TripWillis

CUNY has an incredible faculty. I will definitely be applying there, but I'm also cognizant of the things you guys are mentioning. They take an enormous class, so it's almost certain that some people won't even receive funding. However, as mentioned above, you can teach as much as you want, and, in a way, you could almost consider that a bright spot. I think they make a fair amount of non-comp classes available too so you can practice your lit-ped skillz. And you could definitely live in NYC on 18,000 a year. I'm doing it right now. You just have to not buy clothes or get your haircut EVER.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'd rather lie in pigshit than condone that. What a horrible company. Colleges must be in bed with them somehow.

Wow, you guys who thought you did shitty actually did really well. Where's all my comrades who will join me in crushing disappointment?

I'm doing a couple of these, but only with really good program matches.

As much as I want to know (and dread knowing), I'm going to go ahead and be cheap and wait for it to come online. I doubt I did nearly as well as you, bespeckled. My 2 practice tests came in around 530 and I didn't feel much better about the actual test.

So it's November 9th and I'm thinking of swapping out two schools and finding a couple American Studies programs to apply to. ...yeah. ...I certainly am on the home stretch, but my home is in like fucking Russia at this point.

That Onion article is hilarious; I'm hanging it up in the adjunct office today.

Hey, thank you! Yours too. I bet we could write a pretty good paper about Samuel Delaney/Octavia Butler between the two of us. Sometimes I have trouble figuring out how to reconcile all those things or cram into an SoP narrative how I arrived at an interest in all those things... I mean, there is no narrative, I just read stuff where that stuff was and now I like the stuff and want to study the stuff... wait, that's the SoP! Gotta go write that down! "Read stuff... want to study stuff... genius!" Best I can tell, they all seem to have something to do with oppression, the subaltern, identity, and emergent literature. Makes sense. I'm a huge ol' Marxist. You have cool interests yourself. I noticed you were interested in Haraway in the other thread. You know, I have read certain ecocritics who use Haraway to talk about symbiosis, but I can't remember exactly who it was or how he/she phrased it. Maybe Louis Palmer? Anyway, it's interesting stuff. Not my field, but certainly is interesting.

6 SECTIONS? Yikes!

I may try that, but if I can't give them anything good, I'm not sure it's worth paying the $90 to send subpar work. Timshel -- I have heard sort of what you heard, but not nearly as drastically. I've heard they're not looking for your topic/subject matter/etc., but how you situate and formulate an argument, how you compiled your research, etc. Still, for them to do this when almost every other school is 15-20 or even 25 is sort of sucky.

So, I've been thinking of making some last minute switches on the programs I'm applying to, and even though I think it's a great match, I'm tempted to throw NYU on the fire because of their stupid 10-12 page writing sample page range. Seriously, how are other NYU applicants navigating this? I don't think it's possible to do significantly researched and explicated work in less than 15 pages, and even that is pretty short. Frankly, I have no 10-12 page papers, and I'm not going to take a hatchet to my 20 page writing sample and end up submitting something subpar that they hate. Sidenote: Grad Center's page limit is 15, but I think I can work that. Still...

I can attest to this, but I'm getting it down to a science slowly but surely; I've gone from 12 hours for one section at the beginning of the semester down to 7 now. Slowly but surely! The comp/rhet articles I read on paper marking tend to think that less is more anyway.

With you on this one, TwoEspressos, but I'll add in this tidbit: As far as I can tell, grad school applicants are in the messed up position of not being allowed to dictate or designate newly canonical work, so they are forced to work with literature that, to a certain extent, has already received at least one, if not multiple batches of criticism. The best way to navigate this is to begin the research process not by exploring every single article every written on your topic, nor by finding a bunch of random scholars who agree with your position. Instead, try garnering a sampling of critical articles (30 or so) from the last 20 years only on the topic or text you are pursuing. Then, characterize different strains of criticism and find where yours falls in. This way, you can get a sense of what discourses are occurring at present and how you can be a part of that critical conversation; what scholars you tend to fall in with and what ones you are diverging from. It will make people take you more seriously if you acknowledge scholarly approaches from the last few years; it's a way of showing your ability, as a student, to work in cooperation with contemporary scholars, not just to read and analyze in isolation. This is, for all the isolation that a library symbolizes, a very conversant and social field we are entering into, and we are co-creating discourse.

I feel like the only things really holding me back at this point are: SoP Revisions Writing Sample Revisions Last-minute Swap-Outs of Schools I had a good weekend with the SoP and Writing Sample and made tons of progress; the last one, not so much. I think I've decided that I need to root out a couple programs in rural areas, purely for strategic purposes. There are a couple really great programs in less competitive areas that I think I'd have a better shot at purely by merit of the fact they probably get a much lower volume of applicants.

Doubtful. I've heard that the AW is not important and not a reliable indicator of your writing ability.

Yeah, exactly. Not to mention that they were off by about 40 points on the scaled score estimate. My 165 = 690 on the old scale. Still, 96th% is pretty darn good... I just hate that their estimate was off.

True that -- we don't get them until like the end of the month, right? I'll be surprised if mine is any better than my Quant... Even though Quant doesn't really matter, I wish my score were at least normal hahaha... Killer job on Verbal, BTW. I'm jealous. I got a 730-800 estimate, and it appears that my score fell outside the lower part of the estimate, from the looks of it. I should've been 99th%, acc. to the estimate, right?

