1Q84

It doesn't sound so much like a career gap as you had some mental health issues (depression) that sound like they really impacted your outlook and interactions with your colleagues. I'm told it's quite common. I'm unsure how to approach that with adcomms. I'm quite sure all universities would have a policy about discrimination against disability/health issues but who knows how that might affect individual professors in their decisions? I wouldn't throw it out there as an "excuse", but I'm often told that you should, in 1 or 2 sentences, address the low GPA or other difficulties with a simple reason and then move on to highlight your strengths.

Well, that brings me to another point: how often can one "bother" a graduate chair? I don't want to have this endless chain of emails because she has already stopped responding to my last email which was a month ago. But I guess that's probably because of what you say about preparing for the semester. I shall wait!

What! That folder is seriously ominous. Good idea to bring this up... I never considered adcomms googling people. I always just associated that with job hunting, but I guess this, in a way, is pretty similar. Edit: okay, so I thought my name was really rare but I just googled it and found tons of others with my name who, I suppose, are more keen on proliferating their online presence. I found one open twitter account with my name that is full of vulgarity and (gasp) awful spelling. It doesn't have any identifying details that would mark it out as NOT me. Now I'm kind of paranoid that people may stumble upon it and think it's me! What should I do? :/

Yeah, I guess pinkrobot nailed it. What shall be, shall be. My 0.02 on contacting professors, however: although some have been rude and some have not answered, the ones that have answered have been so incredibly kind (speaking to me about individual interests, etc.) even though they said that they were busy, they still took time to send lots of encouragement and positive, kind words. One of the top scholars in my field and former chair was so nice to me and even complimented my alma mater and said she would "keep an eye out for my application"! It's stuff like that that gets me through all this. So, I think despite the risk of running into some ornery profs or perhaps possibly pissing some off, I'm all for contacting professors if not just for the uplifting moments or the morale boost it can sometimes have. I know that I surely need it!

Again, good to hear from more late bloomers like me... well not late, just different! It's true, but how do you balance all the finances and job stuff and living, so to speak? I mean living on a meagre grad school budget for 8 years does not seem appealing when I see my friends making full salary and living it up. But I have long-term vision now so it's okay... heh Well, you're ahead of me I guess! I'm still living at home with very little money. Sigh. But I took almost the exact same route as you, except I love teaching. I graduated undergrad and was really over it, just because of the type of people I had to deal with in class. I applied twice to grad school in Canada (rejected), went overseas, did some teaching, did my Bachelor of Education but now I realised I should've stuck to grad school. So here I am!

Thanks for the advice! Good idea, contacting the dean may be my best shot. The last email I sent to the chair of the dept went unanswered so... I don't know if I should push that one. Strange enough, the chair of the dept said to contact one professor who she said "contributed a lot of important work to your field of interest" yet I did extensive research on his CV and publications and all his work is from the period right before mine. I guess that's somewhat related? I've definitely got 3 professors per letter, at least. I hope it's enough!

Here's something that's been stumping me: I've had luck contacting some POIs at one particular school, but others have not returned emails. I've been advised on other parts of the board to leave those people alone, if they don't answer. One super frustrating thing is that this department's website is woefully lacking (lots of professors don't list any interests, specialties, courses, etc. just a phone number and email). My google-fu has mostly failed: I was able to track down some papers and conference presentations but not enough. So how do tailor an SOP to this school if you can't even figure out which professors are even in your field? I've also read it can be really poisonous to mention a prof if you haven't actually contacted them yet.

Very, very sorry. Didn't mean to offend or presume!

I hope it's okay that I keep coming back to you for more help...! Ah, I may have been unclear. No, my BA was a double major in English Lit and Latin. I not so much nontraditional as I fell out of academia for a couple of years and didn't perform so well in my undergrad that I would have a strong relationship with professors and a strong GPA. By project I meant like a research paper or published article or assistantship or something to show for my undergraduate work. I'm not sure if it's usual or unusual for undergrads to show that they have this experience. Otherwise, no, I do have a bunch of term papers I wrote for English Lit classes. Would that be enough to point to and say "see"? Right! I'm having trouble pinpointing the tone that this paragraph should have. "I would love to work with Prof. X because of their work in ABC" or "Prof. X's work in ABC seems similar to my interests and I feel I benefit from working with him/her". Should I say "I have been in contact with Prof. X and I feel that we are both working in similar research areas"? Argh! I'm not sure if it's in keeping with the spirit of these SOP threads (if so, I'll post it here) but I've PM'd you my revised paragraph that kind of mixes intro with future (talking about my past and how that relates to my future projects). Please let me know if you don't feel like looking this over again, really!

