[GRE/Unofficial Specs]

Hey guys, I'm a senior at Texas Christian University looking into grad schools for English/American Literature. This is my first post. Hope to hear a lot from you guys.

Specs are as follows:

BA Undergraduate - TCU (Honors College)

Major - Writing; Minor - Japanese

GPA - English/Writing - 4.000, Japanese - 3.570, Overall - 3.572 (for now. Still have two semesters left.)

GRE's (unofficial - took Saturday) - 165 Verbal, 161 Quantitative, Writing N/A

GRE's (Subject Tests) - N/A (Taking Literature Subject in November)

Extracurriculars - Ampersand Mortar Board Society

Bryson Literary Society

Member of Sigma Tau Delta

Published twice in TCU's literary journal, 1147

Presented a piece over Ezra Pound's Hugh Selywn Mauberley at TCU's Liberal Arts Festival (2012)

TCU in Japan study abroad program

Looking at schools that work with American Literature and more specifically modernist and post-modernist poetry.

Looking at the following schools:

Stanford

UCLA

UC Irvine

UT Austin

Rice

UC Davis

UC Riverside

UC Santa Cruz

USC

I've never made lower than a 3.0 GPA in any given semester. My first year was pretty rough. Being openly gay from a small town in Texas and going directly to an open and accepting campus was a strange transition and due to the social ostracism I had from high school I was pretty stunted when it came to making friends. Naturally my GPA suffered. But I recovered, and I can't let my past mistakes dictate the dreams that I aspire to attain.

Any advice is appreciated. Should I aim higher? Lower? I hate to ask for handouts, but a hug would be great.

As a final note, the formatting for this post is based off of avidman's post from early July. Sorry for nicking your format but it was exactly what I needed. Much respect.