TripWillis

Nowhere. A 720 won't keep anyone out of anywhere, I don't think.

December 8th, eh? Sounds like Maryland to me. I think the fact he's put you in this position is nonsense. Letter writing is part of what they are getting paid for. Reality. Not to mention, you let him know really far ahead of time. I thought I had it bad: I gave my letter writers packets (spreadsheet of schools and deadlines, SoP drafts, Writing Sample, work from course /w comments, etc.) way back at the end of August and told them I wanted to submit early before I and everyone else got busy. Letters submitted as of 11/23/11: 0. Almost all my applications are submitted, but no letters.

Oh, and by the way, I never ever want to look at my Writing Sample/SoPs again... sooooo many months of frantic editing. Seriously, I have been drafting SoPs since July. I think I ended up doing close to 15 drafts of the master SoP and I still don't like it that much. Writing Sample is actually not terrible... the 15 page version is better in some ways than the 20 page one, worse in other ways. I feel like I had less time to set up my critical framework and I had to shove out some of the lit review (I also sneakily footnoted some of it). Then again, I managed to destroy almost every single one of my needless modifiers in the 15 page version. I'm thinking of submitting the 20 page one for publication. I've worked on it so hard, it might as well do something besides (probably) get rejected.

I just submitted 8 applications. I have two more to do this weekend that I'm not ready for yet and a couple of hard copy things I need to mail. Oy. I feel very tense. Need a drink. And some turkey.

Well, UC: Davis' website says that "most successful applicants score above a 500 on the subject test, but this is not a minimum." So, I'm going with that... I kind of... have to go with that... for my sake...

Update: I've been working on piecing together a PH and PS out of my primary SoP for the last week or so. It's tough... I'm definitely reluctant to get more personal than relating my scholarly growth to my life narrative in a cursory way. I've basically said that my hometown in Michigan was important to my senior thesis and it really sparked my interest in grad study and then I said that being queer amidst the equal rights debates of the last couple years has affected the way I approach literature. I'm tempted to get all self-righteous about my state school not-born-with-a-silver-spoon-worked-full-time-to-pay-my-way-through-undergrad blah blah blah background, but I bet that would be awfully cliché. Anyway, bottom line is that the way I discussed my personal history was dictated by my scholarly growth.

Heh, well I was being funny, but 10% of me thinks there may be a connection between my interests and PepperSprayGate 2011. While we're on the topic: http://www.smosh.com/smosh-pit/memes/best-pepper-spraying-cop-meme

Forgive me for being a little cheeky, but is anyone going to mention PepperSprayGate2011 in their SoP? In all honesty, my work has a lot to do with literary activism and protest... so... I might. Would definitely be relevant, if touchy. Check out the department website: "The faculty of the UC Davis English Department supports the Board of the Davis Faculty Association in calling for Chancellor Katehi’s immediate resignation and for “a policy that will end the practice of forcibly removing non-violent student, faculty, staff, and community protesters by police on the UC Davis campus.” Further, given the demonstrable threat posed by the University of California Police Department and other law enforcement agencies to the safety of students, faculty, staff, and community members on our campus and others in the UC system, we propose that such a policy include the disbanding of the UCPD and the institution of an ordinance against the presence of police forces on the UC Davis campus, unless their presence is specifically requested by a member of the campus community. This will initiate a genuinely collective effort to determine how best to ensure the health and safety of the campus community at UC Davis."

I think it's well-advised to mention who you think you'd like to work with. And if you happen to have a familiarity with the work of people who are there and they've influenced you to apply, it couldn't hurt to mention. There is a difference between brown nosing and personalizing the SoP, showing that you've done research on the program and explored where you think you fit in its structure. I think brown nosing is typically perceived as such when you surround the person's name with grandiose adjectives and adverbs. So maybe just avoid that. Stick to facts.

Finally got mine in the mail today. It was about as terrible as I expected. The most amazing thing is that I never, ever improved my score. I got the same score on both of my practice tests that I ultimately got on the real test. With all the studying I did, that just freaking kills me...

Really? I had a 620 before and it was 89th percentile. I upped it to a 690 this time around. 96th percentile. I guess that means I won't get into Snobby McSnobbery U?

haha so I've noticed that they filled in the bottom line of the subject test score boxes, but no scores yet. Oh boy... I'm in deep. Too much obsession...

I could totally see those bastards doing that. Wait, how long did it take for your receipt to come? I ordered ASRs on Monday.

Who and what's the cutoff?

Hey, wouldn't it be great if they posted these scores online? I realize it takes it takes a while to feed a scantron in a machine and then have some automaton enter the data, but this is getting silly.

I'm submitting early next week through Thanksgiving. Still refining a few of the targeted sections in my SoPs. I'll be glad to have this over with...

This logic assumes that ad coms should be reading conference papers and not article length work. Not sure I agree with that logic... convenient for them because then they only have to read half as much, but in a publish or perish environment, article length sustained arguments are probably a better measure of whether or not the student will succeed in the program. At any rate, I subbed NYU out for another program, but not because of the page range. It was a good match, but it was #11 out of ten schools I wanted to apply to. Avoiding having to trim the paper I'm sending to 9 other schools is just a nice bonus. * *Sidenote: Wouldn't it be great if the page ranges for these things were standardized to be approx. 15 pages so that we didn't have to drastically alter the writing sample from college to college?

No dice again. Damnit.

Temporarily unavailable again. Last time it was no dice, but maybe this time...

Just tried it with my paper copy and no dice. Must not be working.

Preface: These scores do not matter and the math score matters even less, but... Okay, so I took the GRE this year and did pretty well on Verbal (165 = 690) and AW (6.0). However, I did much better on quant in 2009 (630 = 150) than I did this year (144 = 520). I mean, considering I guessed all the way through both times, it's an absolute miracle that I got higher than 500 both times. So, I see a lot of people talking about their combined score, and I'm pretty sure that in the humanities it doesn't matter, but... well, this is my question: Will the school look at both my math scores (2011 and 2009) and take the higher one, thereby giving me a 1320 equivalent? Or am I looking at a 1210? 1320 would be better.... just saying.

"Scores temporarily unavailable" -- think we'll get an early Thanksgiving gift?

I just spent $161 more dollars on ASRs today. That makes a grand total of $401 so far. That is just unfreakingbelievable. How can it cost that much? How?

Maybe you could just make a venn diagram of your interests and their fields of expertise/faculty. C'mon, what ad-comm wouldn't rather just see something like that? SoPs are so boring! In all serious though, when you figure out how to trim the fat, let me know. Concision and I are not friends.

Brooklyn >>>>>>>>> Manhattan anyway! Can I get an amen? I'm in Williamsburg -- takes me like 30 min. to get to the Grad Center. Where are you in Brooklyn?