Deej

Hi guys, I'm currently a freshmen at Penn State and I'm going to major in English and minor in film studies. I really want to obtain my masters in film studies and (hopefully) pursue my phd/mfa so I can teach. I decided to major in English because I want a flexible degree if I didn't get into any programs. I know grad school admissions work way differently than undergrad, so how do I go about it? I know gre is important. What's an ideal gre score? I'm aiming for 1300 but I think I will probably get around 1200 ish. As for "extracurriculars" I plan on writing film reviews for The Daily Collegian (my school's newspaper), get some internships, get some publishments, and probably more activities with writing. I used to write film reviews in high school and I won some awards, but is that even useful here? I don't know what else I can do. Any suggestions? I know letters of rec are important, too; one my English prof went to Yale (which has the program i'm looking for), so I'm probably going to ask him when the time comes around. I know i'm only a freshmen and it's early, but I really want to just jump right on it and prepare asap. Here are the schools that i'm interested in: USC Harvard Yale Columbia Brown NYU UW-Madison Most of these schools seem super hard so I'm going to maintain my gpa around 3.8+. Would that be a competitive gpa for grad school? What are some professional experiences I can get? Like teaching? Writing and publishing, getting awards, etc.? I guess a better way to ask this question is: How can I prepare myself to get into these specific competitive programs?