ComeBackZinc

Hey, look at it this way: you spend the whole application process telling schools "This is what I'm going to study! Here's this incredibly specific and totally impressive project, which is totally what I will end up writing my dissertation on and researching about for the rest of my career!" And then you get there and they're like, "Ha, you have no idea who you are now. Your focus will be totally different in two years. Fill your mind up with knowledge and don't step on the rug." I get that the point is to show that you know what a scholarly focus is, and that the real job is to signal that you're an academic, but the whole process seems kind of disingenuous.

It might be conjecture for UT specifically, but that is indeed a common situation at schools with rhet/comp programs. I can think of a half dozen schools like that. So it's not a bad thought.

Acceptances from Yale, Harvard, and Stanford on the same day, golly.

Not to mention expensive!

Or could just be that more people who use this board are going to those schools.

I didn't mean to sound scolding. I know how legitimate the stress you're feeling is.

BOOM! Congrats.

You're in at NYU! It's one of the best universities in the world! 6 months from now, any stress or heartbreak over rejections will be a distant memory.

Congrats-- you should be proud, it's a great program, and funded MAs are quite rare.

You're already thinking like somebody looking for a dissertation topic, antecedent! There's a precedent for that type of research, too. http://books.google.com/books?id=g1uPfMwM4EAC&lpg=PA127&ots=0OTcnxcBg9&dq=detecting%20gender%20based%20on%20language&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=detecting%20gender%20based%20on%20language&f=false I assume everyone looks just like their avatar. Rupert Pumpkin's looks so anxious I just want to throw my arm around his shoulder and tell him things will be alright.

Yup, you can apply for a couple positions with the OWL. As you can imagine, those spots are insanely competitive. I'm not much of a digital guy, so I probably won't bother to apply.

What really squashed my mind grapes was when I was really hurt by being rejected by a program I wouldn't have gone to anyway. Not that I wouldn't have gone if I didn't have other options, just that I got into my number one program before I got the rejection. So why did I care? But I did.

I mostly just want to remind people that it can happen, even for a jamoke like me, and to balance the natural doom and gloom feelings we all get in this process.

Happy birthday! Edit: Uh, maybe that was stupid, given you just said it wasn't helping at work.... Sorry.

I'll tell you: when I applied in subsequent years, I realized all the mistakes I had made the first time. It was like night and day. Nothing could have been better practice and education for me than the process of applying in the first place.

If trolls are gonna troll, they're probably gonna choose a school like Harvard. On the other hand, when you really think about it, if a typical cohort 8-12 people, it wouldn't be that odd if none of the admits were on here. My vote is for hoax. Or, alternatively, a prof who knows he'll be working with a particular applicant happened to go off the reservation and call that person up. In any event, there's absolutely no reason anybody should get discouraged.

Remember, your loan payments are automatically deferred if you're in school, so you don't have to pay them down at all while you go. Anyway, using PLUS loans to pay off Stafford loans would be an exercise in futility because the interest rate is higher on the PLUS loans than on the Stafford loans. (I think.) One thing I would recommend to anyone who's considering going to an unfunded MA (I did for my first year, for context) is to email the grad secretary or grad director and ask whether there's a realistic chance that you can find funding for the second year. They'll probably be upfront with you.

If you're in, you can take out the loans; they're federally guaranteed as long as you don't have a high personal income. There's two tiers. There were three, but Congress got rid of subsidized Staffords, sorry to say, as of this coming fall semester. Generally, you can take up to $20,500 in Stafford unsubsidized loans per year. (Previously, you could take up to $8500 subsidized and $12000 unsubsidized.) Beyond that, you can take Graduate PLUS loans. PLUS loans are determined by a cost of attendance and living determined by the university. They'll offer an official estimate, then you subtract all the aid your getting (including the Stafford loans) from that amount. You can then borrow up to the difference between those figures. At most schools, the estimates are quite generous; I could have taken something like $20,000 above my tuition at my master's program. Speaking as someone who will be paying off student loans for the rest of his life, do everything you can to minimize the amount of loans you take.

I'm Facebook friends with most of my grad professors, at their initiation. I acknowledge that it's a lot different before you've actually met them, though.

That is frustrating, and I'm genuinely sorry. It might be worth calling and asking how hard that deadline is. The sad fact is that there's little to compel schools to abide by the resolution beyond their own commitment.

The CGS is an important document, and I'm glad many schools stick to it, but it has no binding authority at all.

I think that, because many schools report over a small time frame, that creates an expectation that most schools will or do. But many, many don't. If you searched around in the results board in a systematic, I think you'd find that it's not all that rare for a department to notify some people in late February and some in late April. It's the programs that have the power, so they proceed in a way that suits their ends, rather than in a way that is easiest on us. Sorry to say.

What's the teaching situation like at Oxford? I'd heard that you have to be careful about getting some teaching experience when you go to a UK uni, so you have some for the American job market, but I don't really know.

Results survey says someone just got let in off the waitlist.