lotf629

Also. I really doubt that being 30ish will count against you. I don't know if it would count against you if you were 40+, but I think 30 is on the high end of normal. You'll probably feel older than everybody else in your cohort, but I doubt admissions committees will care.

Greenblatt at Harvard is currently doing a seminar on Shakespeare (plus other Early Modern texts) and pedagogy: those are the two explicit focuses of the course.

I'm wondering whether the department might be able to fund your visit, especially if you haven't already visited. If they're funding visits for all the prospective students, there might be some money for you too, all the more so if there's a formal visiting day. If there's a formal day, I think you could probably ask without any weirdness: say something about how much you'd love to go meet the profs and the rest of the cohort, etc., but you can't afford it, and you wonder if they're flying people out, and if so whether they might be able to reimburse you just so that you have a chance to meet everyone. If you use a light touch, you could probably make inquiries without being obnoxious.

Yes, I've been emailing profuse thanks...I agree that handwritten notes would be a classy addition in many cases (makes note to self). Thanks for the idea.

I'd lean toward UCLA as well. If Comp Lit is as good as English, it's a very strong program. If this damn process has taught me anything, it's that there's a whole hell of a lot of luck involved in getting in to any top-10 program, even for highly qualified people, and I would hesitate to turn down that kind of luck for the sake of an MA anywhere. It's easy to feel confident now that your offers on the other side would be as good or better, but you really don't know that, and next year could be harder rather than easier for applications...If UCLA is a bad fit and Dartmouth is an awesome fit, that's one thing, but if you're just trying to be strategic about a competitive placement, I think you should think hard about accepting the Ph.D.

Thank you notes??? Are we supposed to be writing thank you notes for visits? Damn it. Somebody fill me in please, so that I can be merely tardy... **Also, sorry to hijack the thread...just a quick moment of panic...

Dunno. Notre Dame is the only school I haven't heard from, too, out of all 10 to which I applied. Weird.

FWIW, UVA let me in this year with an MTS (basically an MA in Religion). My guess is that schools have different perceptions of a) MAs in your actual field and MAs in related but different fields. For many subfields, choice is probably a very good option, if you do in fact have an interdisciplinary interest that makes sense as part of your app, and if you can find a program in that interest that will allow you to take elective credits in lit courses.

There's discussion of this elsewhere. I think our loose consensus has been that it's not necessary, though under some circumstances it can be a help. Others have pointed out that it's far more important to focus on tailoring your entire applications to your top choice schools, a process that can be quite time consuming if done well, and I agree. I have come down harder in favor of publishing, or trying to publish, than other people on the forum, though I have been made to see the other side of the issue by other people's posts, and I think that I have overemphasized the importance of a truly preprofessional writing sample. Take back: I don't think that the writing sample needs to be preprofessional. Still, the dead horse I keep beating is that publishing something usually requires you to a) write to a certain standard, take some stock of the state of your field at the present moment, and c) do original research. These are also some of the things that an excellent writing sample should do. So if you are not sure whether your writing sample is "good enough," and you want to make sure that it's as good as it possibly can be, I personally think that a great way to do that is to try to get it ready for a journal. Also, original research is fun, and it's a great way to confirm that you are really excited about working in your field. Let me also say that when I walked in the door of the reception at the most selective program that accepted me, the DGS walked over to me, greeted me, turned to another faculty member, and said immediately (by way of introduction), "Lotf's writing sample was really excellent. Of all the writing samples I've seen, this one was the one that made me say, 'I really expect to see this in print.'" I was certainly left with the impression that my writing sample was a major factor in my having been accepted to the program in spite of my relatively terrible undergraduate GPA. So maybe we can say that publication is unnecessary especially if all the other parts of your record are in order, but that, if you are trying to do something particularly shiny, working toward a journal article is a far more useful extracurricular than, say, trying to ace the GRE Literature (eughhh).

