JoeySsance

A new MA in History and Literature will be offered at Columbia University in Paris, starting in September 2011. This one-year degree, taught in cooperation with ENS and EHESS, will feature a theoretical reflection on the relationship between history and literature, and a practical introduction to the study of texts and documents in print and manuscript form, drawing on the resources of local libraries and archives.

While French history and literature will be strongly represented in the program, students will be given the opportunity to select a research topic from a wide range of languages and historical periods.

Courses will be taught in English and French. Written work will be done in English. Students will have full reading and borrowing privileges at ENS, which has the only open-stack research library in France. Reid Hall, Columbia's campus in France, is located at 4 rue de Chevreuse in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. Application deadline is May 2, 2011. For more information on the program, go to:

www.historyandliterature.columbia.edu

A new MA in History and Literature will be offered at Columbia University in Paris, starting in September 2011. This one-year degree, taught in cooperation with ENS and EHESS, will feature a theoretical reflection on the relationship between history and literature, and a practical introduction to the study of texts and documents in print and manuscript form, drawing on the resources of local libraries and archives.

While French history and literature will be strongly represented in the program, students will be given the opportunity to select a research topic from a wide range of languages and historical periods.

Courses will be taught in English and French. Written work will be done in English. Students will have full reading and borrowing privileges at ENS, which has the only open-stack research library in France. Reid Hall, Columbia's campus in France, is located at 4 rue de Chevreuse in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. Application deadline is May 2, 2011. For more information on the program, please go to:

www.historyandliterature.columbia.edu

A new MA in History and Literature will be offered at Columbia University in Paris, starting in September 2011. This one-year degree, taught in cooperation with ENS and EHESS, will feature a theoretical reflection on the relationship between history and literature, and a practical introduction to the study of texts and documents in print and manuscript form, drawing on the resources of local libraries and archives.

While French history and literature will be strongly represented in the program, students will be given the opportunity to select a research topic from a wide range of languages and historical periods.

Courses will be taught in English and French. Written work will be done in English. Students will have full reading and borrowing privileges at ENS, which has the only open-stack research library in France. Reid Hall, Columbia's campus in France, is located at 4 rue de Chevreuse in the sixth arrondissement of Paris. Application deadline is May 2, 2011. For more information on the program, go to:

www.historyandliterature.columbia.edu

Hey everyone! If everything goes well, I should be flying out in a few hours.

So I just got back my first decision. I was recommended for admission at Berkeley and have been nominated for one of their most prestigious fellowships!!

The Director of Graduate Studies would like to set up an informal phone call with me (but he said it's not an interview) and added that a faculty member with interests similar to mine will drop me a line as well and that the grad secretary would call to explain the logistics about the admitted students' campus visit in March.

This is great news! Just after the decision, he added this: "Your credentials from [undergrad institution] are extremely impressive, and we feel strongly that the Berkeley program, with its rich offerings in modernist studies, is especially suited to your broad intellectual interests." I hope my other departments feel / felt the same way!!

Good luck to everyone else!

Hey everyone! If everything goes well, I should be flying out in a few hours.

So I just got back my first decision. I was recommended for admission at Berkeley and have been nominated for one of their most prestigious fellowships!!

The Director of Graduate Studies would like to set up an informal phone call with me (but he said it's not an interview) and added that a faculty member with interests similar to mine will drop me a line as well and that the grad secretary would call to explain the logistics about the admitted students' campus visit in March.

This is great news! Just after the decision, he added this: "Your credentials from [undergrad institution] are extremely impressive, and we feel strongly that the Berkeley program, with its rich offerings in modernist studies, is especially suited to your broad intellectual interests." I hope my other departments feel / felt the same way!!

Good luck to everyone else!

Hey everyone! Congrats on the recent great news some of you have gotten!

Speaking of blizzards, which someone brought up, I flew out of Paris this morning with a connecting flight from Copenhagen to NY. Well, due to the crazy snow back home, my flight was cancelled. But my airline accomodated me in a pretty sweet hotel with lots of free perks, courtesy of them, so that didn't turn out so bad! And Copenhagen is a beautiful city! Let's just say that a whole month in Paris plus this sweet yet unexpected turn of events have all been keeping me more or less distracted (or at least occupied) during the wait for decisions. I should be back in NY on Wednesday... hopefully in time for some decisions... or any news at all (in the coming weeks, I hope)!

Bon courage à tous!

-J

Hey everyone! Congrats on the recent great news some of you have gotten!

