bfat

Whaaaaaat?? I wanna do that! When can I do that?

It's official! I accepted my offer at PSU and I feel... weird. I expected to feel relieved and overwhelmingly happy--and I'm certainly relieved--but my stupid brain can't get over all the "what ifs." Also, it doesn't look like anyone else from this board is headed there this year. Sad.

Doesn't seem to be any movement yet on Michigan's Lit waitlist... think I'll email today to see if there's any info about when people might hear. I'm really pretty ready to accept Penn State, but I just want to be sure. Uuuuugh, this uncertainty sucks.

Aha. But this, to me, indicates that they are the same problem--if they would just hire more TT people, they wouldn't need to rely on TAs, and the two problems would solve each other. I always wondered why, when so many more people are getting BAs than ever before in history, the job market for professors is so shitty--this doesn't make mathematical sense, does it? Except that it does when you realize that it's because they're screwing over the professors and using graduate students as cheap labor rather than as "apprentices" that will move into stable positions. There could be balance in the system--there used to be, to a certain degree, but it's the whole cheap labor/outsourcing (or insourcing in this case) mentality that has taken over the university, along with the rest of the world... ... but anyway, Yay, we're all getting PhDs!!

Just a word of advice, in case you aren't familiar with the area--the DC suburb housing can get pretty expensive (2-bedroom townhouses selling for $400k in some of the "nicer" areas), though there are of course some good finds and places for students too--but my thought is that those places will be rentals. As far as living farther away, the area also has some pretty crappy traffic, so I would recommend getting as close to campus as possible. Definitely do not live somewhere where you would need to take 495 or 95. Seriously, ugh, don't do it. Just my $.02, of course. But I lived about 6 miles from my job outside Baltimore (which has a slightly-less-evil 695 beltway) and it sometimes took me 45 minutes or more to get home (with no traffic it was about 15 minutes). That's the #1 reason I quit that job.

The more I read in this thread and think about moving two dogs, a cat, and an 11-month-old (in July), the more the 2.5 hour drive to PSU sounds like a brilliant idea... Michigan, you are sounding less and less appealing every day...

You could also see if you can find a job at the university that would cover some (or all) of your tuition as one of its benefits. About 80% of my MA was paid this way--my salary was garbage, but I got tuition remission for 6 credits per semester (which is all I took, while working full time). The remaining 20% was when I "overloaded" one semester with 3 classes, and then this final semester when I quit the crap job to teach while I'm finishing my thesis. There are usually tons of clerical jobs at large universities that will pay you a moderate amount but also offer you benefits (like tuition remission).

It's not about escaping the human point of view. It's about acknowledging that an alternative point of view exists at all (which humanism, traditionally, has not done--hence post-humanism).

Ah, my bad. I thought you were talking about this program: http://advanced.jhu.edu/academic/mla/index.html Whoops. No, yeah, disregard everything I said.

My BA is in film, and I (will) have an interdisciplinary MA, but with a focus on lit and theory. I think it did hurt me a little bit, not having the English BA, but only in that it was a real struggle to fill in parts of the canon that I just didn't get with all those lit survey requirements that people have as English majors. Self-study of the Nortons when you have super exciting MA-level readings and work going on was very difficult (in terms of motivation), and I ended up with only a 620 on the Lit GRE, which I'm sure kept me out of some places. But it's definitely do-able, as long as you're willing to show that you've done work in literature and/or that you're willing to fill in some of those gaps on your own.

I get the impression that, while it might be something of a springboard to a really great PhD, it's really more along the lines of continuing education for the hell of it (or for a promotion, higher salary bracket, etc.), but with a Hopkins price-tag. Of course, that means it also comes with the Hopkins brand name, professors, and amazing resources, which would certainly be useful if you plan to continue. I'm sure the program would be really great to go through, but it's completely unfunded, right?

I know the official visiting weekend is coming up, but I just got back from a "private" visit (since I can't make next week) and... I am pretty much 99.99% convinced on PSU. I met with 7 different people on my visit, and the work that is happening there is just amazing, and I'm so excited. I'm really bummed I won't get to mingle with other prospectives, though. Who is going to the recruitment weekend? You'll have to share all about it.

Yes, I also don't want to reveal my (secret) identity, so I will PM. I need to look at my schedule, but a grad student event sounds fun.

PM'd because if I post it here, I'll be easily google-able, and I need to protect my secret identity.

I'm sorry I can't help you (probably not the post you wanted to read), but I just have to say, this conference sounds amazing, and I'm kinda jealous--but I'm presenting a paper on posthumanism at NeMLA that weekend so at least my brain will be in the same theoretical space. Where did you apply this season?

