antecedent

As opposed to those bargainous American M.A.s???

Nearly all departments accept less than 10% of applicants; many are in the 5% or lower range.

Food for thought: Harvard's undergrad acceptance rate last year--the lowest in the country--was about 6%, Princeton's undergrad rate 8%, Penn's undergrad rate 12%, and Cornell's undergrad rate 16%. If you were to conduct a straightforward comparison of acceptance rates alone, you would conclude that being accepted to a funded PhD program is *at least* as difficult as getting into an Ivy League undergrad, and in reality, probably more difficult.

Trust me when I say: any student, from any background, with any scores/grades/undergrad institution/writing sample/SOP, who makes it into a funded PhD program, has beaten the odds.

IT'S MY LAST DAY AT WORK MUAHAHAHAHAAA!

I am NOT going to miss this place.

Though to be honest, I'll miss my coworkers and my paycheck.

IT'S MY LAST DAY AT WORK MUAHAHAHAHAAA!

I am NOT going to miss this place.

Though to be honest, I'll miss my coworkers and my paycheck.

A friend and I try to pick a day a month and do 3-piece-suit lab days. I've got an old seersucker suit that I favor, he goes traditional pinstripe.

saecla vincere and rems, thank you so much for posting your feelings about the matter. I experienced these concerns as well last Spring while my mentor was encouraging me to go to grad school. I took this year off to think about my motives for grad school and, yes, to just experience life as another cog in the corporate machine. My mentor prof pointed out that (and not that I necessarily endorse this point of view, but it comforted me at the time) if I know I want to go to grad school, I should apply and do my best to get in. At the end of the day, if I came through grad school, got my PhD, and then decided that what I really wanted to be was a potter, then I could become a potter with a PhD in literature and that would be just fine. It's admirable that so many people in these forums know that academia is the One True Career for them, but for the rest of us that think it is but aren't 100% sure we can hack it, it can be just as hard committing to the process in the first place. I definitely support the idea of a year off, just to clear your head space (and dedicate some time to applications if that's the route you chose).

But ComeBackZinc's point figures in here too. Even if you decide you do want to commit to a life of academia, there's no guarantee you'll even get it. I mean, I would love to be a professor, and I will work hard to make that goal a reality. But if it just doesn't pan out, I may just end up being a basket weaver (or an editor, or a non-profit administrator) with a PhD.

{Edit} I think a lot of this comes down to our ultimate inability to predict the future. We'd all like to know whether or not we can handle the heat of 7 years of doctoral work, or whether or not doing that will get us the tenure-track job of our dreams. At the end of the day though, you'll never know whether or not you could do it if you don't try. The odds may be against you, but that's no reason not do try, it's just another factor in the decision making process.

This is all to say, I'm pretty sure this is the career for me, but I'll let you know in 10 years. (Funny, my boyfriend says the same thing about being a meteorologist).

Sorry for putting this out there, but anyone who is crying about being in the 89th percentile verbal on the GRE should be shot. The end.

I'm applying to eighteen schools, ranging from top-20 to top-120. I already have an M.A. and am solely applying to Ph.D. programs. I've been saving up money and socking it away every month - my savings account looks pretty impressive, but it's almost all going to be gone by December. I applied to very few schools (almost all of which were top-20 or top-40) last year and didn't get in anywhere, though I did get three waitlists. I feel like I have a much better idea of what to expect this year and started planning for this application season almost as soon as I got the last rejection letter from LSU in April. I have to budget for eighteen school application fees, eighteen sets of transcripts from the community college I attended, eighteen sets of transcripts from my undergrad, and eighteen sets from my Masters institution. I made the decision early on that I was going to apply to as many schools as humanly possible without going into further debt to do so, and that's what I'm going to do.

When I tell people I'm going to study English Language in Scotland they say "Scotland?! They don't even speak English there!"

