bdon19

Chinese Cafe

I'm an English person, and personally I know I would have bombed that test without a calculator. I can remember how to figure out problems and use formulas, but I am HOPELESS at simple computation. I used the calculator way more than I probably should have, but I didn't really have any time issues. In two of the three sections (I got an extra research one) I ran out of time, but only on a single problem each time. I tried to strategize by going through and skipping the ones I knew would involve more complex computations or guessing and checking, leaving those for the end. Ultimately, I fared pretty well (my range was 680-780--not bad for an English major!).

Hmmm now I am really tempted. This is the course description: Are we growing up according to plot? Is our coming-of-age prescripted in the coming-of-age novels we read? This course explores the role of the bildungsroman, or coming-of-age novel, in shaping who we think we should be, who we are, and who we are becoming as human rights subjects. This course satisfies the global diversity requirement. I do need to fulfill that requirement. I think this term may be the only opportunity I have to take a 17th/18th-c. American class, but I could very easily get that in grad school, anyway. Maybe I should just go for this one. Nobody is enrolled for it yet, so it'll be a really small class! It sounds really cool, and I think it'll be potentially more theory-based than the other course, which is always a good thing!

I'm really tempted to take this Bildungsroman class, especially because the professor contacted me personally and asked me to take it, and she's the only one in my department I haven't taken a course with. However, the Early American class is taught by my adviser, who I haven't taken a class with since my freshman year. It won't include Hawthorne (it only includes 17th- and 18th-c. lit, and my adviser absolutely DESPISES Hawthorne! ), but since my field is 18th-c. British lit, I thought it might be valuable to see what was happening across the pond during the period! I just can't decide, though. And, no matter how much I'd like to and want to take all four, that's like academic suicide at my school. I've done it before and survived, but there's no way my adviser would sign off on an overload of four English courses when I'm applying to grad school, being the news editor of the campus paper, and being the English department assistant. This is really a tough decision!

Oh, wow, you guys have a lot on your plates! The normal course load at my school is only three courses a term (we're on trimesters), and I don't think I like the thought of overloading while also completing applications this term! I also don't want to push my number of credits...I'm already in danger of going over my limits in the English department WAY before the end of next year! ( ) I'm taking: Independent Study in Critical Theory (hooray! I am super excited for this) Early American Literature (though I've been tempted to swap this with a new course on the Bildungsroman...decisions, decisions) Nonfiction Creative Writing Workshop And then, if I do decide to overload, I'd be taking a Spanish Phonetics course on a Pass/Fail basis to brush up on my language skills prior to submitting my applications!

I bought a book from Kaplan, which came with a free online practice test. It gave an access code to get to it via the website. I don't know anything about the Manhattan practice test, so I can't speak to how accurate a predictor that one might be. My suggestion, though, really is to become familiar with the test format first and foremost. If you know how to approach each question, you'll save a lot of time thinking and be able to jump right into the test. As for math, reviewing concepts is always good. I didn't find the math too difficult, considering I haven't taken a math class since my senior year of high school and still did a decent job there.

Oh, definitely. At my school we call it the "Word, Word, Colon" formula. I personally go for the: Examples: “Because she rose from stinking Ooze”: An Examination of Socially Constructed Beauty in the Eighteenth Century (This was for a 100-level gender studies class. The topic was "social construction." I wrote about Swift. ) “I at least have so much to do”: Narrative Responsibility, Analogy, and Heterogeneity in George Eliot’s Middlemarch “[T]o lay a hand on its exhausted dust”: The Materiality of Memory in Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit “Mystical Misogyny”: An Examination of Mythical Contradictions and Novel Form in D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow Yeah, I've had fun with this format.

