a cup of coffee

It's good to aim high, but I wouldn't use rankings as a direct indicator of hireability. A lot of schools that don't make it that high on the rankings list have excellent placement records. I didn't get into a school as prestigious as my naive, naive mind predicted, but looking at where grads there got jobs last year made me feel very optimistic. What else matters?

Seven. I'm poor. And in retrospect, I think it might have killed me to keep track of more than seven applications ...

Getting a student bus pass (they last the entire semester) is currently somewhere between $70 and $90, I can't remember. Northeast is close to campus, but without the undergrad atmosphere (and it's more expensive, I believe). Marcy-Holmes is just south and west of Dinkytown (lots of students), and Como is on the northern side of the university (I've never been up there). Seward is on the west bank of campus and has a lot of good restaurants, shops, a grocery co-op, etc. Another neighborhood that's accessible is Loring Park, which is between downtown and uptown. Steven's Square is just south of Loring Park and can be sketchy, though cheap, but it's one of those areas where even a block or two makes a big difference in how safe you feel. I wouldn't live in Phillips or the areas south of Franklin and east of Chicago, near Hiawatha -- I used to live in that neighborhood and would hear gunshots once in a while ... As for parking in uptown, my apartment and many in the area have parking lots. You can park on the street and can apply for a special pass to be able to park on street parking reserved for neighborhood residents. An express bus (they run all day) takes literally 5 minutes to get to campus, so it's not as if you have to transfer a bunch of city buses to get there. But if you're not concerned about being near some of the coolest restaurants/coffeeshops/record stores/art museums, I don't know what the appeal would be for you. Apartments around campus are affordable, but the areas are less safe. Muggings on the west bank (Riverside is what the neighborhood is called) are pretty common and people seem to get their cars broken into on the east bank all the time. Yes, I think that would be very doable, even without a roommate. It won't be the snazziest apartment, but you will be fine. More likely you would be looking at a room in a house, but I know there are a lot of cheap apartment complexes. You might consider Marcy-Holmes (on the east bank, along the river -- Minneapolis' oldest neighborhood) or Seward (along Franklin Avenue on the west bank). I'm a German minor at the U and I know for a fact the program and its faculty are AMAZING! A one bedroom most places in Minneapolis will probably be between 600-800 a month on average. Make sure heat is included in your rent, you don't want to pay for that. I pay $605 for a basement apartment (with big windows) in the wedge (between Lyndale and Hennepin in uptown, and an awesome area, in my opinion) and it's also got a dishwasher, air conditioning, and a garbage disposal -- a pretty good deal, I think. Air conditioning isn't an absolute necessity, but it's sooo worth it in the muggiest part of summer. PM me, too, I'll answer any questions I can!

I'm an English major and basically a socialist, though I don't know how those two things are related. I think people are indistinguishable from their participation in society, so we all have to take care of ourselves and each other at the same time. I vote for Democrats not because I think the party line is completely correct, but because we have more influence moving parties' political positions from within them than we do from outside of them.

Where did you get info for logging into OneStart? It can't authenticate me to log in. (Incidentally, the system my school uses is called OneStop -- when I saw Indiana's, I just hit my head on my desk. Bureaucracy!)

Wow! At least now I feel like Chicago admissions this year has a happy ending (or beginning, I guess). It's better for all of us if they take better care of their students. This is a good example of what you can't predict in the application season, though!

First of all, I haven't heard anything from Chicago officially, I'm just assuming they've admitted everyone based on what they did last year (emails sent out on one day). It's also rumored that they severely cut their cohort size this year, but that's only what I've heard secondhand. It's really true that you never know, so I will be responsible and take it out of my signature -- I didn't mean to freak us all out more. :> Researching universities that early might be a good strategy. I was rushed for time during my application process and there are definitely things I would do differently. But personally, I only developed my main interest in my summer before my senior year, when I started to do research for my thesis. So it's possible that your interests will evolve a lot, even in the next semester. However, most schools are strong across multiple subfields. I think it just seems good to have a sense of some direction. What I mainly considered when choosing programs were: - where their graduates get tenure track jobs - what the funding situation is like - how many faculty members work in the time period I want to study I know what you mean about wanting to go straight out of undergraduate school -- I also am applying as a senior, although I had a gap of time in undergraduate school. If you apply now and don't get in, you don't have to feel that bad about it and can apply again. For fun you might want to read some recent journals in American lit and see what debates are interesting to you!

Is "pretty certain" certain? The first few professors I talked to about PhD programs told me not to apply. There are a lot of extremely unappealing, difficult, annoying aspects of the job -- definitely talk to more than one TA at your school about what their experiences have been. My husband in currently in a PhD program and I had no idea what graduate students do all year until I watched him. The workload is unbelievably intense, you need to be your own boss, there are tons of annoying bureaucratic tasks to stay on top of, you have to network constantly, the pay is terrible, and the job market is brutal. Being a professor is not the only career that allows you to work with literature and writing, and it is probably the most grueling. If you decide to go, seriously consider taking time off between undergraduate and graduate school. Supposedly it makes you a more appealing candidate and helps convince faculty that you are certain you want to be a graduate student. I would then try narrowing down your interests (which will probably evolve a lot in the next year, anyway) to ones that fit within a typical subfield. Do you want to study 20th century American literature, or do you want to study Romanticism? Once you have a better idea of what you want to do in graduate school, you can look for programs that have strong faculty in your interests. You'll only be accepted to schools that think you will fit their department's research interests and philosophy. This means you probably won't have a definitive list of schools until the fall you apply. Make sure your major GPA is as good as possible (take more English classes your senior year, anyway, for their own sake). And get excellent GRE scores!

That gradapply page is the right page -- mine changed to "Admission Decision: Recommend Admission" on Thursday. I wouldn't worry about being able to edit the extra info, I noticed that too. For what it might be worth, I think mine was the first acceptance posted on gradcafe and my name is near the beginning of the alphabet.

I live in uptown and can recommend it -- a very short bus trip and I prefer being a little bit away from school. My husband is a graduate student at the U and almost everyone in his department lives in the neighborhood. I would recommend living somewhere between Hennepin and Nicollet, between Hennepin and Lyndale is where a lot of the more "artsy" places are. But uptown is becoming very yuppified and I think if I were moving here again, I would live in northeast Minneapolis. You could still get to the university quickly. There are lots of cool bars and restaurants there, too. I work just outside of Dinkytown and it's a nice neighborhood, but very student-y, I guess. Lots of bookstores, coffee shops, sandwich shops, and a couple head shops. The main downside is the cold. It's really, really cold. Nothing will prepare you for it. I am very ready to leave after living through four winters, but I am looking at graduate schools that are places almost as cold. I think if you focused on your work and really loved your program, it wouldn't be so bad. It's just important to get outside during the sunny daytime, even if it's freezing, or else you get a little loopy. (Buy a dog!) The city is pretty liberal, and amongst the university community it is uniformly so. There are more conservatives in the suburbs, and I saw what I thought seemed more typical, puffy-haired "Midwesterners" (I'm from California originally) when I worked in the business district. The theater community is probably the most bustlin', but the arts community in general is very active and there are two good museums. Also, order Pizza Luce. And be sure to visit Town Hall Brewery and Acadia Cafe just by the university.