JaneLWH

I can totally attest to that, too: earlier this week I got accepted to Columbia (my dream program) and rejected by Fordham. 😅Anything is possible

Best of luck everyone! This cycle isn't technically over for me yet, but since yesterday's Columbia acceptance (my dream school for ages now!), I think I have made my decision!!!

Hi guys, fwiw, I just wanna say that after receiving an offer from Columbia last night, I'm gonna remove myself from the waitlists at UCLA, Michigan, and NYU. I will also be declining offers by Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts. I hope some of this movement ends up helping other people!!!

Waitlisted at UCLA, I really hope someone rejects their offer as my other alternatives are Northwestern and (potentially) NYU (I haven't had my interview there yet though)

To those who saw their rejection update on their UCLA portal; my portal hasn't updated or I'm blind lol. Would it mean a possible waitlist or am I missing something?

Is the Columbia interview invite true or fake? Turns out the Berkeley posts for English aren't genuine based on inside info

I also got an interview invite from NYU; it seems that this is an extra step for shortlisted applicants. I'm surprised at how many programs are doing interviews this year - it seems to be a new thing

Hi! Waitlisted at Rutgers. I do have an offer from Oxford for an one-year MA though, so I may be accepting this instead.

Out of all the programs to which I applied this cycle only Duke English allowed applicants to send it. In their webpage, they said it's optional this year but that, "if you think your scores would strengthen your application, then please feel free to send them." I didn't send mine anyway - my math score was a bit embarrassing -, and I found their policy this year incredibly unfair and ethically questionable. It would be much better if they either required the test of everyone this year or not at all. Encouraging certain people to send their scores whilst knowing others will be unable to due to covid, lockdowns, general disruption, puts the latter category at a disadvantage.

I really hope they do not reinstate the GRE! It's a classist barrier and a waste of a ton of money. Not to mention that studying for it is boring and utterly unstimulating.

So happy for you! Congratulations!

I don't think being "odd" is necessarily a disadvantage. I've been apprehensive, too, chiefly because I'm still an undergraduate and therefore haven't had time to develop my research interests extensively. I have thus far been rejected by two programs, but have received an invitation to an interview by another in spite of what I fear some would describe as the "vagueness" of my interests. At any rate, I wish you good luck with your applications! I'm actually wondering how many people applied to UNC this year. I don't know if it's true, but their website says they typically receive between 300 and 400 applications yearly!

My area of interest is British Romanticism (and, within the field, I'm interested in the intersections between poetry and aesthetic theory as well as poetry and philosophy, in addition to certain deconstructive approaches). UNC was a bit of a stretch for me fit-wise. I decided to apply though because of one particular professor though and current graduate students studying there who specialize in Romanticism. What's your period?

I applied to UNC Chapel Hill as well. I haven't heard back, nor do I know when results are supposed to starting being announced.

If anyone knows anything about Duke...I'm wondering if all acceptances have been sent already, given that only three people have posted and only one appears to have been waitlisted. Though I've braced myself to expect a rejection letter from them any day now, I'm still hoping!

I haven't received anything either. I'm pretty sure it's an implied rejection (?)

Just received a recruitment invitation from Notre Dame! So stressed about the "interviews" the email mentions.

Yes, you essentially submit three applications whilst paying for only one. But I frankly don't think all three are fully-funded, and probably that's the reason I got accepted to one of them so quickly. Let's hope we'll both hear back from West Lafayette soon!

I applied to Purdue as well. Purdue allows you to apply to three programs simultaneously, so I applied to the MA English programs across three campuses (West Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Northwest), and got accepted to Fort Wayne's program about a week ago. I have no idea what this means though, or if all three programs are fully-funded or merely the West Lafayette one. At any rate, the West Lafayette program is the only one people seem to talk about, and it's therefore the one I'm looking forward to hearing back from the most. Good luck with your applications!

I applied to an Oxford MA program as well (1700-1830). After substantial editing, my WS ended up being 4089 words, excluding the bibliography and the footnotes. Their website clarifies that footnotes and the "Works Cited" page are not counted as part of the word limit. Have you included them in your counting already? If not, I believe that the word number will be significantly lower. My essay is 4680 words with the bibliography and the footnotes, pretty close to yours. It depends, of course, on how long your footnotes and works cited page are; my bibliographic entry page is 3 pages long, while the footnotes are frequent. I emailed the program director as well a few weeks ago, and they suggested that the word number should be as close to the limit as possible, though it doesn't matter if it exceeds it by a bit. Hope that helps!

