meghan_sparkle

Part II: A: Go to (k). I went to (y) but the three most brilliant minds working in literary studies right now are at (k). You would be an idiot not to go there, but I have a feeling you won't, because you'll be an idiot about it. Me: Well I've heard that all of the graduate students at (k) are miserable—a lot of current and recent ones have reached out to me with not so great things. A: What is "happiness" anyway? Why would anyone do a PhD thinking they're going to be happy during it? Me: Okay that's a point. Were you happy at (y)? A: Well, yes. Me: I feel like I could be really happy at (x) but they apparently haven't placed a TT job in 3 or 4 years now. B: There are no jobs. You will not get a job. Just go where you want to read and write for 6 years and expect to leave the profession after. Me: But you have a job. B: Do not pay attention to that. No one gets jobs. Me: This is a Beckett play and I want out.

Okay took 1 hour but I'm over it!!!!!!! If I'm honest w/myself I would not have gone to Penn over Harvard, Yale, Columbia, or Princeton. I would've felt weird to have a totally successful season and tbh was already starting to feel bad taking up a spot at multiple places when I can only choose one in the end (a decision that'll be hard enough as is). Onwards and upwards!!

Wow this implied rejection feeling really ... sucks doesn't it.* *Please please no one jump down my throat for saying this—I realize I'm incredibly lucky with the options I have; my only point is that as a feeling it manifests no matter the surrounding context and sucks no matter what!!

welp! nothing in my inbox from Penn–going to assume an implied rejection. which is fine ofc, fit was a stretch! but any rejection stings a little can't lie

STOPPPPPP

....i'm listening

im not going unless im carried there

to be fair the email says (from princeton) that the 1st is "essentially a departure day" for students.....so if the 1st for harvard is "essentially an arrival day" and doesn't have things starting at like 9 am (which we would know if either of these places had a schedule but ofc they do not!!!!) then maybe it will work but TBD !!! I'm going insane.

I got this in an email: "Monday, March 30, 2020-Wednesday, April 1, 2020". AAAAGGGGH CONFLICTS WITH HARVARD.

Just an update on this: I have been emailing/having coffees with all of the mentors of mine who're in the know about the state of the programs I applied to at the moment and they are ... all giving me completely contradictory advice lol! Also most of them know each other and it's gotten to the point where some are fighting behind the scenes about their advice to me. (I'm sure this will all be fine in the end, no one is totally right and no one is totally wrong, but just picture me, a person who always tries to please her teachers, good teacher's pet, sitting in a chair, trying to process all of this.) A: Don't go to (x). There's no one for you to work with there. B: Well, A doesn't know what she's talking about. Go to (x). C : Wait, actually I think (y) could be a perfect fit for you. Don't go to (z). D : I've been talking to C and we both think you should go to (y). Go where you have multiple people you want to work with who have clout. E: I know you like (y) a lot but eh ... I'm not crazy about [POI]. D : I've changed my mind; go to (k). F (teacher of B ) : (x) is boring. (y) is also boring. Don't go to (x) or (y) under any circumstances. Also don't choose for advisors; all that can change. Go where you like the intellectual community best. More soon, bye. B : Remember there are no jobs so don't expect that you'll get one. Kiss kiss!

That is on the same scale!! My work are being super flexible with letting me work remotely and have more days off when on visits than I probably should—if I was balancing this with undergrad I would literally go COMMAND --> FORCE QUIT on the whole operation. I know someone in the middle of a 1-year Oxford masters with a massive amount of coursework due in a few weeks and she's just ... flying back and forth for individual visits and it's BLOWING MY MIND like HOW are you surviving the jetlag?? No ma'am!! No ma'am. Also: I have also had that happen before re: calendar app importing flight details in a weird way to make it look like you're leaving or arriving on a completely different day. Surprised it hasn't given me heart failure yet.

Girl what the F*&? Ugggggh!! I'm so sorry. You are fabulous do not forget it even for a second!!!

At what point is the norm for receiving a schedule/itinerary for a campus visit? Especially ones I RSVP'd to more than a week ago? I'm coordinating a lot atm and am really wary about booking nonrefundable flights without a guarantee e.g. about what nights my accommodation are and where, or in the case where one visit is followed by another back to back, figuring out what time the former will end in order to book the right flight to make the latter. I've emailed a couple programs about it but am not sure whether I'm just following up too early and it's the sort of thing that only concretizes the week before, or whether some are dropping the ball. Realize it's a massive luxury to have this "problem", so sorry to complain. But tbh I'm a veteran solo flyer and nothing has ever stressed me out like the prospect of trying to plan the next month and book everything quickly and efficiently and not fuck it up. I'm terrified I'll arrange something wrong and miss one visit, or arrive early and have to stay a night I'm not reimbursed for, or wait too long to book and end up having to pay for an expensive flight outside of the travel budget...idk. Maybe I'm going crazy.

Congrats on your success! Fwiw I don't think we're on different sides: my introduction is 4 pages and the big statement of the argument isn't til page 3 and I don't get to the roadmap of the rest of the paper til page 4, making it also sorta like a chapter. "Introduction" for some can be a paragraph or several paragraphs or the first section comprising several pages.

