dreid

Officially going to UVA!
Thanks to everyone who has helped with advice, information, and just generally making this community the supportive place it is. I've been here for 3 years now and I'm glad to be moving on to the next stage finally.

I declined UT Austin for Comp Lit today. It's an incredible program in an amazing place, but unfortunately the stipend just wasn't enough to cover cost of living + my MA loan repayments (what a great idea that seemed at the time). I'd either have to take out another loan or be dependent on my partner for a few years to make it work - neither of which I want to do. Genuinely heartbroken as it's SUCH a fab offer, but hoping it creates some waitlist movement for someone here! Good luck pals, we're nearly there xxx

I declined UT Austin for Comp Lit today. It's an incredible program in an amazing place, but unfortunately the stipend just wasn't enough to cover cost of living + my MA loan repayments (what a great idea that seemed at the time). I'd either have to take out another loan or be dependent on my partner for a few years to make it work - neither of which I want to do. Genuinely heartbroken as it's SUCH a fab offer, but hoping it creates some waitlist movement for someone here! Good luck pals, we're nearly there xxx

I declined UT Austin for Comp Lit today. It's an incredible program in an amazing place, but unfortunately the stipend just wasn't enough to cover cost of living + my MA loan repayments (what a great idea that seemed at the time). I'd either have to take out another loan or be dependent on my partner for a few years to make it work - neither of which I want to do. Genuinely heartbroken as it's SUCH a fab offer, but hoping it creates some waitlist movement for someone here! Good luck pals, we're nearly there xxx

i've officially accepted michigan!! (which is a relief as my birthday was recently and a lot of my friends bought me michigan-related gifts... would've been an amazing but shortlived punchline to have been like "haha actually i'm staying at oxford but thanks anyway i guess"). 

I really can’t thank you all enough for sharing your experiences and tips. I clicked with a number of points—financial security (about time, right?), schedule and organization (mentally, too), having a more structured life after working, and trying to get a sense of what works best for me.
dreid’s suggestion of doing different things at different places really struck me. I worked the past few months as a freelancer and did almost everything at home: work (online), app prep, meals, even working out (I bought a yoga mat). I did go out of course. At first it felt convenient, but later this doing everything at one place became chaotic boring and depressing. I even started to feel annoyed at the sight of my desk, i.e. my dining table, library, work station and entertainment platform.
I didn’t want to take this full-time job at first. Actually I cried pretty bad after I accepted the offer (but partly because I’m already too sentimental lol), as I thought by saying yes I’m officially stepping farther away from my dream. Yet something tells me that you are not going anywhere either if you don’t. I really do need a more structured life, and to return to my normal self.
The past year has been…but the worst thing happened to me is that I became timid and lost faith. I was a scrappy kid telling myself and people around me you can do it if you work hard/if you really want it/if you have enough motivation. I never thought I was being idealistic, I simply had enough courage and inherent incentive. God I miss that.
All of that are still true, I just need to rebuild myself, and I will. I really appreciate your support, and sorry for my disorganized thoughts. ~
“Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.” Wish everyone well.

