S_C_789

Can we all just collectively close our eyes and see if we can make time jump? If it could be like, Thursday, that would be super. Or March. March would be good too. 
The continued waiting.......   madness. 

I'm making some chocolate cake and raspberry sauce, because if I have to endure admissions uncertainty on Valentine's Day, I might as well do it while eating good food.

Johns Hopkins acceptance and Emory rejection came within a span of 10 minutes. JHU is fantastic and a completely different kind of department (because of their small small cohort size), and I'm so thrilled.
In other news, Princeton is really dragging it til next week, huh.

This is so true, and of so many schools. I can’t stress this enough. I’m finishing a second Master’s (both related to English Studies) and I’ve worked in higher ed long enough to really have a strong, strong testimony of this. So many things come down to minutia like budget fluctuations in a given year, how many people matriculate, how many people defend, how many are ABD... sometimes programs that have 10 and 15 spots one year only have 5 the next. I’m currently waitlisted by a school I’d prefer not to name; the DGS sent me a beautiful letter in which they stated that in more sturdy years, I would’ve received a first round offer. It was a hard pill to swallow, but it is what it is.

Feel this so hard! I am still an undergrad but a friend bought just me a dozen donuts knowing this app cycle has not been my friend thus far. Sending good vibes to all this Valentine's Day!!

To everyone who just got rejected from UW, here is what my English prof there had to say: 
"We just finished our admission yesterday and we rejected many stellar applicants because we do not feel that we could support them in the work they are proposing, or because the people they want to work with are overburdened with other commitments at the moment. It often does not have to do with the work itself." 

I'm in at Northeastern???

The Johns Hopkins acceptance letter was the most well-written among the personal acceptances I received. Holy shit.

@coffeelyf I heard back from them, and got waitlisted.

@coffeelyf I heard back from them, and got waitlisted.

I know I most likely won't hear anything from Emory until the end of the week, but I'm already obsessively overthinking my visit and interviews. I feel like I did well, and I was the only one there with a focus in Irish Studies, so I'm not necessarily competing against anyone else in terms of that, but this entire process is so nerve wracking ? 
Currently trying to work on my thesis (final draft is due in a month) and I just cannot concentrate. 

In asking this question, I would make sure you hear out not just people in their first stages of the program, but people at the end of the program. Usually the first several years of the program are the smoothest, since funding is often guaranteed and committee drama hasn't developed yet.  Many programs will roll out the red carpet for you, but it is the programs that will help you finish and professionalize that really show their worth.  And yes, this includes the collegiality of your fellow graduate students as well since they are often a crucial part of this by reading/workshop your drafts,  attending your practice talks, etc. 
Let's say you are a bit behind to due life reasons, is the program going to support you through this, or turn the screws on you? This is crucial information and you need to ask latter stage ABD students how their program handles them. 
I'm ABD at UCLA, and I still feel I am being supported and the program has gone to bat for me when it comes to things like funding.  My committee reaches out to me and tells me about fellowship opportunities, etc. 
I would say this extends to questions about programs in general.  Don't just ask 1st, 2nd and 3rd years how they are doing. Ask 1) People who have been there a while and are behind 2) People who finished really quickly.  
You'll get a some different perspectives, believe me. 

Everyone ready for hell week?
Get your wines, ice-creams and tissues ready.

My brain processing this news:

 

I'm deeply relieved to contribute to this board after receiving acceptances from both Yale and Georgetown (MA)! I got my Yale acceptance an hour before I started a Friday night double shift. As a bartender, I get asked about 900 times a day how I'm doing or how my day has been and since Dec 15, I have wanted to say "I spent a sh*t load of money to put my future in the hands of several strangers and am currently waiting to receive judgment on an application I have spent years and hundreds of hours developing, and now I'm just waiting on the confirmation that I'm a full POS. What can I get you?" One of my friends yelled to the whole bar that I had gotten into Yale and everyone clapped and I didn't cry so...Today was a good day.

