caffeinated applicant

I'm not an expert by any stretch--I have no more insider information than you do--but since this thread hasn't received any responses, I'll throw in my two cents. I feel like on the letter of recommendation front, your best bet is going to be looking for contact with professors outside of classes--which would already be the case if you were in an American MA. So, office hours, chats over coffee, that kind of thing, whatever is within the norms of your academic setting. I think it's perfectly alright to be direct in these conversations about the fact that you see this MA as a stepping stone to the PhD, and it's possible that your professors might take additional note of you just because they know that you're looking to go into academia. On the bit about perceptions of a German MA, I think it's also probably a good idea to spell out in your SOPs for PhD apps the reasons why you chose a German MA: immersion in another language (even as your academic work is in English), a chance to live abroad for relatively low financial cost, and two years in what sounds like a fairly interdisciplinary program (shot in the dark based on the program being named North American studies instead of North American literature or Anglophone literature) to refine your research interests. It sounds like you might be worried about the comparison between a German MA and an American MA ("why did OP do this less-rigorous program?"), but I think that if you frame the MA with these reasons why the opportunity was unique, that won't be a huge issue. Finally, I am sorry that this program isn't what you thought it would be! That really sucks, no getting around it.

Congratulations!!

Congratulations!!! Especially exciting that both you AND your partner have interview potential/requests from the same schools so far!

? I didn't even apply to Yale and that seems alarming... Reading down this thread, the same seems to be true at Chicago: and Columbia... (Sidenote: this Tweet embedding thing? Very neat!)

Congratulations!! Very exciting to see the good news start to flow!

Gotcha! Well, fingers crossed that you and your partner gets requests!! FWIW, I also did not receive the Doodle poll. I kind of recall seeing a post that last year Chicago sent requests to some subfields and not others--I think it was medievalists had a round of interviews and not other applicants? Combined with the US/international aspect, I'm trying not to read too much into it for my own chances... but it's pretty tough, haha.

Oh man, gonna need more info with a teaser like that!! Do you mean to say that you just got an interview request, then? What subfield?

Poking in here to say hello--I'm mainly applying to English lit PhDs, but I did apply to Duke's GPL rather than their English program. It looks from past years' gradcafe results that Duke flies folks out at the end of February, but I'm not sure based on the results and Duke's FAQ whether this is for a second round of interviews or if it's an accepted students visit. (Or, frankly, if "invited for a campus visit" means that they pay for travel and accommodation or not.) Does anyone happen to have more info about this from past cycles? I'm sure all would be revealed to me if my application makes the cut for the interview process, but naturally, this waiting game just makes me want to find any additional info that I can about what could be ahead.

Oof, this is so relatable--I'm applying post-graduation, but I feel like if I were applying my senior year, I'd be struggling to work on my thesis and then thinking, "If I'm struggling to summon the focus to work on this, am I even cut out for grad school at all?" Which is nonsense, of course, since those two things aren't related! I can tell that this would be my thought process because I've already thought to myself, "If I can't stand to read The Limits of Critique after I get home from work while I anxiously wait to hear back from UVA, am I even cut out for grad school? If I don't find that as fun and soothing as binging the next season of The West Wing while I'm waiting on pins and needles in a constant state of anxiety, maybe I don't belong..." Not sure if that's part of your anxiety or not, but if it is, I hope it's helpful to know that other people are in the same boat and to be reminded that this line of thinking isn't true. We're all going to be in the waiting boat for a bit longer. I made a countdown in my agenda until the end of January--when I expect to hear back from the first program or two--and it was surprisingly helpful, like telling myself, "This is when you'll know. Until then, you can't worry about anything, because you'll know then." (Of course, if UT-Austin decides that February 18th is actually a great day to release decisions, I'm screwed.) Not sure if that would work for you to displace some of your worrying to the future, but it might be something to try.

Another agreement that it likely won't change anything if your classes are different, assuming there isn't some drastic change, like you drop (or fail) five literature classes and no longer finish your major (or degree). At a lot of schools, students' class registration commonly isn't set until the end of add/drop, and like @CaliAcademic indicated, I'm sure they're not making decisions based on your senior spring, which is at best just a set of four or five classes without grades. If you're really quite concerned, you could perhaps send your finalized enrollment to the graduate admin/coordinator at each program, just so that they have a record that they were notified of it. (This is probably way overkill, but I can't imagine it would be a black mark on your application if it turned out to be unnecessary.)

Not sure if it's a survival strategy or an avoidance strategy, but I've been studiously avoiding all of the "useful for grad school" books that I checked out from the library and articles I printed out in Oct/Nov, and speeding through The West Wing on Netflix instead. I figure at this point, reading academic texts or research-interest-related fiction will just keep my mind on the emails that I don't expect to get for at least two or three more weeks. It feels bizarre and uncomfortable not to be working on something right now (you know, outside of my actual full-time job!), but if this is my last real break from the academic hustle for the next five years, maybe it's a good thing to slow down in a big way, at least until I hear back and have some direction for what's happening next. Fingers crossed that the semester starting will take your mind off things! Certainly you'll have a bunch of other things to think about (especially if you're writing a yearlong thesis project--I feel like spring senior year for me was a complete blur of thesis with everything else just scattered in).

Baby's first shellack--University of Chicago emailed me with the subject line, "Your application has been received." I applied early December, so part of me thought maybe this meant news?(!!!) Not sure how I thought they'd be ready on January 7th--more likely someone just moseyed into my file and manually marked it "complete." At any rate, they're reporting all decisions made by middle of February. Only another five weeks to go!

Tossing in another vote to start looking at programs early. Researching programs really helped me refine my priorities, and because I had started fairly early (I think I made my program spreadsheet in February of this year?), I had a lot of time to slowly build a detailed spreadsheet of programs that I could reference throughout the process. Also, beginning my program research early gave me more time to dive into professors' current research and explore subfields--though I ended up doing 90% of that reading in October and November anyway. Relatedly, I agree completely with @Cryss about the pros and cons to starting work on your materials months in advance: it's great to have time to set aside the statement and come back to it later, but I quickly got to the point where I couldn't stand to look at my work sample any longer. The right balance for me was to choose what I was going to submit for work samples and write a first-draft statement fairly early, but then not spend terribly much time on either until late summer/early fall. (Bearing in mind that I spent all of the spring studying for the GRE, and I graduated college in 2018, so spring, summer, and fall all had the same amount of free time for me.) I emailed profs to ask for letters in late spring or early summer and sent them the first draft of my statement of purpose over the summer. I also included a couple of work samples and a CV in case any of the profs needed to refresh their memory on what I did in their classes.

Hey-o, first time poster, medium-time lurker (lurked throughout the application cycle, but never posted). This is one of those questions that doesn't strike me as super important to the program-research process, and definitely isn't relevant until I hear answers from programs, but I'm curious: what resources do folks' programs give for lit grad students' workspaces? I'm currently working as an admin at a university in a non-literature department, and the grad students in this department are each issued a desk in a shared office of about six people. I also recall from my alma mater that grad students there only received workspaces during semesters when they taught, but for those semesters, they each got a private office. A friend at another university knows literature students who're only issued a desk in a shared space during teaching semesters. Clearly, there's a lot of variation out there! So, current students: Do you have a desk? Shared or private office? Designated corral in the library? Only when teaching or all the time? And if you don't have a university-issued space or choose not to work there, where do you usually get stuff done?