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@Sibilance7, I was accepted at Indiana for the English PhD, '09, at some point in early Feb, but I didn't post about it on the forum; I hadn't mentioned any of my results until this thread. You must have been talking to somebody else. Is there a board where we are all aggregating admit/reject data? If it is useful to other people to share this data, I would be happy to post; I just didn't think anybody would care. (In total, I applied to 10 schools, am waiting on 5, have been accepted to 5: Fordham, Indiana, Wisco, and UVA for Eng PhD 09; Cornell for Med Stud PhD 09.)

Hi all, So this was unexpected. I only recently realized that other people had had emails from programs sent to their spam folder, so I opened mine and promptly discovered an email from Cornell. I applied to Cornell for English; they apparently rejected me for English but accepted me for the Medieval Studies Ph.D. I didn't even know that my app had been forwarded. It does make sense, as my background is fairly interdisciplinary (I have an MA in a field other than English), and as my knowledge of certain non-lit medieval topics is stronger than my knowledge of certain non-medieval lit topics. (Or at least, that's how it looks when you glance over my transcript.) So here's the question: what should I even think about a Medieval Studies program, especially with respect to job placement? I'm still feeling startled and kind of ambivalent (obviously excited to be accepted anywhere, and really excited about Cornell, but kind of unclear on the whole prospect of switching fields). I really think I'd prefer the English PhD to the Medieval Studies PhD, but thus far, Cornell is the strongest school to have accepted me. I feel like a lot of these questions are ill-considered, but I'm a little in the dark here. More research to do!

The book Getting What You Came For provides survey data ranking the relative importance of different aspects of your app. Their list is as follows (numbers are scores on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being "extremely important"): 3.9 Undergrad GPA in major field 3.8 Recommendations from faculty known by members of department 3.7 Undergrad GPA in junior and senior years 3.6 GRE General Verbal score 3.6 Undergrad major related to field of graduate study 3.5 Undergrad GPA overall 3.0 Educational or career aspirations of applicant 3.0 Recommendations from faculty not known by department members 3.0 Applicant known to department faculty 2.9 Other academic achievements (papers, projects) 2.9 Quality of undergrad institution 2.7 Personal statement on application form 2.7 Impression made in personal interview 2.6 Work experience 2.6 GRE General Analytical score 2.5 Other nonfaculty recommendations 2.5 GRE Subject test score appropriate to program 1.9 Other test scores 1.9 GRE Subject test score appropriate to applicant's undergrad major Here's the description of the study: "[C]omprehensive surveys can sum up trends over many departments and academic disciplines. One such large-scale study by Philip Oltman and Rodney Hartnett for the Educational Testing Service (ETS)...surveyed how twelve disciplines judged admissions criteria (p. 60)." Obviously, YMMV: for instance, I am confident that many English programs weigh the Literature subject test much more heavily than the Analytical test. It seems to me that you can often get into a program if one aspect of your app is below standard, but usually not if two or more aspects of your app are below standard, and that the GRE plays some part in this equation. For instance, if your GREs are low but everything else is fine, your GREs will likely be fine (unless the scores relevant to your program are so abysmally low that they raise serious concerns about your ability to do the coursework). On the other hand, if your grades are low, your GREs better be rockin'. Finally, if your grades are somewhat low or inconsistent, fantastic GREs in relevant areas can go a long way toward getting the committee to look at other aspects of your application. A cut-and-paste from a post at the Chronicle of Higher Ed fora [http]: "As others have mentioned, it's possible to skim and chuck a substantial fraction of the files without giving them all the full inspection. "Wrong major not addressed in SOP, toss. "Low GPA, low GRE, poor SOP, toss. "Low GPA, low GRE, applying from a fourth rate school, toss. "Either a low GPA or a low GRE with weak letters of recommendation, toss. "High GPA, poor SOP, weak letters of recommendation, toss. "High GPA, high GRE, fantastic SOP, strong letters of recommendation, keep. "Three of those four items strong and one weak, read the essays and other materials. "Not using a firm GRE/GPA cut-off still doesn't mean that people have to read the whole portfolio of every applicant. It just means that you aren't automatically sunk if one of those numbers is lower than average." This post (by somebody with adcom experience, obviously) affirms my basic instinct that you often have a little slack w/r/t your application, but only a little. If you use up your slack on your GRE scores, then you don't have any room to get bad grades. Etc. I feel like it's important to remember that every aspect of your app is evaluated in the context of every other aspect of your app.

