ThePoorHangedFool

I'm sure you're already very aware of this, but the revised GRE that replaced the previous format just a week or so ago is slightly different in terms of the overall content tested, the "presentation" of said content, and the capabilities allowed test takers (although depending on your strengths and weaknesses, "slightly" could potentially be "substantially"). Unless this is old news to you, I'd personally recommend some form of study book/guide/practices that cut out portions not used in the revised version (such as antonyms) and are updated to accommodate features including, for example, the provided calculator during the quantitative sections (at least I was told it's provided, meaning that a digital calculator appears on the computer screen itself if you take the exam electronically...I'm admittedly uncertain about paper-based tests, but I'd assume the testing center will give testers some basic calculator? ....Anyone?). Please don't think I'm deriding you in any way; I simply couldn't discern from your post whether or not you're already familiar with the details concerning the revised GRE. ------ Regarding the subject test, I'm literally taking it solely because a handful of programs to which I'm applying demand it from all applicants. If I manage not to drop the ball completely when I take it and somehow earn a score I'm not ashamed to report, I'll send it to the schools whose instructions for how to apply coyly state that their adcoms don't "require" it, the implication being that they gladly still accept scores from those who want to submit them (as opposed to the couple that fervently say not to send scores from subject tests). I don't know which from which specific subject test Pharmacy programs typically request scores, but as far as the Literature subject test is concerned, it's essentially the biggest chunk of bullsh*t in existence, at least in terms of its actual ability to gauge an applicant's ability to succeed in graduate-level programs. If you looked at a practice exam from ETS you'd see what I mean; the questions insist upon answers that stem from a comprehensive list of "Author/Notable Work(s)/Main Character(s) in Said Work(s)/Period Written." In other words, it assumes 1) the memorization of the entire Anglo-American canon on top of an equal amount of outlying trivia from other prominent works (modern, etc.); 2) at least a basic knowledge covering theory and criticism, in addition to major relevant names and essay/book/chapter titles (also which writer from X school is reacting to which other writer from other X school, etc.); 3) oh right, and given that the test uses passages FROM the works in question, it would be a wise idea to, like, read them. Sorry for the rant; I hate everything about how the subject test is constructed, and would rather submit supplementary SoPs written as Petrarchan sonnets to every program for which I'm applying than take the Lit subject exam. So there.

See my above post on the subject test dates, and in regards to your LoRs, if you choose the right people to write them for you they shouldn't mind writing that many. Professors today know how difficult it is to get into graduate programs of all levels, and if they show signs of irritation with you for asking them to write what may seem like a lot of letters, maybe find another person to write some of them (by this I mean that not all of your 3 letters for EVERY school to which you apply need to come from the same 3 people). ***CORRECT THAT, SOMEONE WITH MORE EXPERIENCE, IF I'M MISTAKEN.***

Would this be for the conference in Kalamazoo? If so, please let me know whether or not there's a link to the "theme" of this year's conference, as I can't seem to find one anywhere online. And for those who think it's not a good idea to take the subject test in November: I'm doing just that. The October test date for the Lit subject test falls on the same weekend I'll be out of town for a conference at which I'm helping my thesis advisor present a medieval play...long story...also my birthday is the same weekend. I've checked on most of the program websites (that are relevant to my own list of schools, at least), and they seem to concur that there is absolutely no problem with taking it that close to the deadline as long as you indicate that your score will be arriving after the rest of your application materials. I can only afford to take the subject test once, since I've been saving for months just to make taking the regular GRE twice a possibility. I'm not going to stress too much about the subject test, though have heard the Norton Anthologies are the way to go in terms of study material. Other views on this are, obviously, welcomed with open ears (or rather, open eyes, which I suppose would be the more accurate organ in an online forum...).