Speaking of blizzards, which someone brought up, I flew out of Paris this morning with a connecting flight from Copenhagen to NY. Well, due to the crazy snow back home, my flight was cancelled. But my airline accomodated me in a pretty sweet hotel with lots of free perks, courtesy of them, so that didn't turn out so bad! And Copenhagen is a beautiful city! Let's just say that a whole month in Paris plus this sweet yet unexpected turn of events have all been keeping me more or less distracted (or at least occupied) during the wait for decisions. I should be back in NY on Wednesday... hopefully in time for some decisions... or any news at all (in the coming weeks, I hope)!

Bon courage à tous!

-J

Hey everyone! Congrats on the recent great news some of you have gotten!

Speaking of blizzards, which someone brought up, I flew out of Paris this morning with a connecting flight from Copenhagen to NY. Well, due to the crazy snow back home, my flight was cancelled. But my airline accomodated me in a pretty sweet hotel with lots of free perks, courtesy of them, so that didn't turn out so bad! And Copenhagen is a beautiful city! Let's just say that a whole month in Paris plus this sweet yet unexpected turn of events have all been keeping me more or less distracted (or at least occupied) during the wait for decisions. I should be back in NY on Wednesday... hopefully in time for some decisions... or any news at all (in the coming weeks, I hope)!

Bon courage à tous!

-J

Hey everyone! Congrats on the recent great news some of you have gotten!

Speaking of blizzards, which someone brought up, I flew out of Paris this morning with a connecting flight from Copenhagen to NY. Well, due to the crazy snow back home, my flight was cancelled. But my airline accomodated me in a pretty sweet hotel with lots of free perks, courtesy of them, so that didn't turn out so bad! And Copenhagen is a beautiful city! Let's just say that a whole month in Paris plus this sweet yet unexpected turn of events have all been keeping me more or less distracted (or at least occupied) during the wait for decisions. I should be back in NY on Wednesday... hopefully in time for some decisions... or any news at all (in the coming weeks, I hope)!

Bon courage à tous!

-J

Hey everyone! Congrats on the recent great news some of you have gotten!

Speaking of blizzards, which someone brought up, I flew out of Paris this morning with a connecting flight from Copenhagen to NY. Well, due to the crazy snow back home, my flight was cancelled. But my airline accomodated me in a pretty sweet hotel with lots of free perks, courtesy of them, so that didn't turn out so bad! And Copenhagen is a beautiful city! Let's just say that a whole month in Paris plus this sweet yet unexpected turn of events have all been keeping me more or less distracted (or at least occupied) during the wait for decisions. I should be back in NY on Wednesday... hopefully in time for some decisions... or any news at all (in the coming weeks, I hope)!

Bon courage à tous!

-J

I wonder if anyone realized that my wordle was the lyrics of Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, plus that infamous top ten list of words overused in grad school, plus part of a legit SOP. I have to admit though, the cheesecake one really does take the... cake.

I thought it would be, which is why I played around with the layout to see which word would end up embedded inside the "Q." I like how it ended up being "Ph.D." That juxtaposition happens to say a lot about my academic commitments.

Guys, I'm screwed.

*Looks at transcript* "Huh, Cairo University? Is that even a real school? We have no idea how strict or lenient their grading system is, but her GPA isn't that high and her record is spotty. Graduated in 5 years. Her GRE scores are average, too." *Looks at SoP* "She says she wants to study contemporary Egyptian lit, but she barely passed her Arabic courses... And what is this crap about France in the 60s? We have like 10 other applicants who want to study that!" *Sees LoRs* "Who ARE these people?!" *And now for the writing sample* "I... I have no idea. What is she even talking about?"

From my first choice - *looking at my portfolio* "Why on earth is he applying here? He doesn't even have a solid foundation of skills!!"

From schools I got into last year - "Oh, so now he's reapplying after we accepted him last year? We weren't good enough for you last year and you've decided to use us as your safety school, eh? REJECTED!!!"

From schools I got rejected to from last year - "How many times are we going to have to tell this guy no?"

From new schools I applied to - "A colleague of mine told me about this guy who applied to their school. Let's reject him too!! MWUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!"

This is pretty cool! Here's mine. It's essentially most of my SOP except for the names of professors, my top choice school's name and a few authors' first names. I even left in some French words, mostly from the titles of books I've used in research and I opted for the colors of the French flag. Voilà!

I thought it would be, which is why I played around with the layout to see which word would end up embedded inside the "Q." I like how it ended up being "Ph.D." That juxtaposition happens to say a lot about my academic commitments.

This is pretty cool! Here's mine. It's essentially most of my SOP except for the names of professors, my top choice school's name and a few authors' first names. I even left in some French words, mostly from the titles of books I've used in research and I opted for the colors of the French flag. Voilà!

