Grunty DaGnome

Don't post any sensitive stuff on FB ever. Besides, if you get in to your first choice the people who are close to you who have suffered all your neurotic anticipation with you deserve the phone call.

At first, I also feared that pool of applicants who had saved a baby from a burning building, but then I thought, "what if that baby grew up to be Hitler?" So, in an attempt to dampen the ad com's enthusiasm for baby saving candidates, I made my entire SOP about this hypothetical; baby's growing up to be Hitler and the superior applicants who should be punished for saving them. Now, I think I'm a shoe-in. 0

All habits are annoying. It's a constant fight to keep it fresh.

Good luck!!!

Ah well, there's always next year.

Now you're breaking my heart, because I never thought of doing that with my own horrible mistakes.

I think Brandeis is particularly good for Romanticism and Victorianism. They have several professors, Fleisch, most notably, who take a cognative approach to literary studies. Brandeis is also part of the consortium in Boston, so you would be able to cross register with Boston College and Boston University. You might want to check Brandeis's job placement page and see how their graduates do on the job market. Generally, they are ranked somewhere around the top 50 or 60 programs in the US. Not top 10, but not bad either. You can see from my signature that I have applied to several Boston schools, but not Brandeis. This is only because they do not have a strong American Literature department,and this is my main focus.

You should look into registering abroad as a visiting student, perhaps. Usually, language courses in Europe are more rigorous. [i did 3 semesters as a visiting student in Germany and also studied French while there]. You might also consider moving to a city like Boston, New York or some other city with great continuing education options. Harvard has an extension school, for example, that has no enrollment criteria and offers many courses taught be Harvard or other local faculty from Brandeis, UMASS and Tufts. A part time job waiting tables might pay for a year's adventure in Cambridge or some similar town. Latin: http://cdn.dce.harva...ourses/lati.jsp Greek: http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses/subject/greek

Timshel, You have application fatigue. I see you have one outstanding. I felt the same way once I sent out 6 and had that last push to send in the final 2. I had a hopeless feeling that just seemed to keep me from crossing the finish line with my last app. Have a friend read your writing sample with you, explain it to them, etc. It will get you moving again and you can finally finish.

We're all equally in the dark about these things but my sense is that state / public school funding is tied to scores more closely than private schools. Therefore, if you have your eye on a Penn State or a UVA or a UC whatever, you should probably plan to take the test early, just incase you need to improve your math score / combined GRE. That's the best in the dark advice I can muster. I've also heard [rumors] that schools take the best of all your non-expired scores, so if you don't study much for the math the first time out, get a great verbal score and then retake the test, but you lose a few points on the verbal the second time, because of all the conical diagrams floating through your head, some schools will take your best verbal and your best math. Boston University, for example, has a "date" entry for all your scores, contemplating that you self-report the highest historical score for each section.

Holy cow! Did you read the "student essay" they include in the application?

Tufts Fletcher School might be worth checking out, even if they don't have a program with "human rights" in the title. Of course, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government has a program on everything, but they are more geared toward actual work in government and human rights. University of Chicago has a professor, Margaret Nussbaum, who writes extensively about law and ethics. She is interdisciplinary between the law school, english and classics department.

Amen to all this! I'm leaving a fairly decent job in a profession I don't love. It feels like crap to excel at something that destroys you daily.

I interpreted the additional letters more as an opportunity to provide specific recommendations, IF you had them, not necessarily as more busy work if you didn't. I'm eager to see what they say. Thanks for taking the initiative!

I understood that to mean that, in addition to the application, I only needed to submit a letter outlining my experience. Since I haven't taught a course, there would be no point in submitting extra letters. Perhaps I'm just too optimistic.

Brown. I know, the odds are not with me.

Always nice to hear a voice from the other side.

In case you guys are thinking of trying this too; staring at the calendar at the bottom of your computer screen doesn't make it change anymore quickly, just as staring at a clock doesn't make time speed up.

All those early deadlines give me comfort that I may begin to get results as early as the first week in February. Or, maybe the word I'm looking for isn't exactly comfort, but more like dread. The closer it feels, the easier it is to repress, that's the upbeat take-away.

I have these folders in my Gmail account. What if your computer crashes?

I already assume that I've been rejected to every program and I'm planning my strategy for next year's applications. Maybe study for the math gre this time and add another 20 programs to my list.

This was the case for many of my programs. I applied a few years ago, did a MA and now I'm applying again. What I noticed for BC is that they mix the "received" log from 2008 with the current one. Lame.

Sorry Live, after I submitted, I closed my computer and went on vacation. It felt pretty good. Pretty, pretty good! Glad the last minute technical difficulties [which they program on purpose, I'm sure, just to mess with us] didn't derail your game! Good luck to everyone!!!!!!!!!!!

I was probably the last applicant to Brown University, just hours ago. If anyone beat me in procrastinating on submitting their writing sample please do post.

I have everything uploaded and ready to submit for Brown, but considering how many sentence fragments I sent to Columbia, I think I'll proofread one more time tomorrow...or two more.