Grunty DaGnome

OP, for what it's worth, I don't think you're a 4th timer --except at the schools where you've actually applied 4 times. I agree with ADMITedly. You've got the goods. Funding has been tight for the past few years. Don't get discouraged! It will be a great story some day when you're world famous

I don't think it's brown nosing if your sample really actively uses the professor's work. Brown nosing is more like reading the web site and dropping in as many names as possible for no reason. That said, I don't really know the first thing about what will work in a personal statement and what won't. I suppose our goal is to both talk about our interests while giving the ad. comms. an idea of who we are and what distinguishes us from the 600 other applicants in the pile. Probably -- again, I know nothing -- limit your name check to one, maybe two sentences max and then get on with the business of demonstrating the 1,000 other things we're supposed to be demonstrating in those 3 1/2 pages.

I think it's a good idea to stick to your own experience in the SOP. That's a rule of thumb I pretty much just invented, but I can't really think of a way to mention internal UC issues from an outsiders point of view without it seeming gratuitous. ...but it might be a different story if you were at the protests, or at protests in another city and witnessed or were involved in something similar. That's really the only context that I can imagine referencing the protests would make you sound like a more compelling candidate.

Think of it this way, OP. Since you're self conscious about your scores, you'll probably spend so much time obsessing over your personal statement and writing samples that they will be kick ass, and everyone with high scores will probably slack on editing their sample, because they figure their perfect GREs will surely get them in

I had a similar confusion. My older scores were from 2006. I didn't know exactly when the 5 years went into effect or whether the scores would be fine for December deadlined apps, but not for January. I took them again just to be safe, but the old scores still appear on my reporting sheet, so I assume they're valid.

Congrats. I'm not even done with one.

It's the hardest two pages I ever wrote.

MichaelK, Although you started off this post with a fairly negative view of literary scholarship after a good night sleep, it seems, you reversed your appraisal and began to argue its merits. It seemed to me that you began to argue with yourself a little, and then you slipped in that you're also applying to law school simultaneously, but only 4 law schools. Could it be possible that you are still undecided about what the best course for you might actually be and you are throwing out a bunch of applications hoping fate will make your mind up for you? If that's the case, I really think you should take more of an active role in making these important life decisions. As you note, studying literature, culture and theory is an endless endeavor and unless you are clear about your purpose, the undertow of academia can draw you in and spit you back out again like a hopeless castaway. Going to law school is not an effective way to avoid making these types of choices. Even though law school appears to be the more standardized option, you still have to chose a direction before you begin. You really can't make a solid choice regarding which law school you want to attend [and take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in some cases] until you figure out what sort of summer job you're going to take between your second and third year, which you need to apply for the fall of your second year and your available options will depend a great deal on which region of the country you chose to attend law school. I'm no psychiatrist -- I don't even care much for psychoanalytic theory -- but is it possible that you feel "disadvantaged" even a little persecuted, not because you're a "white male," but because you haven't yet formed your own sense of resolve and instead you're throwing yourself on the mercy of anonymous forces larger than yourself to make up your mind for you?

After college I didn't apply to grad school because, in retrospect, I suppose I had similar doubts. I wasn't really sure what purpose graduate school served, I couldn't clearly figure out what I was expected to achieve there and I wasn't sure what I would contribute....so I didn't go. Instead, I worked all sorts of jobs; some sucky, some pretty good. Now that I am going back, it's with a very clear sense of purpose, an understanding that there is plenty of silliness I can expect in grad school, just like there is in every other aspect of human life. I'm also much less focused on the idea of great, sweeping, transformative discoveries, which is really just a recipe for disapointment. I point all this out because I think it's normal when you are completely immersed in an academic environment for 4 years as an undergrad to not really have any objectivity on the process of education anymore. For some people, these are just that - doubts. They'll go on to grad. school anyway and probably figure things out once they're there. Some doubts are certainly normal and the application process is definitely very hard work that achieves an overall keystone cops result in grad. faculties nationwide. But if through all that you don't have this glimmer of an author or a body of theory or some period in history that inspires you and still seems even a little important through all the mental compromises you have to make just to articulate a simple sentence about that thing, then maybe it's not time to go to grad. school? My time to go was most certainly not right after undergrad, and I am very glad I waited. Like the OP points out, applications alone cost around 1,000 bucks, and most graduate departments won't let you get in and defer. So if your statement of purpose is 99% done and your writing samples are 99% done and you've taken the GREs and you've begged for your letters, but you haven't paid the application fee, why not wait tables for a year, work on a rig in N.Dakota, volunteer to teach English in China and send the applications out next year?

UCI has unofficially had one for a while. Brook Thomas is very well knows for his work on Henry James and contract law. There are several islands of Law and Literature floating around out there in the sea of English Departments and American Studies faculties, but I wonder if anyone on these boards takes an interest, if it's mainstream in any of your departments or if this kind of work will always take a back seat to Foucault and Kristeva?