I was working full-time on top of running a freelance gig throughout this application cycle, and I'll be honest with you...it's tough. After a 9-hour stint in an office, the last thing you really want to do is sit in front of another screen and start a different kind of work. It is certainly possible to pursue work and graduate apps simultaneously, but I would say it can end up taking a toll on you both physically and mentally if you don't allow yourself enough time to rest and recharge (preach @jadeisokay!).
Everyone is different, of course, but what really helped me to strike a balance between the two was allocating different environments to different tasks. For example, I never work at home if I can help it. That's my space for eating, watching Netflix, hanging out with my housemate, hosting dinners, sleeping - and if I try to work there, I inevitably end up being lethargic and getting frustrated with myself. Instead, I go straight from the office to the library and do app things there for a few hours. Then I go home and relax. It just keeps everything compartmentalised in my mind, and stops it from becoming too overwhelming. There's an iPhone app called Life Cycle that actually tracks how long you spend on certain activities/in certain places, and I used that a lot to make sure I wasn't overdoing it and burning out (13 hours' total working today? Time to GO HOME).
Further advice: screen glasses are your friends. They cost like 10 dollars and stop you from getting those screen-glare headaches if you're putting in long hours.  Also, exercising, eating/sleeping properly, and - I cannot emphasise this enough - seeing your friends. Go for dinner or coffee or to a bar or a party. It might seem unproductive when deadlines are looming, but it will clear your head and put you in an infinitely better frame of mind.
So, in short: yeah, it's not easy. But it is absolutely doable if you are determined enough to take on the extra work, and mindful enough to recognise when your body and mind need to relax. Personally, I love my job (and oh my I love that sweet sweet financial security) - but I don't want to do it forever. And being at that job gives me a daily reminder of why I want to pursue academia. So don't lose that fire in your belly, be mindful of your mental state, and very best of luck!!

I feel like my close friends/family are more excited than i am. I haven't really celebrated besides going out for a casual meal. It really didn't feel celebratory...seems like the stress of life keeps on coming and leaving me no time for celebration ?

Hi folks! I am currently sitting on the Grad Studies Committee with profs who are reading applications and making decisions. This is what I have learned:
1. This is the worst truth and you're not going to want to hear it, but GRE scores matter a lot. Not to the department, necessarily (most profs are very frustrated that it's a factor they need to consider), but to the university, who wants to look good in terms of numbers. It fucking sucks. It's the truth. This means quant scores, too. ?
2. The committee wants to see that you have a well-articulated set of interests and that your work will find a home in the department. This means outlining research questions that are interesting and viable. What this means differs depending on field. If you're working in post-45 American, for example, do not propose a project on Pynchon, DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, and irony. That project belongs in 1986. It's not viable. Race and embodiment in Octavia Butler? Now we're going somewhere. Make sure the department has at least 2 tenured faculty members whose interests--in terms of theory/method and literary archive--overlap with yours. Check out their CVs and skim the last 3 things they wrote. Note the last grad courses they taught, if possible--these often indicate where their research is going, much better than already-published things. Profs often use grad classes to test out their developing interests.
3. The committee also wants to see that you are flexible and open to developing new research questions. Your SoP should trace a trajectory of thought and project to your future research interests, and your writing sample should reflect that trajectory. If possible, work with a professor to revise your writing sample and tell them you'd like to work it up to publication level. But do not resubmit the same sample and materials the following year. There are a number of these re-submits that have come to the table, and they get tossed out right quick.
4. Visit, if you can. Meet with one or two people in the department. Get a sense of what the campus is like. If you can visit during a regular semester, attend an event that you can mention in your SoP. If at all possible, meet a professor you'd be interested in working with. These things are difficult and may not be possible, but they can make a huge difference in shaping your SoP and how it gets noticed. They stand out.
5. The committee really seems to appreciate when life experiences shape someone's research and work. What can you do, or what have you done, that might ground your work in actual life praxis?
Hope these are helpful. I'm a mere grad student sitting on the committee and not allowed to actually read the applications, but I've been taking note of what the faculty members like and comment on. 

waitlisted at UNC :^) i figured i'd been rejected when i didn't hear earlier but it seems they're still rolling them out!

Anyone else just waiting around for schools to get back to them so they can get on with making a decision? So looking forward to being out of this limbo and planning the future. At least I had a snow day from work today and could take Ursula on a nice hike: 

I desperately want to hear back from my last few schools so I can start making decisions already. I feel like there's just a huge number of impending life choices waiting to crash down on my shoulders. Anxiety does not sleep and, apparently, neither do I.
Hope everyone's doing okay and managing the stress! We'll get through this one way or another. Fingers and toes crossed for each and every one of you!

