echo449

I would assume that some are just better at recruiting! One of my offers was an early notification of a special fellowship, but I haven't received any personalized correspondence since. A different program that admitted me called me the next day to discuss the program, despite the fact that the offers were mostly the same for everyone. I wouldn't read too much into it. If yr in, yr in, and it should be assumed that they'd love to have you.

Thank you, both of you! And it was an email from the graduate school.

Congratz to the NYU admits! Great program, great city. Additionally, I've been admitted to UC Irvine, which I am incredibly excited about.

Going to the visit would be beneficial; it's always helpful to allow them to give a face to the name, and to have the opportunity to schmooze/maybe impress a little more. However! If it would be a pain to ask off of work, or if they arn't offering reimbursement for expenses, then you'd have to make the call financially.

Ditto to the above. Though I wait until wait-lists have gone out to consider myself out of the running. Also, for one of the schools I was accepted to this year, I was not a first round admit, and I understand from my offer letter (for reasons I'm not going to go into here) that more admits will be extended in March. So! While I understand the sanity saving measure that this practice promotes, there still is hope!

I had two of these offers last year. I decided to turn them down, and, while I regretted it occasionally, I also know that the kind of debt I would have accrued in MAPH or at Columbia could have put an end to any PhD hopes I might have had going forward, especially if I ever need to take out more loans to make ends meet in a particularly bad year. Turning down an expensive unfunded MA sucks, even at a great school, but you made the right choice!

Infinite Jest is v accessible--it can be a pain to read at times, and is indeed very long, but it isn't any more difficult than most contemporary novels. Wallace, at least in that book, is not attempting anything like the big modernist or postmodernist texts that the book is frequently pared with--he's too much of a populist at heart. The problem with Infinite Jest is mostly its bulk--reading it is a commitment not to read anything else for a little while.

allplaideverything, I was one of the Buffalo admits, and, from the email, that is my understanding. I would assume that most of the admits to the program have yet to go out, so there is plenty of reason to hope/think you will be receiving good news in the near future!

My professors have been as quick to commiserate with me over this news as they were to congratulate me for my acceptance, unfortunately.

It can really depend on the atmosphere of the department. Graduate reading loads don't vary GREATLY among programs (especially the ones you listed in your signature), but the atmosphere of the department might mean that you are involved in a few reading groups/ reading tough theory regularly on top of all of that, or are doing X/Y/Z in addition to your coursework because of expectations that you feel are typical of yr cohort.

*raises a preparatory pint for thingies to come*

But at the same time, the more heady/theoretical aspects of these programs are maybe what inspired us to pursue them in the first place. I think, especially in my own institution, changes made to make the English major more appealing oftentimes make it less rigorous and leave people unprepared to go on to grad school. Now, going to grad school in English is a foolish decision which should only be made if one is sufficiently passionate about it, but at the same time, what is an undergraduate degree in the humanities if it does not graduate students who prepared to tackle more intense work either in a PhD program or in their own lives? Also, the article is explicitly about a single circumstance (the restructuring of gen-eds at UM) and the consequences of this unique occurrence. It cannot be generalized; and if one were to do so, then one of the options is that students just don't think that English is a useful major because they aren't exposed to it in the first place. The implication of the article is that English majors drop when people no longer become exposed to English classes as such, not that people, full of accurate knowledge, refuse the major because they know they will not get anything out of it.

I think that would be very difficult to accomplish if yr list is as large as yours or mine. Plus, just the sheer stress of doing something like that would be burdensome, imo. For instance, when you begin to quote faculty like that, you have to worry about whether or not you are construing their project in the way that is adequate to their own conception of it, a difficult line to balance in a writing sample w/out critiquing them too harshly or accepting them too easily.

Understandably! Of course, I never wanted to impart any kind of negative connotation to it. For my own part, I'm fascinated by my nervous reaction to this, since I have made it a point personally to keep things like my twitter account public and under my legal name during this process. For whatever reason, this makes me more anxious! Which I guess is an interesting bit in itself--my relationship to my stats and application.

Eh; unfortunately, I'm going to withhold my information for the time being after thinking it over. If anyone wants to discuss my information (in light of my posted acceptance or references to my area in my post history), I would be happy to do so over PM. (edited post)

I'm one of the UW-Madison admits this year--I'm coming in with a BA. P excited since this is my second round applying!

Hey, I realize that this is a tempting emotion to feel, and is the most natural reaction you could have to this situation, but, to be sure, English admissions are not easy to gauge nor are they easy to predict. There was someone on these forums last year who got into Duke and Uconn. I very much doubt that that person predicted that their situation would cash out in that way. Moreover, you have a very well-rounded list. So OSU didn't take you--this doesn't mean that UPenn, or WUSTL or A&M, will reject you in the future. This in no way reflects on your abilities as a scholar, or the achievements you have managed in grad school. You are, it seems obvious to me and I figure many people on this forum, a dedicated and smart candidate.

Almost no programs require them, and those that do are exceptions rather than the rule. Duke lit and Emory are the two biggest interviewers, I think.

Programs could not expect you to have individualized statements beyond the fit paragraph and the stray line elsewhere. There just isn't time for applicants to do that. And one very good statement that represents you best is going to go much farther than 10 arbitrarily different ones.

Thanks! That looks interesting & a useful resource to dig into at some point when I'm not buried under thesis work. Have you read Jackson's work on Dickinson? It's not really my area (which is more 20th century American), but I thought her critique of the uh hegemony of the lyric-form in poetic criticism to be really enlightening.

Ah another Irvine-hopeful! I applied to Irvine for much the same reason--the Poetics program, combined with the strength of its materialist theory group generally.

My partner is applying to programs in Chemistry, so she's already started to hear back. It's a strange position to be in--I'm nearly comically happy for her, but we also now have to both wait for baited breath to see if I will be anywhere close-by. Is anyone else jointly applying and experiencing this?

Makes me kind of glad that this round I kind of gave myself a goal of not applying to any competitive metropolitan areas (barring one late addition to my list): LA sounds wonderful to me, as it must to literally everyone.

My partner (who is applying for a PhD in the sciences) and I have had this talk, and we attempted to apply if not to the same schools, then to schools in the same area. So if she's applying to CalTech, I found Irvine, etc. Long distance isn't fun, but being an hour away isn't the worst situation to be in, if it comes to that. This kind of solution at least allowed us both to find programs that we could see ourselves at while not sacrificing our respective goals. She is also going to make much more than me with her respective stipends, so that actually played a role in my decision to apply to New York schools, since that would make it workable if things cashed out that way. We'll have to have another discussion if the worst-case scenario comes to pass (i.e. we wind up on different coasts), but we'll see.

So, to kind of switch the discussion towards a more positive-bent, what do we think should replace the Lit exam, if we allow that it's purpose is to test for background in incoming applicants. By this I mean, taking the purpose of the exam at face value (and not assuming just another arbitrary way of weeding out applicants), what can replace it? Should departments create a standardized breadth requirement for undergraduate coursework (i.e. to go to Harvard, you must have had X, Y, Z period courses) that split the difference between a Bloomian canon and the more diverse topics that reflect the current state of the discipline?