The Hoosier Oxonian

NYU (the other school I was sort of hoping to hear something from this week) appears to have done the same thing last year - they didn't notify their rejections until mid-March! Fully expect not to get into NYU either (like Berkeley, it's a tenuous fit for me), but I wish they'd tell me now and not make me wait six or seven weeks!

For Berkeley applicants who haven't heard anything yet after yesterday's round of acceptances: it looks like last year they admitted everyone they were admitting in early February and then waited almost six weeks to notify all the rejections. Time to strap in for a long wait!

Almost had a heart attack this afternoon when I saw the words "Decision Available" in the subject line of a new message in my inbox... until I realized it was just the Graduate School at Northwestern sending a follow-up letter to the acceptance I received from the department on Saturday. It's nice to be accepted, of course, but I'm still waiting on eight other programs - I was hoping for news!

We expect Berkeley to notify any day now, right? Hurry up and reject me already, Berkeley - I just want an end to the suspense!

The acceptances on the results board are not mine (I'll post shortly), but I am in at Northwestern. The professor who called to tell me asked me not to tell any other applicants until Monday because she said they can't call everyone who's accepted between now and then and they don't want everyone to worry all weekend. But since the beans have already been spilled, hopefully I can set some minds at rest to know that not having been called today is not a sure sign of rejection.

Haven't posted to the results board yet, but I am also in at Northwestern. The professor who called me (not one of my POIs, which I thought was a little odd, but she was nice!) specifically asked me NOT to say anything to other applicants until Monday because, she said, they can't call everyone they're going to call before then and they don't want everyone who didn't get a call yet freaking out all weekend. But since the beans have already been spilled, I thought I should let everyone know to rest assured that if you didn't get a call today it's not a surefire rejection.

For my undergrad thesis (which I wrote last semester), I had limited room, so I focused just on Where Angels Fear to Tread and Maurice. But I see this project eventually expanding to encompass EMF's entire oeuvre - that's the thrust of my SOP, actually. So the answer to your question is yes, and also yes. It's too bad your thesis was such a stressful process (although doing a thesis on Graham Greene sounds exciting!) As an honors student, I was able to do mine through my university's Honors College, but when I started trying to arrange it I found out that no liberal arts student had actually done a senior thesis before (our Honors College was only created a couple of years ago) and there was no precedent for how it was supposed to go. I ended up basically having to do it as an independent study with just one advisor (a nineteenth-century Americanist who specializes in the Civil War). She's wonderful, but that was obviously not the ideal way to do a thesis! Anyway, I've realized I seem to have hijacked this thread with ramblings about EMF - anyone have anything else exciting to share about conferences?

Honestly, although I love EMF's short stories, most of them are strikingly weak in comparison with even his worst novels (the exception being a few of the more polished stories in the posthumous collection The Life to Come, which, like EMF's novel Maurice, was published, according to his wishes, only after his death due to homosexual content - EMF was "out" to his friends during his lifetime, but never to the public). I'm a weird Forsterian insofar as I don't actually love Howards End; I find it productively frustrating, but it doesn't delight me the way the rest of his novels do, especially the masterpiece that is A Passage to India. My "lightning talk" will present just a small snippet of my thesis. My thesis as a whole argues that rather than being torn apart by his competing commitments to humanism and to a queer view of identity (typically understood to be incompatible), EMF allows his humanist investments to enrich his view of queerness and ultimately envisions what is, in effect, a queer humanism. The bit I'll be presenting at Cambridge focuses mostly on a new reading of his first novel, Where Angels Fear to Tread, that points toward this larger theme. @vondafkossum, I've been flirting with the idea of getting an "only connect" tattoo for about five years now - maybe I should finally do it! Also, I'm curious: what rationale did your undergrad professor(s) give you for the discouragement about doing your thesis on EMF?

I had to go to class before I could decide whether to call back, and now with some distance it seems funny that I thought a random guy might be Northwestern. I'm sure the poor innocent man who mis-dialed my number doesn't need to hear my application-induced ravings, so I'm going to assume (as I do with most phone calls) that if it was important he would have left a message. Besides, Northwestern probably won't notify for at least another week (*tears hair and gnashes teeth*).

Just had a missed call from an Illinois area code and even though the name of the caller (according to White Pages) is just that of a random guy (not one of my POIs or any kind of university employee, as far as I can tell), I'm suddenly obsessed with the idea that he works for Northwestern in some capacity and was calling about my app. But if that were true he'd have left a message, right? Agh!

Always glad to claim another devotee for EMF's ranks! (I believe he is criminally underrated). Which short stories are you reading?

