The Bitch of Armenia

I'm currently a first-year Ph.D. student in the English program at A&M where I got my M.A. I decided to do another round of applications because I realized my interdisciplinary interests in the history of science would be difficult to pursue formally because the history department here doesn't really emphasize premodern science in any way. So, I've reluctantly decided to try to transfer. One of the things I'm risking walking away from is the collegiality of the department. Intellectual community is a major emphasis at A&M, and the welcome wagon is, in part, their way of expressing that. Most members of the faculty are particularly engaged with graduate students, there are many productive working groups devoted to various areas of interest, and the English Graduate Student Association organizes weekly happy hours and semesterly events and colloquia, which, for me, have provided some of the highlights of my experience as a grad student. I've found the informal interactions with my colleagues and professors to be an important facet of my education and professionalization. I'm about to send off a welcome letter to a prospective student with my area of emphasis, so if you have any other questions feel free to ask.

I see two acceptances posted for Indiana University, but no rejections. Has anyone heard anything else? I'm just twiddling my thumbs when I ought to be doing something more productive...

Thanks for the link!

I just checked the My UW site to find that the dept. has recommended admission but under review by the grad office. Does anyone know what that means? Does the grad school exercise veto power or do they just negotiate funding? If anyone would sniff at my terrible quant. score, I suspect it would be someone at the grad school, leaving me scared but cautiously optimistic.

That question has been haunting me as well. I was extremely happy with my verbal, but the quantitative was embarrassingly low. I'll share it for the sake of some comic relief at this vexing moment: I'm talking 8th percentile low. The experimental section was quantitative, so I had to do twice the math and I'm certain the one that counted was the one I ran out of time and energy on. I made a brief apologetic reference to it in my personal statement, so I'm hoping that admissions folks understand that someone who hasn't done math without a calculator since the mid 90s isn't going to perform well under such conditions.

I'm in the same position. No word from UW, and day by day my relationship with every mode of communication (phone, post, email) becomes progressively more dysfunctional.

I've heard nothing from Pitt as well. But I'll take comfort in knowing I'm not the only one trapped in Dante's second cantica.