I'm in a similar situation, omnibuster. I have two possible papers. One is not in my proposed field but has secondary connections to some of the things I'll mention in my SoP, uses theory substantially, is the stronger paper in general, and connects to my minor (Gender/Women's Studies, yay!). The other is in my field but is a lot shorter, more based on close-reading, only uses a "splash" of Foucault, and doesn't "do" as much. I'm going with the first, because it's my best piece of writing. I won a departmental award for it and got it accepted for a conference presentation. I'm not positive if it will look like I only have one good paper, but I'm confident that it's the best choice. Additionally, do any of your programs allow you to submit a combination of papers? A few of my programs (thankfully, some of my top choices!) allow me to do this, and for those programs I will be taking advantage of the option. I think it's a good idea to give them an indication of what I can do in my proposed field, if possible. I'm planning on referencing the writing sample at some point in my SoP. I bet you'll find a way to connect it in some way to your primary area of interest. For example, the writing sample I'll be using is on D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers, while my primary research area is 18th-c. literature. However, I'm interested mainly in the history of the novel/novel theory and feminist theory, and both of those come into play in the paper on Lawrence, even if he was writing two centuries later. In my case, I think addressing the writing sample will be particularly important, because I've written two papers on Lawrence AND my 18th-c. sample uses an essay by him in its analysis. Even though I'm not interested in studying modernism (only certain post-18th-c. novelists appeal to me), the reasons I've been particularly attracted to his work connect to the reasons I'm more interested in studying the 18th-c., and I think that distinction will be important for adcomms to see. Your case might be different, but if you can make your writing sample connect to your field without it seeming like you're just indulging a justification, I'd say go for it!

When I first approached my professors about grad school and asked them to recommend programs for me, I said something to the effect of: "What schools might you suggest that would be a good fit but would also be realistic?" I had a friend apply to about 10 top-20 programs in English last year and got into one at the eleventh hour off the waitlist. I didn't want to be put in the same situation. However, my most trusted professor responded by telling me to apply to "at least 2, if not 3 or 4" Ivies and not to apply to anything outside the top 25 or so unless they were a spectacular fit AND had good funding/job placement. Needless to say, if you look in my signature, you won't find anything outside the top 25. I know it'll be stiff competition and there's a chance I won't get in anywhere this year. However, I also know that I have a chance. They wouldn't be encouraging me to go to grad school in the first place if I didn't. Here's the thing that really boosted my confidence, though. I haven't taken a class with my adviser since freshman year. I was incredibly shy at that point in my academic career, and I was having a hard time adjusting to college. I got the lowest grade of my major in her class, and haven't been super close to her since. I was really scared to talk to her about grad school because I thought she'd think I was crazy. However, when I finally got around to e-mailing her about it, she responded that she thought I'd be a great candidate for grad school and was willing to help me with whatever questions I needed answered. She also offered me the coveted department assistant position. I love going to a small school where my profs talk about me. But seriously, at least from my experience professors don't suggest grad school unless they have a reason to. That might not always be the case (and I have heard evidence to the contrary), but especially with the job market the way it is (I'm speaking for the humanities, but I know it's problematic elsewhere, as well), if your recommenders think you're good enough to get into a top program, you might as well try. Take that with a grain of salt, however. You are ultimately the one responsible for getting in. My friend looked fabulous on paper but waited until the week before the deadline to put together her writing sample and SoP. Your profs can't do that part for you. You have to get your own butt in gear!

This may not be super helpful, as I don't have my practice test scores offhand to include. Actually, most of them ended up giving me pretty skewed scores, as I had tons of problems with computer glitches, bad wi-fi connections while taking practice tests, etc. However, I can say that the score ranges I was given after taking the actual test equalled or exceeded the practice tests I was taking. I did Princeton, Kaplan, and PowerPrep as well and found PowerPrep the easiest and most accurate preparation technique. However, the Princeton and Kaplan prep was useful for preparing my test-taking technique and practicing how to approach the various types of questions (though, as discussed elsewhere on this forum, be forewarned that Princeton Review has a tendency to make some egregious errors in its prep books). As I said before, I don't recall my prep scores, but my actual scores were: Verbal 750-800 Quant 680-780 I'm applying to English Ph.D. programs, so I was hoping to exceed 700 in verbal. I was scoring probably in the mid- to low-700s on my practice tests, but ended up in the top range after the actual test. I can't speak universally, because everyone tests differently, but I think what made the difference for me was not much more than knowing how to approach the questions and the fact that I concentrate well in "sterile" test environments. Good luck!