As I said in a previous thread, learning your Greek and Latin prefixes and suffixes will help you immensely... it can improve your vocabulary exponentially, just by allowing you to figure out what half of a word is will allow you to make educated guesses on over half of the words you encounter. Gruber bears this out in their help section on prefixes and suffixes.

Note that Manhattan Prep also offers a free practice test on their website. Check it out. Their results aren't quite as detailed as I would like, either, but they break things down pretty well by section.

Well-noted. Thanks again for the detailed notes! No offense taken. The more direct critical pointers I can get, the better. I am kind of prone to the flowery writing, I know. The academic research will come later, yes, but I also don't want to go on and on about what I did in my Bachelor of Education. It seems mostly irrelevant. I suppose I should insert one sentence to explain that, though. And yes, the other paragraphs are much more detailed. I would post the whole thing here but I don't want to get overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I have to revise at once. I think my biggest stumbling block is that I'm trying to compensate for the fact that I don't have any research projects under my belt. Considering this is basically what everyone says matters most in an SOP, I'm worried. I don't really know what else to talk about if I don't have any specific projects I can reference. In terms of taking initiative and reading up on my area of interest, I was trying to portray that as tenacity and drive to pursue my interests independently, something that I'm told adcomms really like. For example, would it be better if, when I talk about this independent "research" that I did, that I talk about the different scholarly work that I became familiar with and how it will inform my future goals? Because it's not like I can say "well, I did some independent research and wrote an essay for myself." Right? I guess the fact that I even have to explain it makes it poorly written enough. Hmmm.

Yeah, it sounds like I'll have to sit down and have this talk with my partner. Can't believe we haven't really done it yet... ack! I think it was denial on my part... going to have to answer some tough questions about our future. Okay, good to know there are some people starting a little bit later. But believe me, if I could get funding I wouldn't even think about looking for a part-time job! Well noted. Holy crow! It's confusing me when people say others in their PhD cohort are 21 years old. In Canada, people usually finish undergrad by 22. Are these 21 year olds super keen, fast-tracking geniuses or something?

I'm really having trouble formulating my "professors I'd like to work with" paragraph. How does one start it without sounding like a toadying fool?! Is it weird to say, "I have been in correspondence with Professor X and I feel very strongly drawn to his/her work?"

Thanks so much for the feedback, fuzzy! As for the "exploratory period" sentence, I wasn't sure if some academics might wonder, "well, why wouldn't you be doing your intellectual exploring WITHIN academia? What's wrong with you!?" Yeah, paranoia. Here's a somewhat revised version. I couldn't really address #4 of your points, because my independent research was simply just going to the library nonstop and reading scholars who do work in the Renaissance Lit and gender studies and grounding and familiarising myself with that interdisciplinary field. Is that even worth mentioning or do adcomms need to see actual projects, papers I wrote, etc.

From the attempts I made at Canadian grad schools, I got the impression that humanities professors don't ever really "adopt" a grad student. Otherwise I would've done a lot more schmoozing! I think that's why I've significantly shifted my focus now. It wouldn't make sense for me to try and do an unfunded MA and it seems like I wouldn't qualify for private funding plus there are very few funded MAs that are on my lower-tier of applications. I'm shooting for the stars! (Ph.D programs). Glad to hear I'm not the only one making life-altering decisions based partially on my partner haha. I like this vetting system you and your wife have set up. I'll definitely have to try that out. I can't imagine living in a small town in Ontario is very fun (I'm almost there, Markham is just as bad). Nice to see you're going to Caltech! Definitely more your kinda place eh? I'm hoping to bring modern gender studies perspectives into Paradise Lost. It's been done before but I'm sure there's a lot more! Not sure if you've heard of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (100 Years of Solitude) and Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore). I find they're the two big names everyone knows when it comes to magic realism. It's realist writing but with magical, surreal elements thrown in, almost casually. Interesting perspective that my friend told me about recently is that in the West it's called magic realism but in many societies abroad, it's simply called realism. There's nothing "magical" about it and it's kind of presumptuous of Westerners to call their reality "magic". Thus, I put magic realism in quotation marks in the sig there. Hmm! Something to think about. Thanks again for all the kind words

Is it.... that bad?

