LivePoetry123

Thanks for the help and solidarity-- CUNY is indeed a pain in the ass!! I now have two other problems: one, I can't find specific instructions for the statement of intent anywhere, like length or what topics they want you to address in it. I've already got a generic SOP pretty much written, but was anyone able to locate specific instructions? Also, I had thought that the LORs had to be in hard copy, so I got them in sealed envelopes from my recommenders and was going to just include them in my packet. But they are supposed to be done online?? ugh... I guess I could send my recommenders a frantic last-minute email asking them to upload, but, does everyone thing it'll be ok if I just include them in the packet??

Hi everyone, this is just a paranoid double-check. I had thought that the application for CUNY grad center was a totally mail-in-hard-copy one, but someone recently posted on here talking about their online application. Am I being retarded? Which one is it? I found their website pretty confusing, so I could well be wrong....

very late response, but thanks so much lolopixie for the reply! that is very comforting. I miraculously got an ok math score on my first try, but the second try, well, didn't work out so well. So think look more hopeful now, but I totally agree with you tripwillis: fuck those schools. The fact that they would have a minimum gre score says a lot about their priorities, and those aren't priorities that I can get behind. Especially if they are shifty about the whole thing and don't explicitly say they have a minimum. We're probably better off somewhere else.

"cuny's was also super dodgy" ??? I thought that CUNY required everything sent in hard copy??? did I miss something?

I'm an American who did my MA in Canada, and I was not eligible to apply for SSHRCC, the big Canadian outside fellowship, because I am American. This could become a problem for you if it is true, like wreckofthehope says, that you are expected to apply to outside fellowships in order to be eligible for department funding. I mean, they might waive this requirement because you obviously can't apply for something you aren't eligible for, but I would look into all this if I were you. When I did my MA I had the same funding opportunities as Canadian students, but it could be different for PhDs. That being said, I really enjoyed studying in Canada. I was in the BC area, though not at UBC. There's much to be recommended about going Canadian. Another thing is that if you don't have your MA yet, Canada is a great place to do it because unlike American schools they actually offer good funding for terminal MAs.

For schools that have cutoffs, what about if you've taken the GRE multiple times? Do they take your highest score for each section, or do they combine and average all your scores? anyone know?

I will just chime in about the speed-reading thing. I took the test on Nov. 12th and left about 20 -30 questions unanswered, not even looked at, just because I ran out of TIME. It was so frustrating, because I actually feel like I did really well on the questions I had time to answer. I didn't get my score yet, but OP I'd really urge you to practice your speed reading and quick-comprehension skills! I went into the test thinking it would be mostly identification and I just wasn't prepared for the time-crammed comprehension. Studying general knowledge of the field also just seems iffy because who knows if the stuff you study will actually be on the test, right? it just seems like a crap shoot. Timshel, is it possible to cancel the request to send subject test scores? I just realized I accidentally asked for subject test scores to be sent out to a couple of my schools that don't require them. Ugh, I totally sympathize. I haven't gotten my score back yet but I don't think it could possibly be good, with so many questions left unanswered.

That is really helpful to know, Timshel-- thanks so much for the tip!! Is it ok to make a big deal about what a good fit the poetics program in general is for me? people were saying in some other threads on here that some schools don't even like you to mention fit explicitly because it should be obvious from your proposed project. Did your professors say anything about talking about fit generally?

