vordhosbntwin

NYU or did you get in off the wait list at YU?

Hi folks, quick question: does the physical have to be completed four weeks from the original letter, or from the letter that specifies the terms of the award? I'm trying to arrange it so that I have a physical next week, but it's been a little difficult. I haven't seen anyone else mention it, so perhaps it's not as urgent as I am thinking it is... Oh and: my Fulbright is to Germany, if it matters.

fulbright in frankfurt for a year, then yale comp lit phd, which has authorized a deferral. peace out grad cafe.

probably not a good place to look. on my view, profs usually take their grad students more seriously, and i mean, i took a class with fredric jameson last semester, who was excellent, but of course some stupid undergrad left him a review on ratemyprof that said he was a "boring marxist dud."

Won a full grant to Germany! Yes! I was in shock when I first received that and subsequently posted, so here's a copy of the email, for those who are curious (and yes, it was indeed an email): Dear ---, Congratulations! We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected for a US Student Fulbright award for 2012-2013 to Germany. Shortly you will receive a letter from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board with further details of the award. This letter will be sent to the mailing address listed in your application and noted above. This address will remain your corresponding address unless you notify us in writing (via email to your IIE Program Manager.) In the meantime, be aware that this award is contingent upon your obtaining/receiving: satisfactory medical clearance; a bachelor's degree (if graduating this year); official research clearance from the host country, where applicable; and required visas. Please note that all selected candidates will be required to submit a Medical History and Examination Form before your grant can be finalized. The Form must be completed and signed by a licensed physician and reviewed by the U.S. State Department for medical clearance. This form, instructions and other information pertinent to your grant will be posted on the following webpage within the next few weeks. You may wish to consider scheduling a medical appointment within the next month in order to have these forms completed in a timely manner. We urge you to visit this page regularly for important Pre-Departure information and updates. It is your responsibility to keep fully informed of and to comply with all grant award requirements. Pre-Departure Resources: http://us.fulbrightonline.org/pregrantee_resources.html Your IIE Program Manager will be in contact with you soon with further information on grant administration and pre-departure preparation. If, at any time in the coming months, you determine that you will not be able to accept the Fulbright award, please be sure to notify IIE immediately. Again, congratulations on your accomplishments and we look forward to working with you. Sincerely, Theresa Granza Director, U.S. Student Programs Institute of Interntional Education 809 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017

That may be true for Duke grad programs, but certainly not for undergrad. Fucklist anyone? Shooters? Duke basketball??? Also, I understand that Durham isn't the safest place, but I think the bit about the laser is a gross exaggeration. I lived in Durham for a year, and that's just simply not true. Like any other city with a university that has thrived at the expense of the surrounding community (e.g. Yale, Chicago, Duke, Johns Hopkins, etc.), it has problems, but it has great riches as well, and the triangle area is in general quite excellent. The New York Times cited Durham as a top place to visit last year, fyi. If you're looking to party, there are plenty of parties in Durham. In fact, Duke made the cover of Rolling Stone for its party scene. But you will be getting a very specific kind of party... I know some Duke graduate students who are bored, but most of them are MA students who have been there for a year or less. The people I know in PhD programa have great social lives and love Durham. Having attended many UNC basketball games and grown up as a UNC fan, with several family members who attended the school, I still find it to be a strange claim that UNC is more of a party place than Duke... As for Chicago; people in Chicago like to say that the U of C is where fun goes to die. I lived in Chicago for a while, and the U of C was not a very fun place. My neighborhood, on the other hand, was awesome. I lived in the Ukrainian Village/Wicker Park area, and it was an excellent living experience.

i'm still trying to make a decision between yale comp lit and hopkins humanities center - i'm pretty sure at this point that i'm going to attend the former, but if anyone has any thoughts on either program, i'd love to hear. any thoughts from folks who've lived in new haven or baltimore would also be appreciated!

after having lived in both durham and chicago, i would definitely say that the latter is a better place to live. durham is nice for a bit, but you'll get bored.

i've heard similar things about yale. i was admitted to the humanities center at hopkins and visited last week - really loved the program. there are incredible faculty members in that department, and in the germans & romance language depts. the humanities center is very interdisciplinary, so it encourages its students to use the resources of other departments and to work with faculty in other departments. i don't know if the hopkins english program is at all similar, but if so, there are some really amazing people at hopkins and you should consider them as well. alas, i've decided to turn down hopkins, but best of luck to those who do attend.

i've already committed to yale. did you get into harvard? just out of curiosity, what's the funding there?

i don't think any comp lit people have received rejections, or at least not without soliciting them. we'll probably be receiving rejections soon.

looking at some of the posts about loans in "the bank" has made me realize how lucky all of us are who have gotten into fully-funded, stipend-granting programs... at first i guess i just saw it as affirmation that my work wasn't shit, but now it truly does seem like winning a lottery.