You all are too sweet. I hesitate to do this, not necessarily because it would reveal personally identifying information (though no doubt it would—I just mean I don't really care about that; I mean, I've showed my ass here no more than I usually do on Twitter or something similar) but because ... well, I'm not sure it would be helpful, and at worst it might be misleading? I first looked at gradcafe the last year of undergrad (a 3 year BA for me) and it freaked me out so much that I didn't apply that cycle, or the two after that! (Did a 1 year masters and have been working full-time as an editor the past year.) From the results board, it seemed like scores of people with insanely impressive stats got rejected each year; from the forums it seemed like everyone was doing so much and it was all a lottery and I felt paltry by comparison. I had weak parts of my profile, weak parts of my app—still did even this year!—and literally none of my mentors educated at places like Yale/Harvard/Brown said 'Oh you'll get in you'll be fine'. Nothing is guaranteed, and I think there is an element of lottery here. 
The fact is I did a ton of things with the hope that it might make my application stronger and I could roll out that laundry list, but I'm sure only a few of them were deciding 'standout' factors and it's impossible to know which (I mean, I have a couple hunches, but maybe they're different for each school, who knows). I would hate to say "Hmm, maybe I got in because of this", or "Maybe it was a combination of this, this and this" make anyone think they had to do all of that in order to get in. Also: the few schools that have indicated to me what they felt was strong about my application—well, news to me, that wasn't my opinion of those elements when submitting lol. What this process has taught me, if anything, is that a strong writing sample and an SOP that truly reflects your research interests and intellectual ambitions—whatever those may be—is really what counts. And the thing is, those're the two elements that we on GradCafe never see from each other! 
Anyway sorry this was a roundabout non-answer, if y'all still want to know I'll give some profile details but did wanna give that disclaimer!
 

On the other side--obviously I only know as much as you've posted, but I was thinking Option 1 would be better, if it's that much better funding. Vibe from faculty is extremely hard to gauge before you're in it, so unless there were very obvious turn-offs/problems with #1 (for example, if it were notorious for not supporting graduate students adequately, or there was only one faculty member you'd have to work with based on your interests and you've learned that this professor is Not someone you want to work with on a personality basis)... I'd go with it for the chance at better financial stability, both through the stipend period and in a future career. This is assuming that the relative stipend amounts hold after considering cost of living.
But also, maybe I'm biased because I assumed that your Option 1 is Duke Lit, which I applied to and expect to receive a rejection from very soon! And I'm a very risk-averse person by nature.
Either way, it's great that you're in a position to weigh options--wishing you the best of luck wherever you choose!

To all my fellow Chicago rejections, I reached out to one of the professors at UChi today and he told me that there is an unusually high number of applicants this year and the department simply cannot take them all. He even wrote me a note (with details about my statement of purpose) and mentioned how strong my application is. 
From the tone of his email, it looks like getting into a program now is just a matter of luck. A student from my cohort here got her MA at UChi and she also said the same thing. It's just pure luck to get into a PhD program now. I'm sure we all deserve a spot somewhere! 
On the other hand, I'm waiting desperately to hear back from other schools and every day that passes by makes me die a little inside. 

A couple of years ago @lyonessrampant posted a list of questions that I found super useful for when I visited programs. 
The post itself is here, but these are the questions:
 
-PLACES TO STUDY AND WORK
-Where do most people do their writing and reading?
-What study spaces are available? Do students get a carrel? Do those who teach get or share an office?

-LIBRARY
-What is the library system like? Are the stacks open or closed?
-What are the library hours?
-Are there specialized archives/primary sources that would be useful to my research?
-Are there specialist librarians who can help me with my research?

-FACULTY
-Are the faculty members I want to work with accepting new students? Are any of those faculty members due for a sabbatical any time soon?
-Are professors willing to engage you on a personal level rather than just talking about your work?
-Are there any new professors the department is hiring in areas that align with my interests?
-Students’ relationships with their professors – are they primarily professional, or are they social as well?

