Tybalt

No joke-- The first time I took the GRE, I REALLY prepped for the math section. I hadn't taken a math course in nearly a decade, and I wasn't very good at it back then, either. I bombed it. The second time I took the GRE, I figured, "screw it--The math section will never go well anyway, so I'll just focus entirely on the verbal." I did just that. I didn't even waste brain power on the math part. I guessed randomly, and spent all of my energy on the verbal. It worked. My verbal score went up by 90 points. The frightening part is that my math score went up by 40 points.

Tell me about it. My committee has been waiting on this chapter for two weeks. I have a 100+ page word file of notes, and my works cited is 10 pages long. I intended to crank it out this weekend. Did it happen? Noooooo, I've been grading awful undergrad papers all day today (still in my office actually), and yesterday, I was pulled by the draw of going out for sushi with the other two mega-nerdy members of my cohort.

I'm Renaissance as well. I've been surprised at how many American/Modernists have been getting admits. I thought those were the tougher fields to get jobs in. I also wonder if early-modern/medieval is taking a hit with (from my perception at least) a sizeable wave of retirements this year. At any rate, a big congrats to everyone who got into Rutgers! I'd have loved to go there, but it was always a "shoot for the moon" app for me.

That's why Florida is so high on my list. Sidney Homan seems like an absolutely perfect fit, from his research to his approach to classroom teaching. I would love to work with him on my dissertation (and UF would probably be even higher than it already is if it weren't for that whole heat thing y'all have down there--I'm a life-long denizen of snow-capped mountains. We don't get a lot of sharks and 130 degree temps up here).

I did my first conference presentation after my second semester of MA work, but I've seen plenty of calls on the UPenn site that were open to Undergrads. If it's a well-written abstract, I don't see why they wouldn't consider it. If you're up for something on short notice, you can still submit an abstract for the graduate conference at St. Bonaventure (website pasted below). The submission deadline was Friday, but we aren't making the final final choices until Tuesday. If you can get an abstract in in the next 24 hours or so, I can make sure it's considered. Our conference is open to grad students, undergrads and junior faculty. We're going to have folks there from a number of the SUNY schools, and our keynote speaker is from U of Rochester. http://web.me.com/smoneil/BonasConference/Welcome.html

Yep. I'm wrapping up my MA at Saint Bonaventure University. I'm guardedly optimistic about Rochester. It's a great fit. They have a pretty decent track record of accepting Bonas grads (they took one last year, and another two years before that). My numbers are also in line with what they ask for (4.0 MA gpa, 680 V, 5.5 AW, 620 Subject). That said, I'm worried that my SoP may have had too much of a "narrative" tone, and I have an atrocious transcript in my undergrad past (I have two undergrad transcripts--the first one, where I went from 1998-2001, is dismal. The second is from the school where I actually earned my degree cum laude). We'll have to see. I'm hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. it's all I can do at the moment.

Rochester is my current top choice as well (just a smidge ahead of UFlorida). I'm Early/Modern, Shakespeare and Renaissance Pedagogy. Mentioned wanting to work with Rosemary Kegl, Jonathan Baldo and Kenneth Gross in my SoP.

I'm a couple hours south of you (finishing up my MA at St. Bonaventure). Three of the schools on your list (UFlorida, UNLV, and Rutgers) are on my list as well. I sincerely hope that we both wind up with acceptances to the same program, because I will make sure that you never live down the fact that you had a mini-mid-life crisis at the ripe old age of 24. Signed, Your 31 year old fellow applicant

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1943669 Fair warning-- while this video is hilariously nerdy, it does get a bit dirty.

If any of you guys go to Delaware for the MA, you'll have to report back here on the PhD class. I'm getting more and more curious as to whether they admitted ANYONE to their PhD (4 rejects posted, no admits, and there hasn't been a UDel PhD admit posted to the Cafe since 2007).

Did you apply to the MA or the PhD? I haven't received any e-mails from UF...

There was a PhD rejection for UDel posted today via e-mail. I haven't heard anything either way. Anyone else heard from Delaware PhD? I've heard great things about the program, and it's really close to my brother's family. Edit--Never mind. I just checked the website. Rejected.

