Comfect

Don't forget that the New Grad is closed for the summer!

I'm going to U of Chicago. And I let all my other schools know weeks ago that I wasn't coming, so I wouldn't hold anyone back who was on a waitlist.

When I say a packet, it was about 2 sheets - one of information (and referral to the housing website) and one of a housing form. It came along with my acceptance - and it would have been easy to miss if I hadn't accidentally not taken it out of the envelope at first and so seen it when I went diving in again to find something else I'd missed. I've heard that the U of C-controlled housing is quite good, and convenient, but I don't know about it relative to International House.

Hi s58 (et alia). I'm also going to U of C in the fall, and I've heard from the grad students that the university-controlled housing you can sign up for (I think you should probably have gotten a packet about it within your larger U of C packet) is very good and very competitively priced. So if you're stressed about trying to think about housing, you can always go that route (I probably am!).

First, I'd echo the above - you're not the one who screwed up. Indeed, even the professors I have visited with and NOT gotten along with thought that questions about advisor/advisee interactions and advising style were good, consequential questions; I've even had professors volunteer their view of their relationship with their other advisees. So her being an ass isn't your fault! In answer to your broader question, I try to get the faculty member talking. About something; usually their research, the academic environment at the university, or how they interact with grad students, but something. I already know my own interests; I want to know this person, and the best way to do that is to get them talking, rather than you answering their questions. Also, if they're talking about one of the above things, they're almost certainly giving me helpful information. Particularly, I place emphasis on the above 3 things and on how they talk about their subject - it's important to me that I share an attitude towards my subject with my advisor - and I tend to ask specifically about intraprofessor interactions and their research. Hope that helps!

I'm wondering, for those who have three or more acceptances, what your method is for winnowing those down to a final place you actually attend (assuming that you don't reject all of them). Do you eliminate them one by one, rejecting as you go along, until you have a single, glorious destination? Or do you hang on to all of them until you have definitely decided on which single place you wish to attend?

I'm not sure about Chicago - I don't know the ratios of degrees in the applicant pool, but there were a significant fraction of MA-in-hand students in the admitted pool this year.

Did you miss the visit weekend? That's the best time to find out about programs (I'm assuming you mean programs that have already admitted you - if that's correct, congrats on having multiple admissions to decide between!). But if you can't go/didn't go/won't go, I'd strongly recommend contacting professors there (and asking them or the department secretary to put you in touch with some grad students too) and asking them questions about the program. They should be relatively happy to answer you if you're an admitted student. But in terms of information I myself have, it depends strongly on your subfield (and your degree - English? Comp Lit?). The English department as a whole is strongly interested in theory, or at least it was the last I know of it, is very small, and seems to encourage faculty-student interaction. That said, when I say very small I mean 1-2 professors per subfield, so if you don't get along with someone it can really be a problem. So I'd definitely contact professors in your subfield and get to know them before deciding yea or nay on Hopkins.

I know my notification was mailed on March 5 (it arrived yesterday). It seems like they are taking their time. Unfortunately, I can also say that the admitted students day is Friday, so there probably aren't any surprise acceptances going out.

Unless something is weird, you should have a little time before you accept (April 15 is still a month+ out, for instance, although I know not all master's programs work on that schedule). So you don't have to decide yet. I'd still say if nothing else changed you should do a careful review of how much you can live on before deciding; but you have a bit of time.

It depends on the school. I know for Harvard the English department frowns on accepting their own students generally speaking, and the History department will admit at most one of their own students a year. But I also know of places that favor their own students (at least if they were GOOD students). So it depends on your specific situation.

Actually (as lotf629 and I conspire to mob this thread), it occurs to me in light of lotf629's comment that I do tend to do two series of close readings - one before I know what I want to say, and one after I've gotten an idea - and look very specifically in the second for things that might support my idea (or nix it) that I hadn't seen when I wasn't reading with a specific eye to that issue. You really do notice different things when you read with an idea in mind.

I tend to do a careful close-reading of my own ideas first, then do a JSTOR search for what seem to me to be the key terms that I would use in my work. From what I find there, I branch out via the footnotes in the articles I find, and refine my searches (for instance if I thought "rebellion" was the main idea and everyone seems to be doing "resistance" instead, I'll start searching more for resistance than rebellion). If that's turning up nothing, then I'll go find a critical edition or a bibliography to find more sources. I pay particular attention to who gets cited by other sources (for example, in my thesis most of my sources cited Stephen Greenblatt's essay "Invisible Bullets." I therefore made absolutely sure to use it).