-FUNDING
-Is funding competitive? If so, do students feel a distinction between those who have received more generous funding and those who haven’t?
-How does funding break down among the cohort? i.e., how many people receive fellowships?
-How, if you don’t have much savings, do you make enough money to live comfortably?
-Are there external fellowships one can apply to? If so, what is available? Does the program help you apply for these fellowships? How does receiving an external fellowship affect internal funding?
-If people need more than five/six years to finish, what funding resources are available? (For instance, Columbia can give you an additional 2-year teaching appointment.)
-Do you provide funding for conferences or research trips?
-How often is funding disbursed? (i.e., do you get paid monthly or do you have to stretch a sum over a longer period of time?)

-COHORT
-Do students get along with each other? Is the feeling of the program more collaborative than competitive?
-Do students in different years of the program collaborate with each other, or are individual cohorts cliquey?
-How many offers are given out, and what is the target number of members for an entering class?
-Ages/marital status of people in the cohort – do most people tend to be married with families? Are there younger people? Single people? What sense do you have of how the graduate students interact with each other socially?
-Do people seem happy? If they’re stressed, is it because they’re busy or is it because they’re anxious/depressed/cynical/disillusioned?
-Is the grad secretary/program administrator nice?
-What is the typical time to completion? What are the factors that slow down or speed up that time?
-I’ve read that there are two kinds of attrition: “good” attrition, in which people realize that the program, or graduate study, isn’t right for them and leave early on, and “bad” attrition, in which people don’t finish the dissertation. What can you tell me about the rates of each, and of the reasons why people have chosen to leave the program?

-JOB MARKET/PROFESSIONALIZATION
-What is the placement rate? How many of those jobs are tenure-track?
-What are examples of institutions in which people in my field have been placed?
-How does the department prepare you for the job search? Are there mock interviews and mock job talks?
-Are the people helping you navigate the job search people who have recently gone through the process themselves?
-If you don’t get placed, is there anything the department can do for you? (e.g., can you stay an extra year?)
-How does the department prepare you for and help you attain conference presentations and publications?

-SUMMER WORK
-What is encouraged/required?
-If there separate funding/is the year-round funding enough to live on during the summer?
-Do people find themselves needing to get outside work during the summer in order to have enough money?
-Am I expected to stay in town in the summer, and what happens if I don’t?

-LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT
-What is done to help people who don’t have language proficiency attain it? Does the university provide funding?
-What is the requirement, and by when do you have to meet it?
-Given my research interests, what languages should I study?
-When do you recommend doing the work necessary to fulfill the language requirement? (i.e., summer before first year, summer after first year, while taking classes, etc.)

-LOCATION REQUIREMENTS
-How long are students required to be in residence?
-How many students stay in the location for the duration of the program? (i.e., how many dissertate in residence?)
-How is funding affected if you don’t stay?

-Incompletes on papers at the end of the term: What is the policy, how many students take them, and how does this affect progress through the program?

-TEACHING
-What sort of training is provided?
-What types of courses do people teach?
-Does teaching entail serving as a grader? Serving as a TA? Developing and teaching a section of comp?
-How are students placed as TAs? Is there choice about what classes you teach and which professors you work with? Do classes correspond to your field?
-How many courses do you teach per semester/year?
-How many students are in your classes?
-How does the school see teaching as fitting in with the other responsibilities/requirements of graduate study?
-How do students balance teaching with their own work?
-Is the department more concerned with training you as a teacher/professor or with having cheap labor to teach their classes?
-How, if at all, does the economic downturn affect teaching load/class sizes?
-What are the students like? Can I sit in on a course a TA teaches to get a sense of them?

-METHODOLOGY
-Is a theory course required?
-What methodology do most people use?
-Where, methodologically, do you see the department – and the discipline – heading?
-Is interdisciplinarity encouraged, and what sorts of collaboration have students undertaken?

-Typical graduate class and seminar sizes

-What should I do to prepare over the summer?

-Ask people I know: What are the questions – both about the program itself and about the location – I should ask that will most help me get a feel for whether this is the right program for me?

-Ask people I know: What do you wish you knew or wish you had asked before choosing a program?

-Is the school on the semester or the quarter system, and how does that affect classes/teaching/requirements?

-What is the course load for each semester, and how many courses are required?

-What kind of support is provided while writing the dissertation? I worry about the isolation and anxiety of writing such a big project. What does the program do to help you break the dissertation down into manageable pieces, and to make the experience less isolating?

