meghan_sparkle

Thank you! Honestly, I was not 100% about the fit at either Berkeley or Chicago and expected to be rejected from both so this is an insane surprise.

I was just about to go to bed and I got into UC Berkeley ? EDIT: Just noticed the line: "The Berkeley English Department has nominated you for a prestigious university fellowship; as soon as we know the outcome of that nomination, I will be back in touch to clarify the offer." WHAT??! WHAT!

Jeez. So sorry. Good riddance!

Congrats to the two Stanford admits I just saw go up on the board! Berkeley ... your move

Does anyone know whether visit dates tend to be roughly the same year to year, or are they liable to change?

When I got the acceptance from Chicago—which was a letter from Deborah Nelson saying something like "You'll hear shortly from a member of the faculty via email or phone..."—not even 10 minutes later another email came through and I thought, Oh, that was fast! But it wasn't from a Chicago prof—it was an invite to a Columbia interview. (They don't usually interview for my field, 20th c). When I say I sat down on the stairs of my apartment in the dark and was nonverbal for an hour . . whew. Was roused out of it only by a call from my best friend/mentor (at whom I've moaned and despaired constantly about how I'm sure I'll get shut out) which he began by yelling, I quote, "HAHAAAAAA HOW'S THAT NEGATIVE SELF-IMAGE DOING, HUH? HEADLINE: REALITY TRUMPS HATE. WOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!" Lol. Okayyy buddy! To be honest I've been a little too dazed to properly feel anything about it, but seeing that something I did make someone I care about so happy—well, that was the first thing that really made me smile.

Would love to hear anything about the climate at Chicago.

In at Chicago. First notification of season. Holy mother of... (For some reason my content is still moderated so this probably won't even be approved by mods for hours but .... !!!!)

Just out of curiosity, are you referring to the string of tweets starting with Yale's DGS about this (which then professors at other programs echoed)? Or have you encountered whispers in your program/elsewhere?

Did the POI seem sure about that decision release date, out of curiosity? It's Wednesday (though only 11 am in Chicago) and I've been refreshing madly all day...

It felt like the first few weeks of January flew by, but now the days are creeping by soooooo slowly. Would sacrifice a nonessential limb just for it to be the end of February already.

For anyone who received a Duke rejection today and is feeling a bit tender, a mentor texted me asking if I'd heard from anywhere yet and I said "No; Duke English rejections went out today and even though I didn't apply I'm still taking it personally lol" and he replied w/"Duke still has an English department?"

Harvard doesn't interview for English.

I agree with a lot of this, though I would just add the caveat that these interviews are usually 25-30 minutes, and it would be impossible to do all or even most of these things in that timespan. It just doesn't allow for it. I think if I had gone into my interview with these four tenets in mind, I might've panicked if I didn't get certain questions, been less open to the conversation's natural flow, interrupted or interjected in order to emphasize how excited I was or how I was a good fit (which no doubt would've come off badly). Bottom line, I don't think a 'bad' interview will rule a candidate out completely, especially one with strong materials—you're being admitted to write and research for 5-6 years; not be a talking head—nor will a good one guarantee acceptance. I think they're looking broadly for two things: 1. Can you participate in the intellectual culture of the department? Can you have a friendly, open-ended, casual discussion of ideas? Are you malleable and pliable or unyielding, when a new idea or question is introduced to you? Notice in that phrasing it's less about exactly what you say, whether you trip up, or whether your answer is right or wrong, and more about the orientation and attitude evident in your answers. If it puts you at ease and helps you stay present in the conversation, by all means, go over your SOP and WS for days and rehearse potential answers. But I don't think it's necessary, and worst case scenario, it can be really easy to tell when someone's answers are rehearsed because often they're less responsive to what's actually being asked. 2. Are you personable? Given many programs have only introduced interviews in recent years, it's hard not to see them becoming the norm in light of not only increasing competitiveness, but also the exponentially increasing difficulty of the job market. At least in Chicago's case, given their focus on placement and research excellence, I have to believe that the interview is something of a 'ground zero' for job market interviews; a very early indicator of how you might fare (and/or how easily you might be trained) in speaking and conversing with other professors about your work and your hopes for it in a high-pressure, high-stakes situation.

I'm not at all convinced by this (actually am starting to wonder whether me thinking it went 'well' is an ominous sign) but so sweet of you to say. Also: really?? At the end of my interview they told me "a few weeks"! (Though I guess the interviewers are not the people making the final decision so maybe they said that to everyone.) Either way... Wednesday is so soon!

How should you take it when an interview goes ... well? I have a lot of previous interview experience, but had one today and was really shocked by how friendly it was.

Oh no, what makes you say that? I'm sure it wasn't bad—it's so hard to get a good read on interview experiences when you're the one sitting in the hotseat.

Anything from Chicago yet, anyone? ?

It's rougher than I expected! If I get one (which I don't think I will) the notification will come very late in the evening for me so I've been anxious about it alllll dayyyyy.

So this is my thinking. It is a little early for the Doodle poll -- in previous years it usually went out next week. Since the only people who've seemed to receive it seemed to be international (based in the UK? or maybe international more broadly), I wonder if, in order to better accommodate more people without logistical mayhem, they broke up the shortlist into US/international and notified the latter first. Because those would otherwise be a bit more difficult to arrange—an international applicant will by definition have a narrower window of availability than one closer to Chicago ... ? This theory shatters if anyone from the US got the invite to the doodle poll but seems pretty plausible to me. Don't despair!

Am a lurker but made an account just to say that my initial impression when filling out the bare bones of the Yale app was not that it being a required field made it mandatory to write a paragraph or essay. I was going to leave diversity statement blank or write N/A. I mean. I'm white cis and female; the only case I could make for myself diversity-wise is being bisexual and mentally ill, but I don't really want to include that on my application (lol) and ... isn't everyone, when it comes to English lit students? I dunno. I just would feel like a total asshole trying to shoehorn things to make it look like I am less privileged than I am. Also, wouldn't it have indicated on the Yale English department website whether that essay was a required element? But I also don't want to skip it if it is genuinely mandatory. Hm.