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Protagonist

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  1. Mind mentioning what the translated work is? I have a vested interest in Japanese literature.
  2. Find your academic theme or at least a concentration to study in. Take classes that show you have already started to specialize. Grad schools don't usually want students who are generalists, they want specialists. Find a professor that studies what you want to study and either see if they will be your advisor or just build up a good relationship with them. You're going to want to have good relationships with 3 professors for your letters of recommendations. Try to take multiple classes with professors who you like (and who like you!). Ask them about doing independent studies. Those are a great way to get a term paper written on a specific topic that fits into your area of study. For instance, I had a professor my first semester of university (my first two years of my undergraduate were done at a community college as I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with myself at that point and lacked funds) who, within a month or so after the semester had started, had individual conferences with us about topics for an upcoming paper. She also took this time to get to know us, and she asked me what I was planning on doing after college. I mentioned that I was considering getting a masters degree in library science or education, as that was what my plan had been after getting out of community college. She gave me a blank stare and bluntly asked me why I wasn't considering a Ph.D. in English as she assumed from the quality of my work that I was planning on graduate school. That's when I first started considering that option and I took her words and praise to heart. I built up a great relationship with her, asking her if I could take an independent study the next semester. Just by asking her how I should go about doing this and who else I should talk to I learned a lot about the faculty and about what classes I should take. I learned that she was good friends with my advisor who also happened to tell me I would make a great candidate for graduate school when I spoke to him about it. From there I suppose I did some networking and found the professors who knew my field of study. I've just graduated and I still keep in contact with them regularly, they've had meetings with me to discuss what schools I should be looking at and are going out of their way to help me improve my writing sample and statement of purpose. So to make that long story short, get to know your professors well. Impress them and ask them for help, if you do you'll get a wealth of information. After all, they know the most about getting the job you want because they've been in your shoes before and made it. They also know where the prominent scholars in their fields are and what schools are sending out graduates who are getting jobs. A strong relationship with your professors will give you a group of people who can answer the questions you've stated much better than we can.
  3. I memorized about 500 words and nearly all the words that popped up on my analogies and antonyms were words I knew. I'm extremely surprised I scored so low. I thought I had gotten perhaps 5-6 questions wrong. Maybe the reading comprehension slipped out of my grasp or I made some stupid mistakes. Too bad my experimental section was math, I was hoping for verbal in case I had to retake, which I do.
  4. Ah, I feel you now. I was doing quite well on practice tests (scoring consistently higher than 600) and when I sat down to take the test today, I was surprised at how many of the words I knew and had studied for. I thought I did pretty well. Then my score came up and I got a 570. Total bummer. Probably going to retake it, but I have no idea how the new format will be. I'm not a good test taker, I know this is going to be the weakest part of my application, but I at least wanted a 600, and I was so close.
  5. I took the first Powerprep practice test and ended up scoring a 630 in Math, haha, weird how Princeton Review gave me a 490. The verbal killed me though, I didn't know a lot of the words they were giving me and the sentence completion ended up being more complex than the practice questions I had just done. I got a 610. 87th percentile but still feels not high enough, even though I'm supposed to aim for around 90th. We'll see what happens. After getting that score in Math though I just stopped caring about how to do it. I've been memorizing vocab instead and doing practice questions along with brushing up on how to use process of elimination on the test. Here's hoping for something around where I've been scoring!
  6. My professors told me the safe route would be to get into a school that emphasizes interdisciplinary studies as well as having a focus on cultural studies, but not getting a degree in cultural studies and getting it in English. These are all professors that either incorporate cultural studies into their lit courses or have created courses that focus on cultural studies. This way you've got a degree in English and you're well equipped to teach lit courses, which all schools obviously will be needing professors for, and you also have the needed experience to back up your course proposals to the department for courses focused on cultural studies, which schools may be more weary of or lack the funds for. That being said, I'm going to take a look at Pittsburgh as well. From what programs I've looked at NYU places a good deal of emphasis on interdisciplinary studies and would be a great place to go if you wanted to take film studies courses as well.
  7. Yeah, I've got to sign up for this and start getting ready once I'm done with the general GRE this week. The book I have told me most students feel like they've just been mugged when they're leaving the testing center, hah. Also my huge lack of knowledge in Brit Lit is probably going to kill me here, I have a giant hole in my knowledge between renaissance lit and 20th century Brit Lit. A huge portion of the test concentrates on that compared to my specialty in American Lit. Hope admission councils take that into consideration! Haha.