i've been accepted to hopkins, yale, and a few other places for comp lit, and i'm also having a hard time deciding. but i have to say, after having visited some programs, i have a much better idea about where i don't want to attend, and that has a lot to do with having met professors. if you talk to folks who are in programs, or who teach in them, in my experience they will tell you to go where your interests are best met. you could probably find something to do in most programs, but sometimes people get it wrong, go to places that really don't make sense, and consequently transfer. most of the programs i applied to accepted less than 5 people, and honestly, i doubt they accepted those five people just because they can write well. i have empirical evidence, in the form of emails from directors of graduate studies, that in some cases my interests were just simply too far from those of the program, they wouldn't be able to accommodate me. it's true that i am having trouble deciding where to go now, but knowing what faculty are doing and what students care about is certainly helping me out. and to thestage: you don't think that reading articles written by professors who are currently active in your field and operative in the greater academy is, um, academic? i actually did learn something and incorporated two of the articles i read into a paper that i'm giving at a major conference in germany. a necessity for being a successful academician, in my opinion, is curiosity, and i wouldn't have read those articles if i wasn't curious in the first place about what they had to say.

if you don't have some idea of what some professors are doing at each school you applied to, why would you want to go there? honestly, i spent maybe an hour looking at each school's website to identify POIs based on what their website blurbs mentioned and what courses they'd recently taught. for those professors i was especially interested in, i read an article or two that each had written, maybe even a book chapter, and for some schools, there were professors i already knew i was interested in. because i applied to 15 schools, that did take a lot of time, but i wouldn't say it was a waste. if i hadn't done so, i would have been hard pressed to give you a good reason as to why i would want to attend that specific program.

put simply, fit is to some extent your ability to write a proposal sure, but i mean, i really think it's not a very difficult concept: i was rejected from two programs because the professors i identified in my statements were no longer in the program. there could have been other reasons, but every school i have been accepted to did so because specific faculty members could do work with me. ability to write well and to articulate your interests is a prerequisite - i don't think i would bother applying if i couldn't do those things. i'm most interested in the relationship between modernism and 19th and 20th century german philosophy, and lo and behold - the programs i got into specialize in those things. fit isn't some inexplicable metaphysical concept; it's just how well you, uh, fit.

well, two of the schools i applied to (cornell and brown), when i asked them for feedback upon receipt of rejection, talked specifically about fit. in fact, here is what cornell had to say: I wish I had time to write a substantive response. In brief, I would say that you are extremely well-qualified and your application was very strong. We are a very small program--we admit only 3 students per year. Prof. Buck-Morss is no longer here and Prof. Hohendahl has retired--this may have contributed to our decision in part. In part, I would say that we have admitted students in areas of research that fit better with our current strengths. I am certain that you will do very well and I wish you all of the best in your graduate studies. With regret, Karen Pinkus brown said something similar, that my interests weren't consistent with current faculty foci. if a program gets 100 applicants, i bet many of them have the skills necessary for success in the program, but only so many are going to have interests that accord with those of the faculty. i dunno, i have a good friend who went to yale english to do renaissance stuff, but ended up totally reinventing himself and becoming an american modernism scholar. but here's the thing, if you do reinvent yourself, you're only going to reinvent yourself as something that would make sense in your current environment. if, as the initial poster wrote, you were to become interested in african american literature or w/e, chances are, it's because your program has someone whose expertise is african american literature. thus i think fit is important. you have to demonstrate to the program that you already have a strong project in mind, but if that changes because you decide that you like something else going on in the program better, well, you are still demonstrating a "fit" with the department. my friend may have wanted to do renaissance lit, but his interests changed because of the faculty itself, and thus his fit remained more or less intact. excuse all typos and shitty syntax and i dunno, i would be wary of presenting at 24-25 conferences. i've a senior undergrad, and i've presented at around 10 over the past two years. a faculty member at yale, one at hopkins, and one of my profs at my current university have all said that it's much better to present at a few highly competitive conferences than many less competitive conferences. i mean, very few people write 20-25 quality papers in a year. most phd programs expect you to write 2-3 per semester (and harvard, for instance, on the comp lit website, says that they prefer you do 2!). in fact, over-presenting or over-publishing will make you look desperate, and will actually overshadow the more competitive or the higher quality conferences you've listed on your cv. it's better, on my view, to publish one or two quality articles in one or two renowned journals than 20 articles in 20 mediocre journals. just my two cents.

Harvard is my last

fulbright carries more prestige than the DAAD (can't be very much more, however), but i think their respective cash values are equal.

i wouldn't let it get you too down

hm, are they notifying everyone today? I applied for the graduate grant

by mail or email? congrats!

hm i still haven't received a rejection,...

well, comp lit is different it seems in that there are so few programs - and of course there are plenty of unfunded comp lit MAs. a lot of the big schools don't offer MAs, and those that do, e.g. UPenn and Columbia, don't offer funding. i mean, how many people get into PhD programs for comp lit each year, less than 500? idk.

are you wait-listed for yale comp lit?

either yale or hopkins; not sure yet. but i hope you get in then! congrats!