th3_illiterati

It shouldn't be any trouble for them. I think most of them save their letters in case of reapplication requests. What can be beneficial in the LOR, furthermore, is if anyone's been promoted since your first application (this happened to me!)... One thing that proved very helpful to the busy Prof's I asked this year, since I was applying to over a dozen Universities: I sent them my request along with an Excel Spreadsheet organized by school, type of letter (paper vs. email), due date, and a "finished" column. This was accompanied by a polite note saying they could use it or not, but I know how crazy work can get and if it helped them, fantastic, if not, disregard. They liked it and used it. Don't know if anyone else has ever done this, but I recommend it if you're applying to more than like three or four schools.

My SOP was well received although I didn't get in to the programs I was hoping to. The feedback given on it, when I approached U's that rejected me, was excellent and commented on it being well conceived, interesting, and so forth. Of course, I'm not going to post it because of privacy issues! However, what was very helpful toward the initial writing of it was that I asked my mentor for permission to look over past SOP's from people he had successfully placed in Ph.D. programs. He gave me three, all going to pretty good programs now. I earnestly don't think I would have known where to start otherwise. You could also ask former classmates of yours who have gone on to Ph.D. programs to send you copies of what got them in?

That's a helpful and succinct list, and I appreciate your emphasis on social networking and "fit." Several points, however. - Publication at a BA level is not necessarily helpful for either Ph.D. application, and can represent (as somewhat less-mature work) a future blight on your record. This is a debate often had, and perhaps I should leave it out of this thread. But because I know several people who deeply regret their pre-doctoral publications, I feel obliged to mention it. Conference papers seem to have a different weight to them, and aren't generally seen as "risky." I was ready to dive in and start writing with my trusty Bachelor's Degree, when my partner (who incidentally is only a few years out of grad school, hence our having friends still in grad programs) informed me that it took him two years to write his last article. - The argument you make about attitude and a sense of entitlement can be flipped on its ass pretty easily: if you've worked hard for years and years, why should graduate school represent an exclusive little coterie? Is it really a sound ethical construct for students to present themselves as subordinate entities whose agency is ultimately governed by the control of a dominant educational machine? At the logical extreme, that's where a "non-entitled attitude" assumed by a student who is entirely qualified might take them. I'm strongly opposed to the exclusivity of academia, and feel like if you've done everything right and well to qualify for entrance, why would you want to tell yourself you aren't entitled to play the game? At any rate, it's something to consider, because it's a piece of advice I see get tossed about an awful lot, and ultimately it doesn't really help anyone work more effectively toward getting into a graduate program so much as continue the hyper-competitive mindset and dominator model of capitalist society that may -- or may not -- chap someone's hide. I am of the very humble opinion that Universities are accessible institutions of higher learning that already have all the requisite hoop-jumping inbuilt. Unfortunately, underfunding slash cohort size, not a mass movement of entitled applicants who engage in secret intellectual slackery. Meaning that the problem is often a broader issue regarding the intersection of capitalism with learning. My ten cents. Not lashing out on you here, so much as a pretty endemic meme about the "We have many qualified applicants (and you aren't one of them." Call me crazy, but I think that most people who are serious about applying to a field with as much commitment as graduate school have decent insight into where they fall on the intellectual spectrum, for better or worse. In an economic situation like the present, as well as a climate that is so discouraging toward the Humanities, why not foreground that? Sorry, I have a huge rant in me about how I feel like the Humanities need to start shouting to survive, and it's got nothing to do with my applications to graduate school as much as my love of the field. Improve what you can. But why on earth do people (not you) give advice like "increase your GRE scores," presuming that you did not do as well as you could have, you didn't study, something was overlooked. Verbal standardized tests are just really arbitrary for English majors in particular. If your writing sample doesn't highlight anything the GRE possibly could -- your reading comprehension, analytical writing skills, and general vocabulary -- that is problematic in and of itself. I'm now officially on about three soap boxes, sorry. Bit caffeinated today. Probably shouldn't submit all this, since it's a somewhat polarizing topic, however, I will with the caveat that I'm not trying to start an argument but rather offer my sense of frustration about how encouraging words can sometimes seem derisive or dismissive. Sorry for the typos, etc...