Abluedude, thanks *so much* for that reference; I hadn't heard of it but it sounds great. OP, your situation is really sucky and I sympathize, and I just want to chime in with everybody else who says that it's really unlikely to have much to do with your potential as a future scholar. A couple of quick points (or rather opinions): The "how much do GRE scores matter" question continues to rage and has been examined exhaustively other places, but it seems to me that you should find out as much info as possible about how your program views scores, and then aim to hit their cutoffs and no more. It might be worth some calls to find out how your GRE scores are being perceived, if possible. Also, if you do manage to build up relationships with faculty at the places to which you intend to apply, you might be able to field a casual, tactful question about how GRE scores work w/r/t their program. That's another excellent reason to build faculty relationships: sometimes you can get insider info into those kinds of nuts and bolts. You might also want to keep in mind, though, that even within individual programs, different faculty will place emphases on different parts of your record. Even within a single school, some professors will care far more about GPA than others; likewise, some will care far more about GREs than others. Also, I want to respond respectfully to the point you raise indirectly about class privilege: I think it might be a part of the picture in some cases, but I know plenty of people from dirt-poor backgrounds, sometimes even with significant family responsibilities, who slogged their way through the process and into top schools. It might be fair to say that it sometimes takes them longer, however, and that they may end up having to take on debt or work more than they'd like while in school. Perhaps you are in this situation as well: taking a little more time to find your way but headed to the same place in the end.

Congratulations!!!!!!!! I don't think you have to worry about it being weird. In all my meeting and greeting, I haven't had anybody put me on the spot in that way unless I said something directly about how Program X compared to Program Y or whatever. I think it's a very slightly taboo subject unless you start talking about your own decisions, preferences, etc. If somebody does put you on the spot, as lyonnessrampant suggests, you can just smile and say "It's been a crazy spring, but I'm definitely excited about this program. Tell me more about your research on..." Or you can say, "To be honest, this is definitely the option I'm most excited about." Nobody will drill you for a list of your offers unless, say, you're actively trying to negotiate better funding. Go have fun!

Sarahrayyy, I think the short answer is yes. How sad for us. :|

First of all, I want to say that I think KFed2020's post is excellent. I also want to defer to his or her Princeton admission: I didn't apply there, but I doubt I would have been accepted. As far as publishing, I want to chime in here on both sides of the question. I offer these observations as grounds for discussion, not staunch opinions: I'm quite open to the possibility that I'm wrong. On the one hand, I don't think that publication is completely beside the point, though I totally agree with the points made above that not all journals are equal. I also think it's very well said that committees (especially at competitive schools) will value their own opinions more than those of any lower-tier journal's editors. Still, while an MA student, I was told by a Harvard prof at one point that I should try to publish an article if I could because it was a "feather in my cap" and would help my odds in applying to Ph.D. programs. Moreover, I think that the goal of publishing is a useful way to frame a larger question: that of doing quality research or analysis while an undergrad or MA student. In a different post, I said something about the ideal writing sample being "published or publishable." The point I was trying to make is not that publication itself is a be-all, end-all (hence "publishable"), but that the standards of publication are useful in helping students determine what counts as a real contribution toward the field (or substantial progress in that direction), and that top programs often expect students to evince some signs of being able to make such a contribution. To go out on a limb, I'll say that I think the standards of publication may be even more useful to students attending an undergrad program outside the top 10 or 20 schools. To play devil's advocate, I also want to ask jasper.milvain, respectfully, "Time used better elsewhere? How?" Maybe my own prejudices are coming into play at this point. Still, I think that of all the things I did to prepare for the Ph.D. application process, the one thing that had the most intrinsic merit was the work I did toward preparing a few scraps of new knowledge for public consumption. Working toward publication was far more valuable than all the damn time I spent on GREs. It was also more valuable than the time I spent maintaining my grades in irrelevant coursework (writing dumb response papers for introductory courses that I had to take in order to graduate, and that I needed A/A-s in in order to keep up my GPA). It was even more valuable than all the seminar papers I wrote that I really cared about and worked hard on, since those papers benefited only me. The only thing I did that had any value outside my own application or narrow academic trajectory was the work I did toward publication. Then again, if you mean time used for things like, oh, having a life , I have to concede the point. On the other hand, I agree that fit is far, far more important than publication, and that researching and proving fit is a much better use of one's time than jumping through all the hoops required to get a paper into a lower-tier journal. I also want to repeat that KFed2020 sure as hell knows what he or she is talking about, based on his "Accepted" list .