Alyycat, I considered applying to Ohio State's program as well, though I ended up not doing so. They have a fairly extensive team of scholars in my area of interest (Romanticism) but I am skeptical as to whether they are a good enough "fit" for my approach. I am currently an undergrad as well, and, based on what I've gathered from Ohio State's website, they do appear amenable to applicants who are not MA recipients. They however emphasize that they expect you to be abreast of and engage with contemporary scholarship on your field. If your writing sample and personal statement demonstrate that, I think you should be fine. Good luck!

Done with all but two of my Ph.D. applications. Now I have to concentrate on the MA ones.

sarahchristie: Thanks! I'll PM you.

Glasperlenspieler: My German is not highly advanced. The thing is, my topic is not comparative, strictly speaking. I am just employing two German theorists to discuss a British writer. In fact, at first I was interested in Shelley's ideas about language and how these manifest themselves in his poetry, but while doing research I realized a lot has already been written about this. I then discovered there have been critics who have invoked German Romantics to discuss British Romanticism, so I thought of doing the same. The focus is strictly Shelley, not a discussion of parallel ideas. Still, I am somewhat worried about the topic. I am seriously considering postponing my applications till next year, or maybe just applying to MA programs this year. Besides, four universities I was interested in will not be accepting applications this year. I am thinking that if I can get into a good MA program I will have the chance to better flesh out my topic and be readier to apply for a PhD. I don't know...

Hi everyone - I am new to gradcafe. I am considering applying this fall straight out of undergrad (I am currently a senior), but I've had a lot of misgivings about the whole procedure, so I thought I should try reaching out to other people going through roughly the same thing. I come from a fairly highly ranked albeit not widely known liberal arts college in NY and I have a GPA of around 3.9. I am taking an Independent Study course this semester to work on my honors thesis on Shelley, part of which I intend to send as my WS. The thing is, I literally spent the entire summer researching my topic (I read nearly all of the major critical studies that have been written on Shelley), studying for the GREs (in vain, it mostly seems, since most of the universities to which I intend to apply have suspended the requirement altogether), as well as researching Romanticists that could be potentially interested in working with someone like me. As a result, I only began writing my actual thesis this month, and I have already written 11 pages. I have a fairly good idea of what I want to write, but I've been getting easily distracted because I'm feeling increasingly demoralized. I am a strong writer and researcher, but I am just not sure whether my topic will appeal to most scholars out there. I am not super interested (only in terms of academics) in things like gender, coterie/reading culture, ecocriticism, queer etc., which by and large seem to be the norm nowadays in Romanticism studies. My thesis adopts a fairly traditional (I think?) approach of contextualizing Shelley within a wider intellectual milieu of European Romanticism, setting up a theoretical framework which discusses how Shelley's aesthetics converges with that of two other German Romantic thinkers, and then applying that framework to two/three (not sure yet) of his poems through close reading. I believe that this is (hopefully) a legitimate topic, but I am not sure how "popular" it would be nowadays among Romanticists. I have found a few Romanticists who are interested in philosophy and intersections between British and German Romanticism, but they seem to be an exception. I tried reaching out to two of them: one responded positively by saying that he would be happy to work with me were I to be admitted; the other one was extremely polite as well but said he is not as interested in Romanticism as he was in the past. This was a bit of a bummer, since I will be heavily relying on his work in my thesis, and his overall approach is very close to mine. I have also emailed two other professors who have written on Romanticism but whose interests do not match mine all that much - they haven't answered though (it's been almost a week now). I think I should hereafter refrain from emailing professors lest I annoy anyone or give the wrong impression (e.g. flattering them). I guess this is a pretty long outline, but I would really appreciate it if someone else applying this year who is interested in Romanticism (or 19th cent. British lit, for that matter) shared their experience. Do you think my thesis, based on the above brief description, would be intriguing to academics nowadays? How important is it for applicants to closely "fit" professors' interests working in the same field as them? As I said, I've been having a lot of misgivings, and that is the reason I'm also applying to MAs (mostly in the UK). Thanks in advance.