bdon19

Meh, I get what you're saying, but I'm not too bummed about it. They do give us that range, and maybe it's just because I'm happy with my score, but I don't find it that problematic. I think you'll know if you need to retake it based on that range, and you do have enough time between now and November to retake it. Standardized testing will never come close to being perfect, but honestly I think this test was as close to my version of "perfect" as a standardized test could possibly be. Maybe that's because I'm a good tester so I didn't have to stress a lot about it. I felt like it tested more "natural" skills, especially in the verbal (identifying vocab based on context clues, comprehension, etc.) and even to an extent in the quant. Of course you can study for these tests, but for me I didn't see that it did a whole lot of good. It's a natural skill set they're testing, which is what's going to matter more to adcoms than a test you just cram for. ...That being said, I did do a lot of cramming. But I felt like the real payoff in my practice tests was familiarizing myself with the test format and brushing up my math skills. I didn't memorize vocab because I didn't see the point. It may not work for everybody, but it worked for me...along with the concentration skills I get with added stress during the actual test.

Thanks, dimanche! I won't know *officially* how I've done until November, of course, but it went pretty well! Even the math...whoa. As I've already noted, I know virtually nothing about comp lit programs, but I'd guess it'd be just like those programs that make you apply separately to the M.A. and Ph.D. programs. Since a lot of them are considered separate departments, I don't see any reason why you couldn't apply to both, but you would most likely have to submit two different applications. ...Why do I feel compelled to respond, even when I know nothing about these things? My online personality is so much more annoying than my real-life one, I promise. I'm also still loopy on caffeine, sleep-deprivation, and leftover adrenaline. Gahhhhhh.

Good point. I don't really know anything about comp lit. I probably shouldn't be posting anything right now. My brain is utterly failing me.

I took the GRE in Chicago this morning! (I'm so glad to have gotten it over with, too!) I commute downtown regularly for work, so I'm used to the train, but if you do have access to the Metra from wherever you live, it might be a less stressful option than driving into the city. The test center is only a 15-min or so walk from either Union Station or Ogilvie. Definitely show up a little early, though. It was hard waking up at 5:45 for the exam (I'm not a morning person, either), but worth it to get there a little early. There was a pretty long line when I got inside, but they're efficient and get you through quickly. There are a lot of security measures they take (you have to lock up all personal items, keep your ID with you at all times, get run over with one of those metal detector wands, turn out your pockets, etc.), but they're just routine. Unfortunately those kinds of things always freak me out more than they should--I get so scared I'll be unintentionally violating something! But it's really not a big deal. Because you're just set up at a computer, I found myself feeling less like it was a real test than I would have had it been set up in a classroom or something. It felt like just another practice test. I didn't stress TOO much about test prep. I bought the Kaplan and Princeton Review books and then did the free ones (ETS PowerPrep, Kaplan, and Princeton) online. Personally, I don't think studying really does you all that much good, since you can memorize hundreds of vocab words and have only 2 of them show up on the test. Even though Quant doesn't matter a whole lot for my discipline (English lit), I brushed up on facts/formulas, etc, and ended up doing pretty darn well for someone who hasn't taken a math class in four years! But really, I think the best thing you can do is just familiarize yourself with the test format. Once you know exactly what kinds of questions you'll be facing (and the difference between squares and ovals), you already are saving yourself a ton of time. You know exactly how to approach each question, and I think that's really what the test prep books are best for. You can't cram info into your head overnight, but you can train yourself how to approach each kind of question you'll be given. Oh yeah, and then there was that essay part. I didn't study for that at all. I felt like I did alright, but who knows? I wash my hands of it until November!!

Even if you don't necessarily have a number of interests that fall outside the realm of American lit, I think you've almost answered your own question here. How many other programs, if any, have a specific Trauma Studies track?? I know this is really your major area of interest, so I would say, go for it! I think you could make your SoP say a LOT tailored to that individual program. Hopefully I wrote real sentences. I took the GRE this morning. My brain's decided to shut down.

