Boz

Bonjour tout le monde, Just trying to stir things up a little here in the Lit/Rhet/Comp forum! I was curious to see what you're all reading as you wait for our programs to put a merciful end to this painful anticipation that we must endure. *Note: no, past admissions results posted online and the annals of old "Who Got In" forums do NOT count as substantive reading material! As for me, I'm fortunate enough to have enough free time that I can indulge in reading for leisure (which, I think, is a much better way to spend my time than, say, freaking out constantly about getting into grad school...not that I don't do this, too ). At the moment I'm reading Little Dorrit, one of the few Dickens novels that I've never read. I think that reading and enjoying a book from my period has helped to reaffirm my love of all things Victorian and reminds me of why I'm putting myself through this crazy process in the first place. However, I do look forward to stepping outside of my comfort zone and reading around in all different places. I haven't read much contemporary literature lately, so I'll probably look into that next. Any suggestions?

Thanks for the reassurance, both of you. I guess I was just being too obsessive (as usual). Haha, it was actually some newsletter that I got in the mail for Phi Beta Kappa. There was a section about members who had been distinguished in some way, and my professor guy had won an award, so there was a little blurb in there about his transition to a new university. A fascinating read, I assure you .

The support and encouragement that I've received from the professors who wrote my LoRs. Sometimes, when I'm feeling discouraged, I just go back and reread the kind emails that they sent me in response to my request for LoRs from them. One of my professors read over my SoP for me and gave such flattering feedback that I was genuinely touched (but also still a little bit in disbelief that my SoP wasn't garbage, ha). Anyway, whenever I get too down on myself, I just try and remember that these professors have faith in me and wouldn't tell me things about my work/grad school potential that weren't true.

Same here. If I got into one of the schools that notify early (late January/early February, I think), everything would be fine. The rejections that came along later wouldn't be nearly as painful.

ridgey, I agree with everyone else that you'll be fine. Plus, the fact that he's the dean didn't have any bearing on your desire to work with him--he interests you as a professor, which is also a significant role that he occupies--so I wouldn't worry about it . I thought I'd add a little faux pas of my own--I realized after submitting my application to a school (which happens to be one of my top choices) that there is a certain famous professor, huge in my field, who has a 6-year visiting professorship at this school. I would LOVE to work with this guy, and our interests correspond exactly, but since I hadn't even realized that he was there, I didn't even mention him in my SoP! He's been teaching at a couple of different schools over the past few years, and I guess I didn't track him well enough. Actually, he's pretty old, so I even thought that maybe he'd retired. I didn't even catch this on the school website--I read about it in a magazine. What also made him tricky to find online is the fact that he's teaching in a separate department, so he wasn't listed with the English department faculty. Boo! However, it's still my fault for not looking closely enough, I admit it. Anyway, this might sound silly to some of you, but I personally think that the admissions committee will wonder why I didn't discuss this guy in my SoP, considering his status and our compatibility. I worry that it will make me come across as uninformed about the program, since this guy teaches in Comp. Lit. and it would be completely plausible for me to still work with him as an English student. So, I feel like an airhead about that.

Thank you for sharing, commoner, and I'm glad that you decided to try again (re-applicants for English seem to have good luck, from what I've heard). You'll have to let us know how things turn out this time around--I look forward to seeing a long list of acceptances!

I applied to 14 schools, all of which have very low acceptance rates. Like many others, I fluctuate between confidence and despair so often that it's difficult to pin down a rational estimate. I also think that I may have fudged up one of my apps, so I'll pretend that I'm already out of the running for that school. Pessimistic: 1 acceptance, 13 rejections Realistic: 3 acceptances, 1 waitlist, 10 rejections (Very) Optimistic: 5 acceptances, 2 waitlists, 7 rejections I think that for humanities programs such as English, where the WS and SoP often take precedence over the numbers, it's even harder to guess what will happen. Although I think I'm a great "fit" for certain programs, who knows what they'll think :roll: .

Barbaric yawp. Yes, Whitman, "Song of Myself." Not too shabby for a bioinformatics guy .

I remember reading the success stories of all three. I'm glad that things turned out so well for them the second time around--if worse comes to worse and I have to reapply next year (*groan*), it's good to know that the tables can turn. If you don't mind my asking, what did they do in the interim period to make themselves stronger applicants? MA programs? You can PM me if you want.

Ditto . Although, I'm also inclined to believe that one of the reasons I spend so much time on these forums is due to certain insecurities I have about the strength of my application. Reading about others' experiences has often taught me that my paranoia is ungrounded, but sometimes I get that little *twinge* of knowing that I'm probably at a disadvantage in some respect. In other words, if I were more self-confident as an applicant, I don't know if I would be so in need of reassurance from the online community. But that's just me--I don't mean to say that applicants who use these forums aren't excellent, amazing, brilliant, etc. scholars (as most of you are, no doubt--the results page speaks for itself). I definitely think that, in helping each other, we all make self-improvements and better-informed decisions about applying. And then, there's the whole support group thing that I also love . Still, I do agree with you guys that our obvious enthusiasm should at least count for something. Seriously.

Lately, I've been channeling all of my nervous energy into a baking frenzy--not healthy food, but things like cakes, brownies, cookies, etc. It's funny how baking can make you feel like you're doing something productive, and it's usually my typical displacement habit when avoiding real work. However, there is something relaxing about it that makes it a good therapy for handling the agonizing stress of waiting... Luckily, I've been successful in forcing these goodies on friends and not consuming them all by myself .

