Grunty DaGnome

Yup, that's the one I meant. Paul Fry is excellent; clear without being simplistic.

Yes, I third this!!! Best class I never took!

The best overview materials I ever found were the Literary Theory Yale Lecture Series, which I downloaded on my iPad.

I know that Brown recently [i believe last year] created a joint MFA/Phd in Creative Writing and Scholarship.

I agree that this adjuct unknown from no where should not be allowed to assume the mantle of authority regarding what's wrong with education. In many respects, he demonstrates that he is what's wrong with education. However, even if his own criticism is useless, I do believe it is important to be critical and to stay critical, even if things work out in your own academic career. I recently went to a creative writing seminar at a great local organization. Very affordable, not affiliated with a University at all, loads of fun, nice folks. There was one person in the seminar who was a tenured Film Studies Prof. at one of the local universities. She was a complete parody of everything wrong with the University system. While everyone else in the circle was giving great feedback about what they liked about someone's writing exercise, what grabbed them, what worked for them, etc., this Prof. kept firing out generic theory critiques; everything from Lacanian analysis to Queer theory. It was hilarious, kind of, because she never made any sense at all. It was doubly hilarious because myself and one other person were there as fugitives from organized scholarship and said as much. This person, much like the author of this anti-academy article, has a position teaching, offers very little value to their students and probably has a whole faculty of piers who know as much, but never put up any resistence or confront them about their own failings as an educator. Rather than turn out hundreds of students a year with some sort of useful skill or personal enrichment, they hog up a precious spot in scholarship and spew nothing but garbage in exchange. Perhaps the author of this critical article ought to ask himself why so many students, after taking his class and similar classes, don't feel prepared to go out into the world, or don't have any skills to do so? Over the past few decades, as education used to be cheap and no one spent any time monitoring individual classrooms or comparing notes on higher education goals or curriculums, this kind of self-criticism without constructive alternatives became the norm for many academics. But in this day and age, here we all are on this board, getting more of a systemic overview than any Professor tenured in the 70s or 80s ever had. The next generation of scholars will be different in many ways. I only hope that those of you who get accepted, get jobs and become "The University: Next Generation" keep all of these posters and bloggers in mind when you craft your curiculums and work within your departments to build a better institution.

I was looking up a particularly terrible professor I've had in the past on ratemyprofessor.com wondering what others have made of him and I got a message saying "removed from the system." Is this how ratemyprofessor.com typically works? So if you find a professor who has been removed from ratemyprofessor at other schools, should you be warry that they will be a waste of your time and huge amounts of hard earned money?

I am in the same boat. Personally, I think retaking the GREs is a huge waste of time if they were anything over 70%ile. I think it's all about writing sample and statement. I agree it is hard to rewrite or retool a sample without university resources. I'll admit, I'm hoarding PDFs of good journals on anything remotely related to my 3-4 papers that could be reworked. I'm planning to attend conferences during the down time, to talk out my favorite papers, see if I can get perspective. If a rewrite comes about naturally that way, I'll follow it through, but I'm not going back to the deep recesses of my mind again. Oh, also I'm adding a few more programs and taking away a few.

Got mine today...actually, in the middle of the night through the automated services.

Great tip, thanks! I'll check out those interdisciplinary journals.

Based on my 0/8 acceptances, yes.

I'm interested in 19th century American. Is that the field with more competition or less?

Ok, I know most of the talk on here is acceptance/decision related at this point, but I thought I'd start a thread where those of you who have had success could offer some tips for those of us who didn't. Everyone seems to agree that the writing sample is key, and refining an interest that is a current hot topic seems to be the recipe for success, even if still a fairly vague recipe. Since my area of interest is American Literature, I'm curious to know if there are good journals in this subfield I can puruse other than the obvious [American Literature, American Literary Realism, American Literary History]. Of course, all side discussions about non- American topics that offer good advice about lesser known, useful resources are welcome!

I thought about it myself when I was taking on the MA, but they don't allow part time / 2 year MAs. I did visit a class for the consortium and I'm sorry I didn't attend. Their students are very engaged and impressed me as very professional.

Oh, seriously! I had the exact same thought. For the posters asking where the updates are, click on the "message" field to the left of your screen. Mine still shows no update, but that's where I expect to find my rejection some day.

Well, I have no rejection yet, and I'm the first to admit the sample I sent to Columbia was in fact terrible. It was horribly rushed and just a mess over all, so I have no hope for this place. Basically, I wanted to demonstrate my admiration for their school by donating 125 dollars. ...and I already have an MA, so I know that's not the hold up.