Obviously, it's your SoP, and you should therefore write it however best you personally think it expresses you and your goals/passions/etc. most accurately and fervently. However, I feel that I have to tell you one bit of advice I've never heard stated otherwise from any source (and in this rare case, both the trusted and even the most untrusted sources agree): Neither any admissions committee nor any faculty member from any school wants to read the words "when I was [young/little/a child/in elementary school/etc.]" at any point during an applicant's SoP. They don't care about your childhood. You did nothing productive as far as academia is concerned while in the womb (or in the playpen). I've even heard stories from faculty about quite simply throwing out an application if the SoP includes this sort of reference (I have a bad feeling these stores are true, though I of course can't verify anything myself). It seems to me that at this point in the twenty-first century, when books on how to do everything have evolved into DVDs which have evolved into blogs and forums...and on and on, many faculty members might see going about your SoP in this way as practically a slap in the face to all the available knowledge and resources there are to us as applicants today (most of which having been definitely unavailable to them as applicants, for instance). Just a thought.

That's not quite what I meant; three courses on Shakespeare has given me enough background, and because it is my top interest in terms of specialization by writer, I've read plenty on my own and have more than sufficient background to know I want to keep pursuing it. I wouldn't be wasting time with applications if I didn't have enough background, since I likely wouldn't know what I wanted to study if that were the case : ). My "writing sample," actually my thesis from this year, is currently around 40 or 50 pages long, and it centers around one of Shakespeare's long poems...that'll be something I'll have to figure out at some point, since each section uses other various works and different critical lenses, so I guess it will depend on the school... And you seem to suggest somehow that perhaps you're also in Tennessee? PM this; one of the best features of TGC is anonymity in essentially all areas a user desires...

These questions (which runonsentence phrased well, I think, for this more broad-subject forum, and both of which you definitely want to answer in a "good SoP") should provoke some type of response in your SoP that distinguishes you as a focused, determined, and eager-to-learn (especially from "X" University's faculty members, Y, W, and Z!) academic (prepubacademic? is that disgusting?). A similar question that, if you do have an answer for it, could be good for professors to read is how your proposed research is ​useful/beneficial/imperative/ , etc., for the literary world at large (you can narrow this, obviously, depending on your personal focus). -Why do others need to read what you have to say about this? -How will your potential research findings affect the way the subject is currently perceived? These are GRANDIOSE statements...or statements of grandeur, perhaps?...that I wrote in that way to give you the broadest idea of what I'm talking about. If you're arguing against almost every work of criticism yet published on a specific writer or work, say why your view is necessary as an available lens through which other scholars concerned with ["whatever you're talking about"] in order for a comprehensive understanding of ["that"] to be attained.

Oh, well besides the obvious, which is that I'm clearly scatterbraining for the win tonight, I also forgot to mention in my earlier reply to you that if you haven't been doing so already, Google is a good place to research graduate faculty (Google Scholar can be more direct, but can also omit results that are clearly relevant occasionally, for whatever reason, and that do show up in a basic Google search).

This worries me about my own application material; I can't afford more classes for a better background while I'm already having to save most of what I'm getting paid at work to pay for graduate school (if and when I actually get accepted, though alternatively I would have "mad bank," as it were, if I simply spent three or four years applying but never was appealing enough to any program ever...). What sort of courses did she think you needed? If you're heeding that advice, what are you thinking about taking, and where? (You don't need to disclose where you live or the exact name of an institution, I rather mean "where" as in a community college, huge/average public university near where you live, etc.) My undergrad courses encompass a wide variety of periods in Anglo-American literature, but with the exception of maybe one or two poets from a class I took my sophomore year there, none of the English classes even offered there went beyond 1975, maybe 1980 at the latest. I've done my own research on what literature from the last thirty years is used in courses at logical schools, where there are classes titled "Lit from the 2000s." However, I tend to read critical essays/longer works that I plan to incorporate into my own work from primarily the past 30 years by principle alone *(please, no one quote that statement and explain to me why I'm wrong in any of it. I don't only read criticism from 1980-2011, you've misread my sentence if that is your argument; I don't need advice on this subject....sorry to be abrupt, but if my school did one thing right it was research techniques, and I recently had a rather heated quarrel with a girl who also just got her B.A. in English, and seemed not to understand anything I said about this matter)*. SORRY FOR THAT DIGRESSION. I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS. Essentially what I hope to hear from you and other users is either whether this could hurt my application (my focus and intended concentration for research doesn't involve literature written later than 1950 aside from criticism/theoretical resources). Also, if anyone thinks it could very well be damaging, or just has a good list already made up (from a past course, planned research focus, etc.) of works that any potential English graduate student should read and/or be familiar with written ideally since 1990-95 (the later the better), I'd appreciate seeing that as well.