The vade mecum website is great for the Subject test. The two other things I did that helped me a lot were a) to get a recording of 100 famous poems and listen to it constantly while doing errands, etc., and to make flash cards using Bartlett's Quotations. I got a list of canonical authors, looked them up in Bartlett's, put their famous quotes on flash cards, and drilled myself to id them. Those two approaches, plus the website above, worked very well and were quite efficient (I got a 770, 40 pts above the 99th percentile). Let me also say, however, that it was really dumb of me in retrospect to put as much time as I did into studying for that test; I don't think my score had any effect at all on where I got in and where I didn't. Somehow it was really easy for me to get consumed by the standardized test prep because it seemed like the one part of the app that I could control most directly. I'd say that you should figure out if you can what the cutoffs or averages are at your programs and then, once you hit that threshold, turn your attention to other things.

I gotta agree with draff. I think that other types of teaching offer the inveterate reader a little bit more freedom than does a professorship. For the past five years between undergrad and PhD, I've been working as a tutor for AP Lit, SAT, and classroom English subjects (an equal mix of actual teaching and college prep circus tricks). I've had a ton of time to read very widely, and the money's been excellent (relatively speaking; I mean, relative to other humanities-type endeavors like graduate studentry). A lot of other people at the program are poets, artists, or other people with passions that don't tend to support themselves. There are kinds of teaching like this, that don't require a Ph.D. and do allow for breadth of reading. There are also careers in publishing, which have their own ups and downs but allow for a life spent reading in a different way. As other posters have pointed out, however, the Ph.D. is fundamentally an advanced degree in a research discipline. Many of the most active and sophisticated readers I know are not academics but people who have chosen a lifestyle that accommodates reading. I have an old friend who is a poet (his third book is soon to come out). He has a nine-to-five job that's very uninspiring (glorified filing, if I remember correctly). But he chooses work like this because it allows him imaginative freedom and leaves his evenings free. As a result, he's able to do the reading and writing necessary to serve his real vocation, which is writing poems. I think it's safe to say that if he had gone on to English lit grad coursework (which he no doubt would have been qualified for), he might not have had the time or freedom necessary to do his own essentially, maybe quintessentially, self-directed reading. I do think it's worth remembering, again as others have said, that nobody treats your SOP as a contract. People change their minds; it's expected. I think perhaps what's more important is that you demonstrate that you're capable of identifying a research focus and following through on it to at least a certain extent, and that you're committed to English literature as a research field and not as an avocation or a way of life.

I think that sounds like a great choice. You know what's right for you and you weighed your options ahead of time, or so it seems. I hope you get the acceptance you expect.

Among the schools I've been accepted to, I've seen a tremendous range in the enthusiasm of faculty for my application. Some schools have tried to recruit me very actively. Other schools have let me in but treated me with indifference (in one case to the extent of not returning my email: !). I would have expected that the least selective schools (the schools for which I was the strongest applicant, relatively speaking) would have been the most active, while the most selective schools would have been the most blase, but that hasn't been my experience either. In particular, I'm on the verge of writing off a somewhat less selective school that I would otherwise be interested enough to visit simply because I feel ignored :6 (see email not returned, above). Conversely, of my two strongest programs (on paper), one has pursued me pretty actively (i.e. very interesting faculty have been in touch and clearly took a couple minutes to thumb through my file before writing the email), while the other has not been in touch at all. On the other hand, I've been much more proactive in getting in touch with people in the former program for one reason and another, so they might be responding to my perceived interest level. As this crazy season wears on, I find that I'm really swayed by the level of attention I'm receiving, and I'm wondering to what extent this is a good idea. Of course it's human nature to be flattered, which I obviously am. But some people are doubtless just better recruiters than others; that doesn't mean their programs are stronger (or does it)? How much stock should I put in the level of interest shown by these programs? Ideas?

