itslit

For those of you who are still waiting for responses while finishing your current degree, how are you managing your stress? How are you staying focused and motivated? 
I’m in the last few weeks of my undergrad and my fear of the unknown has been eating me alive. I tried to distract myself by throwing myself into what’s left of my semester but have instead found that the longer the waiting game becomes, the less interested in school I become. I know it’s in my best interest to apply myself 120% in these last few weeks (especially if I don’t end up getting any offers, I want my application next year to be that much stronger), but I just can’t shake the apathy that’s slowly taking over (“why bother working on my thesis?” “I don’t need an A+ to get my degree ...”). I know it’s destructive but I feel almost out of control. 
Some strategies I’m going to try to employ are:
1) dedicating a set amount of time to work on schoolwork (no less than say, 4 hours a day) so that everything still gets done. I find I’m more apt to finish something once I’ve convinced myself to start it 
2) instead of trying to distract myself with school; journaling, talking to folks on grad cafe, or speaking earnestly with my friends and my partner about my fears and worries
3) finding a little time every day to snuggle my cats and benefit from their healing purrs 
4) picking a new song to learn on my harp and focusing on learning it well (I find it’s hard to think about school when I’m actively trying to learn something new) 
I feel like writing this down was not only therapeutic, but will also help me hold myself accountable. Feel free to do the same! How are you managing your stress and apathy? 
We’re going to get through this together  
 
(Sorry if this thread already exists, I looked through the first couple of pages of the waiting game and didn’t see anything. Let me know if I need to remove this or repost in another topic and I’ll happily oblige) 

Edit: I’m not currently enrolled in school but I work full time at a job I’ll leave when grad school starts  
I’m also trying my best to focus on what I’m doing in the moment. I work full time so I’m TRYING to focus on current projects instead of wondering if I got into my top choice program that’s holding out on sending my decision.
Also going to the gym. I can’t help but forget about everything else in my life when I’m lifting heavy things. And watching funny TV in the evenings. 
The waiting struggle is real. 

Hi, hi! I'm happy to announce that I have been accepted to Michigan—my top choice. I still have a couple of programs to hear back from, but I am almost entirely certain that I will accept this offer of admission. Congratulations to you all on your acceptances, and to those still waiting to hear back, don't give up hope yet. Best of luck!

Hi, hi! I'm happy to announce that I have been accepted to Michigan—my top choice. I still have a couple of programs to hear back from, but I am almost entirely certain that I will accept this offer of admission. Congratulations to you all on your acceptances, and to those still waiting to hear back, don't give up hope yet. Best of luck!

Hi, hi! I'm happy to announce that I have been accepted to Michigan—my top choice. I still have a couple of programs to hear back from, but I am almost entirely certain that I will accept this offer of admission. Congratulations to you all on your acceptances, and to those still waiting to hear back, don't give up hope yet. Best of luck!

@Clarisse451 Hey, yes! When I posted this, those were programs that had already sent out interview requests or accepted applicants for the fall. Some of them are still deliberating—to my knowledge—so don't feel discouraged if you applied there!
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@pdh12 Ahhh, sorry! I should have clarified, but I'm finishing my MA in a department that also offers a PhD! I could not imagine trying to transfer, omg. And yes, I absolutely agree. What one person might consider a "bad" school will always be someone else's best fit, and regardless, what matters most is what you do along the way. So I'm not a huge fan of rankings, even if we're somewhat forced to keep them in mind because big names can carry a lot of weight when we reach the job market. Still, though, there's no way to say with any certainty what others might think of one's application post-PhD, but I surely hope they take a more holistic view than what I'm cynically suggesting here.  
This silence is KILLING MEEE. How is it going on your end? 

@itslit oh interesting, are you trying to transfer from one phd to another? how's that process been? seems like it could be stressful! 
As far as comparing schools go, I feel pretty in the dark. it seems impossible to know how great a school will be for you until your actually a student there.
I feel like we've hit pique purgatory. I can't tell now if silence is good or bad...

I have mixed feelings, but I agree more than I disagree with this. I think it would benefit from a metric related to programs' placement record. Last time I checked, Emory's was dicey, but they have high marks across these fields. I wonder to what extent that discrepancy may result from their name and perceived status as a "Southern Ivy." 
But, full disclosure, I'm a little embittered by my own program's not-so-great ranking according to this list, so take my perspective with a grain of salt. 

Same, @jadeisokay. Northwestern, yeah? It seems they sent out automated humanities rejections en masse yesterday—art history, comp. lit., history, philosophy. We'll get there. It was hard to swallow, but if nothing else, it's better than not hearing anything until April. 

Yay first rejection

got a rejection today. fun times.

