dantete
-
Posts
10 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by dantete
-
-
finished by 40? i'm applying to phd english lit. programs at 41. and i'm having the same problem securing a third rec letter. i feel pretty good abnout the two i have but after being out of grad school for 15 years, and college for almost 20, i doubt even my thesis advisors would remember me. at least none of them have responded to my e-mails. i'm trying to figure out what to do. my first deadline is dec. 3, and i'd hate to automatically get blown out of the water due to one LOR too few. ( i was laid off in 11/08 and couldn't find FT work until this past summer so taking courses, even at a community college, was out of the question.)
-
i won't find out what subject test scores are til 12/13 or so when i'm able to call ETS for them.
for the GRE, i'm pleased with my verbal score, but my math score was awful. and i studied so freaking hard. partly because math's not my strong suit in the first place and i haven't had a math class since high school. while studying for the GRE, i ended up learning math better from books and the internet than i was able to in high school. i did sheets and sheets of practice problems too. but when it came down to the GRE, during the math section i went back and forth trying to decide whether or not i'd guess and move on to the next question if i wasn't positive what the answer was or just stick to my guns and work it through. i told myself that i studied so hard and learned so much that i should be able to do this stuff, but just ended up forgetting to watch my time, and i hadn't even finished when time was up. i could have had one problem left to do or 5, i don't know.
and, doing it on a computer was the worst. the reason i had to take so much time to decide whether i was going to guess and move on if i wasn't sure about something or keep working on a problem and try to figure it out is because once you moved on, that was it; no way to go back.
i'm applying to english lit programs and a rhetoric program, so i realize the math isn't really that important. (i hope.) but still, i hate my exceedingly low math score and yesterday, i was actually thinking about retaking the damn thing so i could at least get better scores to harvard in time since their application isn't due til 12/30.
that's not going to happen though.
truckbasket, i like your attitude.
I took the test in October and the "first sweep technique" actually threw me off.
As many have mentioned, the test bore little resemblance to the practice tests or study material suggested by the GRE. Mine was more like 75 to 80% analysis from large blocks of text -- very little trivia-related stuff, and many of the passages I had never seen before. In my first sweep I think I knew maybe 30 questions; and that messed up my confidence. Despite studying for a solid six months, and taking 7 complete practice tests in the weeks leading up to it, I got nailed pretty hard.
It was also the worst environment possible -- extremely noisy and overcrowded with very unprofessional proctoring also.
My scores demonstrated this (29th percentile) but to be frank, I'm not that disappointed simply because the test is so ridiculous and thankfully, more and more graduate programs are ignoring it.
Good luck everyone!
-
was1984, i think your approach is great. having barriers to education can come in so many forms, and what you describe above perfectly illustrates that...the discussion of your family's commitment to education has to be a great addition to this section as well.
-
i thought this was odd too.
i come from a diverse background, and obviously i value it, but what if i were from a very well-off, homogenous background and i'm interested in studying something pretty neutral but am passionate about what i hope to study and plan to teach? does the diversity prompt somehow blend into an issue of morality for the school/adcomm?
also, what kind of academic service would most people have done in terms of advancing "equitable access to higher education for women, racial minorities, and individuals from other groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education"?
do i mention non-academic activist "activity"? memberships? or just stick to coursework, and a personal "i'm female and white/af-am mixed and needed a ton of financial aid to go to college" story?
thoroughly confused as well.
-
i wish i'd known about grad cafe when i was choosing schools to apply to. i decided not to apply to columbia because from what i could tell from the website, funding was incomplete...at least too incomplete for what i'd be able to manage. i also think nyc is so unbelievably expensive that i was trying to picture living there for 6-7+ years on hardly any money. though, in terms of funding availability, it sounds like i might have just been confused by what i read on the site.
-
this helps answer my post about moving away, to a degree, from my prior interests. i've been inspired to go in another direction precisely because of reading i've done since graduating, oh, so many years ago. it makes sense to discuss some specific thoughts on what i've learned and how i'd figure it into future academic studies and pursuits.
-
this is a really helpful topic/thread!
i'm worried about my SOP, and i haven't even started on it yet...spent so much time studying for the tests, i've only done some cursory prepping for the essays i have to submit, the first date being 12/3!
my specific issue is that a great deal of my undergrad english studies were in women's and af-am literature and for my master's degree i competed concentrations in women's studies and african-american studies. while still interested in these areas of lit, my interests have expanded and i really want to explore literature and philosophy. i wrote a paper involving bakhtin's theory of dialogism in grad school so i do have experience working with linguistic philosophy, but otherwise, i'm worried i won't be considered "prepared" enough to be accepted. (the bakhtin paper will be the source of my writing sample.)
but what do you do when your vision is broader than it once was?
I'm starting this thread as a chance to help others learn from my mistake(s), and I hope others will be generous with their lessons learned as well.
I JUST thought to look at my transcripts, and realized that two of the classes in which I did the most work in my area of study do not reflect that on the transcript!! They just say "ENGL _____, Literature and Culture" and ENGL ____, British Literature. I didn't even think to talk about the work I did in these classes in my SOP, I focused on my thesis, my conference activity, and what I want to do for my dissertation -so, while I'm sure my professor's letter of recommendation discusses it to some degree, essentially I applied for medieval literature with only one course actually labeled as such on my transcript. My SOP focused very heavily on what I wanted to do in a doctoral program, while (now I see very clearly) only nominally, superficially, expressing why I was qualified to do it. WOW. No WONDER some of the programs I applied to didn't even consider me as a serious applicant!!
So - from my experience, check what your transcript says about the classes you took/the titles they are filed under, and make sure you discuss in detail for about a paragraph the pertinent coursework you did - texts read, etc. etc.
And boy, do I feel dumb!! But at least now I can see where to go in my next round of apps!!
Anyone else got some good, specific pointers?
-
i agree about the editor question. really?
and the ones i tended to skip were the pure ID questions where i just wasn't sure which answer was correct. there was a lot more reading comp than i thought there would be, but at least with those you don't have to rely purely on memory.
one of the troubles with both the GRE and the Eng Lit. Subj test is that the amount of time and effort involved doesn't equal the amount of weight given by admissions committees...okay, that's a good thing because i have no idea what i got on the subj. test and basing admission on tests is ridiculous, especially for lit. programs. but i studied my butt off for it and now have to sort of "rush" to prepare my essays which i know are infinitely more important.
-
Wow, this is big. I'm applying to Berkeley's Rhetoric program - specifically, the Literature & Phil sub-section that Butler heads. So, she's not leaving until Spring 2012? I'm not applying to the program solely because Butler would be heading the area I'm interested in, but this still takes the wind out of my sails.
list of phd funding sources?
in The Bank
Posted
i'm interested in finding websites that list doctoral funding options...scholarships, grants, not interested in loans.
i've been out of school for a while so i don't have my undergrad institution as a particularly easy resource, and i'm applying this year to enter in fall 2011. (english lit or perhaps berkeley rhetoric)
thanks!