toasterazzi

Mine's still "in review."
Wondering, of course, now, whether or not they're notifying all at once, and if this means a likely reject. We shall see, I suppose.

As a current OSU attendee, I want to say three important things: 1. OSU tends to notify early, so I'm not surprised if people are seeing movement now. 2. OSU notifies over a span of time w/ fellowship people getting contacted first. 3. Feel free to send any OSU/Columbus-related questions my way
Edit: One more thing. I noticed that my status changed on the Portal approximately 2-3 days before I got the call from the DGS.

I am also still waiting on a decision from them. My application is still "in review." Would love to start hearing back so that I can be a little less anxious about all of this ambiguity. Good luck to everyone else waiting!

so, i got an email out of nowhere from a DGS telling me my application was a strong one (!!). totally unexpected, and also still hardly an actual decision, so not trying to count chickens before they hatch. but, the whole email was so positive about my potential future there - man, am i excited! at the very least it's a nice confidence booster this early in the season.

Hi BarAndFrills, I guess I'm one of the 10. I was notified on Wednesday. Congratulations!

I received a call/email yesterday from Michigan State, and have been accepted to their PhD program in Comp/Rhet for 2016. They accepted 10 people total, according to a friend of mine who is there. 

Mazel Tov! I'm still hoping to have a meal over break if you are in town! (as to Hamilton, I submitted a Hamilton-related proposal for HASTAC and quoted "The Room Where is Happens" in my SOP)

I passed my comps today! I am officially ABD and a Candidate, which is SUCH A WEIRD thing to wrap my mind around. My only regret? I didn't work in a Hamilton reference. 
I wanted to start a thread where we can all celebrate each other's achievements this semester. Are you surviving your first semester? Will you be presenting at a Big Deal™ conference in 2016? Did you get a travel grant? Let's get a dance party started up in here. 

I also want to chime in with an "It's possible!" Lol. 
I got my MA at an unranked state school & I'm now getting my PhD at Ohio State. And in my program, there are students from all sorts of educational backgrounds. I'm sure there are probably programs where the prestige of your previous institution can become a factor, but it seems to me that there are also plenty where that's not a major concern.

I didn't mention any specific professors in my SOP. I did explore their pages on the department website as well as any additional websites and/or CV information if that was readily available. I skimmed some publication titles/abstracts, but I didn't read anything that any of them had published thoroughly. I personally did not find it particularly necessary to link my research ideas that specifically to someone else. What I did do though was make sure that there were multiple profs in the department who I thought could at least provide some degree of guidance for me. I also made sure that the things I'm interested in (TV, Film, Popular Culture) had a significant presence in the information that department provided. 
My basic structure with the SOP then was something like:
State my primary research interest(s) & why that's significant Talk about related research & writing that I'd already done  Talk broadly about my vague ideas of what I might want my dissertation to be (btw the idea I mentioned here is totally not what I'm probably going to write about as it turns out haha) Talk about my ideas for teaching, especially as they relate to my research interests Talk specifically about the department & where I see myself fitting in based on the research areas I found to be present in the departmental information (I also specifically looked at the course listings from the prior year and referred to some of my findings here in terms of how they related to my interests) Concluded with how I felt connected to an aspect of the department's publicized goals (Almost every website I looked at included some sort of statement of what the department is interested in, working toward, etc.) And by doing all of that, I feel like I adequately established how I saw myself in relation to the department without naming any specific people. I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't name people. I'm just saying I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

I know I sometimes come off as the blissed-out dude in the back of the van telling everyone to "just relax, man, relax," but I really think that the "mentioning specific professors in the SOP" thing really is something people sometimes worry about too much. Sure, it's a much easier part of the SOP to evaluate/control/whatever than, say, the much more important "does this just feel like a professional document?" part, so it gets a lot of attention. But ultimately I really don't think it matters nearly as much; like toasterazzi says, it is definitely possible to be very successful either by mentioning professors, or not.
Of course, some of my successful SOPs last year had the standard "mention an article and how it relates" name-a-prof gambit, but I also got into some schools (Yale and Stanford, I'm looking at you) with the absolutely lamest, broadest, afterthought-est fit paragraphs you can imagine--think along the lines of "their strengths in blah blah subfield, and hey, they've got a library!" Now: those schools were actually still good fits in terms of those strengths and resources, don't get me wrong. But--eh. I didn't worry about making that case explicit in my SOP for them, really, at all, and certainly didn't specify professors, and it was just fine.
And like Proflorax says, the research you do before applying and the research you do before deciding where you will attend are necessarily different beasts; it's one thing to think you have an idea of what someone might be like as an advisor when you've made yourself intimately familiar with their biography, it's another entirely when you've had a beer with one of their advisees at the recruitment weekend.