Okay, I also have heard nothing either way. I am still waiting on six schools, including most of my top choices. Anybody think that departments will be notifying tomorrow :6 ? On Saturday? Obviously not (sigh). To the person who asked about alphabetical order: let's hope so. I sooooo wanted to invent irrelevant questions today that would enable me to call Directors of Graduate Studies on apparently legitimate pretenses and then sneak in casual references to my application. Due to a quirk of my current location, last night, I happened to *run in* to the DGS (in person) of one of my tippity-top choices...a school that has apparently made decisions but not yet notified. I thought I was going to die of professionalism on the spot. To those of you who got in to top choices today: a thousand congratulations!

This information may be on another thread, about acceptances, but I don't have the nerves to read those threads right now. Please forgive me (and don't make me read about which programs have started to notify! I can't take it!). Thank you for your understanding. I got into a safety that I really really like. I feel a lot better about the whole process knowing I can go to this program, which seems like a better fit for me than all the schools to which I applied except the most competitive ones, but the super-competitive apps are still in play. The DGS called and said something about setting up a time to talk. I was a little surprised that a) I was notified so early (though I guess a lot of other people have started to hear) and I was supposed to call and have a chat with a real person so soon in the game. Should I expect more of this? I imagine I should be pleasant and excited and noncommittal, yes? I applied to 10 schools; should I expect to have a live conversation with any of them that happen to accept me? I guess I kind of expected this process to be a little more like college admissions and less like job interviews. But right now it feels like job interviews. Thanks all.

I agree with basically everything Minnesotan says. Also, BTW: I was told by a faculty member at the number-one ranked school in English (very much a research institution) that a rec from a teaching supervisor would be a positive addition to my application, as long as it was my fourth letter (i.e., if it didn't take the place of a letter that spoke more directly to my research ability). I'd guess that it depends a whole lot on the culture of the school, but in general, if your research background is also strong, I think that documented teaching ability is a help more often than a hindrance.

rising_star, I want to respectfully disagree with you. I see your point, but at times, I think it's important to address blips. I had a 3.96 in my major in a top-ranked school, then suddenly failed out (literally failed out) because my family lost our primary source of income and our house, and I had to pick up several part-time jobs. Back in my masters, I got my GPA back, hit high GREs, etc., but my cum. GPA was still a 3.0 (due to my spectacular blowup at the end of my college career). Everyone I talked to, including several faculty members at my top-ranked masters institution, told me to address the situation very briefly in my SOP in order to keep readers from wondering what the hell happened. So I did, but, of course, it took some words. I didn't belabor the situation, nor do I think that you should take the space to explain a drop from a 3.5 to a 2.9 one semester, or a drop due to a bad break-up with a boyfriend, or whatever, but there is such a thing as a genuinely extenuating circumstance. In the same way, at times a discussion of one's methodology is really pretty important to the case one is building for "Why Your Program and I Are Such a Good Match." Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I stand by my original statement that there is often more than 500 words' worth of information worth including in a statement, even if it's necessary to omit some of it out of respect for program guidelines. I do think that your overall point (as I understand it) is a very good one: namely, that in order to hit the word limit, it's important to recognize that what seems like essential information to you may be inessential information from the standpoint of the program, or at least extraneous to the task of writing your statement, which should be tightly focused and should do no more and no less than answer the damn question.

Joel418, I really doubt that Ivies will toss out your app because of that AW score. Not to discount your concerns, just to encourage you: even English programs take the AW with a grain of salt.

On the one hand, I agree that the idea of "safety" may be a little misleading. On the other hand, I think that you can make some calculated bets. In my case, they're schools with weaker programs overall but very interesting people in my subfield: places where, I hope, I could write an excellent dissertation, God willing, even though they aren't exactly prestigious institutions. For instance, I applied to Fordham's English Ph.D., which has fairly relaxed admissions standards (just one 5-7 pp. writing sample, for instance), because I feel I could do good work there for one reason and another.

