BwO
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Posts posted by BwO
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@TheorySchmeory Congrats! Well, unless you have another offer to respond to immediately or if you’re doubting the prospect of attending Columbia, I don’t think there’s any harm in staying on the waitlist, especially if it’s a short one. Perhaps you could ask for details about your waitlist position or the timeline for decisions in your response to the waitlist email, if you really want to manage your expectations?
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1 minute ago, onerepublic96 said:
Everyone ready for the moment of truth due to come sometime this week?
I'm keeping a bottle of wine at hand, because I'll need it -- whatever the outcome.
- onerepublic96 and cm1237
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14 hours ago, LilyNags said:
There are a few reasons for this, but one is that it appears to be the case that the pandemic has encouraged students to accept their offers earlier than usual, perhaps because (and I truly suspect because) they come with an offer of guaranteed funding and health insurance.
Do you think this is the case for most programs this year? I've had a rather optimistic email from the school that I'm waitlisted at, but I'm not sure how to interpret it, given that so many programs haven't drawn from their waitlists this year, lest I get my hopes up for nothing.
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@karamazov @kolyagogolova congrats to you both!! haven't had any definitive news on my end (from The Other School in North Carolina), but hopefully i'll get to see you there this fall! (or, well, the next, depending on how the pandemic situation goes.)
- karamazov and kolyagogolova
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Two weeks till April 15. Am this close to tearing my hair out knowing that most schools will notify of our final decisions in the coming days.
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@karamazov @kolyagogolova congratulations on the UNC waitlists! It’s wonderful that the school’s paying for your travels to their visiting weekend, since it only goes to show how much they’d like to have you in their program. Anyway, while I suppose Durham differs slightly from Raleigh, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the general environment/culture in North Carolina after your respective visits, given that I’ll very likely be committing to Duke (sight-unseen) should the opportunity arise. Having never stepped foot in the States, let alone NC, I suppose this will be a rather risky move, so I’m trying to find out as much as I can from others to ensure that I’ll make the right decision (if I'm given the chance to).
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9 hours ago, grace2137 said:
What is everyone else doing to learn about the programs/prepare to potentially make a last-minute decision? These schools didn't invite me to accepted students weekends or anything like that and I'm not sure if I could/(should?) foot the bill to visit on my own. I may ask to be put in touch with current students to ask questions. Any other thoughts?
I’m an international student, so it’ll be really expensive for me to travel to the US for self-arranged visits, although I have certainly considered that. If you can afford to travel, though, I doubt there’s any harm in contacting the DGS to schedule your own visits outside of regular visiting weekends (especially since you’ve potentially, in a best case scenario, four schools to choose from). Otherwise, I think speaking to current students will be your best option. It’ll be a good way for you to form a support network early anyway, so you can better navigate whatever program you might commit yourself to/wherever you might be moving to this fall.
- Cryss and Fading_light
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It seems like there are a couple of us here waiting to hear back about our waitlist situations, and quite a few of us for whom our waitlisted schools are our last chances at getting into a phd program this cycle, so I figured that I'd start this thread for us to share our anxieties as we wait it out. How's everyone keeping their respective programs updated on their application outcomes? Does anyone intend to visit the schools where they're waitlisted?
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22 hours ago, lotsoffeelings said:
Does anyone know what kinds of questions are appropriate to ask when you're on waitlist somewhere (in this case, UW)? I am a novice to this whole process and generally afraid of emailing people in general. I mostly want to know 1) size of waitlist 2) general timeline for the process, but I'm not sure the best way to frame these questions.
Reupping this, since I'm curious to know what the etiquette is for waitlistees to express their continued interest (beyond the initial "yes, I'd like to be on the waitlist" email). I'm also interested in knowing about how to ask/whether it is polite to ask about the size of the admitted cohort, the size of the waitlist, and one's ranking on the waitlist, in order to manage expectations.
- Fading_light and Small potato
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44 minutes ago, meghan_sparkle said:
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?
Ouch, why does this penchant for sadism resonate with me so much?
But anyway, here are my $0.02 worth. Even if "happiness" isn't the main criteria for your decision, it doesn't mean that you should be abjectly miserable either. You don't have to be the happiest you've been in your life during the course of your grad studies, and this will likely be impossible anyway given all the inevitable stress, but you also can't be so downtrodden that you're rendered almost incapable of doing the work you're meant to do in a PhD program (if that makes sense)? I suppose this means choosing a program where you know you'll be supported adequately for the next six years, academically, psychologically, and financially. I don't doubt that the programs to which you've been accepted are offering you rather sizeable funding packages, but there are certainly some places (Brown, Princeton) where you can make your money stretch more than others (Columbia, Berkeley) — would you like to live more comfortably and with some savings? Or is the bare minimum enough? Does the school have a strong grad union? What are the teaching requirements? Also, I trust that all these programs are challenging in their own ways, but several places (UChicago, Berkeley) used to be infamous for being shark tanks. I don't know if their reputations for being exceedingly harsh still hold today, and it'll be definitely better for you to check in with the current students on your visits. But if certain programs are in fact more 'hardball' than others, then ask yourself if you're the sort of student who thrives in such hyper-competitive environments, or if you're better suited to more collaborative pedagogical strategies. Ultimately, you have several great programs to choose from, so pick the one that suits your needs — whatever they may be — best.
Edit: I'm guessing that your mentors would have also vetted your POIs with you, but if they haven't, do ask around about their reputations and supervision styles.
