to partner's POI, decisions will be out by Wednesday, so I imagine they'll be spending Monday and Tuesday weeding out the mes and writing up funding letters to the yous!

@urbanfarmer's interview tips are fantastic – I especially agree with their point about admitting what you don't know. I just want to add a few things that I desperately wish I had known before what I felt was quite a bad interview (that almost certainly squashed my chances at my dream school ?) 1. This may be obvious to you, but think of the interview as you pitching your work to the department. The point of the interview is to share your work with the faculty – both the past work you've done and future work you want to do – and to explain why you are excited to do that work at that particular program. I had no idea what kinds of questions to expect – did they want to get to know me better as a potential colleague? Did they want to hear about more ideas that didn't make it into my materials? Nope – they just wanted a better idea of how all of my interests fit together and some clarification of what I've done and what I want to do, research-wise. Our conversation never strayed from my SoP and WS. Talk about your past and future work in as specific terms as possible, rooted in arguments you have made and methods/avenues of research you want to pursue. 2. Review your statement of purpose and writing sample very carefully for at least a few days before the interview. Practice talking about them with confidence in very specific terms, and be able to explain how they link together. Do not waste time reviewing books/articles written by the faculty at that program. I spent far too much time doing this and didn't have a single opportunity to hint at my knowledge. I should have spent the time reviewing my own materials carefully. 3. As @urbanfarmer mentioned, do have questions prepared for your interviewers. But while questions about funding and placement may be welcome at some departments, I very much got the sense that my interviewers did not want to be asked about classes, placement, job support, teaching (whoops). They made it fairly clear at the end of the interview that I should have asked about the opportunities available to me within my specific field/subfield at the program, and what the work culture is like in those areas. I didn't think to ask about those things because I had already researched them well and I didn't want to seem like I hadn't, but in retrospect, I do not think it is necessarily a bad idea to ask questions you already know the answers to. For my next interview, I plan to begin the "question" section with "I'm really excited about University's program because of x opportunities in my Field. Would you mind talking a little bit about the opportunities and culture in Field at University so I can get a better sense of how I would fit in to your program?" 4. Similarly, when possible, throw in phrases reiterating that you are excited about and think you are a good fit for the program because of x. Only after my not very good interview did I realize I really just talked about me the whole time and made it seem like I didn't know or care about the program. I thought my understanding of the department's opportunities in my field and my fit with the department was evident from my statement of purpose, but in retrospect, I wish I had emphasized these things during the interview.

Thank you for this!!!

Wondering if it's expected/appropriate to send a thank-you email to interviewers post-interview? I would ordinarily do this for a job interview, but not sure if this is the same game. (Mostly, I just want to hide in a hole for the rest of my life because I just had the worst/cringiest interview of all time!)

Thank you so much, @merry night wanderer, @politics 'n prose, @Cryss, @theburiedgirl815, @Emailchecker! I am trying not to get too excited about this, lest I be disappointed post-interview (or if I don't even get offered an interview with Chicago, which IMO is likely). But it is a more encouraging start to the season than I had hoped for! Congratulations, too, to @karamazov!!!

Thank you both!!! And I know, right!? We were just talking about that. I'm sure there will be many a divergence later on, but neither of us expected to even begin with the same results. We worked really hard to ensure that the programs we chose were good fits for us but also overlapped in location, so hopefully that will pay off!

Edit: partner and I both just received interview requests!!!!! We are international so they've requested Skype interviews rather than inviting us to recruitment weekend.