shortstack51

I did an unfunded MA (that had lots of jobs available on campus) and it was a great experience. If you can manage it financially, go for it if it's what you want! Rochester isn't the most expensive area as far as I know either

Congrats!! My friend did his BA at Rochester and loved it

Just so everyone knows, I ran into someone who went to a school in Washington who said that the environment at UW was very competitive when last he knew (about 3-4 years ago). I'm not putting this in the UW thread so I don't put the person who's from the program on the spot, but this person had friends who couldn't get their work done because other students would intentionally check out the books the friends needed just for the purpose of sabotage. They also described the relationship between faculty as "very competitive" and as leaking onto the grad students. Just a heads up.

Thanks for the sympathy! You are too kind. And I will see what I can drum up. I'm sure there has to be something I can do. RE : GRE subject test, I used the Princeton Review guide supplemented by Norton. I only spent one full day studying and got a pretty good score. Granted, I'm also finishing an MA, which gave me a boost (had to take all the time period requirements), but I really mostly focused on what it said. It seemed to help me. I took it once before MA and got in the 75th percentile using PR and then I took it after my MA and got in the 82nd. If you don't do anglo-saxon/medieval/middle English, brush up on piers plowman, beowulf, and Canterbury tales and how to read middle English. The list of terms in PR are also good for scoring easy points on the test. Also, their included practice test is way harder than the real thing, which helped especially because they included explanations for the answers. I also personally skipped a lot of the author identification questions unless I could narrow my answers to two comfortably. Hope that helps? Edit: also, the test is more about identifying a major "feature" of an author or text rather than really having to know it. I had never read Tamburlaine before, didn't study it much, but got a question right because I associated it with a particular word that I then spotted on the test. Making flash cards of suggested authors/texts from PR and then picking an easily identifiable feature to test yourself on might be helpful.

The problem wasn't with you not wanting to engage in George Eliot. I don't engage in Eliot either unless reading Lee Edelmann. The problem was you said you would rather she had had 12 kids instead of writing, which is a pretty awful thing to say about any woman and particularly one who worked so hard to escape rigid gender roles. I understand you were trying to phrase your dislike amusingly, but damning someone to being barefoot and pregnant isn't a nice way to do it.

Agreed. The amount of raging sexism in that statement was gross. Essentially it boils down to, I don't like her writing so I wish she'd just chosen to stay within the oppressive gender roles of her time period.

The Windows version of Office is indeed better; I saw a quote by a Microsoft rep (in a newspaper article or something) that said they intentionally made the Windows version better. In any case, I have both a tablet and computer. I have a macbook, but I got it through my undergrad, which had a laptop program. It got annoying lugging my computer around if I didn't want to spend $20 printing PDFs, so I got a tablet. I also agree that Windows 8 is very sluggish, pretty counter-intuitive, and if you're using a Surface, more often than not the dual touchscreen and computer function seem to actually confuse you more than help. If I had a dollar for the number of times my students point to their screen to show me something and end up deleting/moving something... Anyway, my guess is the games you have on Steam would probably need something more powerful anyway, particularly since Steam isn't supported on tablets. My macbook pro from 2010 still has trouble with some Steam games--max payne 3 needs to get restarted every so often, team fortress 2 crashes on the first open (unless that was fixed in a recent update--haven't played in 6 months). The ASUS suggestion above may be your best bet if you need something more affordable that can also support gaming. I have a friend with one and he games on it all the time and mostly has no complaints.

I am finishing my MA now, but it's a small private school, and most private schools don't really need adjuncts/lecturers for composition or lit classes for the summer period (at least in my experience). CUNY colleges in the city don't seem to really have any sort of summer/temporary position. Last year I ended up working a horrible office job over summer because it was the only job I could get (worked for a guy who had alzheimer's and constantly screamed at me--almost quit like 3 times but I needed the money) after roughly 30-40 submitted applications. I would rather not do that again.

Ugh, yeah, it's the worst. I just found out my fiancee is getting accepted to a school in NYC, which is awesome, but I have a wait list at CUNY, so now we need to wait and see if we're moving to eastern CT in May when our lease is up or to NYC....and we're running out of time because our lease ends April 30th. Everything is so complicated! If I don't hear back from CUNY by early April, I don't know what I'll do (IDK if I would pick CUNY over UCONN, but I'll have to see after I visit; my fiancee also has some options work-wise by UCONN). I guess ask for an extension on the lease and stay put? But there are literally 0 summer jobs where I am. Life is hard you guys /whine

I know, same. I'm just going to count it as a rejection because it seems they've made funded offers. It'll help me figure out what to do moving forward.

I know a few people were interested in film studies, including some who got accepted to Fordham, so I thought I'd let you know that Fordham's English program has just established a film studies reading/viewing group (directed by one of the most brilliant people I've ever encountered).

Same- still haven't heard back. I know they're kind of weeding through them, but it seems that they made their funded offers a week or two ago. Idk, since my status online hasn't changed, I'm not very optimistic. Maybe I'm on a waiting list? I feel like they're mostly just weeding through to see who they might take if their first choices don't accept the offer and who they won't. Anyway, I would need to be funded to go there, which it seems I probably wouldn't be even if I got accepted since other people will probably get that funding.

I'd take uconn's women's team though- been watching them since I was a kid!

