asleepawake

Excuse you! I posted a really nice response, you just don't like Lady Mary.

I believe I'm actually responsible for all of the Downton Abbey gifs in this thread. Gif studies is well on its way to being a thing. You can ramble on and on about your stats all you want, but stats aren't getting you in anywhere. You said yourself that you aren't confident in your writing sample. You're just airing your insecurities on the internet. That's fine. You know you don't need to be a jerk to do that.

I really, really, really hope you're still around when results start coming in.

I finally got it to work, too, but that was one awkward application and slow website.

I'd say about 10 inches is too close.

I don't know about UConn, but I've had 3 schools so far say "no interfolioz, pleaz." It's terribly annoying, but if you ask your letter writers they should understand.

Anybody else having trouble with Colorado at Boulder's website? Last week it was down completely and this week I'm just getting error messages and slow loading times...

Sweet casual misogyny, bro.

"________ is becoming more and more common in society in this day and age and era." [Only 10% chance thing is actually becoming more common]

Yay! I think after this thread's brief foray into darkness, a lot of us used up all of our up votes. We will have to just overdose on gifs in the meantime. The website is actually kind of awesome--you can rank schools according to all kinds of factors. Again, some of the info is old, outdated, or possibility just wrong... but I obsess over it anyway!

Actually, a lot of graduates from those programs do struggle to find jobs. You can't just look at the overall job placement rate. You need to look at the rates at individual schools. I've heard rumors about that a lot of lower-ranked schools do not always want to hire graduates from Ivies because they are more likely to view the job as temporary, and then to leave when something better comes along. When someone retires or leaves, departments don't necessarily just get to hire someone new. Departments want good people who will get tenure and stay. This website is a bit outdated, but here is a ranking by "student outcomes" ("The program supports a high fraction of students, students graduate quickly and get jobs, and the program tracks student placements") of English PhDs: http://graduate-scho...______________U As you see, the Ivies do well, but so do a lot of unexpected schools. If you view the schools individually, you can see some of the data on jobs, time to degree, % of students who graduate, etc.

Best to you also! Let neither of us be brutally murdered on live television during the 2013 year. At least there will be more than one winner in this game! Unless funding really has gotten that dire...

Sorry, but I think you misunderstood my comment. By "this is what undergraduate applicants do," I did not mean people applying to grad school out of undergrad. I mean applicants to undergraduate programs. Ranking are more important in undergraduate programs than graduate problems, and they're easier to gauge. I never meant to suggest that applicants coming out of undergrad, as opposed to an MA, are likely to be any less qualified or thoughtful in their decisions. Sorry if it seemed that way. I simply meant that just gunning for the top-rated schools because they are top-rated, and only because they are top-rated, is not the wisest way to go about applications. You say you have your reasons and I believe you.

Well, this thread blew up while I was out today. Allow me to turn the tables: why are you applying to only Ivies and 3 other very top programs? I doubt these programs are all great fits for you, and fit is extremely important. If you opened yourself up to Top 40 programs, and applied only to schools where you had a very great fit, you would have more success than basically just ripping the list of Top 10 schools and applying to those. This is what undergrad applicants do. Job placement is actually very high in some lower ranked programs. North Dakota comes to mind. They have great job placement, but it is probably mostly to schools in the Dakotas, including smaller schools and CCs. If you're cool with this, why not apply to UND? You have a much better chance of getting in and decent job prospects. I imagine you are not cool with this. That's fine. But, ugh, somebody has to teach where it is cold.A lot of these programs also have very decent funding. It may or may not be the case in Comp Lit, but English programs are well-funded in general. I'm fully funded at a lower-ranked MA program. "I still don't think that it's easier to get into top Comp Lit programs than it is for English. There may be fewer applicants..." <---- Basic failure to understand probability. If there are fewer applicants, you're more likely to get in, assuming a kind of base applicant level between the two disciplines (i.e. people in English are not doing much poorer work than those applying to Comp Lit). I know a lot of people in the humanities hate the maths, but this thing is a numbers game. If you apply to a school with 500 applications and 12 spots, you are unlikely to get in no matter what, even if you are in the top 50 applicants. If you apply to a school that gets 30 applications for 6 spots, and you're still in the top 10% of that group, suddenly you have a great chance to not only get in, but to get in with primo funding. This is why I am splitting my applications between schools at all levels, including strong-fit programs that are ranked quite low.

Oh, no worries! I didn't mean to sound certain, because adcoms are pretty much the bottom of the ocean. I have no idea what they're up to down there. I just meant to articulate that I made a decision for my applications, and for my own sanity, that decision has to be final for me. Everybody else should do what makes sense to them.

"I think there was a typo." <----- Welcome to club of people with application typos. We must endure. Honestly, none of us can give you the reassurance that you are looking for. Your stats are excellent. However, that doesn't guarantee anything. You might not feel great about your writing sample right now, but it's too late to do much about it if you've submitted your applications already. It is probably better than you think it is. If you do not get in this year, the schools will still be there next year. All of the programs you applied to are incredibly competitive. Lots of excellent applicants don't make it every year. Fit is extremely important, so applying to Ivies just because they're Ivies isn't what you should be doing. If those schools were good fits, you might have a good chance. But as you probably already know, if you have no idea what your chances are, strangers on the internet probably don't either. Good luck!

Aha. Thanks for the update! You're so ahead of the game. Kudos to you, but that makes the waiting game even longer for you!

Well, yes. I guess I cannot predict what they are going to do with it, but a WC page does not take the same effort to read as any other page. They're not going to closely read it and follow an argument. This kind of nit-picking and speculating of this process is going to drive us all to completely and utter madness. I am not counting my WC page in the page count, at the advice of one or two school's pages, and on the basis of what makes sense to me. YMMV. When I get rejected across the board, I can blame the WC page debacle of '12.

I am surprising good-spirited about it at this exact moment. It's not like it was in the first paragraph of my statement of purpose or anything... oh, except that it was in the first paragraph of my statement of purpose. Luckily, it went to only one school, and I am applying to nine hundred. I am really, really typo-prone, and no matter how many times I proof something I always miss a few, because I'm reading what I think I see rather what I actually see. It tends to happen when I'm reworking a sentence, which I am apt to do up until the second to last proofread, so proofreading usually leads to more mistakes.

Well, I don't know. I think part of what we need to be able to do as graduate students/scholars/whatever is use our best judgement in figuring out what is worth inquiring about and what isn't. I'm not going to call 15 schools and ask if it's okay that I didn't count my Works Cited page in the page count. I've already called all of my schools once about Interfolio. If you're worried about it, by all means call or e-mail. Please share the answers you get, too! I'm just worried about a zillion other things more than I am worried about some stickler on an adcom taking the page count guideline so literally that this one thing will be a deal breaker (and not just for me, but for about half of us here!).

I found conscious instead of conscience yesterday. I remember that this is an error that I have specifically laughed at my students for making. And yet, I didn't catch it in my own work until about my 19th proofread...

Do you think they're reject me because I live in South Florida and they'll think I'm confused? In other news, I'm also applying to the other Miami... the one with beaches.

I really don't think the Works Cited counts. Well, I'm not counting it. If that's a reason for a school to reject me... so be it. My sample is right at the 20 page mark (12 for NYU; completely different sample) + 2 pages of Works Cited. I mean, the admissions committee is not going to actually read my Works Cited page. They might glance at it, but it doesn't take the time to look over that the actual sample does.

I am proud to say I have just joined the post-application-submission-typo club! "I hope continue" is a thing I said.