Lycidas

Congratulations! I grew up near the University of Minnesota and really love the area and the school. If you ever have any questions about the Twin Cities or the U of M, feel free to PM me.

Considering I woke up today expecting a deluge of notifications on the results board, it’s been a very quiet morning so far. Something about seeing the calendar officially say “February” makes me feel like gradcafe’s servers should be overheating right now…

Just got an acceptance call from Boston College! Wooooooooo!

This sounds like an interview to me, or at least a “conversation” that also doubles as a de-facto interview. Having the call on a Saturday isn’t terribly unusual actually; most of these folks are really busy during the week. My S.O., applying in a non-English humanities field, got a cold-call interview from a program at 9pm on a Sunday. So basically anything can happen in that regard.

Amazing! Two GradCafe Berkeley admits in one day is awesome. Much congratulations!

Congratulations!

Congratulations! Are you an Early Modernist by chance? Although I didn't apply, I've always thought Ryan Netzley would be super cool to work with

Yes, I’ve had similar advice. I’ve long been told that conference presentations were useful for an undergraduate (I have three on my application, which seems to be middle of the road for someone without an MA) by showing a willingness to engage in the field and try one’s hand at formal research and presentation, but that publications were to be avoided. I think you’re right not to feel intimidated. In any case, the Duke acceptance listed other impressive qualities, so there’s no reason to assume that the Duke committee looked at the CV and said “14 Publications! Instant Admission!” I’m likely just engaging in the all-too-common “look for holes in my own application while I wait for results” behavior

That one terrified me as well. 14 publications is particularly staggering for someone sans-doctorate. Considering the person lists an MFA, I’m wondering (hoping?) that many of these 14 are poems/prose published in fiction journals, not academic articles. As someone applying straight out of undergraduate with a whopping total of 0 publications, I must confess that the number of “accepted” results that list previous publications is starting to unnerve me a bit.

I wish I had your problem! I'm dealing with the opposite; after all the theory/crit reading I did in preparing my applications, I've been left exhausted and just wanting to curl up with some middlebrow fiction. I’d be lying if I said I didn't envy your desire to spend more of your free time reading theory and criticism.

I just started Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. While driving one day I heard a report on my local public radio station about Betty Smith’s impact on World War II soldiers; evidently thousands of copies of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn were shipped overseas and read by the troops there. Afterwards, many wrote to Smith crediting her for saving their lives and pulling them out of “shell shock.” Add to that the fact that my mother has been pressuring me to read this book since I was young, and I had to pick up a copy. 100 pages in, it reads like classic mid-20th century urban picaresque (think The Adventures of Augie March, but centering on a young girl, which allows Smith to do lots of interesting, genre-defying things). I think the best word for it is invigorating (although no matter how much glowing language is used to describe a dinner of cow tongue and sheep stomach marinated in bone marrow, I can’t quite get my 21st-century Midwestern taste buds to salivate).

Congrats! Really excited to hear how it goes. Stories like yours give me some comfort in my pessimistic moments when I'm 100% sure I'm bound for straight rejections this year.

While I don’t envisage Obama’s plan going through any time soon (although a similar plan went through in heavily conservative Tennessee, so I suppose anything’s possible), I’m not sure it would create much of a jobs boon. The plan would likely lower the enrollment of 4-year colleges, as many students opted to spend their first two years completing general education credits for free before transferring to a 4-year university. This would mean that many of the current adjunct/VAP/contract positions at 4-year schools would likely move to the Community Colleges. There would likely be a net enrollment increase, leading to a slight uptick in overall jobs, but nothing revolutionary. And many of the jobs created would be low-paying, insecure non-tenure positions (although that seems to be an unavoidable reality no matter where jobs are created in academia). Then there’s this to consider: at many institutions, literature courses survive by fulfilling other designations. At my undergraduate SLAC, for instance, many lit courses were made up of up to 50% non-English majors and minors pursuing designations like “Humanities,” “Critical Thought,” “Gender Studies” and so forth that were required for graduation and affixed to these English courses. If more students fulfill these requirements during a 2-year Community College period prior to arriving at a four-year school, then it’s very possible that enrollment drops in those classes at many institutions would lead to 4-year institutions cutting faculty, especially smaller regional public schools. Also, I feel a bit of guilt for having to force down some happiness at the news of English graduate apps decreasing. I know full well it's bad for the field, but this little voice inside me keeps saying "maybe there's a better chance you'll get in now!"