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8 minutes ago, RoughlyHewn said:
Since you were in a similar situation, can I ask what influenced your school application decisions?
As I was discussing with someone else in a PM conversation earlier, given that departments like Stanford’s MTL state quite explicitly that they prefer “projects that could not be carried out in a conventional department,” I didn’t know if my work would be sufficiently far-out to suit such interdisciplinary programs (as it turns out, it probably is). This was partly why I decided to apply to more “conventional” English departments instead. (Other reasons had to do mainly with funding packages for international students.) Granted, there are faculty at each of the schools to which I’ve applied who are working in some capacity on my areas of interest, but they tend to be jointly appointed in comp lit departments and — as I later learned — have less of a presence in english programs/adcomms. Besides, most of my POIs in these programs are at a stage of their career where they can put out more interdisciplinary work — precisely what interests me — and no one will bat an eyelid. But this sort of research tends not to be what’s expected of English PhD dissertations and early-career job applications, which still remain grounded in traditional periodizations/demarcations of approaches. (Oddly enough, academic publishers do prefer books that are more interdisciplinary and can reach a wider audience, so many students end up having to put in extra effort to rework their dissertations into their first books.)
In this sense, I don’t think the “fit” was quite there for most of the programs on my list. Like I mentioned in another thread, if I had to do over this cycle, I’d probably apply to more of the programs that I’ve listed above (or, if possible, just spent more time working on my language skills to apply to comp lit programs), though I really hope I don’t have to undergo this arduous application process again. -
As someone who has been caught in a similar quandary, it seems like interdisciplinary programs may be the way to go here, unless you're willing to modify the scope of your research interests to suit the terms of more conventional English programs, or unless you're able to brush up on your language skills in time for you to apply to comp lit programs (not only will you need to know how to speak, read, and write adequately in your chosen languages, but I believe that a certain familiarity with their associated national literatures would be helpful as well).
3 hours ago, RoughlyHewn said:My McNair advisor suggested I pursue the UCSC History of Consciousness program or another program rooted in Critical Theory.
UCSC's HisCon would be a great example of one of such interdisciplinary programs, but I'd be slightly wary of applying there now, given the considerable lack of funding and the working conditions that have given rise to the recent grad student strikes. (The way that the university's administration has retaliated with threats of mass firing isn't reassuring either.) You could also consider programs like Stanford's MTL, UCSD Lit, Duke Lit, Berkeley Rhetoric, JHU's Comparative Thought and Literature (I've just realized that they require only one foreign language at the time of admission), and Brown's MCM (if you're into cultural and media studies). I hope this helps!
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2 hours ago, Deleuze said:
Hi there, Can I ask what your WS/what the purview of your research is?
I’ve PMed you!
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24 minutes ago, merry night wanderer said:
They have a great deal to do, and making your argument as transparent as possible from the beginning isn't selling out or catering, it's just being practical.
I’ve been told the same, on the (not unjustified) presumption that the adcomm will likely skim your application materials in the early stages of evaluation (no one has the time to read and score — yes, applications are scored numerically — so many 20-page essays on top of all the work that they already have to do). So, I suppose an abstract would likely help to guide a reader through a WS that doesn’t speak to them from the start, or which might be particularly dense, or which might deal with implications that can only be explicated at the end of the essay. (I have to say, though, that my WS didn’t come with an abstract — I’d like to have included one, but couldn’t do so under strict page limit restrictions.)
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1 hour ago, Small potato said:
I think one of my downfalls was not being able to articulate my ideas to people who have no context about me, whereas my profs can connect the dots
This was precisely what I'd experienced, because my research interests, as well as the project that I sketched out in my SOP, are rather interdisciplinary and theory-heavy (i.e. if language requirements weren't a barrier, I would've applied to comp lit programs instead). In that sense, to my professors and the POIs who've kindly reached out to me (they were, unfortunately, not on the adcomms; they also, and not by any coincidence at all, tend to hold joint appointments in comp lit departments), my ideas might've made perfect sense within particular theoretical contexts. But in my broader period/subfield, I'm not really sure how well my research translated. If I had to do over this process, I suppose I might've applied to more interdisciplinary departments with my present project (I thought it wasn't sufficiently "out there" for places like Stanford's MTL, but clearly, the feedback I'd received about it has proven otherwise), and perhaps applied to some of the schools on my current list with a more "traditional" set of application materials. Mais on verra...
1 hour ago, Small potato said:Also I love your handle, ATP is one of my favorite texts!
And ha! Another Deleuzian on here? It seems like there are a couple of us on these forums now!!
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10 hours ago, Small potato said:
I’ve been lurking on here a while and was not going to create an account but here I am lol. Solidarity to everyone else who got shut out; I have so far only been on one waitlist
Seconding all of these sentiments. Admittedly, I've only applied to "reach" programs that I know I'll be more than happy to attend in this cycle, and if my waitlist at Duke Lit comes through, I'll definitely take up my place in a heartbeat. But if it doesn't, then I guess it's back to the drawing board — and maybe also to an MA program at my undergrad institution — for me. It's a bummer, I guess, but I've also managed to learn a lot about my research interests and how well-received they are at particular programs throughout this process, so I guess my application fees weren't completely wasted.
Now, if only waitlist movements will start happening...
Waitlist Purgatory
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
Posted
Best of luck to you!! Here's hoping that you'll hear back with positive news soon.