Two Espressos

Christ, this is a priceless characterization! You had me laughing, Stately Plump! Seriously though, I think I probably have everyone on here beat when it comes to the lowliness of my undergraduate institution.

I'd be very cautious as regards emailing, calling, etc. You don't want to annoy anyone who could possibly end up on your admissions committee. As far as I'm concerned, communicating with potential faculty mentors or advisers is emphatically a bad idea. Others on here will certainly disagree with that sentiment. But the majority of accepted applicants don't email or call potential professors, which both common sense and a poll on these fora evince. I just cannot imagine overworked academics being receptive to the vast majority of email inquiries from would-be Ph.D. students. Personally, I'm not emailing anyone beforehand. As I said above, these things are idiosyncratic, so do what you will. But tread carefully.

Perhaps, but it can also backfire. The truth is, statements of purpose are idiosyncratic-- admissions committees, even more so! There are really no right or wrong answers with these things, minus a few extremes of course, so namedropping may very well work in the way you intend.

This basically says everything that I wanted to say, perhaps more, and certainly more succinctly. But I will add slightly to Phill Sparrow's remarks. Speaking in a general sense, the more elite the institution is, the more likely you'll be expected to know a language or two prior to matriculation. I'd imagine that this would especially apply to programs that require a reading knowledge or better in 2-3 languages, like Harvard and especially Yale. There are anomalies though, such as the University of Chicago, which requires only a reading knowledge in one language.

I'm not applying to a dozen or more programs either, though my reasons are mostly financial. Being poor sucks! I'm going to apply to between 6-8 schools, including one MA program, and I guess I'm just going to make those 6-8 schools be those places which are the absolute best fit.

I know next to nothing about renaissance literature and gender studies, but as a general rule of thumb, avoid name-dropping for its own sake.

I'd explain briefly the C grades in your SOP. Some graduate programs expect you to have some language proficiency prior to matriculation--Duke Literature immediately comes to mind, although I know that there are others.

I didn't read bfat's posts as "cr[ies] for attention" at all, and I'm a little confused as to your acerbic remarks. Since when is 89% on the Verbal a top score? Sure, it's a good score for the general test taker, but for prospective Ph.D.'s in literature or philosophy (or any humanities field, I suppose), the absolute best score is to be desired: humanities kids have essentially received a degree in advanced reading and writing skills, so they should totally dominate the verbal and analytical writing sections. This is usually the case. From data collected from test takers a few years ago, philosophy students scored highest on the verbal and writing, with English literature students scoring second highest in both instances. With that taken into consideration, alongside the fact that the percentages include all test takers, it makes sense that bfat would respond to her/his score with "ouch."

Agreed! When I decide to depart with books in my small-but-respectable collection, I either sell them online or give them to charity, depending on their worth (poor college students always need extra cash. ). There are a plethora of ways one can donate books, ranging from giving them to a local charitable organization to shipping them to cash-strapped schools in Africa. So yeah-- I encourage everyone to donate books they'd otherwise throw away. EDIT: Oh hai, Hegel!

I wouldn't ignore ranking entirely. There is a tendency in many fields to be obsessive-compulsive as regards "prestige," and that's to be avoided, but it seems like many people in the humanities have an opposite problem: ignoring rankings altogether. There's oftentimes good reason for some lower-ranked schools to be lower-ranked; for example, a lowly-ranked Ph.D.-granting institution near me has a reputation for being a total joke as regards academics. Ph.D.'s from there only seem to get jobs at local schools. Personally, I'm not venturing outside the top 50, but that's just me.

Aha! That's it. To help put this thread back on the rails: I'm not an incoming Ph.D. student, of course, but I've been trying to read more straight-up philosophy--Nietzsche, Kant, Heidegger, Deleuze, Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer-- in anticipation of an independent study designed to create a decent grad school writing sample. I should note that I'm woefully behind in my summer reading: notwithstanding a few novels, I've only read Nietzsche so far. And the summer's half finished.

This is completely off-topic, but who's the badass sage in your avatar picture? He looks familiar.

