souslespaves

one of my professors submitted my letter of recommendation 2-3 days after most of my deadlines, and it didn't affect my results at all. (but yes, i totally lost my mind!) i think most committees wait for spring semester to start before they start looking at applications.

As clarification, I was requested to use Interfolio by a professor who has been both director of graduate studies as well as department chair for several nationally-recognized programs. Honestly, I had enough trouble/felt bad enough getting my profs to write and submit one letter on time, keeping track of individual ones for each school would have been a SNAFU. FWIW, I also got into all but one of the schools I applied to without any tailoring in my letters (and two of them had gone to schools I was applying to). While putting as much effort as possible into making sure your letters of recommendation help you stand out is obviously a plus, that component of my application was notably the only one that wasn't mentioned by the graduate heads that called me - they all only spoke to my SoP, writing sample, and GREs.

Another option for letters of recommendation is Interfolio. Your professors only have to submit one letter of recommendation (either by uploading it or mailing it in) and then you can have it sent to the graduate schools. It's more $$ on top of everything else, but I think it's worth it to ensure everything gets sent to the right place on time (and it makes it a lot easier on your professors).

i would get in touch with professors and confirm they'll write the LOR, and let them know when your deadlines are (and I definitely recommend giving them/yourself at least a week's buffer on the deadline...one of my professors submitted mine late which gave me a heart attack, although it ended up working out fine). Regarding the SOP, if you know what you want to write, then I don't think you need to do it right now. I didn't know anything about them so I spent time begging successful samples off of other students and reading them, as well as outlining mine (and I was tweaking mine right up to the deadlines). I left myself enough time to have several people read it and offer comments. One thing I did which was helpful was creating an Excel Spreadsheet of all my schools, with columns for Lit GRE Required/Not Required, Professors of Interest, Deadline, Username/ID for Application, URL for Application, Length for POS, Length for Writing Sample, Number of Writing Samples, Number of Recommendations, Funding, etc. It made it a lot easier to streamline everything when it came time for submitting.

this might seem obvious but in addition to the great resources already mentioned, don't forget to review your own notes from survey classes!

NYU might be a good fit for you - tons of great professors in both 18th century lit (clifford siskin especially w/r/t the novel) as well as modernism. for the writing sample, i agree with dimanche, it should just be your strongest piece. also, while there might not be an explicit temporal or genre-based link between two areas of interest, i think it's usually not a coincidence. Explaining why you have an interest in seemingly disparate areas, if done in a thoughtful way, could make for a really compelling personal statement.

This list is a little old but probably still helpful: http://wgi-lounge-2009.livejournal.com/10017.html From personal experience, I can confirm: Boston College - first year tuition waiver and half-tuition second year and around $8K stipend for TAing Penn State - full-tuition waiver and stipend (around $20K) for teaching, but this is really supposed to be a feeder program for the PhD program Also, if you just apply to PhD programs and decide it's not for you, you can leave with an MA after the first two years. As a sidebar, one of my undergrad advisors went to Princeton for her PhD and said that people who held external MAs had to "start over" -- that is, lost two years -- so you might want to check if that is still the case.

This is just a personal anecdote but I submitted all my letters of recommendation through Interfolio and didn't have my professors fill out the forms (I just had Interfolio send paper copies if the e-mail system required a form to be filled out), and this didn't seem to hurt me (I got into 8/9 schools I applied to).

aldallia - I'm an entering graduate student as well (with TWO cats!) and lion's gate and briarwood on waupelani both allow pets/cats (for a fee). if you google "the apartment store state college," they also allow only one cat in at least one of their buildings on waupelani (might've been nittany view?).

I didn't go to UVA, but I just wanted to confirm what byronlover said is true - I've met several UVA students who all have gotten multiple very good offers.

I turned down (these are all M.A. programs)- BC (with full tuition funding) Georgetown (with full tuition funding and work-stipend) UVA NYU Fordham BU Northwestern Hope this helps some waitlisters!

I got an actual call setting out the same stuff mentioned above. I was caught off-guard so I didn't think to ask any questions but she said to feel free to reach out to her or the program director with any.

Agree with intextrovert too. I do think you should wait to see what you get first -- maybe an informal call to School A to see when they think funding decisions will be made. For what it's worth, the grad director of a program I was accepted to brought up that I should feel free to reach out regarding other schools' offers, and that I shouldn't feel weird about doing it, they would try to be flexible and definitely receptive to listening. I think if you're honest and forthright, you can't go wrong -- everyone understands the position you're in! I think trying to be vague or leaving information out possibly leaves you open to not getting all your questions answered.

you can also PDF straight from word for mac - PDF is one of the "save as" options.

I was able to register for Saturday, November 13, 2010.

If you can get a good teacher, I think the Kaplan class is worth it. Having their computer practice tests is also a huge plus. I went from 1390 on the first diagnostic (640V/750Q on the paper test) to 1580 (790 on both sections) on the real thing. I religiously the Kaplan flashcards, memorized all of Essential Words for the GRE (Barron's Essential Words for the GRE), and various other websites that other people have mentioned. Outside of class, I probably spent around 60 hours studying for the test over the course of a 2.5 months.

Thank you all so much for the considerate and extremely helpful replies. And yes, I will kick my butt preparing my SoP and Writing Sample =) I have many of the funded MA programs I could find on my list, but since financials are not a concern I am just trying to focus on what programs would prepare me best for a PhD program (and admittedly am having a hard time determining what constitutes this). strokeofmidnight, re: not applying straight to PhD - A couple of reasons - firstly, to make sure I want to get a PhD, and to figure out exactly what I want to study. Right now my interest seems to be coalescing around trauma/disability studies, which isn't really established as a program or area. I am also concerned about my lack of background in theory, and do not want to struggle to catch up, and finally I'm pretty sure my literature GRE score is going to be sub-par with the rest of my application as my courseload was very heavily skewed toward the 20th century (I'm going to study as hard as I can, but I work 60 hours+/a week).

Background: I went to a good large private university (think BU, NYU, USC), double-majored in Economics and English and minored in a language and business. I have OK grades (3.65 overall, 3.85 in English), but didn't take the vast majority (8/10) of my English classes until senior year (I had been discouraged by two lackluster classes as an underclassmen; I got straight A's senior year), by which time it was too late to apply for grad school (or to do a thesis). I have two tenured/track professors who I believe will give me good/strong recommendations for an M.A. program (I have to decide who to ask for a third, but I believe at worst it will be generically positive - I am wondering whether or not it would be better to have a strong recommendation from a PhD student or a more generic one from more prestigious names). I am studying for the GRE now, and am scoring low 700+ in verbal (will have to deal with the literature one in October/November). All my friends who were good English students were primarily focused on English and are going straight to PhD programs, so I don't know anyone going through the same process. I believe my statement of purpose and writing sample are/will be fairly strong. I know my application isn't strong enough for the caliber of PhD programs I want and have no undergraduate debt, so I would like to get into a competitive M.A. program. Question: What exactly does one need to get into an M.A. program like Brown, Penn, Columbia? (Or: where should I be looking?) I'm going to cast a wide net, but am having a hard time figuring out where I lie on the continuum of hopefuls. If this is a repeat of another thread, I'm sorry! I failed with the search function.