School prestige is not not a factor. (Litotes!) But I wouldn't say that it's decisive. 
I think @Dares has a point in saying that there is a particular language (and habits of mind, and methodologies, and preoccuping questions, etc.) that characterizes elite academic discourse. It's the language that the profession uses to talk to itself. And one might more readily, or more easily, encounter that language (habit of mind, methodology, etc.) at Yale than at Unknown University. So perhaps a candidate from Yale will be more immediately legible to an admissions committee as a proto-academic than the UU candidate. There is also the sense--perhaps unfair--that success at a prestigious university presages success anywhere; if an undergraduate institution is truly unknown to the committee, then a straight-A average there might not provoke that same assumption. (The UU could be academically rigorous, of course--but it could not be.) LORs often rate students in comparison to other students: e.g., "top 5%," "top 10%," "2 or 3 best of my career." At a prestigious university, top 2-3 of the career is very impressive. At UU, it might be less so. It's not that the committee knows or assumes the UU student to be weaker than the Yale student; it's just that the information from UU doesn't signify as strongly.
That said, committees also love to flatter themselves (and sometimes maybe they're right) that they can recognize "diamonds in the rough" (this is a phrase that comes up all of the time) and "refine" them with expert teaching, mentorship, and advising. There's also a high premium on diversity, including economic diversity and "first-generation college student" status--meaning we don't want a whole class of Ivy League grads from wealthy parents with graduate degrees. If an applicant has gone to a fancy prep school and a fancy university, and is very polished, but the ideas in the WS are uninteresting, that application is much less compelling than one from an applicant from UU who lacks polish and knowledge of the most recent work in the field, but offers a strikingly original approach to a text or topic. And occasionally, applicants from high-prestige undergraduate institutions are identified so strongly with their prestigious undergraduate mentors that the question of "teachability" comes up: does the applicant seem already to be calcified in a particular approach or methodology and s/he would not be adequately responsive to feedback and mentorship? 
So all of that is to say: sure, it matters. Everything in the application matters. But it matters a lot less than the intellectual excitement that the SoP and WS generate.
Hope this is helpful. Happy to natter on further if people have questions.
 
 

Just accepted to Berkeley!!! I had completely written off Berkeley as an implied rejection, and was bracing myself for a shut out, so try to stay hopeful friends. 

Oh man for me the anxiety has only gotten worse. I had a dream last night that I was accepted to Penn and when I arrived on campus they handed me a mop and bucket and I was asked to clean the bathrooms... I then had the realization that they had accepted me to be... the janitor. ?

As a current student, and someone who has a lot of friends in many different kinds/feels of programs, let me try to answer as best as I can, re: what to think about when visiting:
You MIGHT click immediately with the campus/faculty/students. Or you might not. Neither one is (necessarily) an indicator of anything. You might not click immediately because you're nervous, or the students you'll get along with best weren't around when you were visiting, or because some people take a while to get to know. Or you may click, and then it turns out that that faculty member is actually fairly hands-off when it comes to advising, or that student goes on leave, or the one conversation you had turns out not to be indicative of any further connection. 
I have a friend who is super close with their cohort and faculty members. I have a friend who gets along with some of the people in their program, but not all of them, and isn't close with any of them. They're both very happy in their situations. I'm somewhere in the middle, and also happy. 
Remember, this is a professional situation: as long as you feel like you can get along with people, and won't mind shooting the shit for a few minutes before talks/class/etc... that's the main thing! The friend who isn't close with anyone in her program has a huge friend circle totally outside of the school, and thinks of being in her program as going to work (note: this is, of course, easier to do in a big city. If you're in a small college town, maybe care much more about potential friends). While I know not all of you are coming right out of undergrad, if you are, remember that grad school isn't necessarily an all-encompassing social situation like college is. 
A few things I'd recommend thinking about, during visits:
1. Do you think the conditions here will allow you to work as best as you can? Will the stipend REALLY work, or might you have to get some loans/work an evening job? Does there seem to be a lot of structure? Is there a grad student union? What's expected of you over summers? Ask current students about one thing that they wish they could change about the program. 
2. Rates of burnout and depression are really, really high among grad students. Maybe you're the sort of person who likes to put your head down and do nothing but work... but if not, what other resources are available to you, to help you avoid that? CAN you find friends outside of the university if you want to? Is going to live music important? Do you like being able to go hiking? Are you really into, say, yoga-- and is there a yoga studio around that you think you'd like? Don't forget that you have to be a person, too! 
3. What's the insurance like? Do you have any specialized medical issues that might be affected? For instance, I know two students in my program who had to switch off of the school insurance plan because medications they needed weren't covered/weren't covered well enough.
4. Think about not just "can I survive?" on the stipend, but what it will get you. What I mean by that is: will you have to live with roommates? Are you REALLY ok with not living by yourself for the next six years? Will you have money to go out to eat every now and then? Do you like flying to see your family often? Yes-- you're probably going to have to live tightly and compromise no matter what, but genuinely examine what things in your life that cost money add significantly to your happiness, and decide if they can stay there on the stipend you're being offered. 
5. If you're a woman (and this probably applies to PoC and queer folk, too!), ask other female (PoC/queer/etc) students about their experiences there. Is there some institutional sexism? Are there other students (or faculty) that they complain about? 
 