I'm still waiting. Also, I had a question: does anyone look at NRC (? I think that's the name) rankings? They're on the chronicle's website. I've always used USNR, but I like NRC better statistically speaking (especially since USNR relies entirely on self-reporting). The interesting thing is that, if you organize by "s" and "r" high rankings, one of my schools is in the top 10-20 while in USNR, it's ranked 63rd. Wha. Another one I'm wait listed at is at 22 on the rankings but below the school I'm accepted at according to the chronicle "s" ranking. Of course, the NRC ones rank in a range, so perhaps it's best to rank them by lowest "s" and "r" rankings? In which case, the school in 63rd for USNR is still up there. I just find it funny that things could be that drastically different. We've already talked about how rankings don't always mean anything, but it's especially funny because the "s" ranking is determined by figuring out which schools fit a certain number of more-or-less desirable qualities. From what I understand, anyway. My only encounter with statistics was in logic class.

Wait listed at CUNY- I have been told they should admit more off the wait list this year. I am also in at 2 other schools

It looks like maybe funded UDub offers are coming in over the phone? Unless the app status and people are getting phone calls as well. My status still hasn't changed on the app--oh well! Looking at potential housing up by one of my schools tomorrow to see what's out there and see if we fall in love with the area (I'm meeting faculty/etc in a couple of weeks)

If US news and ivy mean nothing, what is this mysterious category of top tier schools you keep referring to? What system of ranking are you basing it on? And I am looking at data. I think the data you're looking at applies to desirable r1 TT positions--one of my jobs is in academic administration and I've spent time talking to well to do, though not well known, liberal arts schools. The English departments say they consciously avoid top tier graduates on the assumption that they'll want to end up at r1. Of course hiring grad programs at top 50, even top 100 schools look for top tier credentials. But those aren't the only programs offering TT positions. "some people in academia" don't understand literature can be enjoyed on its own? That statement is so ridiculous I can't even think of a reply. Obviously every lit student knows that; what they want is to be taught and coached by faculty in areas they're interested in who know a hell of a lot more than they do. Though I suppose you can always pick their brain about Derrida or Joyce when they're ordering their venti latte. Not everyone is Will Hunting; some people expand their ideas best in contexts of close intellectual conversation. Hard to find others interested in the above outside a university. I honestly don't know what kind of background you come from to believe that university sponsored housing is actually cheaper than alternatives for the space to price ratio. Columbia is in Morningside Heights, which is not a good area and has cheaper price than the rest of the city anyway. Through columbia, Monthly studios average over $1300 a month; a single room in an apartment share averages a grand (according to their website). Living off campus in a $1500 two bedroom apartment with a roommate would be way cheaper, especially if you split utilities.

I meant to upvote this! I'm so sorry- don't have my glasses on and I hit the wrong one by accident.

Uh, what? So basically somehow, out of EVERY UNIVERSITY IN THE COUTRY, only the ivies have faculty retiring and spots to fill? I've said it before and I'll say it again: If people expand their job market to include less well-known universities or liberal arts schools, the job market suddenly becomes less horrendous. Also, there's a classist undertone here. $30k a year is the minimum stipend for "not wasting your life," but somehow working part time at Starbucks (and probably only making $10k a year) is better than going to a lower ranked school. Yet someone living on $15 a year "baffles" you. Maybe for a lot of people, making $15-20 a year sounds like a lot of money. I work THREE part time jobs and make under 15 a year. Sorry, "reading for fun" at these jobs is not an enjoyable alternative to having things like health insurance or the security that I'd be making a steady wage instead of an hourly one. This argument smacks of someone who hasn't ever had to work at starbucks outside of maybe a summer job. But somehow I should turn down or dismiss my midlevel acceptance offering 21 and medical/dental in a cheap area because it isn't an ivy an won't get me into an ivy...even though it has an 80% placement rate overall, better than what Harvard reports. And let's not go into the fact that you more essentially telling people if they can't get into a top tier school, they should work at Starbucks (the academic equivalent of "do you want to end up working a McDonald's" it seems)--a tragic message especially for people coming out of underprivileged backgrounds who want to go into academia. You also seem to forget that some places are significantly cheaper than others to live in. Take UNC chapel hill- top 20, doesn't offer much of a stipend because NC is so cheap to live in. Guess someone should turn it downfor the $29 offered by NYU, even though 29 is still hardly enough to get you by in the city if you don't have a spouse!

Same

Congrats!! I checked and mine hasn't changed, so I guess that may be a bad thing, but I'll keep checking! They're also what I'm waiting on before I move into the campus-visit-and-seeing-if-I-should-wait-for-the-waitlist phase.

I spent a paragraph at the end talking about why the program was a good fit, then I read work by the professors I was potentially interested in and I'd talk about how their work might coincide/benefit mine. I don't know how successful this was. I've had two acceptances (one unofficial) and one wait list. My one official acceptance has mostly talked about my credentials and writing sample as being exemplary of my fit for the program. The unofficial acceptance put me in touch with several professors based on my SOP. I was told I should only spend a sentence on mentioning POI, but I looked up example SOPs posted by programs I was interested in and they devoted much more than a sentence to fit, so I tried to follow that pattern. Otherwise, I mostly hoped they'd focus on my past and future research that I spent most of the SOP talkin about. Not sure if that happened.

Yup that's me! And thanks so much Kamisha--you are so totally right.

Got rejected by my MA school. Poop. That's going to make the rest of the semester awkward

Ditto- although I don't know if I'd take it for sure, but it's the only one that might be a contender against my current offer depending on stipend