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btheblueox

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  1. My new mantra: trust your advisor. He knows your academic work the best, and, to boot, likely has oodles and oodles of experience. If he thinks your score works, then I would trust that. And if you're still skeptical, I'd poll the other professors you know well to get more data and go from there.
  2. Some other ideas, in case it turns out that you do want to do both but are not keen on getting two separate degrees from two separate places with two separate application processes: I hear tell that Cornell has an MFA/PhD that may interest you? Alternatively, as Alette suggested, there are creative writing PhD programs (I have a friend in one; she's very much enjoying it, and from what I hear, her work does seem to entail a nice blend of critical and creative work), which may provide the kind of hybrid you're looking for.
  3. This is sorely belated, but I did just want to say thank you, strokeofmidnight -- many of the things you pointed out hadn't occurred to me. For example, the emotional grandstanding/heartstring-tugging/theatricality: I don't at ALL want to do those things (not even the heartstring-tugging: eesh; it'd really bug me if I struck that tone). Same thing with the possible whiff of egocentrism you mention: the reason I emphasized that I was attracted to the bluntness of mentioning the prior rejection is that I feared that not mentioning it could seem egocentric, as though I thought I was flawless or something -- oops. I think I had it backwards. Thanks for mentioning all of those things and spelling it out so clearly: all of the possible tonal implications do make a lot of sense after you pointed them out, though I completely failed to sense them before! In any case, all that aside, I also quite like your use of the "show, don't tell" mantra. Much appreciated.
  4. I was just thinking of the same thing yesterday! As it stands, the first paragraph in my statement of purpose does deal explicitly with the reapplication (e.g. "upon being rejected I realized [etc]"). It's a very brief paragraph. On the one hand, I'm attracted to the "I'm going to be completely blunt with you guys" tone of it, which is true to myself -- I think last year I focused too much on trying to impress and far too little on actually forming a coherent message of who I am as a wannabe academic. On the other, I've heard that such a paragraph can serve the function of shooting oneself in the foot. So, I'm torn: it may well be that I just needed to write the paragraph for my own sake to clear the pipes. So, just chiming in with sympathy and camaraderie, and thanking former reapplicants who have already responded and those who will ...
  5. I'm in a kind of similar position -- I scored just around where you did. FWIW, I'm going to retake, I think; I already applied once (the just-past admissions cycle), largely unsuccessfully, and since I'm giving it another go, I figured I'd try to improve on as many areas of the application as I can. I don't think that my subject GRE score kept me out of the schools that rejected me (there were bigger issues with my application than that), but I don't think it'll hurt to spend a couple months reading as much as I can and taking it from there. Why leave stones unturned, you know? I think the thing that comforts me most, though, is that if I find I am unable to retake the test -- if I study even more and still feel uneasy, for example -- my score is already passable. So the most I'll lose with the route I'm taking is $130 (if I don't feel good about a week before taking the test, I've decided I'll cancel), and even though that's not peanuts for me, I'm going to be spending so much on the reapplying process anyway that I don't mind going for broke. It all depends on how I'm doing anxiety-wise. The last time I took the test, I'd studied exhaustively -- read the Nortons, cooked up the flashcards, driven everyone around me insane muttering about iambs, etc. -- but when I got there, I spent a good portion of the testing time (I'm taking about 30 minutes) sitting there, frozen, unable to pick up a pencil. And it didn't get much better after that: some questions I just answered and moved on, but for others, I spent a lot of time staring and wondering if I actually knew what I knew I knew (oof, what a phrase): there was a poem on the test that I knew inside and out (I'd written about it in my undergrad thesis), and it took me a solid chunk of time to pick the answer that I knew was right (it was a "who wrote this" question). Honestly, I'm amazed I even made it out of there alive, and even more amazed that I made it out with a low-600-range score. So that's my plan: read more, learn more, register for the test, then go from there. Like I said, worst comes to worst, I'll come out the other end having lost $130 and having read a bunch of things. Not too shabby. Maybe some similar approach might work for you? (Ed. for typos.)