 
Anyways, just a few things to consider! Good luck to all of you in visits!

Waitlisted at BU
I feel like this cycle is turning out just plain weird for me, but...I'm not mad at it.

i got into Michigan!!!!! my first offer!!! i cried at work!!!!!!

Y’all. Some of these implied rejections out here make me feel like I’m experiencing the 7 stages of grief. 

About four people posted on the results survey that they had been offered interviews by NYU, so I assume that not being asked to interview means I’m probably not on the shortlist. Of course, this is 100% speculation, so i guess anything could still happen - but I’m not very optimistic!

Hello! This is the Ghost of Waitlists Past! As someone who was waitlisted and ultimately admitted, I wanted to share a few reflections from my experience. Being waitlisted is the worst. Your application cycle has been dragged out even further. You feel a weird mix of joy and defeat. My inner saboteur kept telling me, "I was good, but not good enough." At the end of the day, you may not get admitted despite all this added anxiety. These steps, though, made me feel like I had done everything I could do. 
1. If you want to be on the waitlist, re-affirm your interest. I do not just mean replying to the DGS's waitlist email saying, "Yes! Keep me on it!" (Though you should do that ASAP.) A week or two later, I also sent a formal letter to the DGS, i.e. 2 short paragraphs in an email with a Dear XXX and Sincerely XXX, re-affirming that the program was one of my top choices. Keep it concise and do not repeat anything from your SOP. This might only be one short paragraph. However, here are a few other things you might want to mention:
1a. If this program is your first choice, say it. When I submitted my PhD applications, I was fairly confident this program was my first choice, but after having a few more months to reflect, I was now certain. In my letter, I said that and stated that I could confirm my attendance if admitted before the April 15th national deadline. This is a big commitment, so only say this if you are going to commit to that. When April 15th barrels down on the adcom, they want to offer admission to students on the waitlist that will accept their offer. Some adcoms will have a ranked list of waitlisted students, and this gesture may not do much. However, if your program's adcom does not have a ranked list, this may help.
1b. Tell them about any admissions you have received. Some DGSs will ask for this, but either way, be sure to mention which programs admitted you! This makes you a more attractive candidate, and if those acceptances are from impressive programs, it could spur them to review your file to see what they might have missed. Plus, it also alerts them that you will need to know before April 15th since you have an offer on the table.
1c. Any updates to your CV since you applied? After submitting my application, I had a few CV additions. I had a paper accepted for a conference, I was awarded a competitive grant, and I had another line of employment to add. I included those in my letter since those, like admissions to other programs, could spur some review of my application. Even if you do not have updates like that, you can still tell them about other things. Still in school and finished your fall semester with a 4.0? Tell them. Was that conference paper or publication listed as "forthcoming" on your last CV now given/published? Tell them. Did you finish a project at your job that seems relevant to the program? Tell them. The point here is not to brag, but to affirm that you are a hardworking candidate that could bring something special to the cohort.
2. Ask the DGS what the waitlist procedure is. Some will tell you up front and in detail how they select students and how frequently they will update you about your progress. Some will be more opaque. Either way, you have the right to ask questions like, "How does the committee select students for admission from the waitlist?" and "Are waitlisted students able to visit the department, either at the open house or individually?"