Origin=goal, I think you're right. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe the paper really isn't as "controversial" as I initially may have made it seem. I guess that I asked the initial question because I was worried about the (very slim) possibility of offending an adcomm member. However, in reality the paper really doesn't get as controversial as it may have appeared. It's about porn, sure, but the underlying thesis encompasses the rhetoric of modesty as well as pornography in the courtship novel. I do have concerns about it being perceived as somewhat "edgy for the sake of being edgy," especially (as Sparky brings up) because it is my secondary writing sample, though I think the perceived edginess comes more from my choice of text than the argument itself. Nevertheless, it's still a (however marginal) "canonical" text to an extent, so it's probably a lot less problematic than I'm making it out to be. Regarding Sparky's point, I just don't think the "porn paper" is as strong as my other paper, which is why I chose that other one as the primary. It proves its point, it's a bit of an original take on a text, and it's in my primary field, but it feels a little more assignment-like than the other paper. The one on Sons and Lovers seems, to me and to the professors I've spoken with, a bit more sophisticated in that it moves beyond the standard interesting argument + close reading + secondary evidence format and into...well...different territory. I couldn't exactly describe what kind of territory that is. It was the most rewarding and yet most difficult paper I've ever written, primarily because I had to figure out a way of organizing it that was different from any paper I'd organized before. I'm pretty set on using that one as my main writing sample, even if it's not in my field, because it is so different from anything else I've written, because it shows my ability to work with my secondary area of interest (feminist theory), and because it contains a few of the most damn beautiful sentences I've ever written in my life. It's interesting that Origin=Goal should point out that I seem "preoccupied" with "canonicity." I think I've been conditioned to worry about the texts I'm reading because my UG department has had a number of controversies specific to my field of 18th-c. lit regarding what constitutes a "canonical" text. Both of the 18th-c. professors I've taken courses with teach what might be considered a "fringe canon," by which I mean they'll include Eliza Haywood or Charlotte Lennox but shortchange Dryden or Swift. Their predecessor, who died early in my sophomore year, was the exact opposite. He wouldn't budge from the Fielding-Swift-Pope curriculum and wouldn't be caught dead near any type of feminist analysis. Even though I never took a class with him, many of my classmates did, and so I've spent the past three years in the endless debate of which approach is more valid, especially when I was on the student committee for the job search for a permanent (TT) replacement for him.

Maybe I should clarify what I meant by labeling a canonical text as pornographic. It's funny that you use Lawrence as an example, since both of my papers actually utilize him to some extent (my main writing sample's primary text is Sons and Lovers--and it makes virtually the opposite claim! I adore Lawrence and think he's the furthest thing in the world from a big perv!). In my "porn paper" (as I like to call it), basically I'm locating the "pornographic" element of the one text in various rhetorical techniques and comparing such techniques to those used in another explicitly pornographic text. I don't even know if I'd call it a "controversial" argument, but there are a lot of traditional/conservative-type people still in my field, who hate to see their beloved Swifts, Popes, Fieldings, etc. analyzed from a feminist perspective, let alone called pornographic! Haha You make a good point. I'm having a hard time with my more "obscure" text--a novella by Anais Nin--because its only function is really to back up one of my points, and it feels a bit like it's just in there to be there. In the first draft of my paper I kind of shortchanged it, which makes me think it might be better to just take it out altogether. Unless I can really make it pertinent to my argument, it's gone. And like I've mentioned above, my primary text is Sons and Lovers. I don't know if I should just assume my audience would be familiar with it or spend time contextualizing. Seeing as I don't remember a lot of major plot points, it may be necessary! (Time for me to re-read my primary text!!)