This is an interesting topic, particularly because my style has changed quite dramatically through my three (almost four!) years of undergrad. Freshman year I don't think I voluntarily participated once in any of my English courses. I had tested out of the intro courses, so I was taking classes with students who were a year or two older, and I was petrified. The combination of older students and brilliant professors left me completely silent. However, as I started becoming more confident and more passionate about my English major, I started talking more, and now I'm at a point where it can be hard to get me to shut up, even in classes with less than 10 students! However, I have the horrible problem of being one of the least articulate people in the world when I'm not fully prepared to talk about something. I'm great at public speaking when I have time to prepare, but when an idea just pops into my head, I end up being able to word vomit about half a sentence and then wait to see if other people catch on. Thank god I have writing assignments to show people I can, actually, develop an idea! However, I have to disagree with the above posters. I have never found aggression towards other students to be productive in the classroom. I'm having terrible flashbacks to a moment gone horribly wrong when one student told another, "I think you're wrong." *Shudder.* I love a lively, intellectual debate as much as the next person, but I don't think the classroom is the right place, no matter how much another student's work "needs help," is the right place to "insult" the work of another student. It's all about balance. Just as we are expected to be mature enough not to bring personal problems into the classroom or workplace or whatever, we shouldn't bring the chips on our shoulders into it, either. I agree that, at times, students' work is not up to par, and still our peers don't want to critique it. That's the point of constructive criticism. Don't shut down someone's paper based on silly things like "poor structure, word choice, and abuse/misuse of quotes." Heck, one time I had to do a peer review of a paper that talked about "Hemmingway" throughout the entire thing. Instead of shoving the paper back into the girl's face (which was, yes, my first instinct), I circled it, crossed out the extra "m," and went on to point out both the positive and negative aspects of her paper. It ended up not being half-bad! I've had to come to the realization that, while everyone's instincts may not always be as brilliant as mine (ha! I only rarely think that way anyway, but we're prospective English Ph.D.s, we must have our moments of pretension ), that NEVER, under any circumstances, means that I can dismiss someone's ideas based upon poor word choice or structure or something like that. Maybe I'm spoiled by going to a school where the majority of the population is pretty darned smart. But I've come to realize that the girl with the dumbest sounding voice and most disorganized writing in the class can have some of the most brilliant ideas. Sorry if I sound like I'm attacking you, dimanche! That's definitely NOT what I'm trying to do. But, maybe your self-proclaimed "aggressive" classroom tendencies are something to think about? Personally, I sure wouldn't like to have to work with too many aggressive types in grad school! I tend to shut down when the class gets too tense!!

That's exactly what I'm doing. I think I'll apply to one M.A. program, so, if it were to happen that I didn't get accepted into any doctoral programs but did get into the M.A. program, I'll have an option of whether or not to do the M.A. or to just take the year off and re-apply. P.S. Regarding my own previous question and a number of others that have come up in this thread and elsewhere, after taking nearly a week off of thinking about all this stuff (to get in some hardcore GRE prep), I'm thinking that maybe some of us (myself included--myself foremost, even!) spend too much time worrying about what we HAVEN'T done. Instead, I think maybe the focus should be on what kinds of things we have done that will impress adcoms. No two applicants are the same, and we have no way of knowing what might make us stand out. So let's focus on making ourselves shine, no matter what our shortcomings might be! ...I don't where this Little Miss Optimism attitude is coming from. Maybe from excessive caffeine. Or the fact that the GRE is two days away. Something like that.

Yay for translated Harry Potter! That's exactly how I plan to brush up on my Spanish.

http://faculty.salisbury.edu/~csvilmar/gradschool.htm I'd recommend this link to just about anyone as a sort of "tough love" view into grad school admissions, but since you explicitly mentioned Salisbury, I figured I'd post it here. It was written by Christopher Vilmar, a Restoration/18th-c. professor at Salisbury, who I don't know personally but know enough about to have found this page. I think it takes on a relatively negative view of both the admissions game as well as the bleak nature of the job market, but at the same time it's fairly realistic. Of course, he's speaking to lit majors generally rather than rhet/comp people, but I still think it brings up a number of valid points from the perspective of a seasoned veteran, rather than those of us Grad Cafe-ers, who, while we might be quite knowledgeable regarding all of these things, still don't have the experience of those who've gone through it backing up our statements. Plus, I just figured your mention of Salisbury would be a good excuse for me to post this link, which was one of the first things I looked at when I started thinking about grad school. And it freaked the shit out of me. You also might (if you haven't already) take a look at the discussion a number of us had last week on here about the relative merits of top-25 or so programs vs. lower-ranked programs for Ph.D.s. Of course, you're looking at M.A.s for rhet/comp, so two of your variables are a tad different, but you might find some of the comments useful nonetheless. I know I sure did!