I thought it would be, which is why I played around with the layout to see which word would end up embedded inside the "Q." I like how it ended up being "Ph.D." That juxtaposition happens to say a lot about my academic commitments.

For someone like me, who's foreign and has never lived in the US, the GradCafe has been very useful in understanding how academia works, what the culture is like, what to put in my SoP, etc. It also gives me a good idea of the level of competition, and helps me better my app by comparing myself to people on here--who are generally among the top applicants, I think.

Of course it's not going to be that useful if you already have a mentor who's guiding you through the process. I don't, however, and I doubt I'm the only one.

I thought it would be, which is why I played around with the layout to see which word would end up embedded inside the "Q." I like how it ended up being "Ph.D." That juxtaposition happens to say a lot about my academic commitments.

Hey everyone! I recently took the GRE. I'm actually still waiting on my AWA score. I'm not placing much importance on it though, especially after reading that the essay is scored in part by "e-raters" or computer readers. I wrote (what I thought) was a creative and attention-grabbing introduction for my Issue essay and I found that both of my essays read well rhetorically and made good use of GRE vocabulary. I'm now wondering whether all of that was for naught, given the way the essays are graded. Here's a simplified explanation along with some articles with further information. Essentially you have a human reader and a bot reader. An essay that a human reader might praise for rhetorical finesse or incisiveness might be completely lost on the bot which is programmed to look for very specific features. Apparently if you misspell certain transition words (e.g. "therefore," "furthermore," etc.) the program erroneously penalizes your essay for lack of structure. The human grader is pressured to assign very strict scores using the most rigid and trite templates as guidelines (e.g. the 5 paragraph high school essay) because sincere scoring would call their work into question (i.e. if they constantly disagree with the computer). This would necessitate too much intervention from "third" (read: human) readers, which is costly to ETS. I think it's a shame that this is being done mostly (if not, entirely) for cost-cutting reasons (don't we pay ETS enough... and indeed, overpay them?). These essays are supposed to measure our analytical reasoning and an algorithm might be able to pinpoint some classical signs of good reasoning and structure but with the consequence of completely eschewing creativity and the kind of original writing many of us will go on to do in graduate school, it's no wonder a lot of humanities programs accord little importance to the AWA score.

http://awatips.blogspot.com/2007/05/using-strategy.html (This is about the GMAT but apparently it's applicable to the GRE as well)
http://awatips.blogspot.com/2007/05/about-e-rater.html (Ditto)
http://www.800score.com/gmat-essay.html (Ditto)
http://www.daytondailynews.com/project/content/project/tests/0524testautoscore.html

Since score recipients receive copies of our AWA essays, they would be better judges than the e-rater as to the quality of our writing. However, as it has often been stressed on this site, a solid writing sample and SOP are clearly better examples of one's writing and argumentation skills. I scored 800 on the Verbal section and I suspect that other 800 scores and some folks with 700+ scores might find that a score below a 5 on the AWA is a blow to our otherwise impressive GRE scores. I've encountered a plethora of threads initiated by high Verbal scorers who seem devastated about receiving a low AWA score. I don't know my AWA score yet but I'm sure I didn't do everything I could have to "please" the bot reader, so I personally won't be too disappointed if it's below a 5 and I certainly won't take it as an indication of my writing abilities. I hope this thread is helpful to those of you who (especially in the humanities) have aced the Verbal but not the AWA or who have yet to take the exam. Don't worry about the AWA; knock 'em dead with your writing sample and SOP!

Berkeley is very attractive, but the funding isn't. :/ As an international student, I need guaranteed full funding for five years, or there's no point moving across the planet and then being unable to afford continuing my PhD. Harvard doesn't seem to have anyone working specifically on modern Arabic or Egyptian lit.

My top choices are Yale and Cornell, though I know I'm reaching, there. They both have amazing French specialists, and flexible programs that would let me take lots of courses outside my department. They also really encourage interdisciplinarity, and have interesting programs in Art History and Film Studies that would be useful to me. Oh, and of course, they have Egyptian/modern Arabic literature specialists. Some of them even work specifically on the Egyptian novel and film!

I'm also considering working on Latin America. I don't know that much about the literature, though I speak Spanish and understand Portuguese, so I'd like to be somewhere where there's a strong American Studies/Hispanic and Latin American Lit department, in case I do decide to go down that path.

Good luck, everyone! I hope we all have a successful application season.

Sorry this isn't playing the game well, but just fyi, for minatory I always think of "minotaur", as in a scary mythical beast haha....

I'm surprised your quantitative score isn't lower if you can't work out that (480+580) > 1000.