glasses

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! I memorized thousands of words back in 2007 for this thing, and I remembered thinking, "Cool! I have a better vocabulary now! But wait . . . what does this have to do with graduate study? Also, what does the ability to do with long division have to do with graduate study? Also, what does the ability to get a question right without having the chance to come back to it after thinking for a while have to do with graduate study? Oh well. I've gotta take it, so I'll man up." And I'm not complaining about my score -- worked out fine. But seriously: OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Whoops -- you must have replied w/ clarifications as I was typing! O.K., so: yup, you know what I think about "lower" v. "less"; given the context, I do think "intervention in" is better than "intervention to." (Maybe "intervention on" is another option?)

I prefer the proofreader's version of your opening sentence. Also "faculty members in" is correct, as opposed to the "on" you use. I'm not sure of "intervention to" without context. I like the connotations behind your "lower-educated" more than I like the proofreader's "poorly" -- "poorly" implies a pejorative, which is perhaps something you want to avoid? However, I do think your "lower-educated" is awkward: perhaps "less-educated" or something along those lines?

Yeah, 650's around 85th %, and I'm kind of bummed, because I scored slightly lower than that. (Then again, I'm less bummed than I would have been if I hadn't taken the test while swimming in what I thought was the world's most brutal cold and later learned was actually the flu!) But here's the thing: the percentiles skyrocket sharply up for this test. Somehow, even though 650 is around 85th %, 680 is in the 91st! And here are some of the other things: (1) the subject GRE tests everything from Beowulf to Larkin, Aristotle to Spivak, Wheatley to Morrison: barely anyone with only a BA or, at most, an MA has read all of that material in comprehensive detail, (2) the questions are incredibly random, (3) while identifications are rather straightforward, the interpretive questions are not: I have been told in no uncertain terms that most professors do not think that a multiple-choice test is an adequate format for literary interpretation, and (4) if there are any parts of these applications that are the least representative of our ability to succeed in graduate school, they'd be the GREs. I'm not saying any of this to buck myself up, either. I have a documented habit of scrutinizing and making a giant deal of any and all flaws in myself, particularly during this process. I have even, on occasion, made huge deals about problems that actually did not exist. Based on my freak-out record, if there was anything to panic about here, I'd be the first one in line to breathe into a paper bag. But I spoke to a great former professor of mine who teaches at a great program and before that went to a great program, and he says that if the thing an applicant is most worried about is his/her lit. GRE score, he/she is in great shape. (He qualified his statement by saying that this is true to a certain degree only, of course: a score in the 400s is legitimate cause for concern, for example, but if, out of your entire application, you're worried about a score in the 600s, you're a happy camper. Or rather, you should be.)

Based on stuff I've heard from advisors and friends who are in top programs, this is true. Also, I offer this as anecdotal quasi-evidence --Harvard's one of the few schools that explicitly talks about the lit. GRE, and they say: "GREs: High scores in the Verbal (700) and Subject tests (650, i.e., English and American literature) are positive additions to the applica tion but are by no means the most important aspect of one’s candidacy. (The Quantitative and Analytical scores carry less weight than the Verbal and Subject scores.) Applicants should make timely plans to take these examina­tions in order to ensure that the scores arrive by the January application deadline. Scores received after mid-January may be too late to be considered." So, a few thoughts: (1) They mention GREs after they mention writing samples, grades, and letters of recommendation, in that order. (2) They consider 650 a "high" score -- not a "passable" score, not an "average of our accepted applicants" score, but "high." (3) The first sentence of that blurb means a lot to me: "High scores . . . are positive additions to the application but are by no means the most important aspect of one's candidacy."

Just a heads up, most of my schools explicitly say that no Interfolio or other Interfolio-esque services are allowed. You may want to check each school's website.

Yes! Thanks!

Berkeley has a good one for history -- I've lost the link and I don't know if it's still around, but do I know that as of a year ago, it was out there.

Yes -- but you said you sent them on Oct. 8, right? They really should be there by now! Maybe bug ETS? (I say that with trepidation, believe me -- I spent 4 hours on the phone with ETS today. 4. Hours. For most of that time, I was on hold.)

You too, huh? There is not enough gin in the world.

. . . What? "Philosophically superior"? That doesn't make any sense. "Fantasy of agency"? I mean, O.K., the possible merits of "fantasy of agency" in certain texts is an issue for another time, but on what planet is it a good idea for a statement of purpose? There shouldn't be any fantasy of agency in a statement of purpose -- the writer should have the agency, and the writer should show that!

Yes, I think it'd be way too rude to un-ask. But would it be possible for you to add a fourth letter? I know that all the places I'm applying to are OK with 4 letters.