One more, more thing! Just to second Comfect on close reading (of one's own ideas, and also, I'll add, of primary sources). I had a professor (Comfect, I'm going to guess it may have been the same one who made the brutal comment you mentioned in your other thread: initials HV?) who gave me a really hard time about relying too much on secondary sources and insisted that I spend more time obsessively reading primary sources. I thought I was spending plenty of time with the primary sources, but it turned out that she literally wanted me to reread them until I was getting pieces of them caught in my head like pop songs when I was on the treadmill. Doing so also turned out, surprisingly, not to be a waste of time: I noticed things on the 100th reading that I hadn't on the 10th. So maybe that counts as research. Sorry for all the postscripts: I just caught Comfect's point and wanted to second it.

One more thing. I don't do this, but I bet it would be really helpful, and I keep meaning to start. I've heard that it's a good idea to spend two hours a week reading the major journals in one's field. I expect that doing so (or, even better, having done so for a good 12-24 months) would give you a good sense of research methods, major sources, etc., and would really help you get the ball rolling on a project.

What a great thread. Basically, I do what everybody else does, it seems. I've formulated it in my head this way: 1) database searches (JSTOR, Google, library catalogs); 2) bibliographies and other people's citations (paying special attention to frequently-cited works and making sure to look at the bibliography for any standard work in the field); 3) the network (profs, other grad students, etc.). I try to make sure to use all three methods on any given project because usually each one turns up something that didn't crop up in results from the other two. Other things that pop into my head: 1) I've usually produced the best results by resigning myself to the chores of microfilm, microfiche, manuscripts, and other schools' libraries. Obviously there's not always time, but when there is, it's rarely a waste. 2) I've been surprised by how often I've emailed a professor I don't know at all and gotten an immediate, positive, and helpful response. Usually, if I have a question for the author of an article, I figure out where they're teaching and get their email from their website. Recently, for instance, I emailed someone on another continent a query saying basically "Hi, I'm Person X at Y School doing work on Z, and I found your incredibly useful article A. In particular, I was struck by footnote B, because it's exactly like what I'm working on but I don't know of anyone else making these types of connections. Are you familiar with other work in this area?" Within twelve hours the person had written me back something that opened up an entirely new and extremely exciting avenue of research. Sometimes even total strangers (and senior people) are very helpful, as long as it's clear from your query that you've read their work thoroughly and have a serious question. In other words, don't assume that your network is limited to people whom you actually know personally. 3) IMO at least half the battle comes down to your choice of topic. I've had good luck going in to office hours and saying, "I'm interested in doing something at the intersection of X and Y; can you help me narrow my interests down to a specific research question?" That is, as long as it's early enough in the game that you don't look delinquent by doing so.

The one grad program of which I have recent and direct experience is Harvard's, because I've been cross-registering for their English seminars and bumming around for the last two years. (FYI, I was rejected for the Ph.D., so don't accuse me of name-dropping! ) I have entirely positive things to say about the faculty: I probably would have stayed if I could in spite of my better judgment re: fit. Cautions: *The bureaucracy of the university is a nightmare: I finally resigned myself to treating my registration paperwork, etc., as an extra seminar/course, creating a pocket for it in my accordion file and assigning approximately the same amount of time per week to bureaucratic snafus that I did to my less demanding classes. (My situation was particularly complex, but still: watch out.) *Context is in; situating literature with respect to large bodies of fact (whether autobiographical, historical, or cultural) is in. Conversely, at least in some subfields, it would be hard to put together a dissertation committee of people who cared a lot about purely theoretical work. In this respect maybe it's the opposite of Tufts. *Yes, there is a generals exam, and yes, you will be held responsible for something approximating the entire canon, and yes, at least as of now, to the best of my knowledge, everybody in every subfield is responsible for the same very large list of works. If you are not committed to the literary tradition in an essentially broad or integral sense, you may find the process especially onerous. Hidden positives: *In addition to its other obvious strengths, it's a wonderful, wonderful place to be if you love poetry of any era. What's more, the city of Cambridge is a great place for poets and poetry. *The canon thing...the program is constructed in such a way that you really will be acquainted with the tradition of English literature in the fullest possible sense by the time you leave.

