asleepawake

Since when? I've seen at least one website say that Works Cited does not count, so I haven't been counting it!

A burrito at mid-day and hard cider at night...

Whoa, really? I called Miami last week to ask about using Interfolio, and I specifically referred to the online application and nobody mentioned this. I guess I'll triple-check before I send!

A few schools have specified scanned copies of official copies... so still not actually official, but more official than a PDF from your online account. I can't remember which schools are which anymore, but I'm just submitting this format everywhere that wants an upload.

Yes, it's the 5th. 2 whole days! I had a minor coronary event when I read in your post that it was due today.

At least you noticed, right? I love that you were reading over it while in line at the post office! What school still wants hard copies? I'm applying to over 15 schools and everything is online. 3 years back (MFA/MA applications) it was more like 50/50. Everything going digital has made everything so much easier... kind of!

Some people do have success this way, but "academic incest" is generally a bad thing. It is a much better idea to get your degree elsewhere, unless you are bound to NYC or it is your only viable option. As Sparky pointed out, it doesn't look good on the job market.

OSU is wonderful! I've already been offered a way to fix the problem. I'm stressing for nothing!

Well! I submitted my application to OSU a few days ago. Now, Interfolio says it cannot deliver my letters. Of course it can't! The problem is OSU has one of those "complete and submit before your LOR requests go out" applications, so once it's done, I cannot edit anything. Now I'm trying to contact the school and figure out what I can do, but the deadline is Wednesday. OSU might be off my list - after I paid the application fee! Excellent. Also, in the meantime, one of my letter writers has yet to submit her letter and my first applications are due in 48 hours. NO BIGGIE, she's great and I'm sure she'll do it (right!?!?!) but AHHHHH STRESS. stressstressstress How is everyone holding up?

I want to read your thesis instead of finishing my applications!

Yes! This! Watching Manny's abortion episode circa 2004 on the internet (it was at the time not airing in the US) played a sizable role in my descent into feminism... I did not, however, mention this in my SOP... it's not too late, though!

You might consider Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich," though it's really a novella so it may not be what you're looking for. Also, Hemingway's "Hills like White Elephants" and David Foster Wallace's "Incarnations of Burned Children" would be good. Edit: "Cultural history of American medicine." Forget Tolstoy.

Unfortunately, I think Quant_Liz_Lemon is correct. The applications that are run like that are a bit annoying, but you need to submit them with extra time. As far as what to send professors, you should send a list of schools with due dates, your SOP, your CV, and anything else that might help them write the letter.

I ended up calling all of my schools, and I've been able to contact most of them. So far, I've gotten 3 "no" answers and 10 "yes" answers. Well, 9 "yes" answers and one "what is interfolio?" followed by "That sounds okay... I think." Call your department directly rather than the graduate college in general. YMMV, but my "no" answers were from NYU, Vanderbilt, and Pittsburgh. Interfolio generates an e-mail address for each of your letters. You copy and paste that rather than your writer's actual e-mail address. Then you go back to Interfolio a day or so later and check out. You have to give Interfolio permission to enter "N/A" in any fields that they cannot answer. It ends up being pretty easy for the schools willing to accept it.

That would make sense if they actually had to file a bunch of paperwork, but doesn't the fact that it's all digital mean they can just ignore incomplete applications and any attached letters quite easily?

This has come on a few threads lately. As long as they don't specifically say not to send one, it seems it cannot hurt... If they don't want it, they can ignore it.

Here is my updated SOP: Am I spending my time wisely right now? Yes, yes, I am.

I learned this the hard way... I accidentally wasted my free GRE score report on Buffalo State!

Remember if you're not used to the American rules that the rules are different for periods and commas than for exclamation points and question marks. This seems to trip up a lot of folks. Also, you'll notice if you teach composition that a ton of American college students like to put their periods outside of quotation marks, and they haven't a clue when there is a citation. We should probably just change it, but as waparys says, "this just looks so much better." I think it's probably best if you switch to American rules, but only if you're sure you can do so flawlessly. I'd imagine consistency and accuracy are by far most important.

Thanks! I guess this is what I should do, it's just super hard to navigate all of these applications. It sure would be nice if schools just made it clear if they accept Interfolio.

I posted some frustrations over in the LOR forum a few days ago, and I got no reply. I'm currently even more frustrated! Who is using Interfolio? I naively thought that Interfolio would make my life easier for me and my LOR writers. It seems to be doing neither. Every school that I am applying to wants letters submitted electronically. However, almost none of them acknowledge the existence of Interfolio at all. Submitting letters from Interfolio is supposed to be easy; I enter a special e-mail for the e-mail address, pay Interfolio, and they do everything else for me. Uh... if only. First of all, I currently only have one letter submitted to Interfolio and I am waiting on the other two. This means that I cannot submit the information on most online applications to test the system with the one letter that I do have, because it tells me the page is incomplete. I finally got through on one website, and Interfolio was supposed to e-mail me the next day. They didn't. It's been 3 days. Does this mean it didn't work? Does it not go through until I submit the entire application? This is extremely frustrating because I want to be able to tell my LOR if and how many actual school websites they will have to submit to. Deadlines are looming and I still can't do this because I have no idea. Anybody else using Interfolio? Is is just me or am I paying them to stress me out?

I haven't heard this, but at a PhD advice seminar dealy at my campus recently, the professors advised that we format the statement of purpose like a letter. They said it doesn't happen as much with digital applications, but that it's still kind of expected or looks good. Thoughts?

Spot-on. Let's remember that Foucault is the single-most cited scholar in the humanities. How often do you see a citation of the original French and how often the translation? Right.

Well, some of us do find it frustrating that ETS assumes there is a single set of knowledge that every literary scholar ought to have. We are questioned extensively on the British canon, but if you are rusty on world lit, just learn the names of a couple of Russians, Chinua Achebe, and Gabriel García Márquez, and you're set. And, increasingly, schools are agreeing with this frustration. I'm only sending my subject GRE to 2 schools out of 15. Being frustrated by the specific set of knowledge ETS wants us to have is not the same as dismissing knowledge in general.

Do you recommend rounding down, then? Like I said, the application does not give the option of entering "1.57," only either 1.5 or 1.6. The more I think about it the more stupid it seems to even consider rounding down, when I am closer to the higher number and I have to round one way or the other.