Gauche

That's how I felt until I received my first notification too. Congrats and let the the great feelings sink in!

I only heard about the GTAship. They are still trying to decide how much the stipend will be.

I received more details about funding after talking to the DGS. I'm just curious, but how many of you have an MA if you were accepted into the PhD program? I'm just wondering if you need to have an MA to be in the PhD program or not.

You never know until you try. I'm planning to submit to PAMLA for fall 2013 even though (I hope to be) a first year grad student by that time. If you want to make sure you have the best chance possible of getting your abstract(s) accepted, let some professors and/or tutors in the Writing Center take a look and give you some feedback. Best of luck to you!

Undergrads are usually more than welcome to present at grad student conferences. In fact, a few of the conferences I presented at were organized by grad students (mostly intended for grad students, but they welcomed undergrad presenters as well). I also know some undergrads who have presented at professional conferences, so it's usually not a big deal. Besides, if you're talking about the conference that I'm thinking about (Gender Studies, I believe?), I think they encourage both grad and undergrad students to apply, so go for it.

I haven't heard from Kansas yet (and I've been checking the website too). It's one of my top two choices, so I'm crossing my fingers.

After receiving a rejection from a school: "Well, who wants to live there anyway?"

I am in the same boat. I don't know what hurts more: people asking me if I've gotten in anywhere yet or people asking me how my senior honors thesis is going. Please stop reminding me about the two things that are constantly eating at my mind!

I wish I hadn't seen that because almost immediately after I saw it, my phone rang, and my heart pounded. And then it turned out to be a telemarketer call. This song explains how I'm feeling right now:

Whoa that is so trippy.

Get off the Internet and work on your thesis. It's not going to write itself. But I'm a hypocrite because I'm also working on an honors thesis. This comic pretty much sums up how I feel. Besides the required classes for the honors thesis, I'm also taking: 19th-Century British Novel Modern Contemporary English Poetry Milton Bible as Lit This semester is actually going to be very miserable because of the lack of American lit classes. It's my own fault for taking all the ones offered in my dept already.

There might be some programs that prefer that you send your SOP directly to the department with a writing sample, CV, etc. rather than type it out on CSU Mentor. The program I applied to didn't specify such a thing, so I just filled it out on the online form. Like ANDS! said though, it wouldn't hurt to submit it twice, but it should get there either way.

I started The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins last week for my class, but right now I'm reading articles and some chapters of books for my thesis.

I know everyone is eagerly awaiting to hear back from schools, but who else is attending this conference? This will be my first time attending a national STD conference (geez, what an unfortunate acronym), so if you have attended a previous one please share your experience with us. (Plus, I want to look forward to doing something rather than dread the incoming rejections I'm bound to receive from grad schools.)

This seems like an obvious answer, but I just wanted to confirm. If a school, say UT Austin says their deadline is before midnight on Saturday, they are talking about their time zone, correct?

I'm not applying to Columbia, but if I were, I would follow the guidelines set by the English Department.

I'm applying to UCR, and I found that confusing too. In the end, I typed about 2950 characters in a word document and uploaded it. I checked to see if they would actually limit the amount of characters you can enter in the box if you choose to type it rather than upload a document, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It might be okay if you go a few characters over, but I'm sticking to what the online app says. If you contact the department though, let me know what they say.

Watching definitely helps.

Unless you or anyone else in your immediate family is a millionaire, you should never pay to go to grad school for an English program, especially not a doctoral program. Just mark your personal funds as zero. If a school really wants you, they'll fund you.

Grab a copy of The History of Love. I've been recommending that book to everyone. It's such a beautiful read and fairly quick to get through too.

I've been told by many professors that a simple thank you is appreciative and even a personally written note or card is more than enough. Writing letters for students is part of their job, and they are more than happy to do it, especially if you're one of their favorite students. And if that's the case, more than often than not, they want to write letters of recommendation for you because they want you to succeed, so don't feel obligated about getting them something fancy to show your appreciation. If you want to, however, it's your call but it's not necessary.

I'm kind of in the same boat as you as far as wanting to apply to Ph.D programs but wanting to do something else next year instead (not a study abroad program though). I'm pretty tight on cash right now, but I decided that I would continue to apply for Ph.D programs that I'm pretty sure I would definitely accept if I were to get in. That way, if I do get in, it wouldn't be so hard to decide which route I want to take. But as someone else mentioned, definitely apply to both if you can. It's better to have options you can choose from.

Although advisors, mentors, colleagues, etc. suggest that you apply to "many" (anywhere in the range between 8 and 14 or so), if you don't have time to really make each application outstanding, then it's possibly a waste of time to apply to so many. If you have the time to tailor your applications to 12+ schools and especially the money to apply, go for it! The more you apply to, the more chances you have I suppose, but it also depends on what rankings the programs you are applying to fall under. If you're applying to all top 20 programs, you're probably not going to get as good of a chance as someone who applies to a variety of programs in high tier, mid tier, and low tier. And for the record, I'm applying to 8 PhD programs and 1 MA program. I might even knock off one PhD program depending on how the budget looks.

Awesome! I presented at disjunctions as well. Are either of you planning to present again? I'm also planning on applying to their PhD program.

I'm taking it in November too. I spent my summer studying for it, and I helped organize a couple of workshops to study for it this past week, and I still don't feel prepared. But I'm just going to jump right in and hope for the best.