cicada

So sorry to read this, michelle and fransces michelle - have you heard from IU about funding? i'm still waiting. fransces - I didn't apply to UF but Austin interviewed me on Skype. I had a very nice 15-min chat with three professors who asked me simple questions in English and then in French (What are your interests? What classes in related departments/fields would you be interested in taking? What drew you to UT Austin? Pourquoi voulez-vous faire un PhD en français alors que vous êtes angliciste à la base? and the last one - what do you do in your free time?) and asked if I had any questions for them. Always prepare a few questions, you may already have some, but if you don't, make sure you have something to ask, it may sound weird and like you're not really interested in them if you don't need details or info on anything... Best of luck, let us know how it went!

I'm seriously considering moving to Austin, too. A friend of mine who's a grad student there told me to look around Hyde Park... I saw that it was quite pricey - nothing below $600 for a room with 1 or 2 roommates - but it does look like a really nice and green area, and the apartments looked big and well arranged. I need to figure out if I can spend that much money on the rent, but hopefully I should be ok with the funding support I got... Also, I won't have a car so I'll need to find something close to campus so I can bike or take a bus to go there. I've started to look at craigs list ads and there are quite a few already, maybe you should have a look too to get an idea of prices, etc...

I hope you'll get good news from other programs... it's always so hard to decide when you know you'll have a hard time financially speaking But at least you know they liked your profile a lot!

Yes, UT Austin interviewed me mid January and told me a week later that I was accepted. I'm still waiting to hear from IU about funding so we'll see, but Austin do have much better funding than IU and the city looks amazing! I hope you'll get news from them soon, it'd be fun to both go there

congrats, michelle!

I also heard back from them yesterday and I'm admitted (French Literature), however I still need to wait for details on funding. I already applied last year, and in the end wasn't offered anything though it clearly said on the letter of acceptance that I had been recommended for an AI position... Learned later that I was on the wait list the whole time without knowing it, so I felt like i had been played - why didn't they tell me I was on it right from the start? Anyways, We'll see what happens this year. I think it's still a very good thing that you're being interviewed! Maybe they interview more in French Linguistics than in French Literature... From my experience, the two programs that asked for an interview accepted me afterwards with funding, so garde espoir! Oh Gosh, that sounds like a nightmare indeed... but hopefully you won't be penalized. It's always stressful to deal with LORs because it's that one part of the application you have no real control on and cannot force people to write and submit letters in time one of my recommenders always submitted theirs late, and I felt bad reminding them of deadlines and programs all the time, but if I hadn't done it, I guess they would have just completely forgotten about it... I hope you'll get funding at Oklahoma, but either way, congrats!

I was 22 when I got my MA and will be 26 when I start my PhD... I wouldn't have been able to go straight to PhD back then so I'm glad I took some time to work, travel, etc...

Something weird happened to me a few days ago, the DGS of one of the programs I applied to added me to their "professional network" on LinkedIn. I have received no news of acceptance or rejection from that school so far, but it's so unexpected that I must have been on their list of "people they may know" - since we had exchanged a few emails about the program earlier in the application season -, and the DGS may have added several people by mistake, including me... Anyhow, even if i'm not offered admission at their school, I accepted their request. We'll see!

congrats michelle! hope everything will go as you wish! also, congrats donzelle on the acceptance at Columbia!

Great! Let us know how it goes! Fingers crossed for you. It's always nice to have a back-up plan... it's so stressful not to know what we're going to do/where we're going to be in a few months

congrats for your acceptance at IU, Wj2011! I am still waiting to hear back from them regarding financial support... we'll see. Also, I just received an email from Duke letting me know that I was on their wait list... Waiting is going to be hard

Same here such a bummer, it was one of my top choices, too. Got a nice email from the DGS as well, saying that things may be better next year or "they might have a slot in a month or so" and would let me know right away if they did... I don't know how much credit I should give to this, I don't really see how things would change that rapidly... Aaaah I wanted to be accepted at Vanderbilt so bad Hopefully we'll all have better news next week!

Thank you very much Patrick, ukulelesummer and Wj2011 for your kind words and for sharing what you know or have heard about UT Austin! It seems like a great place to study and the faculty members I talked to were very nice and helpful I know a grad student there and she told me there was a great atmosphere in the department. I've also heard great things about the city of Austin, so I think I'll spend the upcoming days looking for information on grad life in Austin. It feels good indeed to know that I have at least one option that early I wish you all the best of luck and will keep my fingers crossed for you guys to get accepted somewhere soon! Good luck with your Skype interview, Wj2011, and let us know how it went

Hi guys, I was interviewed by UT Austin last week and just heard the good news - I was accepted! They're really early though, last year I only started hearing back from programs early February... I was also accepted at IU for the Spring semester but with no financial support, so I deferred to Fall and I'm waiting to hear from them. And still no news from Stanford, Vanderbilt, Columbia, Cornell, UPenn and Duke... Good luck everyone!

Thanks much Zeugma, that's very helpful! Do you know where can I check NRC rankings? I can only see those from 2010, I don't know if they are the most recent available... It is an exciting moment, but also stressful haha I'm afraid I won't make the "right" choice. Even though I don't think there is a wrong choice as such, but I would just not want to regret choosing a school after a few months... Aaah I'm so indecisive. I am supposed to talk to an IU grad tonight. Hopefully, it'll help me figure out things, too. Well, thank you again for your valuable imput!

Hi there guys, I'm still waiting to hear back from a few programs, but so far I've been accepted at IU Bloomington and UMD College Park. They both offered me a TAship (no official offer yet though) but I don't know how much the stipend will be. Anyways, I'm kind of assuming that I won't get accepted anywhere else so I'm already trying to make up my mind about which school I'd rather go to... even though not knowing about their funding package makes it really tricky... I haven't visited UMD or IU campuses, and haven't met any of the professors. I'm having trouble deciding which program seems like a better fit for me, so I'd appreciate it a lot if you could give me some advice? I have emailed a few grad students there so they can maybe help me figure out stuff but I'm still waiting to hear back from some of them. My research interests are in Francophone and Anglophone (+ hispanic) literature from the caribbeans, 20th and 21st postcolonial literature, women's literature. I studied at a small university in France, a bigger one in England and finally served as a teaching assistant for two years at a small (and awesome) liberal college in SoCal. I picked the schools I applied to for a PhD thanks to what I could read on their websites, advice from former professors, programs that seemed to fit my interests... but now that I'll probably have to make a choice between two schools, I want to make the right one. If you have any advice for me, please feel free to share!! What do you think of IU or UMD programs? Are they good universities? Do you think it'll be easier to find a job with a PhD from IU or UMD? many thanks! and congrats to all of you on your admissions