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Agreed, lolo.

To clarify: I am finishing my MA now. I never bothered to go to conferences or fret over publications and I don't think it has hurt me at all. I believe that the most important thing about an application is the demonstration of potential. They'd rather take someone with nothing on their CV but who seems to know what academic discourse is and how it works, than someone with a flush CV but lacking in the ability to articulate themselves well.

I can only speak for myself, but that's an absurd amount of money. I've been accepted to 2 top 20 programs without a single conference (or publication) on my CV.

Looks like there are two now....

I just posted my acceptance. A strange morning, but a good one.

There was a post a while back about the UCLA committee meeting Feb 6. I don't know if that was a final or preliminary meeting. I'm also pretty excited about UCLA.....

While I may have started this post, I couldn't agree more with you MichaelK (a Coetzee reference?).

There are three schools now that I can reasonably assume I've been rejected by (Duke, Stanford, Chicago). I'm okay with that. I just wish they'd let me know!

There are currently two acceptances for Duke English up on the results board. Does anyone know if that's the end of Duke's acceptances? Any information at all?

So, will today be an eventful day or a day of painful suspension?

So it's Feb 4 and no news of interviews. Might it be possible that Stanford gave out interviews and they happened not to fall to anyone on the board?

the hour is getting late.

I think this helps (or starts to) to put to rest the idea that it is necessary. And though it's an admittedly low sample size, it doesn't even seem help that much. I suspect it's an older model that is now a bit outdated. The only professors who have recommended me to do it were several decades from the PhD process. Anyone who had received their degree in the last 10 years suggested it was a potentially disastrous move, and at best, meaningless.

I see that Duke English has two 'Accepts' on the board. Maybe that means they are done for the year? Let's say 1/3 of all students are on this website, so that would mean they have taken 6 so far. It could reasonably be the whole class. EDIT: Didn't mean to be a total downer. Just trying to figure out what's going on in Durham.

I made no contact with anyone and got into NYU.