  6. Hey MSWDreamer -- sorry if you felt I was condescending to you! (And actually, FWIW, I wasn't a "wreck" upon getting rejected; like you, I was disappointed.) The point of all that, which I tried to make clear but perhaps didn't, was that like you, when I didn't get in, I thought, "Well, I did A, B, C, and D: why didn't that yield good results? What else do I have to do?" And when I read your first post, I identified (particularly with the sentence " I have worked so hard, I just don't understand" and the sentences "I am just trying to see the positive in this. I'm not trying to be dramatic..I know this isn't the worst thing ever and may be a blessing in disguise..I was just wondering if anyone could shed some light on this for me.."). So I thought I'd say that for me, it was a blessing in disguise in that it was an indicator that I needed to adjust my attitude toward the application process, and I offered my experience on the off-chance that it might relate to yours (so I wasn't trying to say "hey, change your attitude!" but rather was going for "hey, I identify with what you're saying, and all this taught me that I had to change my attitude"). As per always, your mileage may vary: my experiences might be totally irrelevant to you, but all I was trying to do was contribute what I found to be the "positive" in all of this. Hope I didn't cause much offense! Best of luck to you, too. P.S.: I just skimmed my last post, and I saw that my last sentences were "So, since you asked about seeing the positives in this situation, I thought I'd suggest that perhaps one positive (which can garner more concrete positives) would be the impetus to adjust your attitude. It sure has been for me." I can see how that sounds like a finger-wagging, and that's my mistake; it wasn't meant as one. That "your attitude" wasn't an accusatory "your attitude!!!" It was a "hey, this may or may not be relevant to you -- it was a huge deal for me." Again, best wishes!
  7. Some friendly advice, from someone who's a mere wannabe and a wannabe in an entirely different field to boot: don't think about this in terms of what you've done and what you deserve as a result. I had a disappointing application season, too. I have a really solid undergraduate profile as well, and I've done some stuff I'm pretty proud of since getting my BA. But I think that one of the biggest mistakes I made during the process was trying to figure out where I stacked up amidst everyone else, which is not only a hopeless line of thinking (there are always people who are going to be more prepared and people who are going to be less prepared: that's a given, and that kind of comparison begets madness, in the form of simultaneous self-deprecation -- "I suck compared to everyone else!" --and self-exaltation -- "no, I'm awesome compared to everyone else!") but also an entirely misguided way to think about applying to grad. programs. My wonderful undergraduate thesis adviser suggested that in the wake of a pile of rejections, I concentrate on the genuine feeling of having a lot to learn. He is entirely right. No matter how prepared any of us are, we have a lot to learn -- that's why we're applying to programs instead of, say, entry-level academic positions. So, instead of thinking about what you had last time and what you felt you deserved from your last application season, maybe think about the things that you still want to learn and accomplish? For me, this keep-your-head-down-and-learn approach -- which is how I approached my entire undergrad life and the two years that I've been out of school since -- has not only helped me become a stronger applicant already, but it's also helped me remember why on earth I want to do this and get a little bit of my mojo back. And it's made me a far less unbearable person, which is awesome: maybe this time I won't drive my partner insane with my constant rantings about "measuring up"! I understand how easy it is to find your mind wandering along the "I worked so hard, I totally deserve this, why didn't I get this?!" train of thought. Like I said above, I never thought like that UNTIL I began the application process, which, as it turns out, brings out the worst in me -- I really didn't see this particular attitude problem coming, and I was surprised when I realized how easily my brain had gotten sucked into it without my even being aware that it was happening. (When my former adviser made that suggestion, my first reaction was, "Well, obviously, I already know I have a lot to learn.") But at some point during the difficult, somewhat soul-crushing process of applying for something with long-shot odds that I very badly want, I lost sight of what was previously second nature to me and I began to look at all of this in the entirely wrong way. And I wasn't able to pull myself back from what was a problematic mindset until I got the rejections and until my adviser nudged me in such a way. So, since you asked about seeing the positives in this situation, I thought I'd suggest that perhaps one positive (which can garner more concrete positives) would be the impetus to adjust your attitude. It sure has been for me.
  8. I'm thinking of taking that Latin class, too! As for work: I'm in publishing, and I do freelance editorial stuff and tutor. Edited to say: hi, guys. I was here last year under a different screen name (felt like time for a change), and I'm reapplying to PhD programs for Fall 2011 after a season in which I spectacularly tanked! Edited again to say: that I typed "chance" instead of "change" above. Freudian slip? Scatterbrained? Both, probably. Oi.
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