kfed2020

Hey all, I'm sure they will be notifying you officially by e-mail; I more think they're trying to avoid those 600+ people you mention calling/emailing them/etc. trying to figure out the status of the process. They're not exactly overstaffed, over there. They're not doing it ti be rude.

Sounds like NYU is more interested in grilling people for their interest in the city than they are in helping those people be able to afford to live there...

Can't hurt to have a wider appeal! I was the same way when I applied last year, and I think it worked to my advantage.

A friend in the program says the faculty called their admits last week. Good luck everyone!

These professors all know each other. Rank probably matters less than a recommendation written by a friend. Not something you can predict, and therefore, not something for you to worry about. Use the professors most capable of speaking to your abilities. Given that proving these abilities should be the aim of your application, I'd say you should focus on this. Of 3 recommendations, you can safely submit one from a junior faculty member who hasn't yet made a name for him/herself. After all, they're the ones that tend to know you best!

Don't forget Glenda Gilmore at Yale or Evelyn Higginbotham at Harvard. Both wonderful people to work with.

Is it useful to think about the department's overall ranking? Your interests are much more specific than the broad term "History," so it's probably best to think about this in terms of the school that'd best serve your work. If you do Af Am, for example, Rutgers is worth a close look. Legal historians like Princeton. Gender and sexuality, try WUSTL. Tailor your search to your own needs. Rather than looking at the placement of overall departments, try looking up the students who've worked with your potential advisors and see where they've taken jobs. Look up dissertations, see what impresses you. US News gives a general sense, maybe, but the harder task of finding a fit for yourself is, ultimately, up to you.

This is true. Also keep in mind, everyone, that Columbia's program is inclusive of both English and Comparative Literature, and so attracts students interested in both fields, accordingly. If Harvard's Comparative Literature and English pools were combined, I'm sure the number of applicants would be similar. (Probably a little less, because Cambridge/Boston is no New York.) Still, yes, it's scary to think you're all thrown in there together. Probably less than a third of the students applying to any of these programs will genuinely appeal to the admissions committee. If you're competitive, you're not competing with 700 people; you're competing with far, far less.

That wasn't my experience. I was very proactive about contacting professors last year because I genuinely had key questions about certain programs. Then a dialogue would get started and the professors became pretty familiar with me; the DGS at a top-15 program even offered to read my personal statement and give me advice on it. Very useful. As well -- and more importantly -- after getting into some programs, I was SPECIFICALLY told by the professors I'd contacted that they'd remembered our conversations when reading my application and had kept an eye out to make sure I would fare well in the admissions process. Granted, this all depends upon a few important things: 1) strategizing to come off as an attractive prospective applicant, 2) submitting an attractive application, 3) having genuine need to get in touch in the first place. The first two bullets are a separate conversation altogether, but if you genuinely have reason to be in touch (beyond, obviously, wanting to kiss ass), you absolutely should. Not to mention that, wherever you go, these people will become your colleagues. Having them become familiar with you sooner rather than later never hurts. And testing how well you're marketing yourself -- are you asking the right questions? stating your interests in an attractive way? -- is absolutely helpful to the application process. Good luck!

The Lit GRE is one of those exams from which few people escape unscathed -- even those who did well. Most people leave feeling dejected, so don't worry too, too much over post-exam distress. Feel free to re-take, of course, but know that there are much more important things (in life, but more specifically in the world of graduate school applications), and don't let preparation for this exam detract from time you could be using to edit those samples of writing -- because those are truly what make or break you in the end.

Your scores are fine; don't even worry about that. Focus on those writing samples!

Well, Minnesotan, I think you're addressing the big conflict going on in literary study right now. While cultural studies seems too often to be a substitute for rigorous literary study these days, it's also true -- given how instrumental artistic forms like literature have always been to the expression of identity, political purpose, imagination, etc. -- that it'd be hard to imagine a discussion of "culture" that were absent of literature. This must be what makes literature so attractive to cultural studies folks, and this societal relevance certainly seems to be why those of us studying lit find it capital-I-Important rather than merely pleasurable. I guess that's what makes the distinction between "formalism" and "cultural studies" seem to false to me. Formalist approaches aren't absent of historical and cultural context; in the first place, let's not forget that "Canon" is, itself, a context. The basic questions of when something was written, where and by whom remain important to all of us, I think, because these notions certainly inform our interpretations. I couldn't imagine a lesson on The Scarlet Letter, for example, that didn't elucidate the importance of Puritanism to the book's themes, characters, structure; rather, I wouldn't see the value in such a lesson if it existed, because the book's form is certainly not historically arbitrary. Similarly, worthwhile cultural critiques that use literature as a vehicle generally use formalist readings of a text to derive a sense of the culture from it, rather than the other way around. Cultural critiques that force context onto the text are not really of any use to anyone. Frankly, the most liberal thing about cultural studies might not be the method of interpretation but rather the object being interpreted. The field's definition of "Text" is, I admit, ever-expanding, encompassing books, yes, but also bodies, buildings, all forms of visual production... Maybe that's the conversation we're really having? But if the old liberal arts argument is that we should emphasize the "how" rather than simply the "what," and if a graduate education is at least partially about being trained in a particular strain of "how," then perhaps the true worth of literary training is that it is a "how" applicable to a broad range of "what." Either way, I still assert that it'd be in the OP's best interest -- anyone's best interest, actually -- to find professors whose objectives and methods match his/hers, to look at the departments housing these professors, to see if there are also graduate students of a like mind, and to apply accordingly. That seems far more important (and feasible) that aiming for a formalist majority. The most important thing is to be supported by your department, and you don't have to be the majority for this to be the case. Formalists haven't died out, and I think to ask for a *strong* program that only really pursues one methodology might be asking too much no matter what you study. Your graduate education should be individually driven, and as long as your work is being supported and you're comfortable, the stuff going on all around you may not be nearly as important.

I think many, if not most, schools have a policy on this, and it should be somewhere on that school's general graduate school website. I would double check for each school that interests you. As a general policy, though, unless you're aiming for a joint degree, you might be better off choosing one program over another -- perhaps the one that seems more open to your taking courses in other departments, so that you can take as many in the other attractive department as you like. Departments/programs each have different sorts of requirements for their students. See if one program's requirements don't suit your needs more. Good luck!

Yeah, agree ... Not least because, while you can choose between a full range of schools when applying for graduate study and can therefore avoid whomever you want, your options when you're on the job market are going to be considerably more limited and, well, it would be unfortunate for you if the "School of Resentment" is the only one hiring. Besides, as earlier stated in this thread, the chasm between formalism and theory/cultural studies/etc. is increasingly thin. Your energies may best be put to use trying to find schools that will support your project with many like-minded professors and graduate students and open-minded colleagues, rather than allowing you to segregate yourself from an entire body of thought (or bodies -- not sure I agree with Bloom on the singularity, here). You never know. Graduate school is the place where people who walk in as 20th-C New Historicists sometimes eventually walk out as queer theorist, feminist Victorianists, all because of new exposures. Is this what you're afraid of?

It's interesting to hear about this history between the two fields. I don't think I knew very much about RhetComp as a separate field of study until I read about here. Well, at least someone's getting jobs.