I think Two Espressos is absolutely right; however, both Rosetta Stone and traveling to study and/or live abroad (which I can't remember if you said was your purpose during the trips you've made to France) are each expensive in their own ways. Fast and somewhat temporary immersion is sometimes the most beneficial way to use time spent abroad actively improving one's skills with regards to speaking/writing/read a language, so if your periods in France were more along the lines of 1-3 week trips, you probably gained more from them than you realize quite yet. If you've literally never taken Spanish and have no way to begin without a pretty step-by-step manual (this would also go for most languages that use the same alphabet as that of the English language), that's exactly what you need. Look on eBay or Amazon for textbooks meant for middle- or high-school introductory Spanish classes, which these days often come with DVDs or computer softwar as auxiliary lessons or as electronic resources (dictionary, etc.). Incidentally, my Spanish I book was actually called Paso a Paso (step by step), and I remember it being readable, understandable in its use of directions, and generally easy to use (I had already taken Spanish, however).

Best example of faculty listings that outline areas of interest and research (linked names give more details): http://englishcomplit.unc.edu/people/faculty/alpha#p (UNC Chapel Hill)

In my opinion, and I need to mention first and foremost that I haven't had the graduate program application experience yet. Hence, I've never applied to the same school multiple times, so I hope and encourage any users who think my advice is misinformed (or rather, blatantly uninformed) to quote from this post so that I, too, can learn about the tactics in SoP composition. Basically, it would seem to me that it could potentially be very useful to keep a copy of your SoPs from last year right next to you (or open in windows on your monitor, etc.) while you write your new ones for this cycle. While obviously much of the content will presumably be the same, at least in regards to your specifics about what you want to study and research. However (this is where I could very well be mistaken in my assumptions), it could be a good idea to review the faculties of the schools to which you're applying again this year, essentially as if you're doing so for the first time. Unless the rejection letter you received from a particular school listed exactly each (or "the" reason) why it didn't think you were the right fit for its program, and said list didn't cite anything remotely close to there being issues with one or all of the faculty members in whom you'd expressed in your SoP, it's possible that professors you'd thought would be the ones whose interests and/or specialization matched yours ended up not seeing eye-to-eye with those opinions during app review. If you think that might actually be the case with any program, perhaps try first looking at the faculty working in the same general field as that in which you're hoping to pursue (i.e., English Lit, Comparative Lit, Rhetoric, etc.) and read through all the information given for each one (some programs' websites will be more useful than others for this). You might be surprised at the professors whose primary interest or subject of research is nothing closely related to your own, yet whose minor interests are seemingly just as unrelated to their own focuses (and this situation, therefore, sometimes could end up giving you a faculty member that would prefer to mentor a student whose research would allow him or her to become more involved with the concentration often forced onto the backburner). Does that make any sense? Not conceptually, but in the way I tried to explain it... Sometimes I lose my own trains of thought, and the resulting posts/paragraphs/essays/etc. are at best a string of non sequiturs to anyone but me....