Hmmm, I never really thought about this either, that Grad Cafe might consist mainly of the "upper eschelon" of applicants? Do you really think that's true? I'm really having such a difficult time figuring where I might stand in terms of other applicants. I mean, I feel fairly prepared at this point and feel confident that by December I'll be as prepared as I possibly can be, but it's so hard to tell! I almost (and you will never ever hear me say this except in my moments of panic, such as what I'm undergoing currently) wish there WAS a way to quantify ourselves. But maybe I don't. Does anyone have any idea if there's anywhere on the web that has examples of successful writing samples? Same thing with SoPs? I know I've seen a couple of SoPs, but I don't even really know how to search for these things. Sample writing sample = fail. (And yes, I did nearly attempt to google this.) Or is there anyone on here who was successful in the admissions game who might be willing to share, via pm of course, a writing sample/SoP. I totally understand if nobody does, but I'm having one of those caffeine-induced, everyone-in-my-house-is-asleep-except-for-me-so-I'm-on-grad-cafe freakouts.

I'd say, if Woolf is really the author you're primarily interested in, writing a paper on Woolf is the best way to go, unless you have a secondary interest you're equally interested in exploring. Additionally, you might think about a paper comparing one of Woolf's works to one of your secondary interests, to do something a bit different but still staying with your primary interest in Woolf. While your ideas might seem pretty similar to those in a lot of the criticism you're reading, you may just find that once you start thinking a bit outside the box, you'll find something really interesting! Try reading through some of her letters or essays, and find something that sparks your interest. I definitely think you want to exhibit a solid grounding in both theoretical approaches as well as close reading. However, I don't think ad-coms are going to necessarily be looking for an astoundingly new or original argument. Obviously, they're not going to be impressed by a paper that is fundamentally a summary of the existing Woolf scholarship, but they're also not going to require you to radically revolutionize the field, either. As you state, the paper you used last year was a "lightly edited version of a well-received paper." Perhaps all you really need is some "heavy" editing, so to speak. I'm using a well-received paper for my writing sample, one which one a departmental award and that I'll be presenting at a conference this fall. I figured it would need some minor editing and tweaking in order to be ready come December. I didn't look at it for a few months, and when I did, I realized a LOT of edits were necessary. Maybe giving your old paper a second look will provide you with new angles in which to take it. I know it did for me. Good luck!