I know we're "two countries separated by a common language" but come on, people. It's ranked in the top 10 in the world for my program, and is the alma mater of J.M. Barrie, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Rankin, Sir Walter Scott, Alexander McCall Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin. I think they can speak English there.

You seem more interested in complaining than listening, and I'm not sure why. I've told you about my program. We're a top ten theoretical program in California, we accept students for terminal master's, and we do not require fluency. Half the programs you've listed offer theoretical degrees they can't support (Wayne State has only two theoretical linguists on their faculty, and both are P-side. If I remember correctly, you were more interested in semantics?). Looking at a handful of top programs, I see very few which require advanced proficiency/fluency (Berkeley does for one of their options, but I don't think they accept MA students anyway). Most require reading competence, which is what I described above.

Also, you're dead wrong if you think this is a linguistics-only requirement. Most graduate programs in the humanities require reading competence for just the reasons I mentioned. Heck, I know for a fact that UCLA film school requires their graduate students to take a language exam before advancing to candidacy. I recommend you stop complaining about how the system works and start figuring out what you actually want to do and why.

My opinion: I will tutor him in any subject he wants...mmmmhmm!

63 calendar days left between me and FREEDOM.

I gave some change to a lady working the corner near my work (my office is in a neighborhood where most of the survival sex work happens in Vancouver) and I thought, at least I have the good fortune to have a job. Even if it makes me miserable and I can't wait to leave in two months to go follow my dreams. Sigh.

I'd suggest just buying the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism and jumping right into it. There's a fairly lengthy introductory chapter that covers the theoretical schools and movements, and the editors likewise include a one to three page intro to every theorist in the volume. I'm unfamiliar with most of the other texts listed here, but the Norton is definitely better than Eagleton's book, far more recent and comprehensive.

I think Toby McGuire may be the only right casting! He's so . . . vacant, vessel-like, which seems perfect for a character that is basically just your point of view.

But, I'm def. not a DiCaprio fan (please, someone, make him stop with the Oscar quest), and I think Trip and Augusta are probably right on that this film is a vehicle for an American "period" film - in 3D! - rather than a treatment of, you know, a text.

When I tell people I'm going to study English Language in Scotland they say "Scotland?! They don't even speak English there!"

I know we're "two countries separated by a common language" but come on, people. It's ranked in the top 10 in the world for my program, and is the alma mater of J.M. Barrie, Thomas Carlyle, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian Rankin, Sir Walter Scott, Alexander McCall Smith, Robert Louis Stevenson, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Charles Darwin. I think they can speak English there.

Just out of curiosity, does anybody here have opinions about getting a cell phone in Edinburgh? Are their good carriers or ones to avoid? I've found several free VOIP calling and texting apps for smartphones, so I'll probably end up getting a smartphone. I know the UK tends to be FAR more reasonable than Canada and the US when it comes to phones, I'm just curious what other people have done in the past.

The GRE lit test is really dumb. This means you can game it if you are a good test taker and feel like spending the time to stoop to its levels. If you are not a good test taker you will not do well unless you have been steeped in (not just read) an unnatural amount of literature. There is not much middle ground, as far as I see it. My preparation was slightly above minimal and I got 87% percentile. Then again, I'm an excellent test taker and 87% percentile is literally the worst standardized test score I've ever gotten. It's not an easy test. You have to play defensively, so to speak. Here's a small tip that is of some actual use: I took three practice tests, one as the result of idle curiosity long before I even decided I was going to apply to grad school and two for real. I scored better on the test I actually took than I did on the first of those practice tests, but worse than I did on the other two. I wanted to know why, in general terms. Now, I do think the real test that I took was "harder" or less tailored to my knowledge and my studying than the other tests, and I do believe this played a role, but the main point is that I did not finish the real test in time, while I finished the other three with somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes to spare. The reason? In the practice tests, I wrote the letter of the answer down on a separate sheet of paper; on the actual test, you are bubbling. Bubbling takes more time than writing "A." There are 230 questions. So when you practice, bubble.

