Karatani
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Posts posted by Karatani
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The number one thing I learned was that comparing myself to others, specifically on this website, was terrible for my mental health. I logged out after the first week of February when I realized I was feeling absolutely horrible over the success of anonymous strangers. You are your own candidate. Do the work and feel good about it and f*ck the rest. I’m sure this will be taken down...but really wish I had seen someone saying this when I checked here for the first time back in September.
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I found that reaching out to professors was extremely helpful in developing my research ideas and picking programs to apply to, but probably much less useful in ‘getting a foot in the door,’ so to speak. If that is your goal, I would suggest asking your letter writers (and other professors you’re close to) who they know at the schools you’re applying to, since a personal email from them can go a long way. Granted, I haven’t heard back from anywhere yet lol
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Had a dream last night that I forgot to hit submit on all applications. RIP. It’s gonna be a loooong weekend.
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40 minutes ago, MichelleObama said:
Quick question in case I can possibly assuage my misery--I am 85% positive that I uploaded an inaccurate CV to some of my applications. If this was the case, the CV that I sent was only missing some key details: my honors thesis/advisor info (included in SOP and one of my LOR writers was said thesis advisor), 1 publication (non-academic, but socially & politically relevant), and possibly the research internship I've held with a NYT bestselling author/prof at my undergrad institution, which I've held for two years. The rest of my application is very strong. Should I bother trying to contact DGS at these schools to inquire after a possible replacement? Or let it ride? I might just be driving myself insane????
From what I’ve heard from people (who know people on adcomms) it seems like reviews are pretty far underway most places. If it will alleviate your anxiety, send it along - it definitely can’t hurt. But it sounds like you have a really strong application either way and you don’t need to stress!!
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2 hours ago, jm6394 said:
is there an unofficial list anywhere of programs that typically give interviews? trying to figure out if I have something or nothing to worry about just yet
For what it’s worth, I scoured the results page (shamelessly, multiple cycles back) and found that of my 11 schools, only 2, Columbia and Stanford, interview—and inconsistently at that. As torturous as it is, I think for the majority of English programs we can run with the assumption that it’ll be silent until the emails/phone calls roll in
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@digital_lime funny! I guess we have opposite tastes. I think I just find the narrator, Stevens, a bit dull in Remains, and felt the politics were predictable - as part of what I love about the Ferrante books is how the four serve as a meditation of the dialectics of power and lasting contradictions of theory when they come to praxis in personal, political, and intellectual, geographic, (etc.) life. Also-subjectively- felt like the books really kept a solid momentum.
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I thought Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet would hold me over through January. Nope. Read all four in 12 days. And they wrecked me.
So now that I’m a puddle I’m finishing up Kazuo Ishiguro ‘Remains of the Days (what do people think about it? I’m underwhelmed. I get that it’s a slow-burn meditation on ideology and morality but idk I just find it...boring).
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Personally, I used my statement primarily to outline my academic history/preparation and long-term research goals. In terms of career plans, I more vaguely wrote that my doctorate would prepare me for a career as a “literary critic.” I went with this because TT jobs are nearly non-existent, so I don’t sound presumptuous while also alerting them to the fact that, one way or another, my career will be centered around reading books and writing about them.
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Do you see mostly west-cost students in the cohorts at California schools?
I went to a CUNY campus that is well-known regionally but not nationally, so I sometimes feel like it could be a waste of time and money applying to places like Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford - even though the fit is excellent and I have the grades, resume, etc - because they won't recognize my school of the bat.
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@onerepublic96 Part of why I'm starting to email less is because each email takes me so long to research/write! I've been formatting mine as about 3-4 sentences total: 1 introducing myself, 1-2 on something I've read by them, and 1 asking some sort of specific question. My strategy in terms of deciding what to read by them has been to pick something within the last 10 years, and something that relates to my work. I've emailed 6 professors—those who I most want to work with—and I've heard back from 5 and had encouraging interactions and gotten some great information that wasn't on websites. I think instead of worrying a bout knowing they're current research before you email, it would be totally appropriate to use the emails to inquire what that current research is.
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How have people been approaching emailing professors, if at all? I've written to 7 at my top-choice schools and have heard back from six. One of my mentors suggested I try to reach out to someone at every school, while another told me not to waste my time and instead to use any hours I would spend reading their work and stressing over emails to tighten my own materials. How are other people approaching this?
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On 10/1/2019 at 12:59 PM, Glasperlenspieler said:
I went to a non-flagship public university for my undergrad and it doesn't seem to have negatively affected my experience in grad school.
In terms of your last question, I would encourage you to not get too hung up on thinking about where you can get into. It's good to be realistic about your chances (applying to grad school in literary studies is extremely competitive), but you're unlikely to be very successful in guessing where you have a good or bad chance of getting in. There are plenty of stories on here about people with perfect stats who got shut out, people with sub-par stats who got into top programs, and people who got rejected from low ranked programs only to get accepted at a top-ranked program. Instead, identify the schools that are the best matches for your interests and research. You certainly shouldn't limit yourself to top-ranked programs, but if all the programs that make sense for your research are extremely competitive, so be it. You're unlikely to be doing yourself any favors by applying to programs just because you think you have a good shot of getting in.
All re-assuring! Fit is definitely my top priority, it seems like few people on here have gotten in somewhere - "top" or otherwise - where profs didn't share interests/enthusiasm.
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Hi! Not typically one to post on the internet but pleased to see this group exists.
Me: Recent B.A. grad from honors program at a public school; hoping to research modernist fiction (a dying breed, so it seems), race, and theory. Have some grad/PhD course experience from classes, a conference paper delivered, and have article under consideration for journal publication.
Any other applicants coming out of public school? What about modernists? What about people having a hard time coming up with a list of schools that doesn't seem relatively impossible to actually get into???
Good African American Lit PhD programs?
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
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Rutgers and Columbia are probably at the top; Spillers is retiring so Vanderbilt is maybe not as strong; UVA and Berkeley are really strong, and Penn is good but some of their AfAm people are more conservative.