glasses

This is how I feel, too. Legalese is all well and good, but I asked my recommenders to write a letter about me for the admissions folks to read -- not for me to read.

@ the risk of sounding like an utter bonehead: what on earth are you guys overnighting, anyway? All of my applications have places to upload things online (writing sample, SOP, LORs, etc.), and as for transcripts and GRE scores, I'm ordering them soon and they're handled by my schools and ETS respectively -- nothing for me to mail. Am I missing something huge? I very well could be. There are so many parts to each application and so many applications in general that I'm swimming in forms and endless documents right now.

The ETS website has details about this. Or you could give them a call.

Yes, but you can do standby testing.

This strikes me as a huge faux pas.

Well, in that case, I'm sorry for being a witch-with-a-"b." I only brought up the transcript et. al. because you said at some point that when folks said they worked a ton of hours while going to college, you wondered what "kind of school" they went to; then you said to me "I just want you to explain to me when you worked those sixty hours if you were in class whole day every day?" Those statements/questions struck me as disparaging: hence the defensiveness. I guess this is one of those cases that shows how easy it is to misread tone over the internet: to me, your questions came off aggressively, like you were saying, "Ha! You either went to an imaginary school or didn't go to class." Oh, and yeah, at my school TAing and tutoring were paid gigs.

O . . . kay . . . Well, I guess I didn't take your post the wrong way! I withdraw my conditional apology. Five courses a semester @ two classes per week each @ about 70 minutes per class makes 700 minutes, a.k.a. about 12 hours of in-class time per week. Time between classes spent TAing or tutoring (work hours) + time after classes spent working nights (also work hours): about 60 hours per week. That accounts for approximately 72 hours out of the 168 hours available in a week. The remaining 96 hours per week = research/schoolwork/writing/studying and basic acts of living. Math is fun. (Side-note: probing is less fun.) Not a single party in four years, but my transcript sure as hell looked good, and I paid my bills. (Lived off-campus.) And I am far, far, FAR from the only person to have had to do this.

Yeah, it's possible. I may be taking your comment the wrong way (and if I am, I apologize for the snappy, defensive tone of what's to follow), but please refrain from attempting to disparate others' undergrad institutions based on what folks had to do to stay financially afloat. I worked 60-hour weeks and went to a top-5 liberal arts college, where I took a full course load for all four years and did rather well. Just because some of us had to pull of some ridiculous hijinks doesn't mean that we went to crappy colleges or sucked at academics.

Thanks!

I agree with the above. Re: plagiarism: you know as much as any of us. Yes, people steal things. However, the statement of purpose is such a personalized document that I can't see how it would actually help anyone to steal anyone else's, unless you happen to have the exact same resume and research interests as those of the person you stole from. At the same time, I'd never put my statement of purpose online -- but that's more for privacy-related reasons, not fear of plagiarism.

O.K., I know you don't want to hear this, but I do think you have to axe the first paragraph and write a new one that's tailored for a statement of purpose. Showing personality is awesome and definitely important: I imagine that on some level, folks do want to have an idea of what kind of person they'll be working with if they take you. But, the document is ultimately meant to be a statement of academic intent, so personally, I'm making sure that every detail in mine is academically relevant. As far as my personality goes, I'm trying to show it through my writing style and tone. Also, the thing about humor is that not everyone laughs at the same things. It's great that you think your first paragraph is funny, but you have a sizable sample of folks here who don't feel the same way. If it were me, I wouldn't want to run the risk of the paragraph falling flat -- especially since many folks have said that not only does the paragraph not sound funny, but in fact, it sounds quite negative. Do you really want to bank your entire first impression on the odds that the people reading your application have the exact same sense of humor that you do, especially when the spectrum of possible alternative impressions could be debilitating? Every word matters. In this draft, you spend an entire paragraph on a sizable gamble. It's like going to Vegas with the last $20 in your bank account: not a good call.

Congratulations!!

So, right, above is the exact dilemma I'm having. Which one??? Thanks stacey and intextrovert for your feedback. Could more folks please chime in? Intextrovert: do you think that your friend's success with contacting professors has something to do with the fact that she's in Comp Lit? Maybe contacting people is generally a no-no in English, but a hell-yes in Comp Lit?