  8. To give a brief synopsis of my qualifications and interests: I graduated from UConn, a decent but nothing special state school, with a BA in English this year and I'm taking a year off. My GPA there was a 3.967, graduated summa cum laude, and I was given membership in Phi Beta Kappa. I only attended there for two years however, my first years of college were at a local community college where I got around a 3.8, I can't exactly remember, and started to focus on taking at least one English class a semester as I was slowly learning that was my field of interest. Once I hit UConn however it was nearly all English courses for me besides the few other requirements I had to meet. I ended up taking courses in a pretty focused manner, concentrating on contemporary American Lit along with cultural studies. My 'academic theme', for lack of a better term, was war and memory. I managed to take 3 independent studies with some of my favorite professors that all tied into this, one on political/war films and novels, another on cross-cultural exchanges between the US and Asia in literature, film and comics where I wrote my term paper on the Japanese experience of WWII, and another focusing on postmodern American Lit, a class my school didn't offer. Along with this I had to take a variety of related topic courses, I chose Asian-American studies and once again managed to tailor this towards my theme, I took a course on Japanese-American internment and Japanese-American involvement in WWII as well as a class on revolutionary theory and history that dealt a lot with the Vietnam War. I also managed to cram a class on adaptation theory in, though it only dealt with Shakespearean movies it still proved quite helpful for learning about adaptation and appropriation in general and was my only opportunity to do so during my undergrad. Honestly, I don't know how much more focused I could have gotten myself considering I only had 2 years at the institution and had a variety of other required courses to take. From all of this I have 3 professors who I've done independent studies with and have become good friends with, one of whom considers me to be in her top 3 best students ever. From that I think I'll have 3 very good letters of recommendation from professors who know my work very well. I also think that this group of courses gives me a somewhat cohesive narrative that will allow me to create a well focused statement of purpose. Along with that I had the opportunity to work on a 15 page term paper that fits in with my topic of interest which I will use as a letter of recommendation. My GRE isn't until next week and I have ample time to retake it so I am not entirely worried about it, though I have been studying. That all being said, how high do you think I should aim at this point and what programs would you suggest I look at? A cursory glance last year with professors yielded a list containing: Yale (reaching for the stars, but oh well), NYU, CUNY, WUSTL, University of Illinois - Urbana, UC Davis, University of Chicago, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, University of Iowa and University of Florida. My interests are grounded in contemporary American Lit and memory studies, but I would like to branch out at some point in my grad career to cultural studies. I was advised to not make this explicit and the only goal on my applications as it's still a somewhat risky field, but rather to put such things as film and comic studies down as academic interests that I have a small level of proficiency in. Somewhere like NYU seems ideal for me considering the heavy emphasis on interdisciplinary studies; I'd love to substitute courses in medieval and early Brit Lit for courses in film studies. Sorry if I was a bit rambling here and thanks in advance for any sort of information you can give!
  9. Well, with one week left to go and a practice test giving me a 490Q I'm not worrying as much thanks to this thread and some more research I've done on the internet. Especially since I've been scoring around 650-700V on the practice tests I've taken so far, acceptable scores for me. I'm basically aiming for 90th percentile and hoping that the strength of my full application, which happens to be coming along pretty well, is enough to impress some schools. Though my lack of foreign language preparedness worries me a little, especially as a few of my professors made claims that I shouldn't worry about that until I'm in as I've got a full 2 years to prepare for testing in a language. Anyway, at this point I'm just going to cram vocab and brush up more on my roots and prefixes, along with taking 2 full practice tests to get ready for the day. Might have to retake with the new format... but at least I've given myself enough time to spend a good amount of time studying before I do that.
  10. I'll back you on this. While I haven't read Professor Semenza's book, I took a class with him for my capstone/advanced study/whatever you want to call it course at UConn. He's an extremely intelligent man and often spoke candidly about the English program at our school and how it was run. He was also more than willing to offer me advice as I told him I was interested in pursuing graduate studies, and a lot of what he told me was helpful. As well as that he made special note to grade my papers as undergraduate work but give me comments as if I was a graduate student without me even asking ( I received much more criticism than I would have expected on an A paper but he made it clear these were not faults of my own as an undergrad, just what would be expected of me as a graduate student, haha) and continuously pushed my thinking throughout the year. Though this doesn't have anything to do with his book it speaks to his character and how helpful he really is towards those seeking a graduate degree in the humanities.
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