sad_diamond

I think one effective strategy is to identify a few journals that interest you, read the abstracts for all or most of the essays those journals published over the last few years, and then--if you have access--read several of the essays that sound most interesting to you. If you don't have access, lots of scholars are very amenable to sending you pdfs if you email them. This website has descriptions of most of the major journals in the humanities, so it's a really good tool for figuring out which journals might interest you. This is also a good way to find programs; if you like an essay and it's by a junior scholar, find out where they got their PhD.

Just turned down Columbia and Rutgers!!

Just accepted Penn's offer!

I was an undergrad English major at Brown and I took two grad seminars there so if you have any specific questions you want to PM me about I can try to answer them!

These are my things! I'll definitely post here once i make a decision after visit days.

@toxicmoss If both programs are genuinely interesting to you, then there's really nothing you can do but wait to make a decision until after visits. you really get an enormous amount of information out of them that i don't think you can get any other way.

Accepted at Rutgers got a nice phone call from a POI. funny to me that i did well with traditional English programs and poorly with interdisciplinary programs when i thought it would be the opposite.

Just got accepted at Penn! Got a call from the DGS, and he said he has more phone calls to make, so there's still hope!

Just got a really very kind rejection email from UCI

Penn is closed today! I live in Philly

UPenn is closed today b/c of snow ?

I'm wondering the same thing RE Irvine!

I got into Columbia !

@mandelbulb pm me!

@veroniquea See you there! Have you gotten an itinerary yet? I'm excited to find out what's planned...

The manipulative language in that email was so transparent it made me mad

@JB91 This thread is specifically for people who applied to Literature and Rhet/Comp programs--you will probably have more luck on the Education forum!

Imminent tattoo? Or...IMMANENT tattoo...

Anyone else here use tattoos as (one of) their form(s) of therapy? I'm getting one today and feeling like the timing couldn't be better. Nothing like a couple hours under the needle to make you forget about existential woes.

@trytostay Try not to let yourself catastrophize! You really have no reason to think that Columbia is a likely rejection--you only have reason to think they're very interested in you. Many people on here have interviews they feel terrible about and then get admitted. You are obviously a kick-ass applicant!

FWIW this was for their comp lit program not the English program

Haven't read it yet but Kathryn Yusoff's new book A Million Black Anthropocenes or None looks really cool. Also Geontologies by Elizabeth Povinelli.

@kendalldinniene Congratulations!

@dilby Out of reacts but that's awesome!

I also got the invite to the 2nd round