I'm in the same pickle. I've got a 100-page undergrad thesis and I've excerpted a 20 page mish-mash from it. I've taken part of the first chapter and part of the last chapter and written a thingamabob at the beginning of the document that explains the how and why of it all. It's pretty evenly split: 10 pages from the introduction and 10 pages from the last chapter. 20 pages is good for most of my schools, but I'm thinking that for the schools that want less (NYU: 10 - 12?!!!), I'll axe the part that's from the introduction and turn it into a 1 - 2 page abstract. That'll be a beast, but I think it's doable . . . I was going to write a whole new paper for this, but then an advisor helped me realize that I busted my hump on that thesis for a year, you know? And no matter how hard I work on a new paper, I won't have a year to research it and I won't get the kind of detailed feedback on it that I got on my undergrad. thesis, for which I had an advisor and a committee and a whole department to help. So, I'm excerpting away --nervously! Good luck, y'all.

Me too.

GRE writing is nothing like academic writing -- or like any other kind of advanced writing, for that matter. It's strictly a 5- or 6-paragraph affair, more closely resembling SAT writing than anything else. If you want to rock it, you have to study for it specifically.

I've heard the same (I'm in humanities) -- I asked my undergrad. advisor about this point-blank.

I always thought the 100-page length was kinda common? Where I went, there were no exact restrictions, but the general understanding was that the honors thesis was to be in the ballpark of 60 - 100.

Doubt it. And as far as shrinking the spacing and font by a little, I don't really know any more than the next person about what admissions folks will or will not object to, but a former professor of mine once made it extremely clear that in a pile of double-spaced-and-12-point-font papers, it's super easy to spot any papers with formatting "tricks."

This is totally unsolicited advice, but the second I saw Tamiflu I had to say something: O.K., so I was prescribed Tamiflu a few months ago because I had the flu and I have a somewhat compromised immune system. The good news: it got rid of my flu symptoms in about two days. The bad news: they aren't lying when they say that severe nausea and stomach pain are possible side effects. I had both for the entire length of the treatment, and they were so bad that I felt as bad as I had with the flu, albeit in an entirely different way. The violent urge to vomit was a half-hourly occurrence (and sometimes preceded honest-to-god vomit), and the stomach cramps were double-over bad. Really, really not GRE-worthy conditions. If this was a subject test we were talking about, you'd have no choice, so you'd have to go for the better of two evils (I know this first-hand: I had a beastly cold when I was taking a subject GRE earlier this month!). But, since this is the regular GRE and you can reschedule, I'd really, really recommend that you do so. Good luck!

Story time! A former professor of mine applied to a handful of schools. He got into the best-ranked ones, and was rejected by his "safeties." He got his PhD at a flamingly-good program and went on to teach at a flamingly-good university. He says that it likely came down to the fact that the "reaches" were simply great fits for him and the "safeties" were not. The moral: yes, you were rejected by your safeties, and that must feel awful -- I'd be bouncing off the walls and generally inconsolable. But, you never know what'll happen at your "reach" schools: keep the faith.

At my school: theses were optional, your research proposal had to be accepted by the department, and "honors" status depended mainly on whether or not you passed your thesis defense at the end of the two semesters (the first for research, the second for writing).

Hmm. Maybe you should just say in your cover letter whatever you said to the program director to get her to agree that your GRE scores do not reflect who you are as a student?

And also going to the Wizard to get a brain.

THIS! Yes, me too. Where was all the Donne?

I actually have absolutely no idea how I did. I think I left approx. 30 blank? And I'm fairly sure that I got the ones I answered correct (for the most part). That evens out to a decent raw score, yeah? (I mean, unless I totally tanked the 200 or so questions that I answered.) The major downside: I had a raging, raging cold. Made it through the whole week with no health snafus, and then yesterday, a big one -- I was up most of the night with a sore throat, a stuffed nose, and an unexpected bout of vomiting. I went in with no breakfast, having lost my entire dinner, and with two hours of sleep. Fun. I feel terribly bad for the folks that I might have infected with this thing today, but what on earth's a gal to do? Can't take a "sick day" from this thing without delaying the entire process by a year . . . (They really should do something about that, shouldn't they?) Anyway, thanks to the violent sneezing, the kind proctor gave me a bathroom break -- but it took me some time to stockpile tissues and then come back and assure the proctor that there was nothing written on the tissues, etc. As a result, I was rushing, too. But that may have been a blessing for me: I have this ridiculous habit of second-guessing myself, even on questions that I know I have the right answer to. Perhaps having to blitz through worked in my favor. Since the entire test is so fuzzy in my head, I'm now panicking about things I can't know and can't do anything about ("did I bubble correctly???"). And now the three-week waiting period begins . . .