TripWillis
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Posts posted by TripWillis
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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...
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I wish I could get more done, but I just have so much grading to do! For those of you who haven't taught yet, just you wait. The grading is endless!
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.
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Feminist psychoanalysis and gender theory are not areas in which no original work can be produced. I staunchly disagree with the professor who told you, more or less, that those are obsolete areas of research.
As for one's SOP just being a regurgitation of the theorists one likes (mentioned by perrykm2), I wouldn't worry about that too much. I don't see how admissions committees could possibly expect evidence of completely original theoretical work in a BA applicant's SOP.
I only worry for applicants who attempt graduate school without prior knowledge of theory. There are those on these forums who have successfully applied to PhD programs without it, but I imagine that they are special cases.
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.
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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.
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stupid GRE. stupid stupid GRE :'(
v 169 (99th), q 156 (74th)
and then. 4.5 (72nd) for analytical writing. WTF. :'( I'm sorry, GRE, but I am a great writer, this has always been my biggest strength. I have 100% confidence in my style and I have no idea wtf went wrong and why I didn't score well. I was really sick on the day but I thought I wrote well.
:'( I'm totally gutted. everything is probably ruined
Doubtful. I've heard that the AW is not important and not a reliable indicator of your writing ability.
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Subject test scores will be released the 25th, unless we want to pay like 12 dollars to get them by phone. I think that option is available the 14th or something. I'll prob end up spending the money.
I'm still a bit peeved on the Verbal. I know my score is fine, good even, it just annoys me that my estimate was 750-800, and a 167, which I ended up receiving, is equivalent to a 710.
Based on your estimate, you should have been either in the 99th or 98th. (http://www.ets.org/s...information.pdf) I mean, our scores are fine, good...It's just annoying that the ETS was so off in so many cases with these estimates.
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. -
V: 167, 98th percentile (I'm a little bummed that my estimate, 750-800, was within the 99th, but it's really nbd, just an ego thing haha)
Q: 155, 69th percentile (I was also a tad bit bummed about this, simply because my estimate was 680-780, and I felt like that would make me look kinda good, even though math obviously doesn't matter...)
AW: 5.5, 96th percentile (I don't really know what I wrote on that...but I guess I'm just pretty good at bs-ing. That and probably my time as news editor on our paper has helped me know how to write non-Englishy types of essays)
I JUST WANT MY SUBJECT TEST SCORES. RIGHT NOW.
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?
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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.
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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?
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I like books. What with the words in them.
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I think this is a hilarious idea and a great way to relieve the distress of rejections. This should happen.
It's either this or mass suicide.
- Sparky, and...and...and..., Aztecson23 and 1 other
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Hey! I went to UMass Amherst for undergrad and am thinking about applying to a few of the CUNYs. Brooklyn College is not not prestigious. It's best known for its MFA program, definitely, but from what I've heard, their MA program is pretty strong. How has your experience been so far?
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.
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As regards me personally, I'm fairly confident that I possess the requisite intellect (and mad endurance!) to survive in a PhD program. The problem is that, as we all know, a large majority of highly-qualified and intelligent applicants never get accepted. I'm worried about this, especially coming from a fretfully average public university with no prestige whatsoever: others have said that prestige does not matter, but I have a hard time believing that, especially seeing how hierarchical academia is. At the very least, it's going to make my application less likely to stand out among the others... *SIGHS*
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.
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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.
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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).
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I love Synecdoche, New York; it's such a brilliant film. It's also one of the few films that makes me cry on a regular basis.
Yes. You rarely see something as thought provoking and formally complex as that, but also so affecting. Leave it to Charlie Kaufman.
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These are pretty much all postmodernist thematics, so if you stay away from that genre's primary texts, you'll be fine! The thing is, these subjects are often brought up in Pomo texts as devices to break ontological boundaries. Brian McHale, in Postmodernist Fiction, does a great job of laying them all out, and Jameson is bomb for the cultural aspects of Pomo.
Very.
I'd skip Atlas Shrugged (not for its vile politics, but it just isn't really doing much), but IJ is worth the investment (although a considerably easier investment than, say, Moby Dick, Ulysses, Gravity's Rainbow etc). For DFW, his essays are very good, but I'd say Brief Interviews is his strongest work of fiction -- especially the story "Church Not Made with Hands."