I would also suggest that there's potential problems with going to a university to work with one specific person. Yes, it might work out, but that person also might go on sabbatical or switch jobs or become ill or simply not be able to take on new students. And I think that sometimes people don't always consider this ahead of time. Also, let's be real. Just because you like someone's research, that doesn't mean you'll be able to get along with them on a personal level.
This is part of why I looked for programs that had several people that I could see myself working with based on a broad overview of their areas of interests rather than a deep dive into the work of any particular person.
I do think that this ultimately comes down to a matter of preference. I don't think anybody's application necessarily lives or dies on whether they mention specific profs in their SOP (unless the university has that as a specific requirement). I do believe that it's entirely possible to be successful with either method.

... I didn't frame my personal experience as advice. In fact, my advice was this: "Do what works with your application and the narrative you're putting forth in your SoP." I stand by that advice. I didn't speak to the research I did on potential advisors and programs once I had been accepted. That's a whole 'nother thread. 

I didn't mention any specific professors in my SOP. I did explore their pages on the department website as well as any additional websites and/or CV information if that was readily available. I skimmed some publication titles/abstracts, but I didn't read anything that any of them had published thoroughly. I personally did not find it particularly necessary to link my research ideas that specifically to someone else. What I did do though was make sure that there were multiple profs in the department who I thought could at least provide some degree of guidance for me. I also made sure that the things I'm interested in (TV, Film, Popular Culture) had a significant presence in the information that department provided. 
My basic structure with the SOP then was something like:
State my primary research interest(s) & why that's significant Talk about related research & writing that I'd already done  Talk broadly about my vague ideas of what I might want my dissertation to be (btw the idea I mentioned here is totally not what I'm probably going to write about as it turns out haha) Talk about my ideas for teaching, especially as they relate to my research interests Talk specifically about the department & where I see myself fitting in based on the research areas I found to be present in the departmental information (I also specifically looked at the course listings from the prior year and referred to some of my findings here in terms of how they related to my interests) Concluded with how I felt connected to an aspect of the department's publicized goals (Almost every website I looked at included some sort of statement of what the department is interested in, working toward, etc.) And by doing all of that, I feel like I adequately established how I saw myself in relation to the department without naming any specific people. I'm certainly not saying that you shouldn't name people. I'm just saying I don't think it's absolutely necessary.

I also want to chime in with an "It's possible!" Lol. 
I got my MA at an unranked state school & I'm now getting my PhD at Ohio State. And in my program, there are students from all sorts of educational backgrounds. I'm sure there are probably programs where the prestige of your previous institution can become a factor, but it seems to me that there are also plenty where that's not a major concern.

I initially planned to apply to around 10 schools for the PhD, but the cost got in the way. I ended up applying to six schools.
From what I've observed though, there's no magic number or guarantee. I've seen people on here apply to 20 schools and strike out, and I've seen other people apply to three schools and get into all of them. When I applied for my MA, I did exactly one school and got in. With my PhD apps, I was accepted by two schools outright, waitlisted at another, rejected from two, and I never heard back from one.
I will add that the CIC fee waivers can be really useful depending on what schools you're applying to: https://www.cic.net/students/freeapp/introduction. They helped me out quite a bit.
 

I initially planned to apply to around 10 schools for the PhD, but the cost got in the way. I ended up applying to six schools.
From what I've observed though, there's no magic number or guarantee. I've seen people on here apply to 20 schools and strike out, and I've seen other people apply to three schools and get into all of them. When I applied for my MA, I did exactly one school and got in. With my PhD apps, I was accepted by two schools outright, waitlisted at another, rejected from two, and I never heard back from one.
I will add that the CIC fee waivers can be really useful depending on what schools you're applying to: https://www.cic.net/students/freeapp/introduction. They helped me out quite a bit.
 

And by that I mean, damn, OP got majorly trolled by his department lol.

I'm using my 1000th GC post to say...
I met ProfLorax in person today.
You should all be VERY jealous.

I have a Dakine backpack that I love. They have usually have so much space and so many compartments that everything fits nicely. Plus, they have several affordable options. You can check out a bunch of them here: http://www.ebags.com/category/backpacks/b/dakine?origin=left_nav

Hey folks! I imagine that most people in this thread have also been following the news in Baltimore.
 
Here's a link to some related resources:
 
Baltimore Syllabus

Hey folks! I imagine that most people in this thread have also been following the news in Baltimore.
 
Here's a link to some related resources:
 
Baltimore Syllabus

RESTART THE PARTY!
 

 
Congrats

I know nerves are probably very high for some today so for those of you boring a hole into your inbox with your laser eye beams, come in and blow off some steam! Get a back rub! Have a mojito! We're all cheering for you in here.
 
For those who have made their decisions, whatever they may be, come in and celebrate, commiserate, or simply reclinate (I know that's not a word)! Whatever, let Jim Carrey kiss you on stage!
 

 
I should add: no matter what we all end up doing, we're all move on from this point. 
 
Forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!