sad_diamond

@Warelin I'm out of reacts but I love this statement @Eucerin OMG congratulations!! That's so awesome about Berkeley Rhetoric. You got into grad school!

Don't lose hope! It seems like most of us had the same experience and as @Warelin said they probably just wanted to see how we respond to pressure, rather than expecting us to brilliantly answer every question.

@FiguresIII Was your Duke Lit interview kind of brutal? I thought mine was, at least compared to my Irvine interview. Like they asked good questions, but they were extremely...incisive. Edit: oops didn't see your earlier posts about your interview. I can commiserate.

Just had my Duke Lit interview...I think it went OK but they definitely asked tough questions. Feel a little grilled.

They did not, but Irvine is not a very traditional comp lit program. For what it's worth, I only have one language besides English.

I already talked about this a bit on a different forum, but I interviewed with Irvine Comp Lit so I can say a little about what it was like. It was a phone call with two professors, neither of them POIs, that lasted about 20 minutes. They asked about my research interests, texts that influenced me, why I was interested in the program, and there was time for me to ask one question. Those were pretty much all questions I was expecting, and I was very glad that I had prepared outlines of answers. One thing that made me a little nervous was that they didn't respond to any of my answers at all, just moved on to their next prepared question, but @arbie told me a professor of theirs said that this is quite normal, so that was a relief. I'll let you know how my Duke skype interview goes later in the week!

@FiguresIII I don't know the answer to your question BUT this person from 2011 was invited for 2nd round interviews and lived in Europe so this thread might have answers:

I think one really useful way to start to get a grasp on the current conversations around an area of interest is to find a couple journals that publish work in that area and then read all the abstracts in each new issue, along with an entire essay here and there. It's also a great way to find programs to apply to if you're in that stage--find interesting essays written by people early in their careers (i.e. assistant professors) and then figure out where they got their Ph.Ds. If a bunch of people publishing the kind of work you want to publish all went to the same program, it's probably a good program for you (and is probably good at helping students get published). Also this website https://journalreviews.princeton.edu/ , with in-depth reviews of most of the major journals in the humanities, is incredibly helpful.

If you're talking about Duke Literature, I don't think anyone's going to know when exactly the second round interviews are happening until after the first round skype interviews have happened. In previous years it seems like people only found out when the 2nd round weekend was when they were invited. But sometime mid-february seems like the norm. If you're talking about Duke English, @flungoutofspace emailed the department and the DGS said they aren't doing interviews this year.

I saw him at the Met Breuer last year. It was like...WE were panopticonning HIM. poetic justice.

@bluelight @Bopie5 I honestly listen to the boygenius Tiny Desk Concert every night before I go to sleep. Amazing tunes but also something about the way Bob Boilen has them mic'd it's like straight up ASMR

@arbieThanks for that info it's really comforting!

I also got an interview with Duke Lit ?Also just had my interview with Irvine! I thought it went pretty well, there were no curveballs, although it felt like i might as well have recorded answers to questions...they didn't respond to my answers at all, just moved on to next question. That being said, it was a very brief interview window (15 minutes) and neither of them were my POIs, so there wasn't really time to go deep.

its english

Just got an email from UC Irvine Comp Lit requesting a brief phone interview :')

@dilby

I hope this is the case! If it's any comfort to fellow Duke Lit applicants they accepted 7 students last year and only 2 matriculated which seems like it could mean that they have a little more space this year!

Any other Duke Literature applicants going bonkers waiting for news about interviews??? I crave the approval of all those marxist zaddies...

Anyone want to claim either of those Berkeley Rhetoric interviews : - ) Seems like it's their first year interviewing!

Anyone going to claim either of those Berkeley Rhetoric interviews : - )

Like, it took them THREE WHOLE SEASONS to find out morality is a scam...um hello...

I enjoy The Good Place a lot but it also makes me really frustrated because I feel like all the characters' dilemmas could be immediately solved if any of them read like a single piece of continental philosophy

I wish there was a movie of Infinite Jest so I could just watch that instead of reading the book. I'm always telling my roommate that he's a total rube for reading Anna Kerenina right now

Did grad cafe change the way the search tool works on the Results page or something? All of my old searches bring up no results now...anyone else having this problem? Probably a blessing in disguise lol

Anyone else here obsessed with Rosalía's 2018 album El Mal Querer? It's all I can listen to...