darjeelingtea16

I had a similar issue, and 'cause I get paid in freaking peanuts, it was particularly painful. I finally decided to calculate all the costs (why? I dunno. To torture myself, apparently) and including transcript fees, testing fees, test score report fees, application fees, visiting fees, etc, it came out to about $1500 this app season. PAINFUL. SO. PAINFUL.

I'd like to think the best of her, but honestly, given how she has been with some other students as well, I'm hesitant to say that she wasn't just being mean. It's partly my own fault too, for asking her to begin with. I had some doubts, but she seemed keen on doing it the first time around, so I figured she wouldn't screw me over. Of course, I have no idea if that's what she did, but I'm still ultra suspicious of the letter she wrote me.

I think she might just be mean lol. I really don't know. Nothing changed at all. My MA program ended and I asked her to write me a letter, which she gladly did, and then when I asked again, suddenly there were all these reasons why she should not. Which makes me wonder what she said in her letter for me last year. I'm going to assume it wasn't a bad reference letter, but if it was a dud, that's just a bad, ya know?

I know what you mean about worrying about references. Last year when I applied, I had a reference say that she'd be happy to write me a strong letter of support. When I asked her to write for me this year, she told me all the reasons why she couldn't write me a strong letter of support, which I wish she would've told me last time! Needless to say, I found someone else to write me a letter, but the whole experience has made me very nervous. And yay for Firefly! I've been watching X-Files haha

I am now at the point where I've mapped out around when I should hear news, based on what the results search pages say. Oh God.

Yeah, it's definitely good to just let it go, especially if you just keep nitpicking at it. It's really hard to do so, of course, but it also feels pretty good to be done. I know someone like that as well! He ended up handing in his MA thesis about 2 minutes before it was due. So lucky, but holy crap I was stressing out for him!

I'm half and half about whether turning things in early shows confidence. At least in my case, I swing wildly from thinking that it'll show that I'm serious and have my shit in order, to thinking that it'll backfire on me if something about my application isn't good enough (as in, I should've taken the extra time to fix such and such thing)...

I think it's hard to talk about your "life experiences, including cultural, geographical, financial, educational or other opportunities or challenges" when it feels like they're looking more for some sort of hardship narrative. I eventually ended up talking about being of mixed ethnicity, and moving in and out of the country (mostly out of it) the majority of my life, and how that impacted my desire to do comparative literature. SIGH. I dunno. Bleh.

I know what you mean by stagnating. That's part of the reason I finally just decided, screw this. I'm going to turn them in now. Ugh, my anxiety must've been building and building because I am seriously ill now. Kinda a bit too coincidental that I've come down with something right after turning all this stuff in.

Assassin's Creed: Revelations is slowly starting to take control of my life haha One of my students' husbands was one of the developers of Skyrim, so she gave me a code to get it for free. I haven't even looked at it yet because I cannot get sucked into another game right now.