Another thing to remember is that usually grading like this is done in enormous blocks: say, an essay every 2-3 minutes for eight hours a day, straight. (I don't know if it's true for the GRE, but I do know that it's true for a lot of other standardized tests). Reading literally hundreds of essays a day is so mind-numbing that even the most astute reader might be reduced to a pretty formulaic approach after a while. The signposting probably helps the bored and exhausted reader as much as the basically unsophisticated one.

I think it depends, too, on how competitive your top choice schools are. I ended up applying to 10 schools even though it was really expensive and I couldn't afford it very easily because it happened that my top choice advisors were at very competitive programs. If I had applied to, say, six programs, it would've been three schools that are so selective that their admissions are very unpredictable, plus two match schools and a safety. I wanted more than three maybe/likely schools on my list; at the same time, I felt like I wanted to take my chances at top programs. So 10 schools felt like the way to go. I am not rich by any means...quite the opposite...but after looking at all my options and doing a cost/benefit analysis, it seemed to me that the cost of applying to a few additional programs was a worthy investment.

To add support to a previous poster's suggestion: I wrote two really long essays, so long that I was worried I would be penalized, and I ended up with a 6.0. I also noticed that score and length were somewhat correlated in the ETS book of real exams/responses etc. So if I were giving somebody advice on taking that part of the test, I'd say that in addition to including lots of blatant signposting (the formulaic organization that everybody else is talking about), you should write essays as long as you possibly can.

Wow, what great replies. Thanks especially, Boz, for the inside information. What's your area, can I ask? Best of luck to all of you applying this year, and happy Christmas Eve as well!

Anybody else applying to UVA in English? If so, what do you make of the requirement for two writing samples of no more than 25 pages total? Any configuration that comes to mind seems a little bit awkward. You can either submit an article-length discussion (20 pp.) and a blurb of some kind (5 pp.), maybe a review or something, or you can submit two short seminar papers (12 pp. each), or something in between...? I found out about the requirement for a second sample only a couple of weeks ago and felt pretty unprepared for it: I really hadn't been thinking in terms of sending a high-quality short paper, and to be honest, I haven't had to write a really finished short paper in a long time, because I've been in a master's program, where everything is supposed to be 18-20 pp. I think I'm going to send the same article-length paper I've been sending everywhere else, then a strong 5-pp. section of another paper, along with an abstract of that paper. Thoughts?

Thanks to you both! At least there's one thing I don't have to worry about *sigh*.

I haven't heard anything about interviews and I've been assuming that lit programs don't do them. Am I right? It's in or out; there's no interview round, yes?

I'm also applying to competitive programs for English with some nasty baggage, and I've been asking a lot of people similar questions. All of the feedback I've seen suggests that Ph.D. programs are really concerned with one thing: trying to predict your future performance in and possible contribution to *their* program. It's not in their interest to punish you in some way for getting an F if it's clear that the F does not reflect on your abilities as a scholar. After all, they are not interested in administering justice so much as in putting together the best possible class, so it's to their advantage to ignore your grade if they think you will be a contributor. It sounds to me as if you've clearly demonstrated that the F has nothing to do with your academic potential, so I think you can safely relax about it.

My opinion here doesn't do much but add to the consensus, but here's my two cents: by sending in your application, you're basically buying a lottery ticket. Most of the time, if you get into a program that typically requires work experience, it's because your academic performance or your past research has been outstanding (and often, in my very limited experience, because you are planning to go into a research track in the future, so in a certain sense your past coursework *is* work experience). At the same time, you have little to lose by applying. Those essays may seem like a lot of work now, but will you be glad in March that you went ahead and took your chances? Maybe. I got my MTS at Harvard's Divinity School, and I can say that in general, the reputation of both HDS and the K school is that they are selective but not as absurdly selective as Harvard's MBA, MD, or PhD programs. That's not the quality of insider information you are looking for, I know, but I can give you my general impression that the K School is not the kind of program that would automatically disqualify an applicant for having a C. If you have some really compelling story to tell and your recommenders and CV suggest that your work experience to date is somehow equivalent to three years full-time, you might have a shot. I will add in closing that one of the previous posters makes an excellent point: if the program is designed for people with work experience, you might want to go get that full-time experience for a number of reasons before you move on in your education. Part-time jobs and summer jobs, no matter how selective or serious, are rarely the true equivalent of a committed, full-time position.

