toasterazzi

I was in the second year of my MA when I applied to PhD programs, and none of the ones I applied to requested that I send them updated grades during the application process. The only updated info I had to send was my final transcript after graduation.

It is true that sometimes the total score can be an issue for university funding at some institutions, but I'll go ahead and mention that I had 161 verbal, 144 quant, and a 5 on the writing. I still got full funding. Obviously, individual experiences will vary, but there's hope

I don't know that my experience is the norm, but I applied to mostly English programs and one American Studies program. I was accepted to the American Studies program and the English program. I can't speak to job placement, but I can say that the English program offered a much better funding package. Though a lot of that likely has to do with it being part of a much bigger department in a much bigger university than the American Studies program. I will say that the DGS of the American Studies program worked very hard to find me adequate supplemental funding, and had I chosen to go there, I believe my financial needs would have been well taken care of. However, there were some other factors (location, resources, etc.) that ultimately led to me choosing the English program.

I've tried to-do lists, and they ultimately don't work out very well for me. But I do keep track of important dates with GCal. I've used paper planners before (mostly throughout high school and undergrad), but I don't think they'd really suit my needs now.

It definitely depends on the school. I had my SOP in like 5 different formats by the time I was done applying lol. I think I might have had one or two that didn't specify, and for them, I just went with MLA standards.

I think I only had one school that asked when I applied, but it was optional so I skipped it *shrugs*

During my MA, I never had a formal meeting with my advisor. We did interact regularly, especially at department functions, but I don't think I ever spent more than five minutes at a time in her office and those occasions were generally to ask basic program questions. When I got to my thesis, I didn't really have super formal meetings with my committee. I did meet with each of them individually at the beginning of the process. And I corresponded with them via email when I'd finished a significant chunk of writing. They all gave me written feedback a couple different times. But we didn't have a big, serious meeting until I defended. I suspect things will go differently for my PhD though. I've already lined up an advisor who has interests that overlap with mine, and I think we'll be interacting on a more regular basis.

I ordered the Dakine Network backpack: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008OXQR52/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. It should be arriving this weekend. I have another backpack that I used for the last few years, but the straps are starting to wear out, so I figured it was time to move on to something new as I start my PhD program. I really like the look of the bag as well as the many compartments. I don't keep stuff like my phone or wallet in my bag. I prefer to have those items in my pockets (assuming I'm not dealing with annoying pocketless pants ), but I do tend to like to keep some other items on hand like writing utensils, headphones, chargers, gum, etc. And it seems like this bag will make it easy to keep all that stuff organized.

I tend to gravitate toward teaching more than research because I think that's who I am at the core. My undergraduate degree is in English Education, and I've known I wanted to teach since like the second grade. There is a fair amount of overlap though because I would ideally like to teach classes that are related to the things I like to research.

I only took the GRE once, and I scored a 5 on the writing. Before the test, I looked over some of the past test passages and the types of questions asked, but I didn't do any practice writing. The way I attacked it pretty much comes from my experience as a teacher. I thought about the basic components of essay writing that teachers typically try to impress upon students because I figured those were the sorts of things they'd be looking for, and I incorporated those components into my responses. So I paid attention to things like having strong intros & conclusions, points to support a clear thesis, examples to explain the points, etc.

So I kind of forgot this thread existed, but yeah, my husband and I have been in town since mid-June. I won't be at TA orientation since I'm also on fellowship, but I feel like I have at least 2-4 other orientations/department meetings/mixers coming up in a few weeks. So many dates. Lol.

Well, I started off the summer by getting married (huzzah!), and then for our "honeymoon," we went to see Beyonce & Jay Z in concert . I haven't been doing much else this summer because while I do have a part time job, they hadn't been in need of much help for the last month or so, but now we're into the busy season, so I'm getting like 30+ hours a week, which is nice for the bank account. Cuz all the moving expenses and new bills have been taking a serious bite out of our finances. I've also been reading a lot more non-school related stuff. I don't usually have much time for it during the school year, but I do now. And I have a pretty good amount of books on my Kindle, so I always have something to go to.