When I have fears that all my hopes will sink, Ere half my days, in this proud world and dull, I sigh, and cast aside my pen, and mull About my odds, and turn at last to drink; Then, flushed with Maker's, I sit ill at ease, And, half-accustomed to my weary fate, I watch the night wax lonely, black, and late, And half-rehearse again my silent pleas

Hi OP, I'll offer my perspective, at least, and maybe other people can chime in or correct me. FWIW, I was accepted at one-and-a-half Ivies: I got in to one English program and was bumped to an interdisciplinary program at a second school (I don't know for sure that the interdisciplinary program is not as selective as the English program, but I'd guess so; still, hurray for fully funded offers at exciting places). I was rejected at Harvard and at Yale; I didn't apply to the others. There are certainly people who frequent (or lurk) on these boards that were much more successful than I've been at this process, so I'm not trying to put myself forward as the expert candidate (or, God help me, the "perfect candidate"). I think that as far as the "perfect candidate," well, it's kind of like that line from Good Will Hunting, if you will forgive me: "You're not perfect, sport, and let me save you the suspense: this girl you've met, she's not perfect either. But the question is whether or not you're perfect for each other." The burden is on you to prove "fit." I guess the info I'm about to provide will be enough to out me if anybody happens to know me/meet me in real life, but what the hell. Here are my stats: undergrad GPA 3.0 (no, that isn't a typo), undergrad GPA in major (including easy-A creative writing courses) 3.71, MA GPA (MA in tangentially related field) 3.87. Test scores: 800 V, 750 M, 770 Lit Subject Test. So, right off the bat, you can see that I wasn't a "perfect" candidate: my undergrad GPA sucks, although I had a very good story to explain my performance. It wasn't the test scores that compensated for the grades, although they certainly helped in demonstrating that I could do the work. IMO, my letters, writing sample, and SOP made the difference. To make another gratuitous film reference, I was the "Rudy" of Ivy league admissions. After (failing out of) undergrad, I still wanted to go on and get a Ph.D. and teach, so I squeaked in to a not-terribly-selective MA program, not in English but in a related field, at an Ivy league school, and I cross-registered for a bunch of graduate seminars in the English and Comp Lit departments. I worked ridiculously hard for two years (I had absolutely no work/life balance whatever, didn't date, gained weight, the whole nine yards...not that I recommend this extreme) and went to absurd lengths to impress the English and Comp Lit faculty at said Ivy league school. When I applied, I had four strong and specific academic letters from very well-known people (all tenured profs at said Ivy league school who had worked with me at the grad level already). As far as what those letters actually looked like: I don't know for sure because I didn't see them, but I've been kind of startled by how much info about them I've been able to gather from the comments that recruiters have made. What's really startling to me is just how specific the letters apparently were about my original research: the people who wrote for me apparently went into great detail about the methodology that interested me, about the arguments I had made in the past, and about the research questions I would be likely to explore in the future. Getting some of them paraphrased (or in one case actually quoted) back to me felt as if I was reading a journal review of my own scholarship: "In X work, lotf considers X and Y issue in the light of Z and argues for..." My writing sample was a seminar paper from said graduate courses that I had been told would be publishable if I polished it up. It was the best thing I had written in my life: not the most original, but certainly the most finished and mature. After I had gotten an A on it from a notoriously critical grader, I spent another 50-70 hours making it beautiful. A truly outstanding writing sample in the Harvard or Yale pool is a published or publishable research article that clearly draws from the approach favored by the faculty at that school (again, I was rejected from these schools; then again, my sample wasn't an article yet and is still not finished as such). If you're applying in a subfield where languages are at all important, your writing sample should demonstrate if at all possible that you can do original research in those languages. In the best of cases, the writing sample credibly cites people whom you could be working with at the program in a natural and unforced way. It's also best if the writing sample clearly reinforces the SOP and vice versa. IMO, most people don't give nearly enough thought to how their application will work as a whole. The perfect application is quite narrow in focus: it demonstrates a clear grasp of a specific methodology and a commitment to a specific set of issues that are important to the people on the committee at the schools to which you are applying. Ideally, for instance, your SOP would say "I am interested in exploring Y topic from the standpoint of underwater basketweaving technologies," knowing that underwater basketweaving technologies were the current obsession of the people at your Ivy League school of choice. Then, in the best of all possible worlds, you would include a publishable writing sample that drew on the work of those Ivy League people, citing them by name and demonstrating how your own work might grow from their work in the future. Ideally, all of your letters would also specifically discuss not only your charm, grace, and natural intelligence but also your original ideas about underwater basketweaving and how they would fit in to the approach of said Ivy league school. (Some recommenders, the best ones, will customize their letters for your top choice schools, just as you are customizing your SOPs. You should prepare them to do this by giving them a brief summary of your sense of "fit" with each of your top programs.) You would also demonstrate a mastery of relevant reading and research skills important to your subfield. Anyway. I apologize for the essay here. I just thought that my own experience (so different from what I think a lot of people expect) might shed some light on the question being asked by the OP. I think that the magic words are "original research," or at least "capacity for original research," and that if you can nail that part, your numbers may not matter. I hope that this post helps somebody somewhere and I apologize for its length.

