indoorfireworks

I got an email from Pitt's university press about new poetry collections. Of course I only saw the sender, not the subject line, before I started freaking out ?

Ugh, me. I have a good amount of teaching experience, but 300 words is far from enough to cover anything in sufficient detail. I'm not stressing it much since, as you noted, funding is guaranteed. Anyway, I'll share mine with you via pm if you're interested.

Thanks for this. I know a lot of schools will take them late but this particular one seemed pretty unambiguous. Turns out it’s a moot point in this case because my recommender finally sent in her letter a bit after my initial post. Big relief.

I’ve submitted all four that are due today but I’m still waiting on a letter of rec. The prof says she is working on it and will have it turned in today but good lord being this close to the wire makes me anxious.

I submitted my first application and already have an issue ?I triple checked to make sure all of my school info and transcripts were input correctly. I remember for a fact the school where I got my AA was there because I had to change the start month. Nonetheless, that school was not present when I looked at the app summary after submitting. I contacted the program coordinator who said she couldn't do anything, but to contact the IT help desk. They told me they couldn't do anything. I relayed that to the coordinator who said she would check to see if the info was there but somehow not showing up in the summary. I haven't heard back and it's been about 5 days. I'm wondering if this is something the committee may not notice or care about since all of that info is on the transcript from my BA. Or if they'll just ask me to submit the missing transcript when they're reviewing the app. On the other hand, if that's not likely, maybe there's something I can do to get the app totally complete before the due date of 12/1. Honestly, this is my first choice school so if there's some way they could cancel my first app, I would be willing to redo the whole thing. So therein is my dilemma - to pester the school for another course of action or leave it alone. Any input greatly appreciated.

I just emailed and asked. Between 10 schools, there was a lot of variance. Some said 20 pages max including references, some said 20 pages of writing, plus references. Others said 20-22 pages of writing was fine. IMO, it's not worth guessing and it's not like anyone's going to penalize you for asking.

Thanks, @Plurabelle @Glasperlenspieler @mobydickpic I just avoided the discussion of career altogether, and instead focused on how my research fit the department. I feel a lot better about it now.

So it's getting down to the wire and my WS is done, transcripts and CV are uploaded, and SOPs are 90% good to go. I'm just stressing one last bit - When writing my career goals, should I state a TT job, but mention an alternative I'm considering so I don't seem unrealistic? Or will that look like I'm waffling?

I've found a lot of good input on here about what to include in a diversity statement, but I haven't seen any examples. All the ones I've found online are for teaching jobs which, although there is certainly a lot of overlap, isn't exactly what I'd be writing for a grad school app. Would anyone who's written one be willing to share it via DM? I'm also open to other suggestions about what to include/not to include and structure. Thanks in advance!

The DGS where I did my master's said a strong intro and conclusion are particularly important and if/where I need to trim, some of the close readings would be best. My WS is a theoretical reading of three poets/four total collections, and I'm just going to summarize the whole analysis of the last collection to get to 20 pages. I may just include a paragraph or two from each collection for schools with lower page maxes. The DGS and gradcafe people have all said to just use brackets and a few sentences in place of where I cut and note on the cover page that I've done so.

Last year I got my writers tins of some nice tea. I spent less than $20 apiece, but I felt like it was way better than a gift card.

I'm going into apps with an MFA and of the schools that I've asked about it, here's what I've found out: - Ohio State generally considers an MFA equivalent to an MA, but there are some MFA students who they feel would benefit from an additional master's and only admit them on that condition. - Kent State considers MFA equivalent to MA. - Illinois at Urbana Champaign and UMass-Amherst do not consider an MFA equivalent to an MA and would require a student to complete one before being admitted to the PhD. Hope this helps. If there's any doubt, I wouldn't hesitate to ask. It's an additional two year commitment; you don't want to be hazy on whether it's necessary or not. As far as whether an MFA will hurt you, one of my letter writers has just encouraged me to use my SoP to play up the critical work I did--and I did a lot, even for a studio degree--to address any reservations lit programs might have. Ultimately, I get the impression it comes down to the SoP and WS as it does with everyone. And if it will make you feel better, look at the grad student profiles on the department's web site. You'll see a smattering of MFAs, which I found encouraging.

haha yes, that's also an important factor

I was leaning against it for the most part, but I made two exceptions. The first was because of a very out of date department web site. The second was on the advice of one of my letter writers; I emailed a POI who was of retirement age to see if he was still active. I'm glad I did, because he just retired at the end of last semester. In each case, I just made a quick statement about what I liked about their work, what I plan to do in a PhD and asked A. what graduate level classes they are teaching or plan to teach and B. if they expected to be available for dissertation committees in the next couple of years. Both were extremely gracious and I'm ultimately glad I contacted them, even though the first POI said he didn't know how he felt about my proposed methodology. That was kind of a bummer to hear, but it wasn't outright negative and I'm not taking it as discouragement toward applying. And regardless, I feel really good about knowing I'm only applying to places where there will grad-active be profs I want to study with. I can imagine being very frustrated spending the time and money researching a school, reading a prof's work, applying, and then finding out the POI isn't there or isn't working with grads much. TL;DR - it's a case-by-case thing, and I would really only do it if there was a reasonable chance they might not be doing work you're interested in (if they're there at all). But I would definitely do that research on your own first. I imagine it would look bad if you asked "hey, what are you working on" if articles are readily available online. As far as finding up-to-date pubs, I definitely recommend Academia.edu and ResearchGate even if you do have access to a university database. I found a lot of work from POIs as free pdfs on public sites that my U's library didn't have.

They do offer some fellowships, but I get the feeling they're super limited, plus I don't have the minimum combined GRE (probably should have studied for the quant). ?