cultureisordinary

I defended my thesis this morning and really had no idea going in what to expect (I think this is a common experience). The committee asked me to summarize my thesis in ~10 minutes. The rest of the time was devoted to questions/comments from them about possible objections/counter-arguments to particular aspects of my argument and about methodological limitations. Despite being clueless about what to expect, I still managed to pass with distinction, so I wouldn't worry too much. The best way to prepare would probably be to practice giving an oral chapter-by-chapter summary of your work and to consider potential objections to and limitations of your work and your response to these charges. Of course, I don't know if my experience is standard or if different programs/departments/schools do things differently, so you might want to contact some of your peers that have recently defended in your program and find out what their experience was like. Hope this helps!

I actually met a student at an admitted students visit this week that had also been admitted to the His Con program at UCSC. He said the program only admitted two applicants this year.

You may want to look into Cultural Studies programs as well as English programs with a heavy CS focus (University of Pittsburgh for example). Doing a search for Cultural Studies in the results section should give you a good idea of what's out there. There are also some programs that are basically Cultural Studies programs but that go by different names, e.g. Culture and Theory at UC Irvine, Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at Minnesota, and Modern Culture and Media at Brown. Hope this helps!

I received a response from UCSB today to expect a decision "no later than the first week of March." I'd say it's safe to assume we've been waitlisted.

Have you heard anything more? I noticed someone posted an acceptance (via website) yesterday, but there's still no decision available for me. I sent an email but haven't received a reply yet. I'm thinking this might point to being waitlisted .

I also checked the website after seeing the rejection in results, and there was no decision available. Not sure what that means...