Thanks for the input! My GRE last time was pretty average -- 600 verbal 630 quant. My verbal is better this time but not much-- 163 which is 650 on the old scale, 93rd percentile. This time my math was 19th percentile!!! omg.... I guess I couldn't pull off the guessing thing twice. Analytical writing 5.5 this time, but last time I somehow got a TWO. Don't really know what to say about that. Do you think any of those scores last year could have gotten me disqualified? I've probably been much too cavalier about the GRE through this whole process. I never studied for even one second because I wanted to focus on the other parts of the app. My LORS should be good-- all 3 of them gave me A+'s on my seminar papers for their classes and two gave me an A+ in the class as well (these kinds of high grades are pretty unheard of at the school where I did my MA, but it is not a high-ranked school or anything). I have one person writing me a letter who didn't last time, and she knows me better than the last letter-writer. (last time I applied before completing my MA). That is so awesome that one of your LORS founded the poetics program!! Jealous! did he/she give you any advice on what the Buffalo adcomm in particular is looking for? I have the feeling that my SOP is what got me rejected last time-- I did not have a specific focus at all and I sounded like a totally naive and overambitious idiot talking in vague abstractions. I cringe reading it now. This time its much more focused, feasible, and pitched much more convincingly at the poetics department (I kind of realized that when I used to say "aesthetics" i really was talking about "poetics". AAGH!). I'm thinking I will talk a lot about the department in general and the atmosphere there rather than about specific professors-- does that sound ok? last time I made a big deal out of wanting to study with Steve McCaffrey but who knows if we would even get along, right? the thing I'm sure about is that I want to be in the poetics program-- I've had a solid interest in poetics, both from an academic and a creative perspective, since I first started taking English classes and I'm sure now that it won't change. As near as I can tell Buffalo poetics is the only program in the nation where creative pursuits are so intimately combined with academics without there being any formal creative writing requirements to the program. That is the perfect environment for me. For the writing sample I'm also considering submiting the shorter paper I mentioned earlier along with another 13-pager. Unfortunately though this one is also not on modernism-- its mostly about a film adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray-- which I use as a way to sort of philosophize about how Wilde's poetics necessarily plays out differently in the novel and in film-- because of "the visual" as a category etc. In it I discuss visual metaphors and metaphor itself and translation between media which totally relates to the premises of what I'm pitching in my SOP-- a study of music metaphors in modernist literature as a way into talking about modernist poetics~ but is it a no-go because its mostly about a film adaptation?? What also worries me about sending in my Anthropoetics essay again is that, aside from the obscure and unfashionable topic, I think it sounds sort of incomprehensable to anyone who hasn't read Gans. I mean, the intro immediately jumps into this whole thing about "fundamental human categories" and "the originary scene of symbolic representation"-- you can tell that the writing is good, but it sounds like I'm on my own special planet. I think my other papers are more immediately accessible to people who don't necessarily have a background in the topic I'm writing on. Sorry this is so long.

A few questions here. SUNY-Buffalo is by far my top choice because of their Poetics program. I applied a few years ago (that was the only school I applied to) and was rejected. I am completely KICKING MYSELF now because I did not, at that time, write to ask why my application was rejected, which would have given me a concrete direction for improvement this time around. I know my application will definitely be better this time-- I've improved my GRE verbal, got a much clearer focus for my SOP which is pitched directly at the Poetics program (it wasn't last time), and have added one LOR to my crew who will write me a really strong one. First question, though I fear I already know the answer to this. What if I asked at this point why my first application was rejected? would they still have it on file? and, would I look like a horrific procrastinator? I essentially just want to know whether it was the SOP or the writing sample that was the problem... those are the only two things I could think it would be. GRE was ok (not great), LORS were great, great GPA, etc. Second, I am worried about my writing sample. Last time I submitted a 22-pg seminar paper that was very well-written and has actually been published, but it is on a theorist who is not well-known and is probably very much ridiculed in some circles (Eric Gans-- anyone heard of him? Anthropoetics? the originary scene of symbolic representation? the end of culture?? very interesting and strange stuff, I don't really believe in it at all but managed to write a paper that Gans himself published in his journal, which is peer-reviewed and everything). Gans himself is not a theorist I'm planning to work with but my essay was about the aesthetic experience, which is very much my area. Is a writing sample on this really unfashionable theorist going to hurt me? I also have another essay I could submit which also centers on aesthetics/poetics (my area), but is about a Victorian novel (not my area-- I plan to focus on modernism). This paper is 13 pages, not long enough for Buffalo (they want 20-30). Its not really my best writing but shows better than the Gans paper how I've been working up to my area of interest, and it doesn't include any unfashionable theorists or anything. My thought as of now is to include both of them, but if the Gans paper was what got me rejected originally, sending it again could be death. I can't really see, though, how I could expand the other paper all that much. Damn it, should have asked them this 2 years ago!!!! I also had the thought to explicitly state in my SOP that the Gans paper was included to show what I'm capable of in terms of writing style and shouldn't be looked at for content, and that the other paper shows more about my current ways of analyzing and something I could possibly do in my area of interest (though I would be doing that in modernist lit). any other tips on getting into Buffalo would also be appreciated. I realized recently I am so dead-set on going there, its difficult to even get motivated to apply anywhere else.... but I am going to.

