cquin

Oh man, this thread speaks to me tonight. I was so proud of my SOP but now it just seems like crap. Plan B for me is joining the French Foreign Legion.

Thank you! That's what I thought, but I had a moment of sleep-deprived, confused doubt.

Please forgive my ignorance, but I need a quick clarification: if one is a "Professor Emeritus" that means one is retired and NOT teaching classes or working at a university in any way, correct?

Well out of my list of schools, which range from CUNY Grad (last I heard they accept around 25?) to various MA programs, Duke is by far the most competitive and has the lowest number of admits. Hence my anxiety. But yeah, I see what y'all are saying. Anyway, time for more coffee...

Right here. The Lit program is my number one choice and I'm so nervous about my application I'm practically breaking out in hives. Last year I think they accepted eight applicants. EIGHT.

What?! What kind of black magic do you possess?? AH! See, I wasn't sure whether the deadline was midnight tonight, or 11:59pm tomorrow, so I figured I should err on the side of caution. Where does it state the time on the website (not doubting you, I'm just curious)?

Who will be joining me tonight in neurosis as I work furiously to get my app in? It's only 9:30am and I'm at work but I'm already having flashes of panic. But it's going to be okay!! ... Right?

"On the other hand, as a cynic once remarked, John Stuart Mill never attained Hegel’s prestige because people found out what he meant." Bahahahaha.

Seconding Hegel, and throwing in Foucault. Once I was actually able to decipher The Order of Things, I loved it, but the process was a long and tiring one, resulting in much agony and frequent trips to Dictionary.com

I believe transcripts have to be mailed in as well, right? I have to get on that... I cannot, for the life of me, understand why all schools won't just take scanned copies of transcripts during the application process. It would make our lives SO much easier.

I laughed way too hard at this.

That is a really huge jump, congratulations! As for me, uhh, well, my test actually isn't until the 17th. I honestly have no recollection of signing up for that date (Why so late?? What was I thinking?) and I also don't know why I thought it was earlier--I even wrote down the wrong date in my planner. Thank god my boyfriend suggested I double check before I headed off to the testing center... -__- So, obviously, I'm so stressed out I'm developing early signs of dementia. Great.

And for the bibliophiles who also enjoy smoking... (ahem, me) http://www.tankmagazine.com/tankbooks/tankbooks01.html

Omggggg, thank you

I read Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides back-to-back when I was a young, impressionable first year English major and thus Eugenides can do no wrong in my eyes. But I'm eager to see how he fleshes out that New Yorker short story that seemed so promising... As I was working on my apps and read that Madeline was not accepted into Yale, I felt a sense of relief. It's not just me, then!

I'm not applying, but Cornell has a really awesome MFA/PhD program.

I bought The Marriage Plot the day it came out and managed to read about 50 pages before preparing apps became too much. It was great. I will happily pick it up again once this horrible process is over.

Is this so? I was under the impression that unless the author's name is explicitly mentioned in the SENTENCE, you have to put the name, even if the author has been mentioned earlier in the paragraph. E.g., Beauvoir says that "blah blah blah" (The Second Sex 15). vs. "Blah blah blah" (Beauvoir, The Second Sex 15).

Haaa, your calm, pithy answer to my rambling question just made me snort out loud in the library. Thank you!

Hi everyone, I'm going to ask a stupid question about MLA format. Please bear with me. I'm looking over my writing sample and polishing it up content-wise, but I noticed that a lot of my in-text citations just look...wrong. I'm dealing with a short story by Beauvoir but also quoting The Second Sex. So my citations all look like this: (Beauvoir, The Second Sex 120) (Beauvoir, "The Age of Discretion" 83) (Beauvoir, The Second Sex 392) (Beauvoir, "The Age of Discretion" 94) on and on, ad nauseam Doesn't that look ridiculous?! I thought that was the correct way to cite multiple works by the same author but now I'm doubting myself. I'm freaking out about enough app stuff right now that I don't need MLA in-text citation fucking with me too!

I want to, but I've been burned

Eh, yeah, I wouldn't worry. Advisors from two schools have explicitly told me they don't even look at our math scores (this was said with a little chuckle and a look of, "Uhhh, duh"). I'm not spending a minute of time prepping for the quant. I just want to score really, really highly on verbal this time. The first time I took it, I got a 620 (89th percentile) and that sent me into a manic depressive state for a few weeks.

In my experience, schools only require an official, hard copy of your transcript once you've been admitted. If it's just for applications, they're fine with PDFs or unofficial copies.

Those are the worst. Michigan requires one as well and last year I flubbed my way through 300 words of nonsense.

I just realized I used "assume" twice in that sentence and it's really bothering me... I need to get to bed.