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margate

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  • Location
    Michigan
  • Program
    English Literature

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  1. Just to chime in (since I'm apparently procrastinating this morning) from my own experiences last year -- If you're declining an offer, make sure to go through whatever online system they have -- just telling the Department itself isn't "officially" enough. If you're not certain whether a particular program has some online button to press, ask. I let several programs know in early April that I wouldn't be attending, but then got e-mails/phone calls from them on/around April 15, because they needed an "official" decline before they could offer someone on their waitlist. So help out the programs and the waitlisters, and avoid my mid-April guilt.
  2. As someone currently in the Michigan program, if anyone accepted/waitlisted has any questions, feel free to message me and I'll do my best to answer. (I don't check my account too frequently, so there might be a delay in my getting back to you.)
  3. Re: Vandy -- perhaps this was just coincidence, but I got my rejection less than 24 hours after e-mailing to let them know that even though I hadn't heard anything from them, I was accepting an offer elsewhere and letting them know. It was amusing.
  4. I don't remember whether I posted it on the board or not, but I got a wait-list letter -- it sounded like the department was holding off on sending letters until they heard back from the university about possibly getting more funding for more spots, but they still haven't heard anything, so they went ahead and sent out wait-list letters. I don't know if everyone on the WL got one, or if other letters went out; it was a pretty exasperated letter on their part -- like they were going through with the university what it sounds like many of us have gone through when trying to figure out whether there's any method to the madness in the notification system, or what silence/non-commital responses mean.
  5. What he said. (EDIT: Or she! How is one to know, behind internet anonymity?)
  6. Vanderbilt, too. And no one has mentioned the potential for disaster that expecting ETS to send the correct scores to the correct places by the correct date can be. As a heads-up: if you had a different mailing address when you took the GRE General from when you took the GRE Subject, you should call to make sure they have merged the damn files. I learned this the hard way 3 hours before a flight in late December.
  7. For what it's worth, subject-test-wise, the best thing I did to study (without realizing it!) was to take a survey course in pre-1798 British lit. There's shockingly little on the exam from after 1900, so be warned.
  8. The one by phone was me. I got a phone call this morning from the professor in charge of admissions. She definitely mentioned having had trouble getting hold of people, which may explain why there's now an e-mail on the board.
  9. I got an e-mail late last night to check the website. I couldn't find any real information about the cohort or funding there, though there was an implication that contact by the department itself will follow.
  10. Google Books and/or Amazon's "preview" feature (or your university library, I suppose) are wonderful tools for this. So is Google Scholar, even if all you get are titles and/or abstracts -- that's more than the faculty webpage will offer, and often more than a CV will, if you're lucky enough to find one. I narrowed my list of schools and POIs based on CVs and descriptions of interests on faculty pages, and then skimmed their actual publications and took notes before I wrote each statement. It's not that you have to fully read each article or book -- I mostly just skimmed introductions and conclusions of books (depended on what was available), maybe doing the same with a particularly relevant chapter; and since I no longer have access to JSTOR, I wasn't able to burn too much time on articles. If there are other fields that also deal with some of your interests, investigate their departments, too; see what type of official/unofficial cooperation among students and professors there might be.
  11. And ... a definition of the 50% load for TAing:
  12. Just checked their website. They do have a terminal M.A. program, separate from the PhD.
  13. My eyes just about popped out when I saw the stipend on that one. That is, I suppose, one way to make sure that those you choose, choose you. Congratulations.
  14. I just received a reply to some questions about post-first year funding from Michael Lambert. The relevant portions: I'm not certain how many courses a quarter 50% is, however. Just wanted to share the numbers, since they weren't in my letter and I couldn't find them on the website.
  15. I didn't apply to Rhet/Comp programs, and I don't know how well this applies to your given situation, but: I majored in both Classics and English, but spent more of my time/energy in Classics, including an undergrad thesis that became my writing sample. My SOP talked about 20th/21st c. Jewish-American fiction; my writing sample was a study of a Greek poet from the Archaic period. It sort of showed something of the theoretical approach to literature that I was claiming I'd use in graduate study, but only if you were looking for it. The more important thing was that it showed I could write well, think clearly, and do literary research. I could have used things "more related" to my field, but I went with the stronger paper and applications have been going pretty well so far. On the other hand -- you've got plenty of time. Contact departments you're interested in, and see whether they do, in fact, care.
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