Thanks so much for the input, everyone-- I really appreciate it! MichealK, your list was especially helpful, as "inquiries involving philosophy and literature" is definitely how I would define my interests in a lot of ways. Also, Phil Sparrow, it was quite a relief to hear that aesthetics is not completely out of fashion. As I do more research on schools I am seeing "aesthetics" pop up fairly often on the lists of faculty interests, so I'm feeling better about all that. Cornell's combined program also looks great but I still feel like at this point I am not ready (if I ever will be) to formally study creative writing-- its just an atmosphere that I want around me and I want the chance to participate in informal poetry critique groups with other grad students. I feel like I need much more time to absorb other writing before I know what I am doing at all with my own writing, and my whole thing is that I don't think that academics and creativity should be so starkly seperated as they generally are-- and this is why SUNY Buffalo interests me so very much, and why I can't really see doing an MFA right now. Insertbrackets, do you mind elaborating on why you think doing an MFA would be better? thanks again everyone.

Hello everyone, I'm new on this forum. I'm applying for fall 2012 entrance to English Phd programs. I have spent a lot of time in the past few months trying to narrow down my area of interest. My interest, broadly, is in modernism and aesthetics. Not really "modernist aesthetics" but more like how modernist literature itself theorizes "the aesthetic experience" and how that artistic theorization intervenes in or compares to aesthetic theories-- philosophical aesthetics as well as how aesthetics is configured in contemporary critical theory. I have the thought to focus this very general area of inquiry by talking about music metaphors in modernist literature. To clarify, I'm NOT thinking of doing an interdisciplinary project on music and literature. Rather, this would be a solely literary project which looks at how and to what purpose music metaphors are used in modernist literature. I have a tentative hypothesis that talking about music allowed the modernists to say things about their own art, about language, about aesthetics, that they could not express in any other way, or that were becoming unfashionable during the time that they were writing. I'm also thinking that this project could be expanded out into a discussion of ALL the ways that the modernists talked about their own art in terms of other arts, sort of "translated" their own work into others, including painting, theatre, and music. Or even "translation" in general, including that between languages, but that would be a very abbreviated side note of "possible directions I could take this" because, aside from being really interested in theories of translation, I don't have any significant foreign language skills at this point. I need to be somewhere that will allow and even encourage me to write about aesthetics. My feeling is that "aesthetics" is quickly gaining a nasty reputation for elitism (I'm not an elitist, I promise!) and becoming unfashionable in the academy, and that a lot of schools would try to push me in the direction of cultural studies and historicism, which seem to be the new trends. I definitely want to link my project to political and cultural issues, but not in such a concrete way that I am actually looking at "cultural artifacts" or anything like that. Another thing that's important to me is to find a department that has a strong graduate student creative-writing community or, better yet, some overlap and communication between the Literature and Creative Writing departments, since I write a lot of poetry and would actually rather be a poet than a professor. For this reason, my top choice right now is SUNY- Buffalo-- their poetics program sounds a great place for me, and it sounds like they are among the most flexible and "open" programs. Are there any other schools with a similar deal?? I was actually rejected from Buffalo a few years ago and while I think my application package is stronger this time... I definitely need some other options. I'm kind of an anti-establishment-hippy-artist, and while I'm not set in my ways or anything, I don't want to at a school that is very dogmatic and is going to make me conform to the current academic trends. I could really, really use some advice on where to apply, or even how to SEARCH for places to apply. I know, it is quite late in the process to be asking this. My advisor from my MA gave me this list of schools that are strong in modernism: Johns Hopkins, U. of Virginia, U. of Washington, U. Penn. And I'm definitely applying to SUNY-Buffalo. But I think modernism is not my primary concern, my primary thing seems to be this philosophical-approach, aesthetics thing which I like to approach through modernism. Thanks in advance for any help!! sorry this is so long...