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turtlepower

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Posts posted by turtlepower

  1. ps we have had lovely visits with potential grads at Cs who ended up deciding to go elsewhere, so no pressure.

    Of course. I'm looking forward to making connections, regardless of my final decision. In this profession, we rely on our colleagues across universities so much. You never know when you'll need to call on a colleague to form a conference panel or read your dissertation. Networking is a lovely thing.

  2. I think it's perfectly normal to feel ambivalent when you're on a waitlist, and also when you finally make your decision. It's an emotionally confusing process. Just hold on for a little while longer.

    Thanks, Zinc! At any rate, I'm stoked to meet some Purdue peeps at Cs. And maybe I'll roll out to W Lafayette to visit the campus while I'm in Indiana. Interaction with names and faces can go a long way towards helping us make the right decisions.

  3. Hahah. Thankfully when I was denied from UT Austin I purged the thought of the place out of my mind. Not once have I thought what coulda shoulda been.

    I won't have that option with Purdue for some time now. Unless I get outright denies - and hey, that's possible... I'm coming from a school and program that doesn't send many people out to grad school. Sooo my folks are a little dated when it comes to evaluting profiles and potential.

    I felt really good about Purdue's MA until a prof of mine started talking about how exclusive their program was and how difficult it was to get into and what not.

    We shall see! I still feel good about Louisville but my confidence is slipping.

    That's a definite advantage to the straight out rejection. Wait lists are a unique kind of hell. But... It's also a domino effect. If I get in off my top choice's wait list, I'll have to turn down Purdue. It's a big old chain.

    I know that's not really helping either of us right now, though. Lol. Best of luck!

  4. Anybody? I know my previous post was really long. I just feel like I would need to contact the DGS ASAP if I were to do anything?

    I think you already have your answer. This is a demoralizing and sometimes inhumane process. Try to relax. Breathe. Binge watch bad tv. And trust. I wouldn't send anything else at this point. We're all in the same boat. And we'll make it. :)

  5. Yes, I see. But that's still only 13 results spread over several years, and includes the year when they didn't accept any new students because of the sudden change in directors and uncertainty about funding. So no reason to worry.

    I think I've figured out what happened: your letter was based on the template they used for previous years, when they did notify people earlier. Later in the alphabet as they were emailing us they caught their mistake and put the right date, end of Feb. There's no other possibility, as the deadline for applying was 15 Jan.

    I'm sticking to my plan about not giving Syracuse another thought until the end of February. At which point I will be happy to fret with all other applicants.

    Good call. My email came on 1/6, so I bet that's what happened.

    Though, it's not unreasonable that they'd have a 2-3 week turnaround. They get < 40 apps a year.

  6. How are you searching? I've just gone back and checked again under Syracuse English Comp CCR, etc. and the very earliest date reported ever was a rejection on 1 Feb. However, the poster didn't add the date until 4 March, so I think we can safely they meant to say 1 Mar instead. Everything else -- rejections, acceptances -- shows up in mid' to late Feb or early March.

    English and CCR are separate departments. Try Syracuse Composition (not abbreviated).

  7. Yes, the PhD program in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric. The director sent everyone a kind email saying they hoped to make their decisions towards the end of February. Is that what you´ve applied for, or the English PhD?

    My email from Steve Parks said they'd have decisions out at the end of January or early February. Weird.

  8. Hey smart peeps,

    I was accepted to a fully funded MA, and at the time I was notified that I was waitlisted for the PhD program. I accepted the MA offer without discussing the PhD waitlist in my email correspondence with the DGS.

    Today, I received my official acceptance letter, dated 4/11, to the "doctoral program."

    I suppose I should just contact the school, as mistakes can happen. Anyone have any insight? Am I an MAer or a PhDer?

  9. Two Espressos:

    We share some similar interests. I recently applied to a handful of programs (all unranked), and I've had pretty good success this season. I think that "fit" is something to be concerned about, for sure, but the beautiful thing about epistemology and materiality/corporeal ethics is that they're completely transdisciplinary. You can tailor your SOP to align with any POI's research, which really takes some of the pressure off. You really won't be "selling." You'll be showing your passion! The important thing, I think, is to demonstrate why/how these interests merit consideration.

  10. Thanks, tm. That's great to know. I was waitlisted from the start, but Brooke told me that last year they "went pretty deep into their wait list." they don't rank the waitlist, but according to Dr. Dickson-Carr, "they plan to have the fall 2012 class in place by April 15" and "wait listed applicants should know one way or the other by that date." I'm not sure this helps, but I'd guess the waitlist is organized by sub field.

  11. I think it also has a lot to do with expectations and that it is, perhaps, a humanities- and, I'm even tempted to say, slightly English-specific issue. You tell (the perennial) Joe Shmoe that you're studying English or Film or French, let us say, and Joe, if he doesn't immediately tell you to stop wasting your time and get a real job, or, ask how the heck anyone can study those so-called 'subjects', might respond, "Oh cool, I've read the first part of Twilight recently and also watched Grown Ups, and have actually been thinking it would be ace to visit France" (which is in no way to belittle our fictional Joe).

    People feel that they 'know' books, they 'know' film, they 'know' culture (and of course they do, however, often they seem not to know that there is no end to knowing) thus there is no need to think further upon such areas. They (and forgive me if i generalise) don't see their knowledge of these cultural forms reinforced in the academic output of scholars in the fields which purportedly study them, nor do they typically view such output as 'useful' or 'of value', as we see when we tell our Joe that the post-Foucauldian interpretation of Steve McQueen's Hunger we are writing offers vital insights into the biopolitical character of sovereign power and the forms it may take, or, that a reading of Infinite Jest through Derrida's conceptualisation of différance is germane given the fractured nature of contemporary self and language.

    I would suggest that there is a general aversion to thinking critically, theoretically, and conceptually (which are of course skills the humanities foreground) about culture. Hence the common claims that academics are over-thinking and over-interpreting texts or situations which are, or should be, *obvious* to everyone. Hence these same people would never question the validity of scientific or juridical fields, for example, nor the language - the 'academese' and 'legalese' - that such fields employ. When was the last time a physicist or a neuroscientist was told that her views were pretentious?

    (I wonder if in many ways this anti-intellectualism can be construed as specifically Anglo-Saxon.)

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