Hi, everyone! How are we holding up? Personally, I have run out of fingernails to bite—for better or worse—but I hope to hear back from schools in the next week or so. For those of you who applied to a comp. lit. program (or a related discipline, e.g., media studies) this cycle, how are things on your end?
Congratulations to those already on the board! Yale, Emory, Duke, Cornell, PSU, Irvine, and Santa Cruz will be lucky to have you, whoever you are. 
If only out of masochism (as I have yet to receive anything): to those of you who recently interviewed at Penn State, how did it go? What sorts of questions did they ask?
And more generally, for those of you who have interviewed at any school for (comparative) literature, what should those of us waiting in the wings prepare for? How do these things go, in your experience? 
Regardless, best of luck to everyone this season!

hey! i applied comp lit for a few programs, then english or film studies at others. applied to penn, northwestern, and nyu comp lit. anxiously awaiting but not hopeful. good luck!

Plenty of people start off at regional schools or community colleges for financial purposes. The program honestly isn't going to focus on that, especially if you already have a MA. They will care more about your GPA and what classes you took at the graduate level. 

Hi itslit,
We are in similar fields — DM me if you'd like to connect. I’m not an expert on admissions, but your list of schools looks good to me. If you’re looking for more programs, I’d recommend checking out some Media Studies programs like those at U Oregon and CU Boulder. Also, check out Temple’s Communication program and see if it’s of any interest.
Good luck!

What topics in English currently interest you? 
 
Some websites do a great job of listing out requirements. Others leave some things to be fairly opaque. I think it's important to remember that these colleges are making a very heavy investment in you. Some colleges are making hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment of you over 5-6 years. As such, they want to ensure that that person has the potential to succeed and fit in well in their program. One of the easiest ways to do this is to see their commitment to the field if they've earned a Master's degree. Are they aware of current research in the field? Are they aware of what makes their project important and why is it deserving of funding? Have they engaged with others via conferences? Are they a student that we would enjoy spending time with within the field? How close are they to the writing we'd like to see more of? As a result, colleges prefer to make fairly safe bets on who they accept and some colleges will also reject students that they believe would reject them. Safeties are non-existent within the humanities.
 
I think this is largely school-dependent. According to this article, more people at Harvard and Johns Hopkins graduated with honors than graduated without honors. While there are schools known for grade inflation, there are some schools that are widely known for grade deflation. I imagine that those on the admissions committee would be familiar if schools fall on either of those two lists. I also think that the English community's smaller size allows committee members to be more acquainted with how certain professors write their endorsements for potential candidates. Endorsements go beyond grades earned in class and may very well include personal growth, research, and office hour discussions/visits.
 
I think most schools welcome candidates with a variety of interests. Schools with more resources are able to have more professors in different areas but it doesn't mean that they're actively looking to expand each area. Very few schools are really well known for just one field. Notre Dame sticks out for Medieval/Early Modern. I think that about 75-80 percent of their cohort has a specific interest within those time periods. It's not a surprise though considering Notre Dame has put a lot of resources within that concentration. I think your challenge here is that you'll need to convince a panel of professors on why they should admit you over someone who may have more experience within the subject. They need to feel assured that you're devoted to English and that your potential to complete the "marathon" is there. (Besides the dissertation and teaching, you'll also be required to complete comprehensive exams which would test your knowledge on a wide variety of books._

You won't get in.
Everyone else has already hit on the substantive points why, but I'll put it in more direct language. You don't need 18 credits in English necessarily, but you need substantial upper-level humanities coursework to be considered and to write a decent SOP and WS. 3 gen eds is not enough. You also need specific research interests (specific: Turkish women's poetry in the 20th century) as well as apparent understanding of how they fit into the context of the relevant subfield and why anyone should care about them, which requires knowledge of the field (what was written about Turkish women's poetry in the past? What is being written now? Who are main scholars working on this thematic? What are the theoretical lenses used? What are the questions people are interested in?) as well as of the content. You need to be fluent in the language(s) of your primary sources and proficient or close to proficient in other relevant languages. You need to have grounding in critical theory, ideally demonstrated through advanced theory classes and in your writing sample. Finally, you need a 15-20 pp writing sample on your topic of interest that demonstrates extensive use of primary and secondary sources, and 3 letters from professors who can speak to your potential as a literature scholar (they don't have to be comparative literature professors, but they can't be engineering professors).
All of the above is what you need just to be a viable candidate for admission at any PhD program. Getting admitted to a top program like Yale is another story.