I know exactly what you mean, but then there are other postmodern tropes I like and I LOVE postmodernism in film (Synecdoche, New York anyone?). I guess it's lucky for me that pomo is considered "dead" to a certain extent now (or at least some think so -- not that I'm an authority on this). It's not that I don't appreciate a good pomo text or two, but many of them irritate me. I think the toughest time I ever had with a hallmark pomo text was Gilbert Sorrentino's Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things. I felt like I was being made fun of for 200 pages.
As far as Crying of Lot 49 goes, I like it in bits and pieces. I like when they go to the Jacobean revenge play in the middle and I also like the psychologist, what was his name [Dr. Hilarius]? Whatever it was, I always pictured Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks when I thought of his character. Huh. I wonder why?
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This is interesting; I kind of think I know what you mean. What would be an example of a particularly nuanced view on it, I wonder? I don't know if I see that often.
I'll let you know when I find it.
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Does anyone else, like myself, have basically 0% confidence that they will get in anywhere, but are applying to like 10 places anyway?
Why do you think we are doing this to ourselves?
Just curious. And let's talk. We need to cheer each other up.
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Out of curiosity and despite the risk of derailing this thread, why did you hate White Noise? I've never met someone who disliked it.
As for Pynchon, a beautiful, unread copy of Gravity's Rainbow perennially sits on my bookshelf. If only I had the time to read it. . .
I found White Noise to be a very smarmy book, but the thing is, I think that's what people like about it. I just can't digest so much character scorn and pretentious humor over the course of a whole book. But, I have some weird principles when it comes to my personal taste that everyone else should just ignore: I don't like to read about rich/aristocrat people, I don't like to read about writers, I don't like to read about the intelligentsia, I don't like overbearing amounts of pop culture references, I don't like an assumption of the reader's leftism (although I am left), and I don't like archetypal female characters. *phew* nice to get all that off my chest.
Oh, and I also have a tough time with political commentary on consumerism in books because rarely do I find that the author (no matter how good they are at the act of writing) has a particularly nuanced view of the issue.
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I know very little about DeLillo, but I was told that White Noise is a good starting point. It's not nearly as lengthy or as complicated as Underworld or his other hefty tomes. I read White Noise last year and loved it. It's extremely funny and profound, not necessarily in that order though.
I gotta come out and be the one to say I hated White Noise, but it's definitely representative of a "type" of literature I don't like, so I wouldn't let that stop anyone else... I also don't care for Pynchon *ducks people throwing objects* hey! Easy!
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lots of you seem very nervous about certain applications -- why so pessimistic?! Are these places really, really impossible to get into? I genuinely don't know because I've come through the British system. Are the "elite" programs filled with intellectual demi-gods?
My applications are all for very competitive places, I do recognise that... (Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Northwestern, Berkeley, couple of others undecided) -- but then I have a PhD spot secured in the UK, so I don't need backups and I'm not willing to relocate for anything that isn't superior to that place. Other pending UK applications are for a couple of the London colleges and Oxford.
good luck everyone.
I mean, I don't think intellect has much to do with it -- it's a numbers game. If your odds are 14/250-400 chance (also consider that your field's allotment is smaller than that), then it will be difficult to be in the top 14 period. That's why people are so concerned.
As far as where I'm applying:
Harvard, Rutgers, UC: Davis, SUNY: Stonybrook, CUNY: Graduate Center, University of Maryland, Tufts, Boston University, and New York University, but I'm still considering subbing in the following: Northeastern, Northwestern, and University of Illinois: Chicago.
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I've heard that WashU and UConn are both good.
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Okay, so the school I was referring to was UC Riverside. The website does not give a prompt, it just states to upload a personal history and a statement of purpose. When I contacted the department, the secretary simply said:
The statement of purpose includes why you want to get the degree/why you're applying, etc.
The personal history is your personal history.
That was all I got..........................
Haha, wow helpful! UC Davis wants this from me, 500 word PH, 500 word SoP.
Best I could tell, I should just extricate the 500 words of narrative that guides my SoP from the 500 words in my SoP that talk about my currents interests, projects, and future proposals. *shrugs*
Oh brother. This is almost as weird as NYU's 10-12 page writing sample range. WTF???
NYU Writing Sample: 10-12 Pages? WTF?
in Literature, and Rhetoric and Composition
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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.