I think it depends a lot on the field and the school. If you're applying to competitive English programs, for example, your sample will get scrutinized very carefully. I also think it depends a lot on how far you get in the process. Probably in the final rounds, where they're cutting from 30 to 15 or whatever, your sample will get a lot more attention. As far as citations, I really doubt that anybody ever bothers to look anything up, but you always run the risk that someone will *know* the correction citation without having to look it up...this consideration wouldn't extend to page numbers, but it might to titles and authors of works. I've had professors catch such errors in my drafts, so I'd imagine it could happen as part of the admissions process as well.

Thanks, all! Minnesotan, I own that book, but I didn't realize it contained an example: great tip. I'll go look it up.

Hi all of you with better CVs than mine , I am told that one needs to include a basic cover letter with an article submission. What should that cover letter look like? My little guide makes the following suggestions: a) Quote the article title and the name of the journal; State contact details including email; c) Ask to be sent referees' reports whether or not the article is accepted; d) Inquire about the current publication lag. Any confirmation of these points? What does such a letter typically look like? Thanks for guidance, if you've got it!

Hi chessie, Get on the phone *right now* and call those guys. At top-tier programs, I think that your application is unlikely to be competitive even if the LORs come in. Here's why: there are only a few spots at those programs, and there are going to be plenty of other people with your grades, background, and history of presentations who also have much stronger GREs and who have three or four powerful, enthusiastic LORs. Even though I'm guessing American studies is relatively less competitive than a program like English or history, I'm still betting that you're competing directly with at least nine other people for a spot. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong... It's not that you're unqualified, necessarily; it's just that you won't be the most qualified relative to everybody else applying, which is what you have to be in order to get accepted. At mid/low programs, you might have a shot if those letters arrve. I don't know your circumstances, but it sounds to me like you should really think about applying next year. I'm sure that just a little study would raise those GREs significantly. What's more, then you'd have the time to get those recommenders on the ball. Best of luck!

Think of it this way. It's likely that somebody else will apply to the program with your numbers (GPA, GRE, etc.) and *with* a writing sample. If it's you or them competing for a spot, you may lose out. The only circumstance in which I wouldn't send a writing sample is if you feel like your sample is so weak that you'd rather compete without it, even though other candidates will be sending them.

rising_star, on the one hand, I agree with you that SOP limits are worthy of some respect. On the other, I have to say that I've got two finished versions of my SOP, and the 500-word version of my statement is significantly more limited and less informative than the 1000-word version...and yes, I am a concise and efficient writer. I think that 500 words is likely to be adequate when your application is straightforward, but if you have been out of school for a while, or have more than one degree in related but separate disciplines, or have changed your methodology dramatically, or have any kind of blip to explain (a drop in grades, a low score on one section of the GRE), or any other kind of circumstance to address...at that point, 500 words can start to feel like a very tight constraint.

Three things: a) I agree with Minnesotan that, since you've done the double major, you're probably in the clear re: the ed degree being less rigorous. As a non-expert, I'd predict that most English Ph.D.s would look at the ed masters degree itself as moot (neither a pro nor a con), but might look closely at any graduate courses that you did in the social sciences as part of your ed masters. If you can do some graduate-level study on the history of the Cold War, for instance, and then get a strong recommendation from a history professor to add to your stack, and finally integrate it all into a strong SOP, I'd imagine that you'd be strengthening your app by going back. You just need to make sure that you choose an ed program with enough flexibility to allow you to do quite a bit of graduate work in arts and sciences departments. c) When you get down to it, the Ph.D. itself would be a decent backup plan: it will enable you to teach at most private high schools. If you don't want to teach English at the secondary level, just take history courses while you're in your Ph.D. program. Here's one suggestion. The first time around, you might consider applying to two types of programs: MAs in social studies and English Ph.D.s that will allow for electives in history departments. If you don't get in to the English Ph.D. programs, go for the MAs, and re-apply. If you do get in to the English Ph.D.s, by all means, go...and then take enough history classes to be considered for high school history positions when you get out. You're young enough, it sounds like, that you don't need to worry too much about hedging your bets.