3. After you send the letter of interest, keep in contact with the DGS, but do not overwhelm them. This is where it is hard to be prescriptive. You will have to judge what is too much or too little contact. My suggestion is to err on the side of too little contact since you do not want to overstep. I would especially refrain from asking for updates. Instead, restrict yourself to major CV additions, i.e. other admissions, publications, professional conference presentations, or awards. I received my waitlist notice in late February/early March, and after I sent my letter of interest, I sent a total of two other emails: the first informing the DGS about two awards I had won, and the second – two weeks before that big April 15th deadline – asking for an update/re-affirming my interest.
4. Update your LOR writers about your waitlist status. You should be keeping them in the loop about your application cycle anyway, but if not, tell them about your waitlist status. When I told them, one of my letter writers was very generous and offered to write to a faculty member on my behalf. Not everyone is going to have that reaction, nor should you ask it or even expect it. (I didn't!) However, informing them gives them the opportunity to take more action if they can. You can also ask them if there are any steps they think you should take. During the application cycle, I ran the suggestions in this list by my letter writers, and they approved of them, giving me more confidence to do them.
5. If you have been admitted to other programs, evaluate those offers. Go ahead and start narrowing down any admittances you have. For now, treat the waitlist as an admittance. As you evaluate your options, you might decide the waitlisted program is not your first choice. If, however, you feel like the waitlisted program is your first choice, then hold on to it and decide which of your current offers is your first choice. Once you have selected your top admitted program, decline your other offers. Then inform the DGS at the top admitted program that you have been waitlisted at another, especially if you plan to wait until the April 15th deadline. When contacting the DGS, I affirmed that I was impressed by their program and would be excited to attend, but that I was waitlisted for a program that was a better fit for me and intended to wait. The DGS appreciated my transparency and that she could prepare for potentially notifying people on their waitlist. Remember, you are not the only one on a waitlist!
6. Be patient. The hardest thing to do on this list! In order to offer admission to students on the waitlist, the program has to wait for enough admitted students to decline their offers. Programs often admit more students than they expect to take, so even if one or two students decline their offers, the program may already have a fully realized cohort. Programs usually see major movement in late March/early April when students admitted to multiple programs have attended their open houses and have reflected on their experiences. Then, the DGS will begin sending out other acceptances. You could receive an offer of admission before then! You could also receive your acceptance after April 15th. I did not receive my acceptance until the day before the April 15th deadline. In the moment, it was nerve-wracking. However, because I had not officially accepted another offer, things went more smoothly for me and the two DGSs. If push comes to shove on April 15th and you still have not heard from the waitlisted program, you have to make a choice. It is your choice, but if you are seeking advice, I would strongly recommend taking the admission you already have. You truly do not know if you will be admitted until you get an official letter.
7. In short, always be passionate, courteous, and brief. Each email you send matters and reflects what it would be like to work with you. Now that I am on the other side, I know at least one reason I was admitted was because I was determined and respectful. Proofread everything you send. Keep your emails short. Sound enthusiastic and professional.
Good luck, my fellow waitlist survivors!

HAHAH this has really tickled me on an otherwise v stressful day. Have never related to anything more

HAHAH this has really tickled me on an otherwise v stressful day. Have never related to anything more

HAHAH this has really tickled me on an otherwise v stressful day. Have never related to anything more

Hi all - I thought it was high time for the rhet/comp folks to have their own thread this year. Share your hopes, fears, news (good and bad), and questions below!