110% correct. But the closer something seems familiar to you, the less you tend to see it. My partner was fairly aghast that he hadn't noticed that my field was fairly specialized. He spent this morning hand-wringing and apologizing. But the reality is, he's so familiar with my discussion of it that it didn't seem even remotely specialized to him, I'd wager. He probably regarded my application as "general" when really, there aren't many folks working in the cross-hairs of my area of interest. Likewise with my mentor, since he helped me develop this particular dialectic in the first place. If I'd contacted potential directors first, I'd have probably received the feedback that I did wind up getting: "What's that you're studying there? Red-blue? I'm the Red person at this University. Talk to the Blue guy down the hall." That's not to say that Universities don't accept multivalent approaches, but mine was apparently not making sense. You know, I did receive that feedback from ONE Professor whom I TA'd for and earnestly, I owe her a letter. But she was the least involved person in all of this and I didn't take so much of what she had to say into consideration compared with those closer at hand. So yeah, you are very correct. @booksareneat: basically, yes. My period is overly specific, but I'm working through a few different theoretical lenses to then work through it. I need to dumb it down for admissions and broaden the marketed version of what I'm doing. That's the long and short of it. At least in the SOP. I can explain the specifics to individual people whom I want to work with. Funny position to be in. Because I have a half-cooked idea, they're less sure of how to proceed than if I were a bit more vague. That's interesting, albeit a wee perverse.