I was fortunate with the writing sample. It's a chapter from my MA thesis that my professors seemed to really like so I didn't have to tweak it too much. Well, ok, honestly, everything needs tweaking, but I figured it'd be fine. Hopefully. :/ You'll get there! I've been working on this for over a year now. My suggestion would be to find profs/colleagues to read your SOP. I know everyone recommends that but seriously, it makes the process go by much, much faster. It feels both awesome and awful to have them done. My number one choice this year is Notre Dame, and I agonized over submitting it. Took me two hours of obsessively checking and rechecking all of my information and writing and hovering over the submit button... Ugh, it's always hard to let a piece of writing go without thinking what else you could've done with it to make it better. Pre-submission, I talked to a few of the departments I've just applied to (yay past tense!) and they very kindly urged me to just submit and let go. Easier said than done. As for the video games, yeah Assassin's Creed: Revelations came out this past Tuesday, and technically that was my personal deadline, partly due to the game release (Ah, don't judge me haha), partly due to the reasons I mentioned in my first post, and partly due to a friend coming to visit for a couple weeks. Judging by my experiences last year submitting on the deadline and what I've found out this year, it seems like it'd be best to try really hard to at least get in your apps 1-2 weeks before the actual deadline. Something about getting more attention in some departments... For what it's worth, the revised GRE seems much less difficult. I took the old GRE twice, and scored abysmally. I took the revised GRE in Sept, and got 90% on the verbal. So here's hoping you get awesome scores! That godawful SOP took me the longest to finish. I kept revising it and moving things around and adding things and taking things away and I'm not 100% satisfied with it--don't think I ever will be--but I think I'm pleased enough with it. SPEAKING OF SOPs, I recently contacted a department and was told something about personal anecdotes in SoPs. I don't know if it'll be helpful to anyone, but I was told that many unsuccessful SoPs focused way too much on the personal anecdotes and not enough on the actual research they want to do. Only include a personal anecdote if it's relevant, and interweave it with the reasons why you want to do the research you want to do. It was suggested that the linking of your personal anecdote to your research should be clearly outlined in the first paragraph of your SoP. Also, even if the school has no page length requirements for the SoP, keep it to 2 pages, single spaced. Again, don't know if any of that is helpful, but just passing it on.

Much like many of you, I've been working on this crap for months. Actually, over a year if you include my disastrous round of apps last year. Anyway, I had sent my SOP to be read by peers, profs, etc. My CV was as good as it was going to be. I didn't know what to add to my writing sample anymore. So yesterday and today, I began the process of submitting my applications, and now they're done. I've been coping by playing video games and nursing a stiff neck. Now for the agonizing wait to hear news. Anyone else finished, or close to done?

That's so tricky though. How personal should one get? My interests in my research are fairly personal, but I don't know how much errr--mush? I guess?--that they might want. And, lame excuse, but I'm so burned out from all the other SoPs and the writing sample I've been having trouble avoiding phrases like "as a child" and "I've always loved." Urrrrrrgggg. I really wish it was just all one document. My SoP is pretty much good at this point--I just tweaked some of what I have already. It's just this flippin' Personal Statement!

I am seriously blanking on some of this. I think the SoP is already hard enough, but manageable. The Personal Statement though--that's killing me.

Just wondering if anyone is applying to Michigan, and if so, are you having issues with writing the SoP and Personal Statement? I think I'm having a hard time because I keep repeating myself. I mean, part of the reason why I'm doing the research I am doing/want to do is fairly personal. I dunno. On top of this, I'm trying to get the apps in by next Tuesday (personal deadline). I was just curious about how other people applying to Michigan are doing with this app requirement...

I think that as with any other aspect of this mad application process, it really just depends on the POI. Last year, I emailed maybe 10 people. Each of the emails I wrote was catered to them (so not a mass email). Two replied right away, three wrote me back in about a week, and then one (who I was really excited about) didn't write back until a couple months later, when the semester ended. That last one took a while because he said he was just very, very busy, but he kept my email in mind and wrote me back when he had time, which just happened to be a couple months later. The other people I emailed never responded. I also agree with Timshel. If the apps are due in early Dec, it might be too late to start contacting POIs.

I'm applying to the programs and schools listed in my signature. I'm hoping applying to more Comp Lit programs will give me a better chance, since less people apply to those programs. I think Cornell's Comp Lit program got around 60 applicants last year and they took on 4 or 5. Them's good odds (well, better ones anyway). Like yank in the M20, this is also my second application season. Last year, I applied to 5 schools, all in NYC (except for Cornell). Biiiiiiig mistake. I remember realizing my gross error when I read that 700+ people applied to Columbia's English program. It was a feeling of: ah. Fantastic. Yup, not getting in. I wish the best of luck to everyone on here!

I did, but to be honest, I'm kind of second guessing that decision. Then again, those were the only two people in the department who I felt could even remotely supervise my work. If your research idea is broader than mine (and I've been told the problem with mine is that it's far too specific...tried to broaden it but eh, we'll see), then maybe you can just leave it blank. I don't think it matters either way for them. Emory seems more lax in terms of needing to contact profs ahead of time or deciding who to work with ahead of time.