I hope I don't come across as overly defensive here, but I just want to make sure I've thoroughly explained my rationale (as at this point there is nothing anyone could do to talk me back into writing the thesis). In terms of the thesis itself, it's definitely not that I can't stomach doing the work. I wasn't planning on writing this my sophomore year, but I did come up with the initial idea during a tutorial I took at the end of the year, during which I first started thinking about grad school. I stopped thinking about it for a while, then, after my tutorial's professor was replaced with a new TT professor, and I spent the year cultivating a relationship with her. By the spring, I was ready to approach the new professor with my project, and I spent spring break writing a project prospectus and getting my research together. I came into my meeting with her carrying two huge binders, an outline, and the prospectus. She sat me down, and said, "Bdon19, I want you to make me a promise. Put this stuff under your bed and don't think about it until after this year is over. You'll change your mind, I promise." So, instead, I threw my efforts into ensuring, course-wise, that I was ready for grad school. I took three upper-level seminar courses in English, two in the primary areas I was considering as my sub-field. I did come out of the term satisfied that I had chosen the right primary and secondary sub-fields. Additionally, I revised a seminar paper I'd written the previous term and won a departmental award (the only one offered for critical essays) for said paper. I have no doubt that I would have thoroughly enjoyed writing the honors thesis. Every so often I have a little pang of regret, thinking about the tons of research sitting around that hasn't yet been put to use. However, I still think my professor's advice is quite valid. My capstone seminar will require me to write a 40 page paper anyway, whereas, if I did the thesis, I'd have to write somewhere around 150 pages. Sure, that would be fabulous experience, but I just don't think it's necessary at this point in my education. I don't think any grad program will fault me for not writing a masters-level thesis, coming out of undergrad. NOT doing the thesis frees up my schedule to do a number of independent study courses, for which I'll be able to get exposure to some things I think will prepare me better for grad school than the thesis would. For instance, I haven't taken a theory course, as my department isn't very theory-oriented and a course hasn't been offered for over two years. I'm doing an independent study in theory this fall, which I think ultimately makes more sense. Additionally, I guess I may not have been clear about what I mean by "prestige factor." Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure my professor actually used the phrase "pretension factor". At my school, the honors thesis really does nothing but qualify you for honors at graduation. Since I already qualify for honors in course, this will really do nothing for me. I'll still get my "magna" read off next to my name at graduation, and I'll just have the title of my capstone paper rather than my thesis listed under my name in the program at commencement. I know I might be putting all my eggs in one basket applying to primarily top-20 PhD programs while still finishing up my undergrad. I'm not completely averse to taking a year off if this application cycle doesn't work in my favor, but I'd much rather give it a shot now and just wait and see what happens! Sorry if I sound overly defensive! I do really appreciate your feedback, which is really why I asked in the first place. I don't know if, perhaps, it is just wishful thinking on my part that the honors thesis isn't necessary. It's so hard to tell where I'm going to fall compared to the rest of the applicant pool. I'm constantly going back and forth between thinking I'll be just fine to freaking out that I'm just kidding myself. This whole thing is really so rough! Thanks to everyone who provided me with constructive comments. I do really love GradCafe!

Ahh Pamela. I will forever have the fondest memories of the ridiculousness that ensued after my English Novel class read it. I feel ya about the length of Clarissa--actually, I read the bulk of it one summer when I got stuck on jury duty, spent the entire day there, and was never called. Those hours were a lot more enjoyable spent with Richardson. Of course, I adore Shamela and Joseph Andrews, too, and Haywood's Anti-Pamela is enjoyable, too (if slightly darker). And, while we're on the subject of works inspired by Pamela, has anyone read Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (Fanny Hill)??

I think as long as you take it early enough that your scores are sent in November, you're good. That's what I'm doing. I finally got my butt in gear and registered. I ended up not being able to take it the day I'd planned, which was the weekend before going back, so now I'm taking it a week from Monday. EEEEKKK! P.S. I don't really get the new scoring. I know it's basically just out of 40, going from 130-170, but how the heck are we supposed to gauge where our percentiles are going to fall? I know that info isn't really available since the test is so new (and presumably why we have to wait until Nov for our scores?), but it'd be nice if ETS could at least give some sort of ballpark! I've been scoring around 160ish on my practice tests, which I'm guessing is fairly decent, but then I have a panic attacks because I'm not sure. I miss the old GRE, and I never even took it!!

Bloom and the Bible. That sounds like my personal hell. But more power to ya! I'm so glad that everyone loves Tristram Shandy! Admittedly, I feel silly that I'm an 18th-centuryist who hasn't yet read it, but I've read parts in various contexts and already adore it. But try and find an 18th-c. novel I don't adore. Clarissa, anyone? Or even Pamela?

I've enjoyed reading all the comments, too! It's interesting getting the perspective of those of us currently in the process of applying or who just went through it a year or two ago, rather than getting it from, say, the people on the Chronicle boards. I think we could easily get skewed perceptions there, as we have no idea what kind of jaded people are on that. Yes, we may be among them someday, but at this point we're still the hopeful ones. ZeeMore21, I do hope I can find some more middle-ground schools that fit me well. Of course, I would love to attend a top 25 program if possible, and I think there's a chance that it might be, but who knows? I think I'm sticking with the advice of a trusted professor, who has basically said something along the lines of: "The top schools are the best in everything. If you aren't one hundred percent sure what you want to study, don't try to narrow yourself to lower programs that seem to fit you well. There's a good chance you'll change your mind." I got similar advice from a current grad student. While we obviously need to be focused to SOME extent in our SoP, they're not holding us to those interests and, besides the whole job market question, the top 25 schools really are going to have the better faculty across the board. This won't, of course, hold true universally, but it's a good point to mull over. *Sigh.* Can't it just be December already? I just want to rip this Band-Aid off right now!