Also keep in mind that for some programs, if you choose the track in which you only study one language, they require fluency by the end of it all. Literally---go look at some of the programs you're thinking about and see which ones, if any, have this stated on their website (and possibly peruse a few extras too, so I don't look stupid in the event that none of your potential programs state fluency as their standard). : ) Alternatively, you have to be careful with the two-language option; "basic proficiency" is about as vague a standard as there is, so you might think about contacting the right faculty or staff at the school(s) in question and ask what exactly they expect from students learning two languages. I'd imagine that you wouldn't need to be familiar with some of the more/most difficult verb tenses, nor would you *likely* be asked to write extensive essays, etc., except with the professors' expectations of decent amounts of mistakes. But what do I know? For some schools, maybe as long as you can read it quite well and speak it sufficiently enough so that you don't sound like you're just babbling or drunk, writing isn't even an issue. If you do start asking directly at any point (don't feel obligated, of course), the answers you receive would be more than welcome in this forum. : ) That being said, Spanish is arguably THE easiest language to learn; your apparent current knowledge of French will help you (though people who don't pick up new languages easily disagree). I personally find French more difficult, but a remarkable amount of Spanish will look uncannily familiar to you if you do end up taking it. As far as Rosetta Stone goes, I agree with runonsentence about its less-than-stellar grammar lessons. However--and again, this would be especially easy for Spanish--if you get Rosetta Stone and supplement it with a textbook or guide of some sort that specifically focuses on grammar, you'll find that you're learning both how to write and read, but more importantly (and the best advantage in having RS, I think) you're learning how to speak. How to speak WELL, actually; my German courses, at least, are extremely particular regarding pronunciation and articulation (I say this as someone who has always been better at languages than every other subject in school aside from English/Literature).

Truth. I can vouch for this; my thesis advisor chairs the Medieval Studies Department at my undergrad university, in addition to being one of the most amazing professors in the English department (and, at 33-ish, one of the youngest). Medieval literature is difficult at first, but is great because not only does it heavily incorporate both religious, liturgical, historical, and geographical information by necessity as part of the very essence of understanding motivation behind the literature, but you effectively get to learn new languages (Old and Middle English, at the very least). AWESOME. You may now commence berating me for what can best be described as pure dorkdom.

I am not only an arachnophobic, but a full-blown entomophobic, and have found that the spiders (and ants, and the other unidentifiable terrors that lurk in the shadows) sometimes don't respond (in other words, die immediately) to Raid, Bengal, and similar products. Despite the Raid Spider & Scorpion spray being capable, presumably, of putting down scorpions, the large spiders with atypical coloring especially seem to be immune. Hairspray. Probably the types labeled something to the effect of "XXXXTRA HOLD - F5 TORNADOES DON'T STAND A CHANCE" would wor the best, but when I was little and had hairspray around most of the time for my ballet classes and performances, I'd always reach for it first when I found unwanted bugs in my room/bathroom. Just a thought. I realize, as well, that I've now revealed how genuinely insane I am... This post might have to go once more applicants begin to appear...

I'd be happy to read/proofread it for you; I know extremely little about Environmental Policy, so would have more input on aesthetics and sentence construction/grammar/etc. than about your content. I can assure you I'm really good at editing those sorts of issues, or at least have been told as such by fellow students whose essays I read over from time to time. If that's not what you have in mind, though, then no worries. Just figured I'd ask.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the person leading us as the examplery staff is headed toward getting a Master's degree in education administration/management...focusing on bright or intellectually gifted adolescents.... WE HAVE TO SAVE AMERICA GUYS.

...today I saw the word "examplery" embedded in a message from the head director at the summer job I've been working for a few weeks (which, thank sweet weeping Jesus on the cross, ends on Saturday). This message was sent to the entire staff, which consists of about fifty or sixty people, all of us working toward the educational enrichment of (and being held mortally responsible for) two hundred middle-schoolers at what effectively is an absurdly expensive summer school. We are role models; resources for how to think, talk, act, behave, and generally exist---as far as this program goes, at least. We are the chosen few...the examplery.