Hey guys, This is for those of us who really only probably care about the Verbal, and maybe about the AW. GRE General scores are going up on ETS 'bout now. Here's my scoring. V: 165, 96th percentile (Estimate was 730-800, which would've been 98-99% on the old scale -- drag) Q: 144, 26th percentile (estimate was ?? -- BEAT THAT, EVERYONE ELSE! HA HA HA!) Seriously though, I guessed my way through Q in 2009 and in 2011. In 2009, I got a 150 (54th%); what a score swing! Apparently I was a better guesser in 2009 than in 2011. It's also actually a bit discomfiting that I've never really answered one of these Q questions in earnest, and yet I've still pulled somewhat reasonable scores. AW: 6.0, 99% - Damn f-ing right. Tip regarding this: My strategy was not to craft a concise and reasonable essay, but to spin a wild and verbose web of complex thought and to make it as long as possible. Length, length, length is the best advice I can give. I thought that might hurt me, because after the test I was thinking, "Wow, I'd never actually turn in an essay like that," but lo and behold, it worked.

Putting up 2009 scores as well, for posterity sake (and to show the hilarious drop in quant score). 2009: V: 620, 89th percentile Q: 630, 53rd percentile AW: 5.5, 96th% 2011: V: 165, 96th percentile (Estimate was 730-800, which would've been 98-99% on the old scale -- drag) Q: 150, 26th percentile (estimate was ?? -- BEAT THAT, EVERYONE ELSE! HA HA HA!) Seriously though, I guess my way through Q in 2009 and in 2011 and look at the score swing. Apparently I was a better guesser in 2009 than in 2011) AW: 6.0, 99% - Damn f-ing right. Tip regarding this: My strategy was not to craft a concise and reasonable essay, but to spin a wild and verbose web of complex thought and to make it as long as possible. Length, length, length is the best advice I can give. I thought that might hurt me, because after the test I was thinking, "Wow, I'd never actually turn in an essay like that," but lo and behold, it worked. Good luck to all else. I'm English Lit, so I'm pretty darn happy with my scores. Wish the Q were at least somewhat normal, but what are you gonna do? Maybe they'll look at the 2009 score?

I like books. What with the words in them.

It's either this or mass suicide.

UMass: Amherst is great from what I hear! UMass: Boston gets frowned upon by a lot of people. I thought the faculty was good, but the program wasn't very rigorous. Their graduation rate is also very low. You have heard things (at all) about the MA at Brooklyn College? Huh. I never figured. The MFA program is one of the best in the nation, but I've never heard anyone say anything at all about the MA; we've sent students to Duke, CUNY: Grad Center, Cambridge, and other good programs from here, but only maybe one or two per year. I mean, the faculty at Brooklyn College is absolutely fantastic, and they're all from Harvard/Yale/NYU/Columbia and can give you insight on how to get into top schools. Also, a few of them teach at CUNY: Graduate Center and can give you some inside pointers on that school. I think as MA programs in English go, you can't do much better for faculty. That being said, it's very mixed, so if you aren't good at motivating yourself and demanding intellectual rigor from your professors, you definitely won't get it. So much of the MA student base is composed of high school teachers trying to get a higher salary that the faculty takes those people for granted as the student base. For my money, I think people are better served by applying to the MALS program at CUNY: Graduate Center. On one hand, I've heard there is no structure, so again, if you're not good at structuring your own time/self-motivating, it may not be for you. On the other hand, you get to take PhD level courses in the English department with some of the leading scholars in the field and CUNY: Graduate Center is a top 20 school. I also suspect that they have trouble filling the seats for the MA at BC so they just take anyone who applies... but that's just my suspicion... I would never dream of crapping on state schools; it's a high quality education at a fraction of the price! I'm just being real about my chances against Prince Tonyale of Harvardbridge.

I have a similar problem. My undergrad was UMass: Boston and my MA is at CUNY: Brooklyn College. Both are non-prestigious state schools. I keep telling myself this doesn't matter, but I'm having a hard time convincing myself that, all things being equal, I'll be picked over Harvard McYaleton.

When I entered my M.A. program, I was just coming off a year out of my B.A., waiting tables 45 hours a week, and I was a svelte and toned 140 lbs. Since entering my M.A. program roughly a year and two months ago (although haven't had the bravery to weigh myself), I've swelled to at least 170 (I'm 5'7). My diet is pretty good. I cook most of my meals and there's always vegetables (thank God for my restaurant time -- if I got anything out of that miserable experience it was learning about how to cook food). Basically, I went from spending a good chunk of my week walking to spending a good chunk of my week sitting in a library poring over texts. I sacrificed my bodily well-being for my intellect. I want to get back into an exercise routine after I am done with my PhD apps (and the student gym is like $18 a semester!), but I don't know -- how does anyone find time to have an exercise routine in between T.A.-ing, researching, writing, etc.? I should note that this is especially problematic in New York City, where so much of my time is eaten up by subway commute in a given day (3 hours sometimes). Sorry for the fairly superficial topic. Let's get back to talking about our various neuroses regarding getting into/not getting into School X.

Wow, glad we are all on the same page here. It is definitely very day-to-day for me. I'm either a worthless piece of intellectual nothing, or I'm onto some new-new shit that no one can even touch (and yes, new-new shit is a technical term).