Yes. I had never taken a standardised test before studying for the GRE. I've found it has focused me in a lot of ways and brought out a lot of positive academic attributes in me. Are there faults with it? Yes, of course, and it will be that way with any standardised test on earth. When I saw "tyro", I knew you were studying your GRE vocab lists... and I have a feeling GRE troll is trolling. Yeah, I don't really see how this is up for debate, anyhow. It most definitely is going to be a major factor to some and not to others. Trying to make definitive statements about adcomms is just a fool's errand.

But I mean if you had an 88% average and didn't get one, then I don't know what chance I stand with a 75% or whatever 3.3 happens to be! I applied twice to grad school in Canada and was rejected both times. I totally gave up after that... I feel like Canadian schools are much more stringent with the GPA requirements, especially since there's no GRE. Most schools I've seen have had 3.7 minimum requirements... even schools that aren't known for English like Guelph and Brock, which I thought was silly. Also, might get laughed out of the room for this one, but I'm partially applying to grad schools in California to be with my partner. Another 2 years spent apart if I were to do an MA in Canada just wouldn't work (already been apart for 3 years!) PS. I didn't say it in the post before but your research sounds amazingly interesting! I love science stuff even though I'm totally inept when it comes to studying it.

But that's the thing, that kind of stuff can never be backed up by factual evidence. The method is to read each question and use logic to figure out the best possible answer. Simple stuff. The assumption being that women naturally would never do that because they're more "intuitive" and use their "feelings" to solve problems. Silly, right? Oh I know. That's the thing... there are no separate strategies. It's "women, use the Gruber strategy that men already kind of know how to use because it comes natural to them!" It's such strange marketing. For example, Princeton merely says "all people, use the Princeton strategy to increase your score!" Makes sense. Why Gruber felt the need to have a separate section to point out to women their own logical deficiency rather than just point out that both men and women pre-Gruber will fail is beyond me.

Thank you for clearing that up! Wonder why the paper ones are longer...

So true! That serves as a good reminder for me. And exactly the same here: my MA/PhD is going to be my self-fulfillment for sure. I did a Bachelor of Education, and while I enjoyed it, I did not feel fulfilled at all. Inspiring! Also inspiring. Good to know there's lots of late bloomers out there like me! I'm mostly worried about the practicalities of finances and such. If I may ask, did any of your family have trouble establishing themselves after grad school? Or did they hit the ground running? My gosh you make me feel old! Get outta here! Just kidding... that's awesome that you had the drive and tenacity to do that (not to mention the smarts)!

Okay, so I've done a lot of trolling through the forum about SOP writing and have seen the much-lauded "what to avoid" thread. medievalmaniac and intextrovert's walkthroughs have been particularly helpful! Here's my intro paragraph. I know that it may be too fluffy but I wanted to start off with a quote to nudge at my Latin background. Also, I feel like the one big thing holding me back is my undergraduate career and the 5 years between undergrad and grad school. I wanted to make sure they know that I have grown from my undergrad career. Those are my reasons for making such a fluffy intro paragraph. Please let me know if you think it should all be excised and burnt or if I can rework it, make it more concise, etc. The paragraph immediately after it do their best to follow the Fit, Focus, Future model. Specific opinions wanted about the "exploratory period away from academia" phrase. Would that come off as offensive to academics? Thanks in advance

Good point. That's interesting! I've never seen any departments list Latin as a requirement for Renaissance Lit-- Medieval, yes. I have a working knowledge of written French (Canadian, though). Hmm! I'll definitely contact the DGS. I have a feeling I'm being laughed out of the house by the rest of the professors... I erroneously referred to it as an English department. I think that may have contributed to the (deserved) snarkiness.

I've heard that claim too... but I mean how much of that is societal conditioning and learned helplessness, due to ridiculous, published material like this?! I read a bit more of it and he used the age-old "women are more intuitive" reasoning. Since the GRE is more manly and logical, women need to learn man's way, apparently. Well you'd have to buy the book for that! I can't really set down all the strategies in a 700pg book here. But they're the same as any other book, really. Almost identical to Princeton (except Princeton says it better).