Bah I have too many thoughts for one crazy. ----I just wanted to clarify that I'm not seeking out conferences solely to put them on my CV if my papers get accepted. Truthfully, I don't enjoy speaking in public very much, as I tend to sweat a lot when I'm agitated or nervous or afraid or pretty much feeling any emotion that strays from neutral... As I mentioned, I did my first paper presentation at a very small campus scholarship conference in April, and while I did sweat and probably stood in a weird position or something equally awkward, it felt great to read something on which I had spent so much time and energy and emotion to a group of people who actually appreciated it, and moreover were interested in what I was arguing. I would be ecstatic to feel that way again, although were I actually to be admitted into any conference, I doubt my paper would stand out like it did at my university's unless it was in some negative sense... But that's okay : ). Anyway, I just didn't want to give you guys the wrong impression of me or my intentions/motivations/aspirations in regards to applying to grad programs. I have a lot of feelings. Here they go, spewing onto the keyboard....

Although Shakespeare and, to some extent, medieval literature are undoubtedly my strengths (quite naturally, primarily concerning Shakespeare, due to his work being my long-standing favorite area of literature), I do have some other admittedly random, at least relatively speaking, interests, on which I have done some research already. If that sentence itself doesn't rather make this unsurprising, Faulkner is another favorite of mine; Nabokov, Larkin, Poe (and many of his cohorts--Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, Hawthorne) are all writers on whose work I either have done significant or want to pursue further studies. A number of those figures might also reveal that my overarching interest, encompassing much of my own studies and research, is the conception of tragedy throughout literature; additionally, how tragedy evolved from the way in which it is represented in classical poetry and drama, to Chaucer's and his contemporaries' envisioning, and predominantly, to how Shakespeare's method of defining tragedy is so successful (arguably the most successful). So, if anyone stumbles upon a conference where tragedy/tragic thematic issues are part of its CFP, do let me know; I'm already in the process of doing that blind sprint through darkness, searching for vague terms and seeing what results I get that might be of use.... So if you guys have something in mind that you want others (including me) to keep eyes open for during similar searches, we could all help each other out. : )

One of the benefits of being an MLA member is that there are numerous forums in which one can post or respond to discussions about various matters. Each forum is specifically geared to one period of literature (and in a few cases, as with Shakespeare, to one major literary contributor), so members can select up to what I want to say is around twenty-five different forums to follow based on their diverse sets of interests. The forums are pretty frequently updated with new CFPs, so I am at least familiar with that area of your advice. And you're also definitely right about the smaller conferences being a great place to start out, and I had been assuming that anyway since I'm inclined to believe that MLA and ACLA would be hesitant to admit someone with a mere B.A. dangling at the end of her name to present alongside the more impressively-lettered group of readers... : ) Thanks a lot for your help on this subject; I'm going to start looking up conferences near my area, which itself is literally "the" middle of nowhere, but is conveniently surrounded by Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, Asheville, Louisville/Lexington, and a few other mid-sized cities that hopefully have something going on in terms of what I know I'd be capable of doing personally (more precisely, from what conferences I'd honestly have a chance at not being immediately rejected before even submitting my work).

Seriously, guys... I legitimately can't remember the last time I corrected someone's grammar (which I've been doing since elementary school, to give some perspective) and he or she didn't subtly begrudge me indefinitely for doing so (I'm pretty sure that over time I lost more than a few friends that way, but evidently most of them have a kid and/or are married, so...can't say I'm overly regretful). Alternatively, this could very well be the first time anyone has taken my admittedly annoying red-pen remarks in a way not immediately described most accurately as "livid." My heart overfloweth... This is why the people who have no interest in the realms of higher education or academia are the same people who were annoyed by my attempts to help them sound less uneducated... : )