-What do writing assignments look like in classes? Do they differ based on the type/level of class and/or based on whether you intend to specialize in the field?

-Ask professors: what have you been working on lately?

-Ask professors: What is your approach to mentoring and advising graduate students?

-How long are class meetings?

-How often do professors teach graduate courses?

-Are course schedules available for future semesters (10-11, etc.)?

-Can I see the grad student handbook? Are there any other departmental documents – such as reports on the program prepared for accreditation – that I can see?


-QUALITY OF LIFE
-Prices – how does the cost of gas, milk, cereal, etc. compare to other places I've lived in?
-Cost and quality of typical one-bedroom apartment.
-What does the university do to provide you with or help you find housing?
-When (i.e., what month) do people start looking for an apartment for the fall, and where do they look?
-Is it easy to find a summer subletter?
-How close to campus can—and should—one live?
-What grocery stores are there in town?
-How late are cafes, bookstores, malls, restaurants typically open?
-What do people do to make extra money?
-Does the town have more of a driving or a walking culture? What is parking like near campus (availability, ease, cost)?
-Where do most English grad students live? Most other grad students? Most professors? Where is the student ghetto? Do most students live near each other, or are they spread out far and wide?
-How far does the stipend go in this location?

This is very true as research proposal and SoP are very different genres. Research proposals especially for grant applications require concrete plans and a confident tone. SoPs on the other hand need to show that one is intelligent, curious, informed of the current state of the field, and has the potential to grow as a scholar. Donald Asher's Graduate Admission Essays: Write your Way into the Graduate School of Your Choice was very helpful when I was writing mine.   
 

I also want to reassure everyone that it is okay not to treat the SoP as a project proposal. In fact, when I was revising my statement of purpose, one of my professors critiqued it for being too focused on a specific course of study. He recommended that I use phrases like "I'm interested in x" or "I'm curious to learn more about y," rather than "I will research x through the lens of y." Another prof emphasized that grad school is meant to train us as scholars and that programs don't expect (and maybe don't even want) their applicants to be committed to a fully delineated research project.

I just want to give everyone encouragement in these times.
If you don't have a specific project or a definitive method, that is okay. While yes, strategic specificity is key in things like the SoP, nobody here is expected to produce a dissertation prospectus. It can be incredibly helpful to have a project, but the projects in an SoP are going to be tentative and indicative of a direction than the play-by-play that programs will expect from you after qualifying exams. I came into grad school with some ill-defined notion of a queer archive that, while I have it in the backburner, is a project I'm not currently writing on nor do I plan on writing about queer poetic archives for my MA paper. If you don't feel that your proposal is specific enough, remember that right now, it's not supposed to be a hyper-specific document. What is more key is a strategic specificity that outlines a potential direction that your program can support and shows you're in conversation with current issues in your field, but one that does not foreclose the possibility of you growing within the program.
This process is notoriously tough. If anyone's expressing worries, I'm right there with you. I have heard whispers that this particular cycle is a touch more competitive than last year's due to the fact that there's an increase in applications for some programs. Of course, it must be taken with a grain of salt, but the general point I want to make is that this is a hypercompetitive process with almost no feedback except in most cases a decision. Fit is an elusive beast, and you could have an extremely polished SoP and WS, but there may have been circumstances in the department that meant that your app, as strong as it may have been, simply would not have meshed well with the program. If you find yourself staring at a sea of rejections/implied rejections, remember that it's the very likely case that it's not about you nor is it a final judgment on your skills. Fit, to priorities in the department (too many/too little grad students per cohort, too many in one field), funding structures/decisions dictated by admin, etc. and so many factors out of your control can go a very long way into determining the decisions you can get.

Just got in at IU-Bloomington! 

Just got an interview request from Northeastern!! AAH! I had assumed all interview emails had already gone out. 

Had my second video interview yesterday and it went so, so much better than the first! I feel really good about it and I'm glad I spent more time preparing and correcting for mistakes I made during the first interview. At the same time, though, the positive experience this time around really hit home how bad the first interview was. The faculty I talked with at this program were so much friendlier and more excited about my application. Ah, well – here we are.