It's worth noting that UIC greatly prefers applicants who already have a Master's. I believe they've only accepted one or two students without one in the last several years.

Thank you; this is what I needed to hear. I've read enough gradcafe to know this is the case, but when it's my own score and not someone else's on a message board, insecurity creeps in a little harder I never scored a 170 on any of my practice tests (although 2 169s) so the 170 was a bit of a surprise. I don't have any major studying tips, but the one thing I did was keep a notebook full of vocabulary words. It was a little moleskine in which I jotted down every new vocabulary word I learned. I carried this around with me and pulled it out at random times and looked over everything. For me, this proved more effective than flashcards. Other than that I just took endless amounts of computer-based practice tests to get the best feel possible for the actual test. This helped me get comfortable so I was less nervous on test day. I wish I had better or more detailed advice, but aside from "learn all the vocab you can" the test is difficult to study for. I wish you the absolute best of luck.

Took the GRE on Wednesday: 170V/148Q. So here's an age-old gradcafe question that I'm going to shamelessly dredge up again and hope for replies: Is my quantitative score too low? I think it'll come out around 45th percentile. Is this worth retaking for? I should mention that this score is after considerable studying for the Q section (yes, I'm that dreadful at math. My initial practice tests had me around the 15th percentile, which i'm pretty sure I could've equaled by choosing random answers). With more studying I think I could score in the low 150s. Is this worth doing?

My chapter was originally 24 pages, but has been edited in various ways to accommodate page requirements. In one case (CUNY Grad Center) I had to simply write another paper, since I couldn't cut down to their 15 page requirement. I think submitting the first 20 pages of your undergrad thesis is a viable option, but it will require some work to turn part of a thesis into an independent piece. Even though many schools say that an applicant can submit a note contextualizing a writing sample that is part of a larger work, my gut (a not always entirely reliable source) tells me that many on admission committees want to see applicants who can write a complete work akin to a journal article.

I'm revising a chapter of my undergraduate thesis (which is itself still in progress) as well. I'm doing a lot of work to help it stand on its own as a piece, and I'm working to add a bit more theory to it. Right now it's basically a standard New Historicist piece, and I'd like to make it a bit more unique if I can do so without making it overwrought at the same time

Rose Egypt, it's worth noting that the computer-based GRE is only offered in Cairo. ETS also offers the paper GRE in Alexandria and Sohag, but only on limited dates. Depending on where you are located in the country, it may be worth looking into this (if you haven't already registered of course). Dates for the paper tests are here

I strongly suggest looking at Ohio State, if you haven't yet done so (it may be helpful to post a list of schools you are considering, just to prevent repeated suggestions, and to be helpful to the many lurkers out there). Chadwick Allen does work on American Indian literature there. Another possibility is to look over Arizona State's interdisciplinary program in American Indian Studies. They offer 4 different graduate concentrations, one of which is Visual and Oral Cultures, which might suit your interests a bit. My apologies that these are the only two suggestions I have at the moment; hopefully more will come along.

Just a note: Eagleton hasn't been at Oxford since 2001. Currently he rotates between Lancaster University, National University of Ireland, and Notre Dame, but I don't believe he advises graduate students at any of those schools.

PageandStage, I don't think you'd have any problems applying to your study abroad university. The reason most departments discourage undergrads from applying to their home university for graduate school is the tendency of search committees to view someone who has both a BA and a P.hD from the same school with suspicion. But since your BA won't be issued by the US school, this shouldn't be an issue for you.

I'll be there most likely. Had a paper accepted, working on cobbling together some travel funding at my home institution. But the odds are good I'll get there one way or another

Elliot Visconsi at the University of Notre Dame might be worth looking into. I don't know your specific period, or if you have one, but he does work on Law and Literature in late 17th-century England

Another thing to look at might be the online lecture courses from Yale and Cambridge. Yale's course is Introduction to Literary Theory with Paul Fry, and generally the lectures serve as good introductions to the major players in literary theory over the past 100 years or so. The Cambridge course is on Literary Criticism: Key Terms, and provides a good introduction to a more British style of criticism that many American students (including myself, I readily admit) aren't very familiar with. Both of these are available on Itunes U, and Yale's course is also available on the Open Yale website. These are also great for multitasking and for supplementing your reading.