Other than that, standard test taking measures apply--skip, guess, don't get flustered, look for ways in which a question undermines itself, play the logic, assume the answers are more obvious authors rather than more obscure ones when you are debating between options. Know the characteristics of eras and movements so you can recognize them whether or not you recognize a specific author or text. Read wiki summaries and character lists of longer works that you feel are important (ie, Victorian novels), make sure you can read and recognize The Canterbury Tales, for fuck's sake don't ignore the non-Shakespeare, non-Milton 17th century, assume any passage with questions of grammar or syntax is from Milton unless you have good reason to believe otherwise, know poetic forms and genres (no, really: know them, be able to recognize them very quickly, and not just to be able to answer "what form is this in" but to be able to recognize that a passage is from The Divine Comedy or The Faerie Queene without even reading it or knowing anything about the texts at all just because you saw Terza Rima or a Spensarian Stanza (shame on you, you should read Dante anyway)), Charles Lamb will appear for some reason, there will be at least three passages identifiable as mock epic and about 40 questions with something related to mock epic as a possible answer, I swear Borges showed up on all my practice tests but not on the real one, fuck Samson Agonistes, people tell you the grammar questions are supposed to be free points but in actuality most of them are really hard, read The Rape of the Lock, I hope you've read Paradise Lost, if I had to recommend one book-length work to read in total with the specific aim of assisting you on this test and I can't pick Paradise Lost I'd actually pick Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Umm

you will run into shit that you've never even considered hearing of. don't sweat it.

I (as I'm sure many others) fully agree with Trip. From what I've seen it looks like this process is half skill, half luck. You've clearly got the skills for academia, and certainly the drive. Don't let anyone or anything make you feel like you can't do what you want to do.

Also they skip the relevant post right above them and go straight for the knee-jerk arguments. Typical troll, also covered in internet 101.

Julliet gives great advice.

There's something else I wanted to touch on that comes across in your original post- and that's being able to choose a project that interests you. While it's important to have a project that you don't hate, it's also important to remember that what you do for your PhD dissertation work isn't what you'll have to do the rest of your career. Some people seem to put way too much stress and emphasis on the project, rather than the PI and group atmosphere. Find people you enjoy working with/for and a project that you don't hate, and then slowly bring things around to your area of interest.

Especially in your first few years (and sometimes your whole PhD), project selection and choice is very dependent on the funding situation. Most of my peers have next to no choice over what they work on, it's decided by the PI. A lot of that has to do with personality, but it's also a reality of funding in chemistry- once you have an area funded, you have to keep pounding on it for results. That's especially true of young PIs.

As you get more experience, and have successfully completed several projects, you'll likely get (or be able to push for more) lattitude in your work. A lot of grad students in my departments have many "side projects" that we don't spend a lot of money on, that are more in line with our direct interests than our PIs. But we can only keep working on them so long as we are putting out productive reseach on our main projects and paying the bills.

How'd your GRE go, Two Espressos?

When I finished mine, I was totally dazed, and started freaking out thinking I'd forgotten to do a section, then got lost in the ENORMOUS MALL the testing centre was in. I tried to wake my brain back up with frozen yogurt but I think it went dormant for a few weeks after that. Turns out I did alright in the end, so that kind of disorientation and confusion must be normal...

How will any of us GF'ers who are UT-bound know you? Will you look anything like Marlowe the dramatist...

Personally, I look very little like a volcano.

HOW WILL I KNOW YOU WHEN I SEE YOU IN AUGUST!?

EDIT: ARE YOU A CAT?

This is the dumbest statement so far in this thread; only a damn fool would willfully close themselves off to ALL avenues/resources in regards to future graduate work. "Ah, there's an ENTIRE forum of current, about to be, and hopeful graduate students. . .naw, probably no helpful hints/reminders lodged in there. I'll just stick with asking Professors 20 years removed from the graduate process what it is like."

Dumb.