Would it make sense for the admissions team to factor in a metric which has no impact on your likelihood of excelling in their program? Because, irrespectively of any grade inflation, your ability to, say, integrate a function over a 3D plane has no application in humanities scholarship, and contrary to what you are implying, your ability in the former may have little or no relationship to your ability in the latter. So really your irrelevant GPA would tell the admissions committee almost nothing. GPA and GRE also aren't very important.
I think you are misunderstanding what a PhD is: it is helpful to think of it as a job rather than as school. The reason you are funded in a PhD program is because the department expects you to be a professional who is doing a job. And whereas good departments won't saddle you with teaching duties in your first semester, they very much will expect you to hit the ground running: to be able to participate in graduate theory seminars, to immediately start working with primary sources without needing 2 years of language classes, to start producing publishable work soon after comps. Just as an engineering firm wouldn't hire you for an engineering position without an engineering degree, a PhD program wouldn't hire you for a grad student position when you can present no evidence that you know what you're doing.
I think @itslit is right on with telling you that literary scholarship is not a book club. Lots of people declare a literature major because they enjoy reading and writing and then discover that a) literary scholarship is very unlike the casual reading and writing they like to do, b) therefore they're bad at it. The other reason you shouldn't apply for PhDs right now, besides the fact that you won't get in, is that you really have no idea what literary scholarship entails. Right now you see this as an escape from the grueling coursework that I'm sure you're being put through and the scary job market, but it's also, you know, a bonafide occupation with its bad sides and long days. It seems like you think that because it's not engineering, it won't be hard - and it will be very hard, just in a different way. You really should give this project a lot more thought and work than you have.
That said, if you're still curious about transitioning, I'd try it out - but I'd try a more cautious approach. Especially since you have student debt, I'd finish the MS and get a job, then audit some literature electives at a local college. It's a cheap and efficient way to get introduced to the field, and sometimes, if you do well, the professor may be able to write you a letter of recommendation for your master's application. I don't think this transition is possible for you without a relevant master's. You certainly shouldn't pay for a master's in the humanities, by the way, but if you put in a strong enough application, you may be able to get in fully funded (which will entail TA or RA work). A master's is also a good way to taste the academic life without committing to it. Good luck!

It's not impossible to make the transition you're suggesting, @poboy, but it will require deft maneuvering on your part. As an undergraduate, I had a professor who followed the same path, albeit in South America: they earned a B.S./M.S. in a subfield of Engineering and successfully enrolled in a Spanish Literature & Culture program at a fairly well regarded school in the Northeast. But they also had the benefit of speaking Spanish as a first language and knew enough English to meet the TOEFL requirements their school had in place. It's worth noting, however, that this success story took place in the 90s, in a far different academic environment, and that they were by nature a voracious reader. They were able to pass an entrance exam despite not having completed coursework in literature, and I'm not sure if that's an option at the kinds of schools you're considering in this day and age.
While your GRE scores are certainly remarkable, you ought to heed the advice  @Warelin has offered and carefully consider how you might compete against applicants with 4–6 years of training in literary/cultural criticism and discourse analysis, students who likely know not only the base texts required of those in the field but also the seminal arguments made against them. You would be wise to read the Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism before you make the plunge, as it traces in broad terms the development of literary-critical thought from the Classical Age to the present day. Likewise, I would suggest that you take the GRE Subject Test in English Literature to see how you fare; although few programs require it for admission these days, it might signal to any faculty reviewers your aptitude for and interest in the study of literature. 
And because it struck me as reductive: I would hesitate to say that "humanities majors have had a grade inflation over the years that STEM majors haven't experienced to the same extent." My training has been arduous. There have been plenty of days I have considered giving up, simply because I found the coursework and expectations too much to bear. My sheer passion for literary study and critical theory have kept me going on my darkest days, and if it weren't for my commitment and work ethic, I likely wouldn't be in the second year of my master's program. The humanities and STEM are both difficult, and I would wager that any professor of the humanities with integrity would just as quickly assign a poor grade for poor performance as any STEM professor. 
As someone in Comparative Literature, I have to ask: what are your languages? Many Comp. Lit. programs require applicants to hold superior proficiency in one to two non-English languages and reading proficiency in a third at the time admission, with the end-goal of mastery over four or more, as the discipline emphasizes reading texts in their original language (whereas English programs read world literatures in translation). 
Lastly, if after all due consideration you do elect to make this sort of shift, I would recommend that you enroll in—or at least audit—as many literature courses as your schedule permits prior to graduation, as @Warelin is correct to say that the majority of programs require 18 or more hours in literature or related fields as a consideration for admission. Because so many funded programs require their students to teach intro-level courses, it is imperative that you demonstrate mastery over the material you may be tasked with teaching. The study of literature is as wonderful as you make it seem, I assure you, but it is not book club. It is a serious, age-old discipline that should be regarded as seriously as any other. I wish you the best with your M.S., @poboy, and I encourage you to reach out should you have any further questions.