schamber

Well, I'm glad to hear that this isn't just my experience. My recommenders thought this one was a sure bet for me, and even advised me that they thought I was a bit overqualified and should set my sights higher. I know that the rankings really don't mean much, but I think there's something pretty bizarre about getting into super-competitive Berkeley with fellowship funding and not even getting shortlisted/interviewed at Northwestern. Unfortunately, it was my first implicit rejection, and led me to conclude all sorts of nasty things about my qualifications for graduate study. Then Berkeley came in, and it was all good again.

I've disappeared for awhile, but thought I'd come back to post results: Accepted: Berkeley (with funding!) UCSD (have yet to hear about funding) Rejected: Northwestern (?!) WUSTL English and Comparative Lit. Waiting: UChicago (although I hear they've already sent acceptances) Yale Princeton Comparative Lit. Harvard Stanford (won't notify until Feb. 29-March 1)

I work at UCSD and have used the opportunity to take classes in the Literature department. Like most places, it depends on who you work with. I've been pleased and disappointed. Funding isn't great, and most students teach in the writing courses. If you're fine with this, though, no reason to turn down an offer. But I'd be careful about deciding where you're going to go before you've heard anything. I work in the grad studies department and I know that Literature hasn't made any decisions about who to admit yet, let alone determined funding packages.

So, hey, do any of those supposed three Harvard acceptances on the results page belong to anyone here? I think it's a hoax, although why someone would do this, I don't know. Harvard acceptances weren't sent out until Feb. 21-22 last year, and then by email, not phone. The date of posting is 1/20, but the date of notification is the 21st. 1/20 was a Sunday; 1/21, today, is a university holiday. The deadline was 1/2, only 19 days ago. I already posted this on eljay, but I'm having my former advisor talk with some faculty members he knows. He thinks it's highly unlikely that this is true.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I know Stanford's crazy competitive. In some ways, it's the best match for me, because I want to do novel stuff, but the cost of living in San Francisco makes even us San Diegans cringe. In Chicago, I'd probably go for Northwestern over the University of just because of match, but I always hear such good things about the academic rigor at the latter. I have a love-hate relationship with the subject GRE. In principle, I think it's a fine idea. Not to sound snobbish, but I can't count how many people I've met out there who claim to be studying English literature but can't tell you anything about the literary traditions outside of their narrow subfield (i.e. Western Caribbean fictions, 1967-1990), traditions which might well have influenced what they're studying. I know it's kind of a trivia contest, but maybe it should be: just to show that you, you know, have some idea about the plot and motifs of Lear. On the other hand, it's annoying little bugger and I hated that I had to study for it. On the third hand, I actually learned something in all that studying. I did much better than I thought I would and apart from the seven weird questions on identifying puns (uh?), one of which I'm sure I got, I think it was pretty fair.

Hmm...that's something to think about. I finally received a very nice reply to my October 2007 email from April Alliston today about the congruency of our research interests. It was good to get some feedback, finally. I had very little luck contacting people in general, except at Harvard and Stanford. One of my advisors was a Princeton Comparative Literature graduate and spoke well of the program, with the caveat that he hadn't been there for awhile and didn't really have a good sense for the faculty anymore. I think Princeton's isolation from the world might be solved by being able to drive to other places (a luxury afforded few undergraduates at the eastern residential colleges, I think) but maybe I'm wrong about that. It's the one place, apart from Yale, that I'd really need to visit before I agreed to attend. I was a Harvard undergrad, so I know Boston well. I grew up in Michigan, where Chicago was the local Big Deal. I live in Southern California now, so the San Francisco area is at least somewhat familiar and easily accessible in any case. But Princeton and Yale are total unknowns to me, in terms of the living arrangements. From my husband's standpoint, they'd be good choices because of their proximity to the kind of work he does, but neither of us have done much more than drive through New Jersey or Connecticut.

Oh, were you a Princeton undergrad? How did you like it?

Hi bluewhisky: I've been lurking for awhile and noticed you were also applying for English. Which universities do we have in common? What are you hoping to study? How did the GRE subject work out for you? What an exam. I almost admire it...in a white-knuckled, cold-sweaty sort of way.

April Alliston and Claudia Brodsky. Princeton seems to be one of the few places (other than WUSTL) that has strong offerings about the novel in comparative literature departments. Okay, that's a broad generalization. Brown does, too. I'm really torn, because I speak four languages and I'd really like to use them for something or other, but comparative literature departments just don't really do what I want to do, generally speaking.

Oh, so you only get February notification if you submitted an application early? In that case, maybe I really won't hear until March. (Thanks, former advisor! That waiting until 4:30pm EST yesterday to submit a rec you wrote weeks ago was a great idea! And it didn't raise my blood pressure AT ALL!) So you're applying in history and literature, right? I was in the Hist. and Lit. concentration at Harvard, and I admit that it was a tough choice for me as well. Ultimately, though, I decided that while English departments tend to let you do everything (history, science, law...) history departments have a more narrow idea of what officially constitutes their subject. I may live to regret this.

Ha! I forgot my funny footnote in the last post, which was "And what's up with all of those parents posting on behalf of their graduate students? Anybody else's parents drop them off at college on move in day and never look back?" But, Minnesotan, to answer your question, I'm looking to specialize in narrative and history of the book/literary technologies (connected, somehow and improbably, through the concept of verisimilitude) at one of the following places: Stanford English Harvard English Yale English Northwestern English U-Chicago English Berkeley English WUSTL English and Comparative Literature Princeton Comparative Literature If I don't get into any of these schools, I plan to move to Switzerland, purchase a gross of black turtlenecks, and perch unfiltered cigarettes between my nail-bitten fingers. And if I only get into UCSD, the same. I only applied because I work in the grad studies office there, and various co-workers would have been deeply offended if I snubbed them. Incidentally, do schools really start notifying their first choices at the end of this month? Too soon! I liked that whole undergraduate "radio silence until March 15" business.

Hi everybody! (All together now: "Hi, Dr. Nick!") Just thought I'd drop by to say hello. I'm applying to a slate of (mostly) English programs for Fall 2008, and after finding College Confidential a little inadequate,* I somehow got myself here and was glad to see that it's not all bioengineers.