toasterazzi

It's my understanding that this varies from school to school. Some places rip the bandaid off all at once, while others stagger their results. Some schools don't send out letters of rejection until March or April, and I've heard of a few people never actually receiving any notification or getting a letter in like August.

Personally, I think those programs can be just as good as higher ranked programs, especially given how flawed some of the ranking systems are. Granted, they may not have the same degree of notoriety/connections, but I still think they can be great fits. And some of the lower ranked schools I've looked at still have really good placement rates (sometimes even better than higher ranked schools). For my own bit, I applied to one school in the Top 30s, 2 schools ranked between 30 and 70, 2 schools ranked around 100, and one unranked school. But I tried not to focus too much on where they fell in the rankings and looked more at what the programs could offer me, their commitment to professionalization, their placement rates, where former students ended up, etc.

I don't think my profs know about GradCafe, and if they do, they've never mentioned it. Yep.

My interests also tend to veer toward the pop culture realm (particularly television studies), so I understand that anxiety. I did try to primarily seek out English programs that seemed welcoming to the pop culture crowd though. And I applied to one American Culture program because it really matched up with my interests. But I also have a strong pull toward YA and various cultural intersections in literature, which is why I stuck with English programs for the most part.

One of my friends a perfect score on the verbal. I'm not sure what she got on the writing and math though. I didn't even bother with the subject test since most of the schools I was interested in didn't require. I've heard that most people do terribly on it, so I wasn't especially worried about doing well. I just couldn't spend the money. The content I've seen kind of reminds me of the Praxis II English test I had to take when I was becoming an English teacher in undergrad. I did way better on that test than I expected, which is especially funny to me because the first time I took the Praxis 1, I failed the math section by 5 points. So I had to take the math again and ended up passing by 4 points. If I didn't already hate standardized tests before then, I certainly would've hated them after that experience.

The nerd in me wants to know if we all missed the same questions lol I've always been terrible at math, so hitting 18% was a near miracle lol.

Can I join this 87 and 93 party?

Yeah I had no knowledge of conferences until my senior year of undergrad, and I didn't know about publishing until I began researching Master's programs. I still haven't published anything yet, but by the time I finish my Master's program in May, I'll have presented at two conferences.

I used two different samples, both of which are from classes I've taken in my Master's program.

My verbal score was pretty good, as was my analytical score. My math was terrible though hehe. Ohio State still accepted me anyway . From what I've heard, the SOP and writing sample tend to count for more than the GRE except at that the schools that have really firm cutoff points.

Congrats! That's exactly how I found out I was accepted last week hehe. I imagine some of them might, but it wouldn't hurt to take a breather.

My undergrad degree is in Secondary Education-English, so I'd likely just try to find a middle or high school position. Teaching has always been the plan for me. It's just that the age group I primarily want to work with has shifted in recent years.

Haha well I don't have any good advice, but I feel like they're probably used to people being stunned. When the DGS from Ohio State called me on Monday, I felt like I was vibrating inside and I probably didn't respond with more than 1-2 words at a time lol. He did ask me if I had any questions after he explained a bunch of stuff, but he also said there'd be a more detailed email coming and I had to teach in approximately ten minutes, so I didn't ask anything.

If it's a matter of pizza, then Chicago all the way. Unless you want to/can go to school in Italy. In that case, Italy wins.

When I was deciding which schools to apply to, I looked for professors doing research and/or teaching courses about areas that interest me. I also looked for schools that seemed committed to guiding students through the professionalization process. Location was also a consideration to some degree because there are places that I really just couldn't see myself living in for five years or so. And the whole idea of getting out of Indiana (as indicated in my username) is to get to some place that's at least marginally better. Popular Culture and Young Adult Literature are really my top two interests (with several subcategories in both), so it was important to me to find schools where these areas were highlighted along with all of the more standard research areas because I think that'll be more beneficial for me in the long run.

I liked Divergent well enough. I've heard the other two books aren't nearly as good, but I tend to finish out series when I start them even if I'm agitated (*ahem*Twilight*cough*). And yes I've seen the TFIOS trailer. I'm just planning to go in and bawl. That's the only way it'll work. I'll have to add this Will Grayson book to my list. I've heard a lot of good things about Eleanor and Park so that'll probably be next on my YA list. I also plan to read The Maze Runner soonish, mostly because there's a movie coming out for it soon too. Also, I already watched The Spectacular Now and it kinda made me want to go back and read the book.

I have one page, but I haven't really done a lot just yet.

YA is my drug of choice, and my Kindle has made it much easier for me to keep up with reading. I'm on Insurgent right now, but I right now and I've also read The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent in the last couple weeks.

I applied to 3 for undergrad, 1 for the Master's and now 6 for the PhD. I had planned to apply to like 10 schools for the PhD, but ultimately the funds were not there. There's one more school that I was going to apply to that has a deadline in a few weeks, but once I got my first acceptance, I decided to let that one go.

Almost never. I occasionally wind up only getting like 4 hours of sleep, but I try to avoid the no sleep whatsoever deal.

I don't have any feelings one way or the other about the safety school debate really. However, I did just want to chime in and say that Middle Tennessee State is actually one of the programs I applied to hehe. It may not be highly ranked, but it has a lot of professors doing work in areas and teaching courses that interest me. Plus, I love Tennessee and I have a lot of family/friends in the area .

^ I found my decision on appstatus.

I think this is a highly appropriate suggestion as well though.

Just got my official call from the DGS at OSU this morning! Now I'm officially beyond excited . I definitely think I'll be attending the Open House.

I haven't made any 100% decisions just yet because I've applied to 6 schools and OSU is the only one I know anything about thus far. I will say that it's probably the frontrunner right now though. I have a lot of friends in Columbus and I've been there a couple times. I enjoy the town quite a bit.