diehtc0ke, you bring up a good point. I haven't finished doing my research into professors of interest yet, which is why the numbers are skewed a bit high. In addition, I have two secondary fields of interest that I've been including in my list, as my SoP will be addressing those as well. I think that, with my particular interests, some professors that aren't necessarily in my field per se might end up being interested in my research, so I don't want to eliminate them from my list just yet. When narrowing down my list and eliminating those which had *only* four or five professors I might be interested in working with, my real criteria was which schools had the highest number of faculty in my top field as compared to the secondary ones. For instance, some schools might have had three or four who did really cool research on the development of the novel but focused on the 19th-c. rather than the 18th, which is my area, so I'm not as interested. In any case, I think I am going to go with your advice on not seeming stalker-ish and e-mailing faculty with too many questions at this point. I will probably try and contact a few more current students about the programs I'm more iffy about (it definitely saved me the $65 for one school already), but as for the others I'm going to go with my gut instinct that they will be decent fits for me, though some more than others. Regarding the honors thesis, I'm wondering (from what I've read around these boards) whether a lot of other schools have different sorts of requirements regarding them. They're definitely not required at my school, and nobody's done one in English for the past ten years or so. I had desperately wanted to do one starting sophomore year, but after a really eye-opening talk with a professor realized I probably would be doing it just for the prestige factor and not because it was something I really wanted to do. I really lacked the resources to do the proper research and decided my year would be best spent honing my skills (as well as my writing sample) and taking more independent study courses. Unfortunately, I don't actually do my capstone project until the spring, where we take a required seminar course, but I don't really feel like it will adversely affect my application. Really, I think it might help me to be less pressured!

See, I know I referred to the "top 25" in my original post, but obviously there's a little deviation in that. When I and many of the faculty members I know talk about the "rankings not mattering," we're typically referring to the rankings within certain brackets on the list. Penn State, WUSTL and Vanderbilt may not be top 25, but they're within that small number JUST below the 25-mark, and they're also both up-and-coming programs. The US News rankings aren't set in stone, but still, as numerous others have discussed, an Ivy or top-25 PhD will have better job prospects across the board. Yes there are exceptions, there are lots of exceptions, but we can't ignore cold hard evidence. I looked at a number of schools outside the top 25, trying to find that elusive "fit" factor. In my field, that didn't work out so well. But for others, like ZeeMore21, "lower-ranked" programs like Vandy, which I wouldn't call lower-ranked at all, ended up being better fits than the top schools. I had Penn State on my radar for a while, but realized ultimately that it would not be a good fit for me, so I crossed it off my list. This is a sticky question, and we've had a great discussion about it. We're never going to get clear-cut answers, and the answer that works for one may not necessarily work for another. Thanks for all your answers, everyone!

I feel like sometimes we Grad Cafe-ers (meaning myself) get so involved in thinking and talking about grad school stuff that we forget about the fun stuff. We're lit majors, so obviously we must like (gasp!) reading for fun, right!? So what are you reading for fun right now? I'll start. I've been reading Manhattan Transfer by Dos Passos on my daily commute to and from downtown Chicago. ...Though Tristram Shandy is sitting there next to my bed pleading with me.

For some reason I guess I usually assume that the Internet is a good place to gauge proportions. What I mean by this is that I'd kinda been thinking of Grad Cafe as a microcosm for the grad school applicant pool, but now I'm not so sure. I was thinking about the relative popularity of subfields, and I don't think proportions here necessarily align to what we'll be seeing come application time. Medievalists seem to have a HUGE presence here, when I typically hear that they're one of the smallest in the applicant pool. Obviously I see a lot of c.20 specialists here, but the majority of those have very specialized interests in either specialized theory (post-colonial, gender, etc.) or interdisciplinary areas. Rhet/comp also seems to be really big on here. I know such areas are in vogue right now, but it feels as if, with the exception of Medieval lit, traditional literary studies are frequently absent on GradCafe. I don't know to what extent the same is true in the applicant pool, nor do I know whether my lack of interdisciplinary focus (except gender studies) will figure negatively into my application. What do people active on GradCafe think? Is what we're seeing here an accurate representation of the pool that we'll be thrown into come December? Or am I going to have much more competition than GradCafe might make me believe? (Ignore that last question. I'm not really serious.)