Thanks for the advice! I can definitely see how trying to keep up with the most-recent research could be a "way to madness." A digression: One of the things that most pisses me off about applying to graduate school is the game of make-believe we have to play with research interests. For example, I'm interested in 20th century British and Irish literature and 20th century to contemporary continental philosophy. There are plenty of professors under whom one could conceivably work in these areas. In one sense, I'm not sure I even understand the point of razor wire match-up with prospective professors. I'm in no position to write my dissertation, so why should I pretend that my interests are at a dissertation level of specificity? At this point, I've narrowed my list down to ten or so departments with professors who broadly intersect with my interests. But many of them differ in significant ways. In fact, after scouring the faculty lists of the top 75 or so programs, I haven't found a single professor who "perfectly" matches up with me. Others on here have, and that's why I'm stumped. Basically, that was a roundabout way for me to ask: how precisely should my research interests align with prospective professors?

I've been freaking out for about two years, lol. I'm just ready to get through this goddamn thing. Unlike the more tenacious members of these fora, if I'm shut out from programs this season, which considering acceptance rates is probably going to happen, I'm not going to apply again. I'll just do the research/writing thing on my own and pursue other career options. As I see it, if I'm neither waitlisted nor accepted anywhere, that's a pretty clear sign that I'm not cut out for a Ph.D. So I'm super anxious to see how the coming months dictate the rest of my life! Don't sweat the GREs by the way, at least the General Exam (I have not and do not plan to take the subject test in literature). They're less important than most other application materials, and I found the exam to be a lot less intimidating than I had feared. A question for my fellow applicants (and successful applicants from former seasons!): how much weight would you put in reading recent articles, books, etc. by prospective faculty advisers? I haven't done that yet.

This. High-profile faculty are already expected to be leaving. That fool Rector Dragas needs to go. I wasn't going to apply to UVa anyways, but if I was, this debacle would have negated that altogether. Everything is really tense at UVa right now, and the Board of Visitors certainly doesn't have the humanities' best interests in mind. Prospective applicants: proceed with caution.

I cannot comment upon anything pertaining specifically to community college, but I want to echo some of what Eigen has said here. I'm a rising senior set to graduate next spring. I've taken 16 credits every semester excluding a semester where I took 15 credits. Taking too many classes may stress you out more, but it's definitely doable. A friend of mine has taken a few 18 credit semesters, for instance. Another friend studying nursing needs lots of time to study, so she never takes more than 12-15 credits a semester. I know another girl who's taking 24 credits next fall! That's just insane in my opinion, but I guess it just depends on how you personally learn. I think 15-18 credits is a good amount, and that's my personal recommendation. Since I took 16 credits mostly every semester, I'm ahead of schedule as far as my credits go, so I am able to take an easy 13 credit semester this fall while I prepare my graduate school applications. The saved time (and money!) earned by taking a slightly higher than average course load is probably the best incentive for so doing. That's my two cents.

Wow, the fall 2013 cohort is a talkative bunch! I can't wait to see what this board's like in the heart of application season!

Jesus christ, just stop.

I'd suggest just buying the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and jumping right into it. There's a fairly lengthy introductory chapter that covers the theoretical schools and movements, and the editors likewise include a one to three page intro to every theorist in the volume. I'm unfamiliar with most of the other texts listed here, but the Norton is definitely better than Eagleton's book, far more recent and comprehensive.

I agree completely. This is more or less what I would have said. Caroline SC: stick with Kansas.

I wouldn't apply to Stanford's MTL program if you're "uninterested in literature." MTL requires a dual specialization, one of which must be literature, and you wouldn't be able to skirt around that. Then again, if you really want to know how a particular graduate program operates, ask someone at that program. Sending a brief email to the graduate program chair or an administrative assistant in the department certainly wouldn't hurt.

Yep, looks like it's all gone. Thanks!

Wow, it's spam city in here. Hopefully a moderator can come in here and clean this shit up. I reported one of the posts, so let's see what happens!

I loved A Single Man, though I haven't read the novel on which it's based (isn't it by Isherwood? I cannot remember). I also hated the movie, because I was single at the time (still am, lol) and it made me feel lonely as shit-- "An aging, gay, horribly sad English professor...christ, that's going to be me!"