veniente

Apparently I live a 21 hour flight away from NY. Although presently (and, in all likelihood, finally) I only have one option, do you think there is any chance that the university would be prepared to fork out some money for a visit? (Someone I know who got into Stan. was able to organise this with her/his Engl. dept.) Also, I wonder about relocation costs, as if I accept the offer, flights are probably like $1-2k and I also have all my books that I'd like to have access to. Any thoughts would be super-appreciated x

Perhaps this has been discussed elsewhere, and I believe I've read rumours of it on these boards before, but why would any program look unfavourably on an MA and prefer someone straight from undergrad? It makes no sense to me; sure an MA isn't necessary, and in most cases people who get in probably don't have them, but why would it be a deterrent?

Hah. Yeah. I was feeling the heat after the Brown rejection (as indicated by my post on that thread); in hindsight, my comment on the results board about 'seeing someone else', although premature, turned out to be accurate.

Congratulations!!

Nice!

Is this you? Me likey.

How does American money work, like will I have to live in New Jersey and commute cause NYC is so expensive? I've never even been to the country.

Touché TripWillis! [Can I just take this chance to say you're awesome, we all know it.] Um, maybe like literary/critical/postcolonial theory (???). 700+ applicants for 15 spots. Again, you're all so freaking amazingly awesome (this is the first online community board-type thing I've ever been involved with, but I think I'm safe when I assume most aren't this great) and I'm pulling so so so hard for everyone yet to hear. xx The Cost of It All (despite their protestations about being fair/'blind' or whatever when it comes to funding, the application costs to programs are still an insurmountable access barrier for many - this needs redressing asap): GRE/Subject study books - $85 (not including the Norton's) GRE/Subject exams - $470 (2 GRE, 1 subject) Official transcript costs - $75 (2 universities *idiotically* requiring originals) Postage costs - $35 (posting transcripts to the other side of the world) Online application costs - $1010 (12 English grad. programs) Thank you gifts to 3 references - $125 = $1800 Hours of MA lost in favour of GRE/PhD app. studying/writing/worring: Unaccountable SOP re-drafts: Too many Sleep lost: Untold amounts Dreams pertaining to grad school over the last three years: Frightening in their number Alcohol imbibed following each rejection: Enormous quantities Worrying (after belatedly finding gradcafe) about no other languages bar English / no POI contact / low-ish GRE scores: Lots Finding out someone, crazily, wants me: See OP.

Thanks so much everyone - perrykm2, deebee, TripWillis ♥, lolopixie ♥, waiting international, petitespoir, comebackzinc, and massive congratulations to the others who got in! I'm getting gushy but I cannot give enough love to everyone who makes gradcafe amazing; without you, and your support, this whole process would have unbearable. I could've sworn I was going to go 0/12. I got an email from the assistant dean and then director of graduate studies. Posted dismal GRE scores on results board with acceptance (verbal and quant. should be the other way round).

Holy Fuck.* I just got into Columbia. *Forgive me for my language!

I think it also has a lot to do with expectations and that it is, perhaps, a humanities- and, I'm even tempted to say, slightly English-specific issue. You tell (the perennial) Joe Shmoe that you're studying English or Film or French, let us say, and Joe, if he doesn't immediately tell you to stop wasting your time and get a real job, or, ask how the heck anyone can study those so-called 'subjects', might respond, "Oh cool, I've read the first part of Twilight recently and also watched Grown Ups, and have actually been thinking it would be ace to visit France" (which is in no way to belittle our fictional Joe). People feel that they 'know' books, they 'know' film, they 'know' culture (and of course they do, however, often they seem not to know that there is no end to knowing) thus there is no need to think further upon such areas. They (and forgive me if i generalise) don't see their knowledge of these cultural forms reinforced in the academic output of scholars in the fields which purportedly study them, nor do they typically view such output as 'useful' or 'of value', as we see when we tell our Joe that the post-Foucauldian interpretation of Steve McQueen's Hunger we are writing offers vital insights into the biopolitical character of sovereign power and the forms it may take, or, that a reading of Infinite Jest through Derrida's conceptualisation of différance is germane given the fractured nature of contemporary self and language. I would suggest that there is a general aversion to thinking critically, theoretically, and conceptually (which are of course skills the humanities foreground) about culture. Hence the common claims that academics are over-thinking and over-interpreting texts or situations which are, or should be, *obvious* to everyone. Hence these same people would never question the validity of scientific or juridical fields, for example, nor the language - the 'academese' and 'legalese' - that such fields employ. When was the last time a physicist or a neuroscientist was told that her views were pretentious? (I wonder if in many ways this anti-intellectualism can be construed as specifically Anglo-Saxon.)

I'm going to collect all my rejections and turn them into a performance art project about failure in which I staple them to my body and then self-immolate while reciting Plath.

Probably. Nothing like the smell of failure in the morning.

Swoon. This sounds like every American high school movie EVER. Oh please do accept me land of the free where love flourishes amongst neighbours! Oh my gosh, my heart goes out to you, that's sickeningly awful, I'm so sorry to hear about your master's thesis! My MA thesis is due in a week and I couldn't imagine the horror of losing files. *Backs up files this instant*

Like Eggers, I only discovered that George Eliot was a woman and Evelyn Waugh a man when I was studying for the subject test.

I have not read Richard III, Macbeth, Ulysses, Moby-Dick, Spenser, Chaucer, Milton, Bronte, Henry James, nor much poetry... so pretty much everything on the GRE subject test. And I call myself an English major! If someone says Hamlet I reckon they win.

I probably can't judge on the humandom claim, but yeah, he's decent-ish in those films and his short story collection was slightly better than I expected. On Franco-NYU gate: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2011/12/james_franco_at_yale_franco_s_professor_speaks_.single.html

I wonder what Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby is going to be like? My friend knew the cast and asked me to guess who was playing who - I guessed Leo (gorgeous!) as Gatsby and Toby as Nick straight away. I'm much less convinced about Carey. I mean she's a great young actor, I just would have preferred to see someone quintessentially American to play Daisy.

This. Pulling for you bespeckled. I'm sure that your acceptance will be coming any time soon!

How do we know we've found the right questions and the right critical objects? And, what are they for Zizek, I wonder? I haven't read enough of him to confidently say (And, is it just me or does he look perpetually coked-up? )

After Pandora I'm wary of small golden boxes and their contents.

Yes. But perhaps, like shame, complicity comes in shades or degrees. How much can one stand, which is also to say, how much can one elect to ignore? I can listen to my iPod with nary a thought for Foxconn workers hurtling to their deaths, eat animal flesh without feeling sick to my soul, look into the eyes of starving children on television and feel only the remotest fluttering of my heart. 'Justice' - once that word is uttered, where will it all end? So beautiful. What would qualify as enough? Pray tell. I'm looking for redemption.

This.

Apologies TripWillis - just a life time of explaining the use of studies in English literature to funding bodies/friends/family members/all and sundry is getting me down.

Pretty much.