I'm glad my long-winded praise of her didn't backfire, as she really is one of the staples in both Shakespeare and feminist criticism. There is nothing wrong whatsoever with having less of an interest in feminist theory, but if you're planning on pursuing your graduate studies in theory and criticism, you'll almost definitely have to do at least a bit of coursework that covers feminist critics and theorists. Feminism is arguably one of the most useful lenses through which literature, and often especially that of male writers not working in a period or location where they'd ever be situated alongside an equal number of women writers, let alone women admired or renowned for their writing (i.e., most periods before the nineteenth century, at the very earliest). Kahn is great for another reason that I didn't mention previously, which is that she is heavily into revising her studies on various works and reprinting the updated editions to include new thoughts and ideas, often that stray from or even deny components of her original arguments. Anyway, glad I could be of a little help. If you ever have questions about Shakespearean critics or theorists that are essentially fundamental toward either studies in theory or Shakespeare's works, let me know. At this point I've managed to accumulate a wealth of information that would probably be helpful to someone with your interests.

Thanks for all the suggestions; I've had far less experience with presenting my work at conferences, etc., than what it seems like many other Cafe users have had. Truly, my only real exposure to that area of academia was in April, when presented a condensed version of my thesis at our campus conference celebrating "student scholarship" and research. (the final product, incidentally, was also condensed, and is now being expanded into a paper that is two if not three times longer than any program wants its applicants' writing sample to be....le sigh). My presentation won first place for the humanities division, but that doesn't say very much since my university's undergrad student body was less than 1500 people. Basically, I'm wondering if you guys know whether or not admissions committees and faculty at either all or any specific programs--both M.A. and Ph.D., as I'm applying to both tracks (though opting for the M.A. degree for the programs that award both, since I'm far more likely to get accepted with my current credentials)--consider a substantial list of conferences/conventions/the like at which an applicant has presented his or her papers a valuable (or even tie-breaking) variable. If so, I've got a number of papers, many of which I will likely end up editing at some point anyway for various purposes, that I could tweak and edit to make them conference-ready. However, I'm quite unfamiliar with details about how these things work and which ones are worth attending. My advisor warned me of the dangers in having an essay published in a sub-par journal that would end up being a negative element to one's CV/background/you know what I mean. So, big questions are: --Which programs, if any, consider conferences at which an applicant has presented his or her work to be an impressive (or expected) addition to the overall application? If essentially all programs like to see such experience, please indicate that as well, but if there are any in particular that you're aware of that really want to see it or favor people who have had it, include those too. --If there are certain conferences that are renowned or ideal to attend/at which to present work, names for those would be great to know. (The same goes for any that should be avoided). I really appreciate the help! This is something I honestly haven't thought about until now, so I apologize if I seem exceptionally uninformed..

I joined for the first time earlier this summer, and I have every intention of setting aside the money it takes each year to renew my membership even when (or, equally likely, if I never) move up in the realm of academia. It's a great investment, and I have heard similar opinions about an MLA membership on a graduate program applicant's CV (particularly those without their M.A.s yet or who just received their B.A.s at the close of the most recent semester, like me). I was glad to see that others here are members; I receive most of the medieval "updates" (or "follow" those areas, however one puts it), and have a pretty avid interest in specific subsections of medieval literature, so if there's anything that comes up you think might help me, as an applicant for the Fall 2012 round, to pursue (CFPs, etc., that aren't more harmful to a resume or essay than helpful), do let me know (if you have time, of course!). "Every little bit helps," I like to tell myself as false hopes swoop down around me and leave dirty withered feathers in my hair...

Another random comment, at which point I'll try to stop bombarding this forum with my opinions, is that the professor with which I took my two general Shakespeare courses as an undergraduate got her doctorate at Chapel Hill. She is amazing (and will, incidentally, be the acting Chair of the English department this year, so that should help my recommendations ever so slightly, or I can hope so, at least). She too highly recommends Chapel Hill for a focus in early modern literature, so I'm really just seconding thirding (?) runonsentence's advice.