Hello again! I feel like you must all be getting sick of me on here. I have some questions about the writing sample and SoP which may or may not be a bit silly but are the kind of things I won't figure out anywhere else. 1. What would be your opinion on canonical v. non-canonical texts in the writing sample? Do you think it makes a difference? That probably won't be much of a problem for me, as the main work I discuss in my primary writing sample is a (fairly) canonical text, and the other texts I use are contextualized in the paper. However, even with the main text, if it's not Chaucer or Shakespeare or Joyce or something I'm not sure if I should err on the side of adcomm ignorance and contextualize the plot or if I shouldn't bother wasting valuable space. I'm working on adapting the paper for a conference presentation, too, and I do think for that contextualization will be important. 2. What about potentially "controversial" topics? My main writing sample isn't controversial, but for those schools (like UVA) that require two, my secondary one might be. I think I'd like to send this paper to any schools that welcome a second piece of writing (like Cornell) because it's in my primary field. Ultimately, I call a beloved, canonical novel a work of pornography as I compare it to another pornographic work. It's not explicit in its analysis, but I'm starting to wonder if such a topic might potentially "offend" someone on an adcomm. I wouldn't anticipate that to be a problem, but do you think that might be a risky move? I'm not anticipating most adcomms to be super conservative or anything, but you never know. The late 18th-c. prof. from my school who I just missed taking classes with is probably rolling in his grave at the thought of this very paper. 3. I know a number of threads have discussed the relative merits/disadvantages of bringing up your academic past in the SoP. For instance, my English grades show a significant change about halfway through my sophomore year. I was terrified of speaking in class my first year (and into my second), and that impacted my grade on more than one occasion. Adjusting to college was somewhat difficult, and it took me a while to really gain confidence in my abilities. Of course, if I were to reference this in the SoP, I'd try to give the most condensed version possible, but I'm not sure if it's really necessary. At this point, my major GPA is around a 3.8 (overall 3.75), which probably doesn't really need explaining. I guess I just sometimes feel insecure about it, when I want the whole package to look as perfect as possible. These are the things that keep me up at night. Le sigh. I had more stupid questions the other day, but can't think of the rest right now. I'm sure I'll update as I see fit. Please let me know if you think I'm the obnoxious one blowing up the board! Posting my worries here tends to alleviate my stresses elsewhere (and keeps me from bothering the professors who are attempting to cherish their final week and a half before the term starts)!

You are right, of course, truckbasket! I was just talking to a friend who is happily settling down in her nice apartment at her nice program who, quite literally, was losing her shit right around March. Watching her go through the process, I kind of freaked out around that time, too! I'm just going to make it my goal to be in a happy place through those months and attempt to forget they exist. (Yeah right. I know I'll be on here every second of every day. Or at least every second that I'm not obsessively refreshing my e-mail. Heck, already I spend at least twice the amount of time I used to spend on Facebook on the Grad Cafe!) Of course, the waiting game has basically already started for me. I've had too many grad school admissions-related dreams to count. If I have to wake up one more time thinking U Chicago accepted me even though I didn't apply (yeah...that dream really happened), I'm going to go crazy. So, in that respect, I could do with it being December.

Exactly. Ironically, I did in fact send an e-mail to a professor with the subject heading "The Great Grad Freak Out Email." I've been somewhat obsessively contacting my two friends who just started their grad programs. I've been trying to avoid e-mailing my professors too obsessively; I've already contacted just about everyone in my department multiple times! So instead I've been going through the results forum here, having panic attacks as I compare my stats to everyone else's. I know they don't matter per se, but...but...but. I'm constantly having GPA-related freak-outs. Gahhhhhh. I just want it to be December already and to be all over!!! ...I may or may not have already started filling out online applications where possible. I am a pathetic human.

I definitely agree with the above posters. I just (successfully) got through the revised GRE without studying vocab at all. I found that going through practice tests was invaluable prep for me, as familiarizing yourself with the test format is half the battle. If you want to pick up the Princeton Review 1,014 Questions book, that might be a good one. It's not THE most accurate score predictor, but it has drills of each concept (for both verbal and quant) you're going to come across, and it's helpful to just practice the types of questions you know you're going to get. (Plus, it's cheaper than most of the other prep books, esp. if you buy it at one of the uber-sales at Borders!) RIP, Borders. Good luck!