So, us literary types have been a little quiet for the past three days. This period between app deadlines and notifications is awful! I figure that the first possible thing I'll hear about will be the phone interview with Northwestern in late January/early February (if I even make it that far in the admissions process)--Eek! Did anyone here apply there last year and get an interview? Any words of wisdom? For once, I'm actually looking forward to Valentine's Day (i.e. Singles Awareness Day), since I've heard that there are usually a flurry of responses around then (of course, if these are rejections, then V-Day will suck even more). Also, most of my schools have online systems for tracking the receipt of materials, but a few of them don't. I emailed Berkeley awhile ago and the secretary wrote back saying that they get too many apps for them to be able to confirm that each app was complete (she added that in some cases, individuals would be contacted if missing materials were needed). I haven't contacted the other schools with no online system--Harvard and Brown--and I was thinking that their response would be similar to Berkeley's. Should I bother? Of course, I would like to make sure that they received my things (which I mailed out over two weeks before the deadlines), but I also don't want to be another annoying applicant pestering the secretary. And has anyone else noticed that Columbia just doesn't update their "Application Status" form, ever? Or is this just me? On a different note, I was checking out the "Who Got In" LiveJournal page from last year, and whoa, was I impressed with the places that people had been accepted to! It was strange to actually read someone's announcement that he/she had received an offer from Yale. After I got over my jealousy, it was just nice to be reminded that dreams do come true. I feel like the grim statistics--"20 acceptances out of a pool of 300+"--can often get us feeling disheartened, but for strong applicants there's always hope despite the odds. One person on LJ was describing a phone call from a certain professor (with whom, as a matter of fact, I would LOVE to work) who personally congratulated this lucky individual on his/her acceptance. Wow! So, anyway, I just wanted to introduce a little bit of optimism to the board, since I know that it's easy to fall into the Slough of Despond (not a Pilgrim's Progress fan, but I thought that it was appropriate) on the long road to grad school.

U-V-A! Go Hoos go! (If you ever go to the football games, you'll learn the cheer). UVA alum here, just supporting my school I also applied to a ton of schools (14), including my alma mater. Best of luck!

I asked my former advisor at UVA and he told me that there were no particular expectations for how the 25 pp. should be divided up between two papers (an annoying requirement, I agree), but only the obvious fact that it should showcase the applicant's best writing, preferably in the proposed field of study, etc., etc. I'm applying to the PhD program at UVA as well (whether I'll attend the same school again, if offered admission, is another story), and I recently submitted a 20-pp. excerpt from my honors thesis and a 5-pp. excerpt from a successful 10-pp. seminar paper. I feel confident in the former, because it's one of my best pieces of writing and demonstrates my personal interests well (plus, I already know that at least some of faculty like it--they gave it quite a positive review last spring ). On the other hand, it was very difficult for me to select the shorter paper: of the two samples that I was trying to decide between (the ones that fit the criteria of being both in my general field and, well, good), one was quite different from my honors thesis but just kind of *meh*, while the other was very similar to my honors thesis (in topic) but more interesting than the other potential sample. So, I went with the latter. I think that's a good decision. P.S.--Merry Christmas, everyone!

I'm glad that I found this thread. I got a 750 (99%) Verbal and a 740 (81%) Quantitative and...a 4.0 (37%) AW!!! Someone mentioned that Kaplan sucks--well, I took a Kaplan prep course that was extremely helpful with Verbal/Quantitative stuff, but the instructor (who was great) spent absolutely NO TIME at all preparing us for the AW essays. He was just like, "Come on, guys, it's SO easy!" and then we outlined like two sample essays together as a class...and that was it. So from the start I was under the impression that the AW part of the GRE was no big deal. Now, I'm an English major (seriously), so I admit that I may have been a little over-confident about it, too--I obviously should have done a few more practice essays on my own--but in any case, I blew it big time. Like others, I was seriously disappointed but didn't want to re-take the exam since I did so well on the other sections. I've already sent out my applications to mostly top PhD programs in English, and I'm hoping that my SOP and WS (not to mention the awards/honors I've earned for my writing--from um, professors, not ETS morons) will persuade the admissions committees that I'm a *good* writer. The other parts of my application--GPA, LoRs, etc.--are also strong. Judging from the guidelines on many English department websites, it seems like they pay the most attention to Verbal and Subject test scores... ...let's hope

I was just curious about something and would like to hear other people's (better-informed) opinions on the subject. What are the most popular fields of interest for those applying to PhD programs in English these days? I read somewhere (I forget where exactly, but it was a reliable source) that about half of all people apply with a focus on modernism/20th c. literature, but does anyone know the stats for other periods/genres? For example, is the other half of applicants distributed evenly across other specializations, or are there other particularly popular fields pre-1900? Or certain schools of theory/criticism? I apologize if this is all common knowledge and I just sound silly--I don't have many intellectual/literary friends these days (post-college), so I'm out of the loop!

Hi everyone! I just finished my last application, and WHEW, am I glad it's over! But now--the waiting game, ahhh! However, considering the fact that the earliest notifications are rejections, I think I'll be able to wait until February/March:) I applied to a lot of schools--probably too many, considering that I just discovered a GLARING mistake on one of my SOPs (resulting in a frantic email to the English department at Johns Hopkins)--but I'm confident that I should get accepted to a few...I hope (*fingers crossed*). I would like to focus on 19th c. British/Victorian literature, as well as feminist/gender studies. The novel and nonfiction writing (essays, journals, auto/biography, etc.) appeal to me, as do new historicism and Marxism. By the way, I noticed that a few of you are applying to UVA--I did my undergraduate work there, and I absolutely LOVE the English department! All of the professors are fantastic! If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message. GOOD LUCK to all!