Hi adverbially, Sorry I didn't respond to your earlier PM. BTW, I did go ahead and turn down UW-Madison, early this week. If my memory serves, they offered me 1-2 years at $15,000...probably enough to cut it for 9 months in Madison, which is wicked cheap, but I don't think I was offered a full 4-5 years of funding. Then again, I don't have the offer in front of me so I might have gotten that part wrong.

I think that this is a really great idea! I agree with the previous poster that you have to think about faculty fit as well as schools, but at the same time, I do believe that individual schools, campuses, etc. have "feels," cultures, or preferred scholarly approaches. God help you, for instance, if you apply to Harvard without knowing that it's largely New Historicist. It seems that when I speak to senior people in the field, they're able to articulate the cultures of the schools and programs, but I've never found a resource that describes them clearly. So this could be it! One quick note on organization: although it's not at all ideal, I think that we should organize the resource by school name/program name. I agree that this method has problems and that it lacks some of the advantages of the other way, but I think it's somewhat more practicable for the following reasons: a) If we try to organize it by topic/research focus, the whole page will likely splinter or metastasize. In my field, for instance, we might have one person posting on "medieval women mystics" and another person posting on "early women's preaching," whereas really all of those topics are so related that they could most usefully be grouped (they are not the same topic, but they overlap enormously). In other words, it would be almost impossible, I think, to develop a rational method of topical organization that everybody could agree on. We would have schism after schism after schism (sorry, another religion reference ). There are literally thousands and thousands of possible "areas of interest." Trying to organize the page by areas of interest would result in a huge number of pages that would be difficult to browse through. However, the number of programs out there is somewhat smaller (still huge, but more finite), so it might provide a more successful grouping strategy. c) Most of us browse this site obsessively anyway. Once the info is there, people will link to other program pages, etc., and the site will end up being usefully cross-referenced by topic over time (in a de facto way, not in a formal way), or so I expect. I hope this happens; I think it will be seriously awesome if it does.