wreckofthehope

Giant congrats Proflorax!!!!!! Amherst is SUCH a lovely town, I bet you will love it - will you visit?

Just this, yes.

In my experience this is definitely not true and is a very simplistic way of thinking about class. I did my undergrad at Oxford and, yes, children from well off families are hugely disproportionately represented there. I'm doing my PhD at a mid ranked private school in the US (definitely not an Ivy, where I can only presume it is similar, if not worse) and children from well off families are EVEN MORE disproportionately represented here! I don't know how you're defining class Don'tHate, but just because it's more codified and explicit in the UK than the US, that doesn't mean that class differences in the US are not just as prevalent, systemic and pronounced.

If you're really dedicated and pathetic, you can do what I did: most schools have a complete list of recent dissertations... go through and search every person to see where they are now, then check this against any official placement stats schools give you. Also, if a department doesn't have this information, and placement information, freely available...while I wouldn't say it's a direct indicator that their placement isn't that good, I would definitely be wary and investigate further... don't take their word that they "regularly place students in tenure track jobs in top universities" (as I've seen on more than one web page). Because, really? If your placement is that great, let's see the details!

Out of upvotes, but YES.

I don't take it personally Don'tHate, I just think that your doling out of advice can come across as just as naive as the attitude you're reading into other people (that you can go to any school and be competitive on the market). I have NEVER met a PhD applicant who was unaware of how bad the market is and who was not taking that into consideration when choosing where to apply.

Of course, I imagine those are the same plans as majority of us here.

There are no certainties, even with a PhD from a top 15 department.

Geoff Ryman's Air kind of fits the bill

Oxford doesn't do Comp Lit. You could cobble together a comp lit-y degree in the Modern Languages MSt, but if I were looking to do a Comp Lit degree I think I would prefer to be in a Comp Lit department...

There are actually only a few universities that really do Comp Lit in the UK, and even then my sense of the discipline there is that is doesn't have a strong a sense of being a distinct discipline, if you know what I mean. A lot of places offering comp lit degrees tend to be more along the lines of somewhere like Minnesota's Cultural Studies and Comp Lit, than a traditional comp lit department. Maybe that appeals? In which case, look at Goldsmiths, Queen Mary, Birkbeck, Warwick (?)....If it doesn't, UCL's department seems a little more traditional and language-based.

there is a popular (apparently?) author of erotica short stories who shares my real name...or, more likely, who took the same name as a nom de plume (my real name is quite unusual). I genuinely worried a lot about that when I was applying as her stories come up when you google me (or did, then...now the academic/real me has taken over the first page of google search results, yay!). Hopefully the fears were unfounded, since I did get in to places...adcomms definitely google you, though. Not all, but some; I can fairly positively identify those that googled me, because academia.edu gives you states on who got to your pages through a google search, and where they were searching from. Because I was in a different time zone it was quite easy to tell which part of the US or Canada was searching for me.

Gah, hard.... Michel Foucault David Harvey Arjun Appadurai Raymond Williams (in the sense that I probably couldn't be doing what I'm doing without him, but I don't use him directly)

I think it might be a little bit out of date... going on the average for my program ( know the average in my cohort is much higher than that reported here ).

They might not have funding for anyone, but they aren't a "for profit" school. I think "for profit" has a very specific legal meaning, correct me if I'm wrong? Of course, it would likely be unwise to pay for graduate school, so yeah, you're right to warn people about the likelihood of that should they be interested in Claremont, but asking your students to pay tuition doesn't automatically make you a "for profit" school.

I didn't know this - what a good breakfast tip for days with early classes! Maybe I'll try one tomorrow...

I actually cried yesterday when I ordered pizza for my all-nighter and they sent me the wrong one. I think I need to eat some vegetables... Green Machine Naked Juice is about my only source of nutrients right now.

Me too! Sadly, this was great in undergrad and my MA, but is slowly becoming less of an escape genre as my academic work veers into SF territory. I'm on a detective fiction kick right now, years ago I started reading the Wallander books in the middle of the series, so I've recently gone back and started at the beginning. Henning Mankell is great.

Isn't that the definition of friendship?

I can understand why that might be confusing. If these things were said in a 'platonic' way, and you genuinely believe that, then the confusion is on your side and it's you that needs to figure out how you feel about this professor (assuming this is you we're talking about). I can only go by what you say, and you say that they are offering you their friendship in a non-sexual way, if you're reading that in sexual terms, that's your issue. For the most part, in friendships where I've felt differently (i.e. thought that the person actually was attracted to me sexually) the best way to deal with that is to be resolutely platonic in your interactions with that person... don't let ambiguity sneak in to your interactions - it's not like you have no say in how your interactions unfold.

Actually, my answer was 'yes' - if you read my post above. I have been friends with my professors in the past (though not at my current institution). Your original post asked about having friendships with professors (nothing 'salacious,' you said). Now, your posts seem to imply something more than platonic friendship... so, which is it?

Or perhaps not a chemical thing at all, but a mis-reading thing? I'm not denying that there are some predatory professors out there, but, quite honestly, they are few and far between (in my experience). In most places the gossip network should give you enough to go on that you need never be sharing a glass of wine with them. If, as an adult, you can't engage in a non-sexually tinged manner (if that is what you're implying) with someone of the sex that you, habitually, have sex with, I worry for you.

You have some control over whether there's 'tension' or not, I would think....

Sad this didn't happen a few years ago! As an international student, I just couldn't apply to CUNY knowing the instability of the funding and the reliance of their students on picking up extra teaching to get through (you're only allowed to work 20 hrs a week on a visa, which I thought could prove untenable). It was already a hugely attractive program, now it can only get even better!

Wow - that's brilliant. Is that still only for a portion of students, or did they up the numbers receiving fellowships too?