I took that as optional, since it didn't have a little star next to it. Plus, they say in the app instructions that you don't need to contact anyone before applying. I actually only put down 2 names, and the app site didn't give me any error messages or anything saying that I needed to fill that part in.

I think it depends on the schools. The programs I'm applying to this year each told me some variant of "Get your application in as soon as possible after the application opens." The only exception was Chicago, who never mentioned anything to me about that when I called, but I'm just going to get that one in earlier anyway. Out of the schools that did tell me to get my app in sooner, 5/7 told me that they like to start looking at apps close to when they get the apps. For me, my GRE scores won't be out until Nov. 10 (took it Sept 30th). In the email from Emory about the fee waiver, it says: However, you will receive the fee waiver even if some other components of your application arrive later. This is often the case with the letters of recommendation and official GRE and other test scores. So I just put in my GRE registration and the date I took it, and figured that would suffice. I then called Emory to make sure before I submitted, if it was ok that the scores were coming out in Nov, but that I didn't have them or my rec letters yet and they said that those can come later. I don't know if that's the case for the official December (or January?) deadline though. Might want to call... This happened to me last year as well (the system crash thing). Also, judging from what some of the programs I'm applying to have said about getting apps in early, I get the impression that when the mass wave of apps comes in really close/on the deadline date, they weed out apps faster and don't devote as close attention to them as they would have if they came earlier. Again, I want to stress that this is just information that I've gotten from calling some (not all) of the programs I'm applying to. It might be a different issue altogether with other schools.

It was ridiculously down to the wire. I got that email Emory sent out about it a couple days before the 31st and just busted everything out. I sent my SOP to a friend to look over, made edits where she suggested, submitted it a couple hours before the deadline, and am now hoping for the best. I'm trying to get all my apps in earlier this year. My goal is to have them all in by mid-Nov when my GRE scores come out. I've been calling departments and the ones I'm applying to seemed pretty keen on getting my app as early as I could give it to them. Last year, I waited til' the day apps were due, and I wonder now (as one does after feeling like they've failed) if that's part of why I didn't get into any schools. This year, early app submissions!

I think that's the aspect of the comp lit program that I had the hardest time with in my decision--that they said most of their placements are in language departments or other comp lit programs. I'm ok with being in another comp lit program (if I get in/get placed anywhere!), but I really, really, really don't want to be in a language department. Ultimately, I decided on comp lit because my research does require looking at lit in a few languages, and while talking with various people affiliated with Emory's English department has indicated to me that their department encourages interdisciplinary work, I didn't get the sense that it was interdisciplinary enough to accomodate my research. I dunno. Hope I made the right choice!

I got an email a few days ago from Emory that was sent to all applicants about submitting your app by Oct. 31st to get an automatic fee waiver. I figured, I might as well. At least one out of eight of my apps this year is now IN...let the panic begin. Anyone else applying to Emory and submitted their app tonight? Just curious. (Oh, and after much deliberation, I ended up applying to their Comparative Literature program instead of English, but I made the decision to choose which department to apply to about a minute before I submitted the app :/ )

I'm familiar with the being-in-grad-school rollercoaster to some degree. My MA program was a year long and that click click click click whoosh to the thesis felt more like a tiny whisper of a warning click and then a 2000 foot drop (yay for arbitrary numerical measurements!). I want off the app rollercoaster, at least.

Mostly my mood concerning my apps fluctuates wildly depending on the day (which I suspect is how it is for all of us, really). There are those days when I think, you know, if I don't get in, it's not really the end of the world. This usually then leads to a downward spiral of me wondering what other thing I could be or do instead of being an academic and going to grad school and then getting horribly depressed by my prospects. I just hope something good comes out of this app season, 'cause I seriously want off this rollercoaster haha