I'm waiting on Florida as well. Early-Modern. I really like the look of the program, but I'm not sure what to think about the weather. I'm a northeast kinda guy, and I think I would melt quicker than Falstaff in a buck-basket in Gainesville.

Thanks. I never get used to it. Thanks also to everyone for providing a venue to get it out. I felt like a very small human being for getting as "gloom and doom" about results as I have been. On a positive note, I heard from Mark's brother--he's still at shock/trauma, but it looks like he's going to pull through. He's a tough kid.

Don't apologize. As much as some of us (myself included) are stressed about not getting in, we need to realize that there is another layer of stress for those already admitted. Teaching is a scary thing if you've never done it. I will say this--Odds are pretty good that your cohort and the other grad students will be able to support you with your teaching. Teaching experience is something that I already had when I started my MA. As such, I help out whenever the other folks in my cohort need feedback or ideas for a lesson, paper topic, etc. My big weakness was theory. I had never had a theory class in undergrad, and I really struggled with it at first. Two of the other grad students had taken multiple theory courses and helped me out. That's why meeting the cohort is just as important as seeing the school, reputation and all of that other stuff. A good cohort will save your bacon more times than you know and vice versa. Congrats on getting in. Take a deep breath and realize that yes, teaching will be hard--but you will have people to help you out with it, and once you get the hang of it it's REALLY fun, too.

Fair warning--This is not a "chin up, I got rejected by 5 programs before getting a funded offer" story. We are officially halfway through February. There are those of us (like myself) who have received rejections but no admits. There are those of us who have heard nothing from any program at all. It's easy to stress out. It's easy to picture across the board rejection. We start to picture spending a year waiting tables. In horror, we see ourselves getting forced out of academia and onto the bottom rung of the economic world of "real life." We start to question our intelligence, our worth and our futures. I know. I've been doing it. Today I stop. Today, I recognize that going to work for a year is not a bad thing. Today, I realize that even if I never get a funded offer for a PhD, my life will have meaning because I will have a life. Before I started my MA degree, I spent four years as a high school teacher. I received an e-mail this afternoon, letting me know that two of my former students were in a car accident last night. Both of them graduated last year. Both are 19. One, Mark, is a United States Marine, and he is currently fighting for his life in a shock-trauma center. The other, Ashley, is dead. At 19 years of age. After receiving this news, my perspective on this whole process was forcibly altered. I still hope for a funded offer to continue my work on Shakespeare. I will still get a little goofy every time I hear the beep of a new e-mail arriving in my inbox. I will still check Gradcafe often enough to qualify as an addiction. I will no longer dread the notion of going 0-11. I will no longer get all dramatic at the concept of a year outside of PhD work. Whatever I do over the next 12 months, whether it's starting a PhD program, applying again, working a job I love or working a job I hate, I will be alive to experience the highs and lows of that year. Whatever happens, I will remember that. Our "worst-case scenarios" would look very enticing to Mark and Ashley right now. I intend to remember that over the coming weeks and months. I apologize for the depressing tone of the post. It doesn't make any sense to me when kids die. It makes even less sense when they're my kids.

Someone posted an e-mail acceptance today. Anyone claiming it? Maryland's notification set up is very strange (there have been I think three acceptances posted so far, all on different days, almost a week apart from each other).

Got my reject e-mail this morning. I'm okay with it. The program was a great fit, but I don't know anyone in LA (I'm a lifetime East Coaster), and the funding would be very difficult to live on (I'm not adverse to having a roommate, but as a 31 year old, it might be tough to find one who was compatible). I also understand why they notified on a Friday. It just makes good sense from their point of view. They know that the rejected folks are going to be upset. This way, it gives us the weekend to have that initial reaction and calm down a bit, rather than calling the English department to find out why. Congrats to everyone who got in!