I never said all adcom members at all programs read every single word of every application! I was responding to the suggestion that an abstract might be good because you can never underestimate how little a professor reads—which suggests that people think they're at risk of rejection because professors are skimming. Also, no one person on the adcom has hundreds of files—they are broken up into packets/sessions and divvied among readers, usually by subfield. Obviously I can't speak to how it works at every institution, but I know people who have been on adcomms at places like UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, NYU, Princeton, Brown, and Oxford (MSt and DPhil). There are one or more initial culls based on any variety of factors (and I'm sure in a lot of cases it doesn't take reading every last word of the sample to know the person isn't a good fit for the program), but, like I said in my previous reply, by the time you get to the first and second rounds, yes, please take it as a given that your application is being read carefully and in full by several people. I won't engage in further on this one because really that's my entire take, but I just do not see the point of an abstract for writing samples. If it's an essential component of compiling a polished file for you personally or a helpful structuring element of your style as a scholar and thinker, I'm sure it won't harm your application. But imo, if your introduction doesn't accomplish what an abstract would, something's wrong with your sample.

Just to be clear, schools you apply to will definitely read your writing sample in its entirety—and if you get to the second and third rounds where candidates are narrowed down to 60/~20-30 applicants respectively, many people will read it! I really don't think anyone should be approaching or strategizing for the WS on the assumption or hunch that it won't be read. I'm sorry, that just sounds like a bad faith argument to me.

Totally agree with #2. A million times yes to #2. But #1? I may have missed this discussion earlier in the thread but I don't think an abstract is necessary and I haven't yet encountered a WS that had one (with the exception of brief single sentence at the top indicating a sample was an excerpt from a longer paper, for one friend that had no time to revise anything or rewrite a different conclusion). Maybe that's just a fluke, but I was a bit of a hoarding magpie when it came to asking friends who went through past cycles to see their SOPs/writing samples. I say this only because an abstract at the top of papers (different than a conference abstract) can be a tricky form to get right (has to be brief, concise, eloquent, sum up piece without repeating and in such a way that doesn't steal any of the thunder of your thesis/arg in the introduction). Most people won't have much experience with it even if they've done conferences, unless they have publications and had to write one for a journal article—I for one have never done it and can bet if I would've tacked one on to my WS, on gradcafe advice, it probably would've been redundant and awkward and a waste of precious page-space. Not saying it's wrong—it's certainly an option and for some a good one; I can see why for the kind of paper you're describing it might benefit—just chipping in two cents for someone who might read this in future wondering whether they should.

Okay so there's an applicants thread and an acceptances thread. Where's the thread where someone tells me what to do.

Congratulations! See you at visit days!!

Oh, also -- my email from the DGS says the formal offer from the Graduate School on the portal will be coming "early this week".

I would not fret yet—it was a personal email from the DGS and he said it was meant to be by phone. I mentioned a couple weeks ago on this thread but my phone broke and I can't afford a replacement for another week so I emailed department coordinators at the programs I knew notified by phone just to let them know to use email only for me. I also emailed the Princeton grad coordinator on Friday to ask when notifications would go out (this was before I saw someone on the board had emailed her, but needed an idea because I'm coordinating an international trip for visits and was being pressured by a couple programs to RSVP to dates ASAP and book flights). So, it may be that for those two reasons (phone and being international) I heard earlier than others.

I pledge allegiance To the Susans* Of the Princeton University English department And to the novel For which it stands ... *Wolfson and Stewart obvs --- Okay I'll stop now. My heart is being pulled in 10,000 directions and beating very fast because I wasn't expecting anything over the weekend but ... I just ... got in ... to Princeton. I know it's obnoxious but I'm posting 1. For posterity, so people know this can happen 2. Because my entire family asked me repeatedly over Christmas "What will you do if you get rejected from everywhere?" and I was so terrified because I'd worked so hard night and day on apps I didn't have an answer. And while I was feverishly working on them an awful ex-boyfriend asked to "swing by and wish me luck" a few days before the deadline and walked into my living room to say "You know you're really not smart, right? You try to make it seem like you are but you just never ... produce much of anything" About that, luv. About that. I felt like a loser for two years after a particularly shitty time during my masters, and I've struggled with having zero self confidence even longer than that. I have had embarrassing failures that made a huge dent in my ability to move forward. This? It can happen. Admissions is a wildly unfair process and I think more than anything I've just been incredibly incredibly lucky, but I lurked on these boards on and off for years thinking, "I'm too stupid, I'm a loser, this will never happen for me." For anyone who remotely fits that description reading this now or in future just please know that it can.

Just because there's a lot of questions about Columbia: the email from the DGS wasn't sub-field specific and looked like it was sent to all accepted applicants so I'm pretty sure all acceptances have gone out Basically it's at the individual discretion of subfields year to year to decide whether to interview in order to rank finalist candidates for each subfield. According to one of my interviewers, 20th/21st century interviewed this year (even though they normally don't) apparently because there was an unusually strong pool of candidates and fierce competition, if that's any consolation. All finalists (whether interviewed or not, all subfields) then become part of the final admissions committee meeting (which was yesterday) and a representative from each subfield will argue for the # of spots they want and their picks. The number of candidates admitted from each subfield and the candidates themselves are decided, fellowships are approved by GSAS, and finally the DGS email goes out (which in my case was followed this morning by emails from my POIs). So sorry to be the bearer of bad news but hopefully that clarifies why some interviewees haven't heard anything, while people who didn't interview were accepted. It's subfield specific but I don't think they're admitting in waves. (Not sure about waitlist—that may well still have yet to go out.) EDIT: Wow, take a shot for every time I say "subfield"—my bad, typing on a crowded London train running on no sleep

I AM ALSO CURIOUS ABOUT THIS My initial thought would be that it'd be a bit like the scene in Fleabag where the therapist says, "You already know what you're going to do; everybody does"—that I'd just sort of ... know, instinctively? But no, not at all.

this video is me ... the water = the abyss of indecision