Yes, I'd love to see your list! I was considering posting a very similar thread earlier today, so I'm happy you did! I, too, am having problems knowing just how specific to be in my SoP. I have specific-ish interests, but I don't have anything close to a research proposal or anything. I'm hoping a few more months of thinking this over will help me, but I'd like to have at least a (very) rough draft done before I start classes, and I barely even know where to start! P.S. I know there are sample SoPs out there, but if anyone's found a particularly good one (that's pertinent to our discipline), would you mind posting a link here? The only one that really springs to mind is the one from the Berkeley student about Nabokov, and I didn't like that one much.

Well, Emory's FAQ page on the Grad School site says this: Can I apply to more than one program? Yes, though with some difficulty. You must submit separate applications to each program and pay a non-refundable $50 application fee for each application. Our online application system will accept only one application per user account, so you will need to create one user account for each application. You might want to e-mail someone from either the English or Comp Lit programs, though, to make sure that it would be okay to apply to both. Hope this helps!

It's been a while since I've read Vonnegut, but I recall not really enjoying Slaughterhouse Five. It was one of those books I forced myself to get through on a long train ride. However, the only other Vonnegut I've ever read was Player Piano, and I loved it! I had to read it for a bs class on technology in high school (ITGS, any IB folks out there?), and the novel was the best thing to come of that class!

Yep. I can't say that the options were exactly those that I listed earlier. Actually, I think the identification for that one was even easier! There are a lot of no-brainer type answers in the vocab area of the verbal. What might be more valuable is practicing the reading comprehension questions to know the tricks they tend to use. Those are so much more complicated and time consuming! Also, if you're not doing superbly on your practice tests, don't freak out entirely. The Princeton Review ones were really hard for me, and I did much better on the actual exam! I thought Kaplan was fairly good, and the PowerPrep was what it was. I couldn't tell you how I did on that because I had so many computer issues with the software that I kept needing to restart it. But I definitely did much better in both sections than the Princeton Review practice tests were predicting! So take your practice for what it is--practice--but take the score it gives you with a grain of salt. Be warned also that Princeton Review's books are riddled with errors. Meh.

THIS. I feel like I've done so much, but really I've been mainly just thinking about it and not really doing it. But, still, thinking isn't really a bad thing. Especially from the girl who writes all her papers the night before they're due but can pull it off because of how much thinking (in addition to copious note-taking) I've done. Thank goodness. I may be prematurely freaking out, too. Of course there are plenty of things I should probably get done now, but at the same time, I don't want to just get it all done too soon. I'd like to make somewhat decent progress on both my writing sample and SoP before I go back, but at the same time I know they'll be infinitely different if I work on them now as opposed to 2 or 3 months from now. It's amazing how much you can visualize your skills improving when you go back and read papers you wrote just months before. I know that's what happened with me and my writing sample. So I think as long as I do as much as I can now and then do the rest a bit closer to the date, I'll end up being okay. TPHF, I totally understand what you're saying about your situation last year. I watched a friend go through the process and go through a (somewhat delayed) breakdown in the months while she was waiting to her back from schools. She didn't put much into the application process and didn't realize that until it was too late. Thankfully, I took as much out of her experience as I could, and that's what's influencing my drive right now. It also helped that another friend (who hadn't even thought of grad school until October!) was quite successful in her applications, so I can take advice from both of them, both negative and positive. Luckily, I'm the type that ultimately ends up working better under pressure. I don't think I've ever gotten to the point where too much pressure made me crack, it just made me more driven. In terms of my course load for this term, it is what it is. I have no way of really gauging how difficult it will be, but I don't foresee it being too horrible. I'm taking one upper-level English course in an area I think might help me focus my SoP, an independent study in theory, and a creative writing class. With the exception of the manuscript I need to have for creative writing, the class will be a piece of cake. The independent study will only meet once a week and will be more reading-driven, which I don't mind at all. However, I will be juggling three jobs, including one as an editor on the school newspaper. Hopefully my colleagues will understand when I can't put in 110%, like I usually do. (Of course, I've already promised to write 3 articles for the first issue, which comes out before I even come back to campus. Oh, well.) As life begins to get more and more hectic, I'm sure I'll be coming back here for additional moral support!