I would agree with most of this (I went there undergrad, but have been double-rejected for the Ph.D., so who knows if what I think about the department is right, but here goes anyway). The university is VERY bureaucratic for cross-registration, but much less so for internal registration (a single bubbled-in form usually does the trick). Still, if something DOES go wrong, it can take a long time to fix (it took an entire extra semester for the university to realize I had in fact passed my classes at my study abroad institution and I was in fact going to graduate). Context IS huge, poetry IS a major strength, and breadth IS emphasized. And they can be very blunt about it when they think you don't have enough breadth in the general - one person I know was asked, point blank "well, is there anything you think you could say about any poem?" when she, a modernist, had trouble with a question about sixteenth-century sonnets. But because of that, you do end up with grad students who know a lot more about the broad sweep of literature than you do in some other places. Also, it can take a long time to graduate. I don't think my two freshman-year TFs, who were both G4 then, have graduated yet, and I'm a year out of college (and they aren't the only ones in their cohort still around). They might have gotten out last year, but that would be 8 years.

I might actually say the opposite - it's likely easier to live in Syracuse on less money. In NYC you're going to be paying a lot just to live there, let alone tuition.

I would. But then, like all my friends back home, you'd make fun of me for that. Can't win . And yes, I do mean I've been laughed at for calling them TFs. :mrgreen:

Not in the slightest, at least in my field (Renaissance) When I visited there last year, it was very clearly a place where they take theory very seriously and are much less interested (at least compared to Harvard, my undergrad school, and one of the schools you were comparing it to) in traditional, close-reading-oriented literary studies. Hopkins is, or at least can be, quite theory-oriented.

A lot of this depends on your personal situation. Why are you getting the masters? If you're getting it (as some of my current coworkers are) to get a promotion at a place where you already are, then go to Delaware, avoid paying crazy money at Chicago, and come back with your newfound knowledge to your place of work. If you're getting it (as some of my friends are) to find a job later, then weigh whether you could afford Chicago, whether you'd work yourself to death to pay that 75% of tuition + living expenses, and whether you actually like the Chicago program. After all, name recognition is great, but staying sane and happy in grad school is more important.

I had only one acceptance last year, and I visited and hated the place, so I reapplied. I had thought I'd like it, but my visit convinced me otherwise, and I'm incredibly glad I didn't go. Visit the place; check it out; decide if you really want to go there. Then if you do, be very happy you got in, and if you don't, realize that it means some school thought you were qualified this year, and that means you have a good shot next year (now that you have a better idea of what makes a program you like, even if that idea is just 'not the school I turned down') of getting in someplace again, because you're a good candidate. Then reapply places based on your new understanding of what makes a good school for you. Good luck! I hope you like your accepted school, but if you don't, it's not the end of the world to reapply.

As a fellow researcher of the Renaissance, I'll follow your lead, noting that this process led to the first time I have ever chosen to drink alone. My condolences on all your other circumstances; it sounds like this has been a terrible year for you in non-academic ways . Best of luck with the rest of application season. It really seems to get to me, this wait, To nestle in my cracking self-esteem And, being in, to further split my seam And tear me open like a packing crate. It's far too easy, waiting, to create Fantastic visions in a waking dream To fright yourself. Then, turning to Jim Beam Or Johnny Walker, or my jolly mate The flat-tailed beaver on my cider can, I drown these worries. What if I should fail? Thus cider-fueled I'll make a better plan. O lovely drink beside which others pale, The incubator and the cure of pain, Another toast! For I must calm my brain.

I went to what I'm going to be argumentative and call the most prestigious private university in the world, and we definitely had TA-equivalents (different terminology, because by golly we have to be Different). Then I visited Oxford, which is public (although of course not American), and there weren't TAs. So I'm not sure why they would suggest that being private or public has to impact the existence of TAs.

I agree completely (notice a trend?). This is my second round of applications, and while I am (thank God) into two programs that I think both offer wonderful fits for me, I did not even apply to those schools last time, because I hadn't figured out that they were good fits. This year I looked at all the programs I could reasonably look at, looked up their faculty in my discipline, read at least one article by each one...and still didn't predict my fit very well (although I lucked out in the end, I would not have picked the schools I am into as my best fits). I wish we could have a wiki-style encyclopedia of grad schools, with perhaps each entry broken down by field (i.e. an entry on School X with short descriptions of the general departmental attitude towards study in postmodernism, modernism, early modern, Victorian, etc etc etc). Would probably take up far too much bandwidth, of course...

If only it were that easy Thanks.

As the only person who put "Mrs" there, I'll just fess up to the typo

I usually begin with Mr/Mrs and then go by their response (a John Smith remains Mr Smith, a John becomes John).