First of all, thank you to everyone who took time to reply: I've basically been sitting back and watching this thread, trying to see how various insights would unfold without my intervention (especially when I've been in a really negative space about this and was beginning to doubt my own judgement and perception). It is a very depressing year and I sincerely have no idea what I will be doing, whine, whine, whimper. But in all earnestness, I was a return student and have to make pressing decisions about what to do financially right now. Not that everyone doesn't, but I have this child to care for, as well as what feel like fewer and fewer years to get it all together. So setting aside my bruised ego, pragmatism looms. In a pragmatic fit, I sent requests to various Universities requesting insight into the specifics of my rejections: it beats the Hell out of wondering on message boards. Four Universities got back to me, three with the same highly useful piece of feedback (they had a few other key points as well, but at least I got some sort of helpful narrative from this): my field was too obscurely defined and/or they didn't know where to place me because of this. It wasn't something I'd really considered because since it's my field of study, I missed that possibility entirely. Furthermore, I already have a burgeoning thesis. So I wasn't just throwing things higgledy-piggledy together. But it would have helped, I infer, if I'd contacted the specific Professors I wanted to work with to explain how I was hybridizing my areas of interest. Those same three encouraged me to reapply next year, one rather glowingly. I found out they had short-listed me (one of my two top programs). I received strong support about my Statement of Purpose, writing sample, and letters of recommendation. That was encouraging, especially given that the last thing on God's Green Earth I'd like to do is retool any of those again. Also encouraging was that my GRE's weren't stated to be a factor in any of the rejections, although I still plan to retake them. Basically, I'm left with the simple need to 1. broaden my field-as-stated and 2. contact viable Professors in advance and find out who would be willing to listen to my ideas and work with me. I strongly appreciate the advice given here to consider "safe schools" ones that are out of the top 30/40 ranking range. It goes against the conventional wisdom that I was given again and again, which was based largely on later employment options. Frankly, my Ph.D. is far more about personal gratification than employment. I get a kick out of academia. It's good stuff. I'll teach when I can. Someone asked me what influenced my decision to apply to the schools that I did. The decision was largely based on either staying in the area where I presently live, applying to schools near relatives whom I could live with, plus a few dream schools. I think I will reapply next year, since the feedback was so golden, to some of the same programs and also, to new ones that really are doing the work that I'm pursuing. I still can't believe I overlooked such an obvious issue as being slightly too specific, too hybridized, and decidedly cutting edge (I won't qualify that with "too" as well). Anyways, you forum people, you are amazingly helpful and kept me even-keel through this rather helpless chapter of the application process. I'd started to wonder if I was completely thwacked in the head or what. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Out of sheer frustration, I am venting on this board. Of course, feel free to reply with any helpful advice, although I appear to already be swimming in it -- not that it's been of any particular use. Which leads me to the point of wishing to repeatedly jab sharply whittled objects into my eye sockets several hundred blessed times in a row for some sense of relief. Ok... This is my second year of applying for my Ph.D. in English Literature, with a dual emphasis in 19th C. British Literature and Theory (it's more fleshed out, sincerely). I've just received my 14th straight rejection, which marks the last of this round of applications. Not only did I graduate with a 4.0 BA in English with a Lit Core, but I graduated cum laude with a 3.72 total GPA. I also gained Special Distinctions in English. Additionally, I speak fluent French, some Spanish, and some Latin. My GRE Verbal was 650 and the Lit Subject Test was 550 (I took it very early in my education). Because I was the top ranking student in my class, I was permitted to attend Master's Courses so that I could TA undergraduate courses as an undergraduate myself. This was unusual, and constructed toward giving me a "leg up" when I applied for my Ph.D. I lectured in Critical Theory, as well as served as a regular section leader in a variety of other 300 level English courses. All of this was in a mid-sized American public University. Not a Research I, but a teaching college. Through this work, I was able to get great letters of recommendation: from the Chair of the Department, from the Director of Graduate Studies, and a third from another top Professor who is a Departmental Director in a related field. As if this weren't strong enough, I then married an English Professor. A huge number of our friends are young English academics, either Professors or else still in Graduate School. So all of my application materials have been handily reviewed by people specifically in the profession. And I get to see what teaching English at a University-level looks like on a daily level (harder than Grad School and less rewarding; he went to an Ivy League, and was accepted to half of the schools he applied to). Did I mention my Grandmother taught at several Universities and has her Doctorate in Education, with previous funding from Carnegie-Mellon and Ford? That she and my husband are both published in English and Education? That she wrote textbooks on Educational models where I was part of her guinea pig control group for autodidactics? I'm starting to sound like Dubya here. But seriously, this is horrible. Why can't I gain acceptance into any English Programs? I recognize that I went to a State University, but that's the only drawback I can see. It has frustrated me to no end and basically confounded most of the academics I know. They come back to the issue of having gone to a State University. Also, the advice I've received about applying to a Ph.D. program straight out of my BA vs. applying with an MA his been conflicted and seems very subjective. I'm not from a particularly economically privileged background -- it was a bit of a back and forth, sometimes we had money, and sometimes we didn't -- attended about half private and half public schools growing up, and managed to skip ahead three full grades so that I began college at 15 years old... my ethnic background is a mixture of European and Sephardic Jewish. I feel like I'm a "dream candidate," but today I feel more like a walking joke. What on earth? If I wasn't so level-headed, I'd get angry. I'm lying. I'm pretty angry! At any rate, maybe this will shed some light on how lame and arbitrary the graduate process can be. Sorry to be so dogmatic, but it's a rough day. I literally don't know what to improve, although I don't think I will probably pursue a third year of applications, particularly given the horrors of the academic job market where so many friends of mine are floundering and flailing. Feel free to respond. Everyone keeps telling me that I'm bright enough, etc... but honestly, I've begun to wonder if I'm not secretly a giant dolt. A fatalist, yes. An impossible contender, not so much. Incidentally, the Universities I applied to were about half UC's, a few Ivy Leagues, a few "safe" schools that ranked around 30th/40th, and one other program that just fit my needs well. I did NOT approach any Professors specifically about working with them and will do that if I reapply in the future. Sorry for any crummy grammar but honestly, I've been tearing up all day and am a bit overwrought at this point. Has anyone else actually been rejected by so many Universities in a row?