I'm in the English program. I'm actually taking a Folklore class this fall, and I'm decently excited about it since I've never had a class in that area before. I met some of the MFA folks while I was visiting, and while I don't know much about that aspect of the program myself, they seemed to love it

For my MA, I had a 2-2 assistantship. Because of the requirements of the program, I also had to take three classes per semester every semester except for the last one when I was writing my thesis. Honestly, most of the time it wasn't too terrible. Sometimes grading the essays got a bit unwieldy, but it was manageable. I was teaching two sections of the same course though, so there's that.

Like Academicat here, I've also been in Columbus since early summer, and I've found that there's been plenty to enjoy here. Though I've been somewhat limited by my lack of funds. I'm finally getting more hours at my job though, so I'll get a chance to explore some more things here soon. I've also checked out meetup a bit, and while I haven't gone to any of the groups yet, it seems like there's plenty of people to hang out with. I've also passed some time by creating an excessively long Yelp list of restaurants I want to go to in this city haha. That being said, I am itching to be in class already. I can't help it man. I like school too much lol. But it's less than a month away for me now, so I figure I can deal

Ya know Tony, I don't think I ever found out exactly how much the fellowship stipend would be since I didn't end up going through with the fellowship application process. That info may be somewhere on the website, but I'm not sure. And yeah, there was a lot that I really liked about BGSU, but I ultimately chose OSU. It just felt like the best fit for me, especially after the visit day

Hey! So I actually applied to and was accepted to both of those schools last year. However, I applied to the American Culture Studies program at BGSU. I'm not sure if funding is the same for the Pop Culture program, but ACS had a pretty limited amount of funding, which is to be expected for a smaller school I imagine. I was initially waitlisted for an assistantship with them. The people there are super nice and accommodating though, and the DGS worked hard to find other possible funding options. And he did ultimately find one that would have given me a 1 year non-service fellowship to start. With the English Department OSU, I think pretty much everybody that's accepted gets at least an assistantship that covers tuition and offers a stipend in exchange for teaching one class per semester. And then some people also get offered fellowships for one or more years where they don't have to teach and still get tuition covered plus a bigger stipend. Whether or not somebody is eligible for a particular fellowship depends on test scores and such I believe.

Sounds pretty typical. For my MA program, they sent out our course manual a few weeks before class started. Then we had a 2 day meeting/orientation to learn about the classes we'd be teaching during the week before classes started. Up until then, it was pretty much radio silence on the TA front.

I applied using a mix of samples and SOPs because I have a couple pretty significant interests, and I found a mix of schools that were aligned to those interests. It worked out pretty well overall I think. I will say that my MA program did help me focus quite a bit on what my interests really are. However, I still ended up with a variety even within that focus. I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. Many of the profs I've known have a couple different major interests. I think that if you can find some way that they all overlap though, then that's probably pretty useful, at least for explaining it to people who want to know about your interests.

During my MA program, I was notified of the fact that I was TAing pretty early. But it was a pretty well into the summer I think before I knew the exact times/places of the classes I was teaching.

I used it for a couple years, but I kept forgetting about it, so I eventually canceled my account.

I got a Kindle Fire in December, and I've found that it really comes in handy (especially for reducing some of the weight in my backpack). Plus, I fall on the side of preferring not to print out things if I don't have to. Now I will go ahead and mention though that I study English, so most of my books have been novels. I don't really have experience with regular textbooks on the ereader, but the novels and such are just fine in my opinion as are the PDFs.

I don't know that you should necessarily mention your age in the SOP unless you have a specific reason for doing so. But I will say that in my MA program, there were a couple people in their 30s, a couple people in their 40s, and one lady who was a bit older. Also, grad students in my program were invited to meet and interview some of the prospective new hires for this fall and all of them were in their mid to late 30s or older. I don't doubt that there are probably biases out there, but from my personal observations, it also seems like there's still opportunities available.

Spunky wins the thread....

For my mom and people I talk to on a regular basis, I just told them directly. But beyond that, Facebook and G+ were where I shared info with most other people. My mom, and a lot of my close family members as well, still doesn't quite understand what I do in an academic sense, but she understands that I teach, so there's that. Most other people that I know seemed to roll with the info pretty easily. The things that I find that people are most thrown about are the length of phd and the various things that have to happen before I even start writing the dissertation. When I tell people that I'm about to start another 5 year (or more) round of school, they look at me like I'm crazy