So don't apply. Seriously, if you feel that way, why waste the best years of your life doing something you don't love that doesn't pay or even guarantee a job later.

Yes, I'm aware of her. What did her advisee say about working with her? Is she very involved as an advisor? And does she concentrate on Law and Lit or is it more of a side interest [if you know].

Is anyone else interested in this sub-field/interdisciplinary approach? Better yet, is anyone already in a graduate program that offers this emphasis? If so, I'd love to hear about it.

Yeah, both are probably tangential, but both are fun. Readymades is a good essay to chose and it would be a good mid-semester break from theorists who take themselves so seriously But I do think Duchamp has serious applications, even if he demands to be taken unseriously. He goes right along with the theme of "power" and relates back to politics and more serious topics [more serious than toilets] if the OP is interested in non-traditional art at all. Grafitti in general or Bansky, Sheppard Fairey, who was recently arrested in Boston, or those guys who shut down Boston with a terrorist scare because they were doing guerilla marketing for aqua teen hunger squad owe a huge debt to Duchamps for tearing down the border of "art" inside and outside of a museum. Duchamps is also more upbeat. I mean, you read something like Benjamin's Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and it sounds like everything good only used to be and life has truly come to an end. That guy could have used a better sense of humor, I think.

That's great advice truckbasket! A great way to indroduce a new theorist through one you probably already know fairly well. You might want to include something a little off the wall and more geared toward the visual. Duchamps on Dadaism maybe? It seems to me his work was a real turning point in "art" culture that challenged established power structures and was arguably spurred on significantly by changes in technology and mass production. If you're reading any Benjamin, some Duchamps manifestos might fit in well. Also, I once took a class on the Avant Garde and recall reading some good essays on the museum as a power institution by critics like Rubin on "primitivism" or McEvilley. It might be too far from your and your professor's idea of "theory" but it might break up the reading a bit. Independent study is time to have fun and explore, right?

I think Agamben is the new big theorist to build on Foulcault. Homo Sacer is one of his most widely read books, but glance over the Agamben page on Amazon.com and see what interests you.

I'm on my third, completely unique draft of the SOP. I thought I had one finished in the summer, but I showed it to Professors who strongly encouraged me to write it much differently. So I thought I took all their various advice, but it still missed the mark. I think the best advice is to find ONE faculty member whose judgment you trust and work with ONLY that person on the SOP, otherwise it comes out like a patchwork of random advice, insecurity and hedging.

Mine, indeed, was a short story written and published during Nabokov's European exile period. However, like most of his earlier work, it was published in translation in the 60s after he achieved fame with Lolita. Yes, I agree with you, he may not be the "most" American, but in some ways that makes him all the more American, and therefore, I didn't feel bad about submitting a sample about him...when my SOP doesn't express an interest in early American Literature.

I felt the same way about a 10-12 page limit! But since I've had my eye on NYU for a while, I spent the summer cutting down a 23 page paper to submit according to their length requirements. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that now it's a much better paper. What does this say about me?

Too funny! I'm applying for American Lit programs, but I'm also planning to submit a paper on Nabokov for one program. They want a 10 page writing sample and that was the only one I could shorten enough and still show something of my thought process. I don't know if it's a bad idea or not, but I'll let you know in April!

@eomentl, so if the math GRE doesn't even give ad comms relevant data for math/engineering applicants and I'm an English Lit applicant, I took an extra hour and a half answering multiple choice math questions why again? Like I say, a different or just a la carte version of these tests would be nice, and might make the resulting percentiles apply to those who actually care about getting a good result on that portion of the test.

Seanish, The writing test is still scored crazy, in my opinion. A 4 seems like it would be a good score! Yeah, I'd try and get a re-grade. Why not, if a 4.5 makes such a huge difference percentile-wise?

Hmmm. I took the test on Sept. 19th. When I logged in, at first, all I got was an error message. The second time I tried, I was able to log in, but still had no reported scores for the new exam. Perhaps these percentiles are still adjusting?

While I am merely and English Major, I can't help noticing that my 740 on the math score puts me in the 79th percentile. This effects my own application not at all, of course, but it seems that the economics applicants are all terribly worried that only an 800 [94%ile] is a competative score. If I were on the ad. comms, I think I would view a 79%ile score as low for a math/science program. If the difference between 79%ile and 94%ile truly don't matter, why aren't the tests pass/fail?

I guess they never fully "settle" but continue to adjust as more and more people take the test. The downward trend in math scores seems to indicate that if you have an older test score that was pretty ok, you might want to consider retaking the test to make sure you remain competitive in areas where GRE math scores really do matter. I don't mean for test-o-rexics who have a 94%ile and want a 95%ile, I mean for people who were in the high 600s/low 700s, felt that those were fine scores, but may find they're slowly slipping from low 80%iles to high 70%iles.