I'm beyond thrilled to be giving my first conference presentation this spring (during my senior year of undergrad) at an international conference at the University of Cambridge. June 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of E. M. Forster, the subject of my senior thesis and most of my future research interests, and in early April Cambridge is hosting a three-day conference to commemorate and re-evaluate him. I was encouraged by one of my Oxford professors to submit a proposal for a seven-minute "lightning talk" (not a full paper, thank God - I'd die!) and was beyond amazed to be accepted. I'm incredibly excited to have an excuse to return to the UK for a week after living there all of junior year, but I'm frankly petrified about presenting at this conference - one of my POIs from Brown is the keynote speaker! But at the end of the day I bet it will just be a big Forster nerdfest and I will have a great time. I also have a proposal awaiting a decision for a panel on gender and mid-century American poetry for a very low-stakes graduate conference at Purdue in March (if accepted, I'll be presenting on Adrienne Rich's revisions of Jean Cocteau). Hoping my panel is accepted to that so that I can work out some of my presentation nerves in a much lower-pressure setting there before I give the Cambridge presentation the next week!

Just jumping on the rejection train: got my first decision of the cycle last Wednesday, which was a kind but firm "no" to my application for a Fulbright to do an interdiscplinary MA in gender and sexuality studies at the University of Manchester. It was a long shot, so I'm trying not to be crushed and reminding myself that the Fulbright app and English PhD apps are apples and oranges, and I haven't had any PhD decisions yet (which is agony!)

My understanding of the application was that the personal statement to be uploaded should be a different statement than the statement of purpose in the application itself. Several schools require both a personal statement and a statement of purpose - I thought Rutgers was one of them. Now I'm questioning whether I've misunderstood and need to upload another copy of my SOP instead of the separate personal statement I've uploaded. How did others understand this?

I was also unclear about this, so I called the Graduate Admissions office to ask and was informed that only the unofficial transcripts are needed unless the applicant is admitted.

So I just discovered that I submitted my WS to all my programs with a citation in my bibliography that reads "Sedgwick, Eve Kofosky" (I spelled it correctly in the body of the paper, thank goodness, but still!)

Monday is the last day of the fall semester for me, and the first thing on my Tuesday free time agenda is to read all the Carson McCullers I can get my hands on (I've read about half of her books so far and I'm obsessed!)

So glad your situation was resolved, @Cryss! I just got email notifications that my last recommender has turned in 3/6 of the letters she hadn't yet done, so I'm guessing she's aiming to have them all in by midnight - at least I know she's getting them done! So that's a bullet dodged.

Same! But almost every place I've looked at mentions that there's a small grace period for letters - surely adcomms of all people understand how busy professors are, especially this time of year, so I keep reminding myself that no one's going to look at anything until after Christmas and that if a letter or two is a few days late it shouldn't be a problem.

And I am done! All applications are now in (except for Oxford, but their deadline isn't until January 10, so I'll work on that over the Christmas break). Now to get back to undergraduate life and that final paper that's due on Monday...

Regardless of our homeschool vs. public school backgrounds, it sounds like the common theme here is that we are all grateful for the English educations we received, and perhaps we can at least all agree that we're all on the same page about the importance of providing the like to future students (I know we are all stressed about applications right now, so just trying to promote a little positivity!)

Trying to quell my unexpected wave of superstition as a I prepare to submit my remaining five apps on Friday the 13th.

But of course! We started out doing Waldorf (the original impetus behind homeschooling - my mom wanted to send us to a Waldorf school but there weren't any in the state, so she decided she could do it herself at home). After seven or eight years of that she started to diversify and really just pulled together her favorite pieces from a lot of different sources for middle and high school. We did Sonlight for a couple of years (a de-Christianized version, ironically, because although my mother is a minister, she's a liberal crunchy granola Christian and all the religious curriculums were too conservative!) And in high school I did a bunch of dual credit and online AP classes.

I was homeschooled for thirteen years (kindergarten through high school graduation) and am undecided as to whether it's useful or harmful to bring this up in my PhD applications (I've ended up not mentioning it in my SOP, but it does seem to make sense to mention it in diversity statements/personal statements). I believe homeschooling had an incalculable influence in shaping my intellect and work ethic - I wouldn't be the student I am otherwise. That being said, I know homeschoolers are still a minority (about 3.5% of all U.S. students) and often hugely stigmatized (for every great story like mine, there seems to be one of children being neglected; since the neglect stories are sensational, they're the ones that tend to get media attention). Has anyone else had the experience of trying to navigate grad apps with a homeschooling background (or do you know anyone who has)? What's the prevailing attitude toward homeschooling in the academy? As I said, I feel that having been homeschooled has been crucial to shaping who I am, but if I don't bring it up in any statements, no one will ever know - it's not as if it's reflected on my college transcripts. Will bringing it up help me stand out, or is it likely to elicit prejudice?

My WS is 21.5 and my advisor has said to go ahead and submit it as is; she doesn't think it will be a problem. I'm assuming being a little under would be similarly unproblematic.