It's an on-screen calculator. A little obnoxious, but probably saved my life. A lot of people seem to think that the calculator is a waste of time on many problems, but I used it on almost every one. I (surprisingly) did fairly well on the math, and I know without a calculator I surely would have bombed it!. Though I did run out of time on both of the sections, it was only on one problem each time. As far as having only a short time to prepare, the same thing happened to me. I planned on taking it the Saturday before I went back to school (which would have been this coming Saturday) but instead ended up taking it last Monday. I had only about a week and a half to prepare (opposed to over 3 like I thought I would), but honestly I preferred it that way. I don't really see the point in hardcore studying for a test like this. I practically lived at Starbucks for that week and a half, going through practice test after practice test. I studied math to some extent, but I don't think it's worth it memorizing tons of vocab and such. Personally, it was more valuable to familiarize myself with the kinds of questions on the test and how to approach each one. This saved me some valuable time on the test day. Most of the vocab stuff you end up getting on the revised version isn't very obscure (I literally had one question that had me identify which preposition was more appropriate...the options were like "on," "at," or "in" or something like that) but stuff you're supposed to answer via context clues. Sure, they're not all easy, but they're also not anything you can put on a flashcard in many cases. Unless you're really worried about vocab, don't bother spending your short amount of study time memorizing obscure words. You'll get maybe 10 of them, at best. Just my $0.02. Of course, everyone's study methods are different, but this is what worked best for me! Now, the subject test...that's another story. I have flashcards galore!

I just realized that I go back to school in exactly 2 weeks. I still have a ton of work I'd planned to do before the end of the summer. I need to tailor my writing sample enough to be ready to present it at a conference on October 1st, do as much prep for the subject test as I possibly can, and do some serious work on my SoP before the craziness of classes start. I also just got an e-mail from a professor that I need to have a manuscript of a story for my creative writing class ready by mid-September. On top of all this stuff, my work schedule's gone crazy, and I'll likely only be getting two or three days off before I go back to school. I'm starting to panic about getting everything done. I put a lot of it on hold prepping for the GRE, and while I can breathe a sigh of relief that it's all done now, I don't want to short-change the really important parts of my application! I know I have time still, and I'm just freaking out, but I wanted to see if anyone else was in the same boat. I know most schools are actually back already, so I'm sure plenty of you have already experienced the end-of-summer-freakout. I totally get the whole waiting until you're done with undergrad to apply thing now. But I'm still doing it. I've invested too much energy not to. It will be okay, it will be okay, it will be okay. That is my mantra. Moral support, guys and gals.

From my experience, the answer is both yes and no. My first year, as I've mentioned before, I rarely spoke in class. I know that my first term I got an A- where I could have gotten an A because participation was worth 25% of the grade. Other English courses I took freshman and even into sophomore year went similarly. I'd get comments on written work or e-mails from my professors telling me I had some great ideas and should speak up more. At that point, speaking up simply did not happen. Once I did start participating in class, I saw a solid increase in my grades. I went from getting A-minuses and B-pluses in my classes to getting As across the board. I know that my writing skills have improved as I've gotten a bit older, but I definitely see my consistent participation in class as having a positive effect on my overall grades. Even still, I frequently have professors telling me to speak up more often! As far as professors "looking down" upon more reticent students, I don't think that is necessarily the case. However, I definitely think, depending on course expectations, it can impact your grade. And personally I've found that speaking up in class has helped me create far better relationships with my professors than I had previously. It seems to me that professors will be nice to quiet students but really end up harboring the best relations with those students who are quiet on occasion but at other times really show that they're not always intimidated in the classroom.