Yes. This. And haha, it looks like I'm the only one that voted for #1, but I think that just proves that I need to clarify. I think the classical canon is important for the history of ideas,but I think it should stop at the point of popular literacy (i.e. sometime in the 18th century), and everything after that should be considered fair game. Actually, anything "non-canonical" before that point is fair game, too, but I think learning the classical canon up through that point is important as a foundation for everyone studying Western literature. I say this kind of as an impostor, because my canonical knowledge is greatly lacking: I'm aware of how important it is to have that foundation because I have so little of it (non-English BA, now struggling to catch up). So maybe I should have voted for #2? But I don't think the canon needs to be revised so much as truncated after a certain point, at which time we recognize that canonizing literature after that period is useless and counter-productive. Does that make sense?

Hooray for you! Would you mind sharing a little more info? What is your area of interest, and do you know more about how the wait list works? Thanks! ETA: nrrmind, I see you're comp lit. ... wonder if the English waitlist works similarly... But CONGRATS!

Ah. Enlightenment. UVA is on spring break this week. D'oh. (I sent an email earlier this week too.)

I know that there's been at least a little movement on Penn State's wait-list, but I haven't heard anything (no grad-cafe-ers, at least) about Michigan's. I kinda wish I at least knew when their visiting week(s)/open house/whatever was happening so I might have an idea. For me, "nail biting" is kind of literal--my fingers look a little bit like I've shoved them into a garbage disposal because of this whole process.

Are we expecting a tidal wave of UVA rejections anytime soon? They're my only outlier...

I wasn't really expecting to be actively recruited from the wait-list, but I did make inquiries about visiting and meeting with people (had even booked a hotel in Ann Arbor), but my meetings were cancelled and I haven't really gotten a sense that my interest in the program matters that much to anyone. Some programs invite their wait-listers to events and open houses, etc., but I've just gotten zip since that initial letter (though that letter did sound very promising). But honestly, it's more about my careful consideration of what the program offers, and in what direction I want to take my PhD studies, rather than their "enthusiasm" or lack of it. I'm not ready to make a decision yet, but I am leaning heavily toward PSU.

Yeah, I've been seriously considering turning down Michigan's wait-list this week. Penn State is really actively recruiting me (and it feels so nice to be wanted), while Michigan is very "blah." Also, I've spoken to a few advisers/professors and they all agree that, while Michigan is higher in the rankings, PSU is doing way more cutting-edge stuff, especially in the areas I'm interested in (Theory, posthumanism, cultural studies, science & lit, etc.). So torn, though... I'd just really like to say that I was admitted to more than one place, so it feels more like a decision.

Just bumping this because it's next week (eeek!!). Anyone? Anyone? It would be nice to "network" with some grad-cafe-ers while there.

I did an insane thing in an earlier thread about rankings and actually averaged all the NRC ranking numbers (highs and lows across the chart) for a bunch of schools, giving programs a "score" between like 10 and 100 with lower numbers being better. It's still not really clear what these numbers might mean, or if they're important, but I think it's probably more accurate than either the USN or trying to guess which NRC score is weighted most accurately. This is only for a few schools, but kinda interesting: Princeton: 11.7 Stanford: 12 Harvard: 23 Cornell: 23.8 UMichigan: 26.4 Penn State: 27.5 UPenn: 27.6 Yale: 30.6 Duke: 33.1 UMaryland: 41.6 UVA: 44.8 NYU: 45.1 Berkeley: 46.7 Carnegie Mellon: 56.3 UPittsburgh: 65.2 SUNY Buffalo: 74.9 Note, though, that if you remove the "diversity" rating, Yale and Harvard would bump up to the top. It would be interesting if someone started a wiki or shared doc or something where we could rank all the schools by their "average." Maybe just the high and low S and R rankings, though, since they seem to be the most important. Or maybe this is all a totally ridiculous waste of time because these things don't really matter (except they kind of do in some ways) and also this doesn't take into account sub-fields. But anyway, back to my thesis and 50 hours of mid-term grading (uuuuuuuggghhhh)...

Just got my rejection from Carnegie Mellon, and I feel like a total idiot. Apparently they only admit 3 people per year, and I never would have applied if I'd known that. It was my last choice, and the closest I had to a "fallback" (though, of course, there's no such thing), but I thought they admitted closer to 12. Whoops. Do they funnel their MA students into the PhD? I couldn't find anything on the website that indicated how it all works, but I think I just totally misunderstood their process. Another app fee down the toilet...