toasterazzi

I don't have any statistics or anything, but I know most of the programs I've looked at just want applicants to have a certain amount of English classes/experience, which I imagine most English Ed. degrees would have. I'm in an MA program right now, and I'll be applying to PhD programs in the fall. I got my BA in English Ed., worked for a year in tech support, taught middle school for a year, and then landed in grad school last fall. My program didn't have any problem with my degree being in English Ed. instead of straight English, but I'm also not in a super high ranked program, so I don't know if that makes a big difference.

Congrats! San Diego, here we come!

Neither of my schools made the cut. I can't say I'm entirely surprised though lol.

So I love Buzzfeed. It's like the best, most ridiculous waste of time ever. Apparently, in all their infinite silliness, they decided to combine the Forbes rankings for top schools with the DateMySchool rankings for sexiest schools to develop a list of the smartest, sexiest schools. Please note that there is most likely very little basis for this, but I still found it amusing: The Sexiest, Smartest Colleges in the Country For those that don't want to go to the link and look at the pretty picture, the list went like this: 10. Carnegie Mellon 9. UVa 8. Harvard 7. Boston U. 6. Boston College 5. Columbia 4. UPenn 3. Princeton 2. Darthmouth 1. Brown I know there's people here going to these schools. Maybe the single Fall 2013 folks have something to look forward to hehe.

When I go into a PhD program, I will most likely pick Spanish as my first foreign language since it's the one I have the most experience with (4 years of high school and 2 years of college). That being said, I've lost a lot of the Spanish knowledge I had, so I've been working on brushing up here and there when I can. Ultimately, I don't especially plan to do a lot of foreign language study in my work, but I'm very interested in several cultures, including Spanish/Latin American culture, and those cultural interests could be part of my work. Assuming I have to choose a second language, I will most likely choose Italian. I've never been especially interested in French or Latin, but I love all things Italian. I studied abroad in Italy, and while I did pick up some of the language while I was there, it wasn't nearly enough. If there were no restrictions, I'd learn ASL. I've always wanted to learn, but my undergrad university was really restrictive on who could take those classes (basically only Deaf Education majors). My fiancee's dad is deaf, so this is especially relevant for me now.

I moved to the town where I'm getting my MA about a month before school started. I had enough money saved from my previous job to cover the first two months of rent, moving fees and not much else. But I found out my campus bookstore was hiring for the back to school rush, so I applied and got hired. And they actually let me start working in July instead of the week before school started since I was already in town. They also let me come back during winter break, and I just started up again this week and will probably work through the summer as long as there's enough hours available. It's a pretty nice job .

Seeing everybody else's lists makes me want to reevaluate my list lol.

I'm mostly just hoping to not entirely bomb lol. From the places I've seen that actually list numbers, above 160 seems to be what they push for and that's what I'd be aiming for any way. My math score is probably going to be terrible, but I'm working on some things that will hopefully prevent me from completely falling apart on that portion lol.

Thanks! My current tentative list looks like: University of Michigan, UNC Chapel Hill, University of Missouri, Washington University in St. Louis, Ohio State University, UC Riverside, UC Irvine, Carnegie Mellon, University of Maryland, U Penn, Brown, Louisiana State, Pitt, and UC San Diego. That is, of course, subject to change and the list has already changed like 48950096060 times since I started seriously researching schools a couple months ago lol. Realistically, I probably won't be able to afford to apply to them all, but I'm aiming to hit at least ten.

Fingers crossed for you too! On the off chance your proposals aren't accepted, when they sent that first rejection to me, they said they were going to be posting a list soon of sessions with extended deadlines to get more submissions. So maybe if your original submissions don't work out, then check out that list and see if something grabs you.

Ahhhh!! Remember the other day when I said I submitted proposals to a conference for the first time? Well, I woke up this morning to an acceptance email from PAMLA. Huzzah!

I just woke up this morning to an email saying one of my proposals was accepted! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you

I sent in 3 to PAMLA even though I know they only let you do one. I initially only sent in two, but I got an email from one of the session leaders saying she wasn't going to be able to attend, which made me think the session was canceled. So I sent in another proposal to a different session I was interested in then. Then I got an email saying that they got someone to replace the person for the first session, but they rejected my proposal lol. I'm still still waiting to hear about the other two sessions though.

I looked all over their site, but I didn't see anything either. Maybe email someone?

Currently in this free Kaplan GRE Challenge webinar thing. So far, the examples make me feel a little bit less ridiculous in terms of the math...but only a little bit...lol

Oh I agree. I was just saying what I think the perception is based on what I've seen from other people's statements. There seems to be a good deal of people who think the other schools are, by and large, much more difficult to get into. Personally, based on my own preliminary research, I don't see much of a difference overall.

I always make time to do non-academic things. Sometimes I will hang out with other master's students before or after class (this usually involves getting food and/or drinks depending on the day and time). I'm also involved with a couple campus orgs, which helps with meeting people outside my department. I try to go to the movies at least a couple times a month (as long as there's something that interests me playing). Now that the weather's getting nicer, I'll likely get back into taking walks and such. There's always some sort of event happening on campus or near campus, so I try to hit those up when I can. I think I went to almost all the home basketball games and most of the football games this year .

So I mentioned that submitted proposals for the first time a couple days ago. I got an email last night about one of them and almost had a minor freak out just from reading the subject line. Then I read the email, and it was just from the presenter letting me know that they were canceling that session. I don't know much about funding differences, but I think the general perception is that state schools are easier to get into. I'm not sure how grounded in reality that really is though.

No problem . I will recommend a site I like for language practice though: http://duolingo.com/. They cover Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian, and they kinda make a game out of the whole thing so it doesn't always feel like I'm doing work lol.

From what I understand, the AW score isn't a big deal, and they definitely focus more on the writing sample and SOP. I feel you there. I will most likely use samples from the MA classes I'm currently taking, but I've also been looking at calls for papers to see what people are interested in, presenting about, etc. just in case I did need to write a new one. We have a lot of the same interests (*points to signature* lol) and I share your concerns about them appearing to be too broad. I do have certain interests that are a bit more narrow that have developed during my MA program, but I still like a lot of broad categories as well. As far as program recommendations go, I'm still working on narrowing my list so I'm not much help there. And lol about the websites. I've literally axed some schools because their websites were terribly unhelpful. From what I've seen, most schools aren't necessarily expecting you to be fluent upon admission, but they require you to prove reading knowledge in one or two languages by the end of your 2nd or 3rd year. There are, of course, exceptions like UCSC that want you to be able to do work in other languages immediately. I don't have one of my own yet, but I've looked at samples and seen a lot of similarities and differences. I think the information at this site will be most helpful when I start putting mine together though: http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/01/12/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv/

This is available on Etsy: http://alisonannestitch.tumblr.com/image/29771690884 I'm just saying...for reasons...

Ooh thanks! And congrats on being accepted!

So I just submitted proposals to a conference for the first time...

^ That would save me so much time...

I second the above recommendation of Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. That's the book we used in my rhet/comp class last semester and it covers quite a bit of ground.