lotf629

My two cents: don't do anything that's openly deceptive, but whenever possible, leave the information off. More realistically, if you are asked to list four or five other schools and you are actually applying to nine or ten, make it a point to choose four or five peer institutions, rather than your four or five top choices. If Rutgers asks you, better to list UVA than Yale, even if Yale's your dream school. Etc.

Oh P.S. The previous poster is also right that you need to define your interests within medieval lit very carefully and match them very closely to faculty.

The previous poster is right about the language work. On the one hand, I think there are relatively fewer medievalists than, say, 20th century Americanists out there. On the other hand, the previous poster is right that you are going to be facing long odds no matter what your specialty, and one of the reasons that there are fewer medievalists is because medieval as a field requires more technical skills (languages and sometimes manuscript work). It's somewhat more common for medievalists to have MAs already in hand for that reason. This application season, on the meet-and-greet circuit, I encountered two kinds of medievalists. Some were straight-up medieval specialists; these people more or less invariably had good Latin and a strong command of at least one other language (some had three or four), and often had some background in manuscript work. Others did some kind of "medieval-plus," like medieval literature in Victorian England, or medieval literature and WWI poetry, or something. These people often lacked the purely technical background of the pure medievalists (i.e. languages and paleography) but had a much stronger background in a relevant later literature. If you feel your technical background is weakish, but you have a strong interest in a related later period, you might try the hybridizing approach. Lastly, as a safety net, you should probably look into some funded MAs if it's an option for you. Medieval is one area where an MA can really help your application because it allows you to acquire languages and manuscript work, and languages and manuscript work will almost always help you out.

I don't know what to tell you, OP. Today, there are a million people who can do extraordinarily good, traditional close readings and also hold their head above water in today's theoretical environment. You'll be competing with them directly for spots. All of you can do fantastic close readings, I assume, but your New Critical-type competitors are at least conversant with many of the major approaches popular today. Why on earth would you put yourself at this kind of disadvantage? It's as if you are daring the Establishment to reject you. The thing about that is, they will. If your personal statement projects any of the defensiveness and rigidity you are currently showing, even the New Critics on the committee will toss your app into the reject pile on the grounds that you lack the collegiality and flexibility necessary to handle a real-world scholarly environment. Sorry to be harsh: better you hear it from us, since our opinion means nothing, than that you scotch your chances.

Okay, OP, now I'm really confused. Did you read the thread from last year? Did it give you any ideas? If not, how is it different from what you are looking for? Maybe if you can clarify a little we can be more helpful.

Minnesotan, I love you, but I don't want to be you. I feel about rhetcomp like I feel about any other humanities field outside my own: fascinating, valuable, powerful, but ultimately not for me. Why on earth do you think that lit people envy rhetcomp people? All of us made a choice not to go into rhetcomp, after all...

More data to answer this question, through the grapevine. Last year Columbia apparently placed 14 of 14 people on the market, so I was misinformed: I spoke in Feb or Mar to someone who had been away from campus and I guess was speculating. Yale placed 6 of 8 (2 people went jobless). For the rest, I have no stats. Those stats come second-hand from last year's Columbia and Yale recruits: I have not confirmed them officially.

I see more and more impatience with these kinds of methodological dichotomies in our generation, and I find it encouraging. A good friend of mine has a theory that the big methodological contribution of our generation (i.e., those of us just now getting Ph.D.s, going on the job market, or entering Ph.D. programs) will be synthesizing available methodologies and breaking down the vertical silos currently compartmentalizing the field. Hope so.

Melusine I <3 your user name! Some programs will likely not even record your M score, but given how competitive programs are in general, it's worth trying to get it up into the 500s. Try this book: http://www.amazon.com/Math-Review-Stand ... 910&sr=8-1 It will start at the beginning. Do you have dyscalculia? If not, I expect that a big part of your difficulty is just a mental block. Take it slow, work through problems consistently and gradually, and you will make the progress you need to see.

I'm not sure "conservative" is the word you want here; you might also want to draw your distinction a little differently, as most theorists view their discipline as a study of literature (no less than a more old school and less contextualized close reading approach). That said, you might take a look at the following thread from last year: viewtopic.php?f=56&t=16074&p=75768&hilit=formalism#p75768

I really really don't think you should go back to school...really really really. You may have to declare bankruptcy, but you will have to be smart about it. Student loans aren't usually included in bankruptcy filings: you have to prove that a) your payments threaten your ability to make payments for basic cost-of-living type expenses and you have made a good faith effort to keep up with your payments. In your case, however, you might be able to meet both criteria. You will want a shrewd lawyer, however. See http://www.studentloanborrowerassistanc ... ankruptcy/ , or do some googling on your own. How much are your monthly payments now? How much will they increase after you go back to school? More debt is not your answer. Please, please think hard about this before you dive back in.

Most people at Columbia and NYU either live in subsidized housing or in Brooklyn, etc.

Nope. For instance, Columbia's placement this year was nothing like what it had been in past years: the economy hurt everybody. Also, even under more normal conditions, students usually expect to get some kind of placement, but it's far from unheard of at those places for students to get no offers at all. Over the last five years or so, I think you'd see an 80-90% job placement rate from those programs, but that's not 80-90% of people getting multiple offers from various schools in various regions: it's 80-90% of people gainfully employed on the other side of the Ph.D. The people picking and choosing are people who've done really well and also chose a dissertation topic that is all the rage at the time they hit the job market. But it's really hard to know what will be trendy in five or six years, and plus, choosing a topic because it seems trendy is a really dry way to do research. In general, no matter where you go to school, the old rule still applies: don't go into literature fields unless you're willing to live anywhere, at least at the beginning. Maybe it's easier for Rhet and Comp people.

You'll be just fine, especially with your grades and pub record. I applied last year. I got an 800 V, a 750 M, and a 770 Lit Subject. When my results came out, I discovered that those scores and $2 would get me a cup of coffee. Put in some time studying but don't worry, and whatever you do, don't emphasize the tests at the expense of the writing, the letters, etc.

Yeah, in my subfield as well, cog sci is hot. Unless you're absolutely sure you don't want to do anything science-related in your lit research, I'd consider wrapping up the double major.