This entirely depends on what kind of learner/worker you are. I didn't know any formulas. I have no inherent math skills. I got a 750 with the "familiarize myself and learn how to figure it out" approach.

Study the example essays that have gotten 6.0s in the past. Follow the pattern (i.e., 5- or 6-paragraph essay, clear transitions, introduction, and conclusion). Avoid anything at all that brought down the essays that got less than 6.0. Works like a charm.

This is the approach I took.

I know for a fact that folks have done the multiple-papers thing and had very successful application cycles! But, one thing: maybe you want to contact schools and double-check that they permit it? I know that some expressly forbid more than one writing sample (even if the total # of pages adds up to the # of pages required).

Hey guys -- I've been trying to work myself up to contacting professors at the programs I'm applying to for the last month and a half. The trouble is, I can't bring myself to do it: every single draft I write sounds so very obviously like a suck-up note. On principle, I don't have a problem with sucking up. These professors are dazzling rock stars, and I'd kill to work with them: hell, I'd be willing to do their laundry if it would help. But they're busy people, and I don't want to waste THEIR time with e-mails that essentially translate to "I love what you do. Here is what I do. Do you love what I do?" I mean, aren't they going to decide whether or not they love what I do when they get my application? Why burden them ahead of time? I've been told that it's helpful to ask a non-generic question about their programs, but I don't really have any questions at this point that are unanswerable by their websites. There is one thing I'm curious about: my focus isn't time-period based, but rather based on a set of critical questions I have about poetry. So, of course I wonder whether this kind of focus is acceptable to graduate programs. But I have a spectrum of answers on the subject from my advisors and LOR writers, and I'm not sure if this is the kind of question you can really ask a professor you're not acquainted with . . . So, I guess I have two questions: (1) To successful applicants: how important is contacting professors in English lit.? I know some of you have said that it's helped you immensely. But, are there any of you out there who didn't contact professors and still did swimmingly? Can the application stand on its own without these e-mails? (2) Is the one single question that I do have the kind of question that you COULD ask a professor at a school you're applying to, or will it be a waste of their time, especially since I have advice on the subject from my old professors? Thanks so much.

I don't have a personal anecdote to accompany this, but my advisors -- and my instinct -- say that "all transcripts" means "all transcripts." In general, I like to think that instructions mean exactly what they say they do. And, after all, why on earth would you want to risk the possibility of not doing what is asked?

Yup.

Again: yup. This. I would say more, but there's no point. LateAntique pretty much said exactly what came to my mind. Except one thing: you can also use humor during job interviews if you're interviewing for a spot on The Daily Show.

See, I'm already a smoker. I used to smoke 3 packs a day (since I was 14! Heaven help me and my lungs), and I've been working on cutting that down slowly to ease myself into the idea of quitting . . . two months ago, I had it down to 1.5 packs a day, where I held steady until about two weeks ago, when it spontaneously increased to 2. This is not going in the right direction. I'm with you on the number of rejections thing -- and I'm applying to 9, too! Current neurosis: a couple of my recommenders have already uploaded their recommendations to the few schools that I've started filling out online forms for. I can't tell whether that's good (i.e., they liked me enough to already write 'em?) or bad (i.e., they uploaded a two-word Word document saying "she sucks"). I know I shouldn't be thinking like this: my recommenders are fabulously supportive rock stars, and they've done this a gazillion times before. And they rock enough that if they didn't want to recommend me, I'm sure they would have just said so instead of taking on extra work into their already packed-solid schedules. I also can't help but think that it might sound kind of belittling to think of my recommenders this way -- I mean, they're awesome, and I trust them, and they're crazy brilliant -- but that's not my intent. It's just that this whole process is so nerve-wracking that any place where self-doubt can creep in, it does. I think I will be better at actually going to grad school than I am at applying. What's with that?

Yup. This.

Every day yields a new thing to freak out about. I haven't submitted a thing yet -- but I have just registered online recommenders, which, for me, was enough to solidify the hypothetical terror of waiting to a very real sense of dread. Commence nail-biting. I'll be lucky if I have cuticles by the time April rolls around.

A caveat: I barely know what I'm talking about. I haven't applied yet. That being said, my gut reaction to the above is: No, no, no no no. No no no. Don't.