The worst part is the ambiguity and mystery of the whole thing. Case in point-- One of my main concerns about my app is my 1st undergrad transcript. I went to a school in PA when I was 17, and just before my entire family life fell apart (relatives hospitalized, childhood dog died, childhood home burned to the ground via arson--ages 17-20 were like a particularly sick country music song). Like an idiot teenager, I didn't know to step back and reassess. I kept on signing up for classes, but rarely went to them. I think I failed the college writing class three times due solely to the attendance policy. I was told by a journalism prof that I failed his class even though I had the highest grade IN the class (again, due to the attendance policy). I ended up taking a year off to work, transferring to a school in MD and, two and a half years later, graduating with honors. I worked as a high school teacher for 4 years, garnering awards and recognition for my work in front of a classroom. In the Fall of 09, I started a full-time English MA (4.0 gpa, and 4 conference presentations). My GRE scores are comparable with some admitted folks (680 Verbal, 5.5 AW, 620 Subject). The writing sample has been through the editorial gauntlet plenty of times. My LoR's all said they raved in their letters, and they all seem shocked about the explicit and implied rejections (UCLA is the confirmed, SUNY Buffalo, Notre Dame, and Vanderbilt are the ones where it's all but official). It keeps coming back to two concerns: The tone of my SoP was too narrative (I compared it to the one written by someone I know who got into UB, and hers was almost blunt, while mine tried to tell a story), and my first undergrad transcript. Here's the really frustrating part: When I applied to MA programs in 2009, the DGS at Delaware offered some feedback on my rejection. He told me that I had to address the bad undergrad transcript in my SoP. Going on that advice, I did just that this year. After the SUNY Buffalo notifications, I asked the DGS of my current grad program for feedback, and he said that I shouldn't have even SENT the first transcript (regardless of what the app said), and I certainly shouldn't have "drawn attention" to it in my SoP. He said that the first thing programs do is look through the pile for any reason to throw an app on the reject pile, in order to get that pile to a more manageable size. That comment marked the first time through this entire process that I actually got angry (I've been disappointed at times, but never angry). For $75, the whole application should be reviewed. After spending 10 years working my posterior off to excel in the worlds of education and academia, it galls me that three horrible years of my life from the 1990s are still viewed as more important (or at least important enough to never even look at what I've done in the decade since). To be perfectly honest, I would be in favor of some sort of governmental policy requiring programs (at least the programs at publicly funded schools) to list EXACTLY what their review process will be. The actual review process, not the warm and fuzzy "we look at the whole application" line, which is apparently not true (according to at least one DGS). The reason they don't list the actual process is because, even though it would give them that "manageable number" of applications they seem to want, it would deprive them of the boon of getting 75 dollars in exchange for throwing years of hard work in the garbage. Sorry about the soap-box moment. I can handle being rejected based on things like competition from better applicants, weaker SoP and stuff like that. As I said, my classmate who was accepted to UB had a tighter SoP than mine, and her spot is well-deserved. I just got so aggravated at the idea that my app never got to be rejected based on that kind of issue, but was likely rejected initially due to something that happened in the late 1990s.

That's what I thought last weekend, when I got two of my officially unofficial rejections (ie- they sent out acceptances, and I did not get one). I now fear the weekends as much as the week. I'm officially at that point that I almost just want to get the official rejections in hand and start on apps for next year. I still have some hope for some of the schools on my list (Florida and Rochester were particularly good fits), but I just keep seeing things about my app that I would have done differently--starting with the "too narrative" tone of my SoP.

Not me. I e-mailed Dr. Vos (the prof who would've been my potential mentor), and he basically told me that he would be retiring before I could finish the PhD (and that the other Ren. scholar didn't particularly like New Historicist approaches). While I'm bummed at losing the opportunity to work with him, I really appreciate the honesty and forthright nature of his e-mail. I would have been so upset if I spent $75, got in, and then found out that I'd never get to work with the guy who made the program such a draw to begin with.

Congrats! I did my undergrad at Towson, so I know the MD area very well. What is your sub-field? Who were you looking to work with? Did they give any indication as to how large the cohort would be this year? There have only been 2 acceptance postings for MD, so I'm hoping they've only notified those who are being put in for university fellowships.

Which begs the question, what did you do different this year? As someone who is looking at a possible 0-11 this season (no notifications, but 5 of my 11 have notified acceptances), inquiring minds want to know and what not.

I just went to check and realized that I don't even remember getting login info from them. The website asked for temporary login and password. I checked my grad school apps e-mail folder, and none of the UF e-mails mention a temp login. My standard logins aren't working either. I am officially concerned.

Yup, I meant the PhD. And you should know better than to tell a bunch of result-crazed spastic applicants that one of the programs they are still holding out hope for only had "very very few phd students." (Kidding...mostly )