Okay, I have a few assorted questions that I thought I'd group together here. I'm sure there have been threads on some of these things (actually, I'm positive about some of them), but as most of my questions are fairly specific I thought I'd start a new thread. New threads are more fun, anyway! First and foremost, in terms of researching programs and finding a good fit, I'm realizing I'm increasingly drawn towards schools that have multiple professors in my major areas. That's a no-brainer. However, even when I do, say, find a program that has 9 rather than 4 or 5 professors I really find interesting, how do I really go about getting information on them? I know I can check into what research they've done and what courses they've taught in recent years, but how do I get a sense of how often they take on grad student advisees or whether they'd rather work with a more or less focused incoming student? I'm guessing this information is, by its inherently individual nature, most likely only garnered through asking either current students or the faculty themselves. I guess I could take a look at dissertation topics/advisors from recent years, but other than that I don't really know where to look. Though I guess that's something we wouldn't necessarily know at this point in the game, huh? Finally, what are your takes on honors theses? I was SUPER close to doing one this year, had started research my sophomore year, talked to professors about advising me, and finally decided I didn't want to. A professor advised me not to do it, as I'll qualify for honors without it, we have a capstone requirement anyway, and I'd just be taking on way too much along with my applications this fall. My thesis topic fell WAY outside the interests I'll be including on my SoP, anyway, (as well as the interests of the dept faculty) and it just felt a little irrelevant at this point in the game. I'm not really asking for advice as to whether I should have gone with it. What's done is done. I would be interested to see, however, what people on here think about honors theses. Are they, say, on par with conference presentations--nice to have but not really necessary in terms of the app as a whole?

Oh, boy. I'm being *that* girl, posting three times in a row. I didn't want to start a new thread, though! But I wanted to see if anyone else had any info about 18th-c. studies. I'm trying to find some that might still be strong but are just enough off the radar that I haven't thought to check them out. Any ideas?

Yeah, in terms of math, I figure as long as I go over enough of it that I don't go into the exam completely cold, I'll be good. I bought one of the Kaplan prep books, and I'll go through that, but that'll be the extent of it. Also...is anyone else finding prepping for the math strangely...fun? In a weird, twisted way? I'm finding I remember a lot more math than I thought I would, and I actually don't mind studying something so concrete (for a change). I started going through my Kaplan book yesterday and missed my train because I got completely in the zone. Weeeeeeeeird.

WOW, I'm really enjoying everyone's take on this! It really is a hot topic, and something, alas, that all of us here have to consider. I wanted to throw in my $0.02 on a couple of points. I wholeheartedly agree that, in the case of certain subfields, finding a program that is strong in that particular concentration is of the utmost importance and that the importance of the program's "rank" may in such cases be a lot less important in comparison to the overall strength of the faculty in that field. However, I also agree with the poster who makes the claim that "you will likely land a job at an institution/department of slightly less prestige than your degree granting one." Even if we make room for the occasional "wild cards," the fact still remains that, generally speaking, your "lesser" institutions (and I include my much-beloved, higher- but not super highly-ranked LAC in that category) are saturated with degrees from highly-ranked programs. I'd love to find a program that would let me thrive to the extent that I could be that one "wild card," but I don't think that's necessarily something you'll know until you're nearly ready to go out on the job market. I think a lower-ranked program has the potential to allow certain students to excel in a way that a higher-ranked one wouldn't necessarily, but, at least in my field, I still haven't found anything below the top-25 or so that even sticks out to me. There are so many factors that go into this process, and, unfortunately, most of us only gotten a taste of what it's like at this point. I think at this point all I can do, at least, is find the program that will have the best possible combination of fit, prestige, job placement, and faculty for me. I think that at least puts me a step or two above some of the applicants floundering around out there. *shrugs*

I'm getting very excited, too! Honestly, I think maybe the best way to go is to start out with some more general questions about the program itself and how well it might fit in terms of your interests. Then you can test the waters as far as how responsive the students are, and perhaps go from there with more questions. At least, I think that's what I'm going to do. Also, does anyone know how we might go about getting names of students to contact when a directory isn't posted directly on the school's web page?