hope for unsuccesful applicants

[keila]

I know that the past month has been a disappointing one for a number of people on this board, and I just wanted to offer some hope for those of you who haven't been accepted into a program for this year.

Last year, I was rejected from all six schools to which I applied. At the time, I had a near 4.0 GPA at a top school, great GRE scores, and a writing sample that had been runner-up in an English Department essay competition. This year, I was accepted to a number of top ten and top twenty programs, including four of the six that had rejected my first application. While there is a degree of randomness about this process, in my case, I believe I have identified a number of factors that made the difference.

1) Recommendations. At the time of my first application, I was still a senior in college, and had been abroad for half of junior year. I had also - foolishly, in retrospect - worked to fulfill all of my distribution requirements before senior year. Consequently, I hadn't had courses with many of the top professors in my field. My recommendations came from one full English professor, one lecturer who knew me very well, and a big-name professor from another humanities department. This year, having taken four upper-level English seminars (including two graduate seminars) during my senior year, I was able to apply with the backing of three (and for some schools four) full English professors. I also suspect that the professors who wrote for me this year, knowing that I had been unsuccessful the previous year, were particularly anxious to be good advocates for me this time around.

2) Writing Sample - I fully believe that the essay I submitted this year was considerably better than the one I submitted last year. I am positive, however, that while last year's submission may have been a good essay, it was a terrible choice for a writing sample. It was well-written and showed off my analytical skills, but it didn't indicate a potential scholar. This year's writing sample wasn't just a good close reading; it demonstrated my particular command of the works of the author in question and gave evidence of real engagement with some broader critical issues. I want to emphasize, however, that my writing sample did NOT focus heavily on the works of other critics or on a specific school of literary criticism.

3) Focus. Last year, I mentioned two potential subfields in my personal statement rather than focusing on one. I think this led to an incoherent application: my writing sample fit within one of the subfields, but I also mentioned the senior thesis I was working on, which fit within the other. This year, I had a clearly delineated primary focus; while I mentioned the second interest, it was obvious that I was applying in subfield A. Even though graduate programs know that a lot of students change interests in the first few years of grad school, enough of them still divide applicants by sub-field that focus matters.

I also want to mention some thing that I did not do, just to give some indication of what proved less important. I did not enter an MA program or do anything related to literature during my year off. I did not get in touch with faculty members at the schools I applied to. I did not do a lot of in-depth research into my "fit" with various programs - my personal statements had one or two lines mentioning a couple of professors I might like working with and identifying one or two attributes of the department that I liked, but nothing terribly specific. I did not publish.

I understand that my experience may not be relevant to everyone. If you think a low undergrad GPA might have been a factor, for instance, it might take a one year MA program to make up for it. But I don't think that my mistakes were unique, and hope that this proves helpful to some. I'm more or less the same student this year that I was last year, but I presented myself much, much better, and that made an enormous difference.

[tortola23]

Thanks; all of this is good to know. I really do not want to be too discouraged to apply again in the fall if this application season keeps going badly.

[Caved]

Thank you for the informative post, keila. I'm still holding out hope for a few programs, but will most likely be reapplying in the next few years, and this is certainly good advice (a lot of it I can see I should have done myself this time around.)

[strokeofmidnight]

This is a really helpful and informative post...and completely true of my experience as well. It's actually extremely hard to do well applying straight from undergrad, during your senior year (major props to those of you who have pulled it off!). So much of one's (mine, at least) maturation came during that last year and in the year afterwards. Like Keila, I also did well as an undergrad, but there was something about taking time off--not just from applications, but hardcore literary studies in general--that paradoxically allowed me to become a far better literary scholar when I returned to it a year later (while prepping for applications). I've been reading over my old papers (always a scary venture), and the change is somewhat incredible--all the more so because I wasn't studying/researching at all in the meantime. It just took time--and real world experience--for those 4 years of education to simmer and finally come together. (excuse the dangling metaphors).

[hadunc]

This is a really helpful and informative post...and completely true of my experience as well. It's actually extremely hard to do well applying straight from undergrad, during your senior year (major props to those of you who have pulled it off!). So much of one's (mine, at least) maturation came during that last year and in the year afterwards. Like Keila, I also did well as an undergrad, but there was something about taking time off--not just from applications, but hardcore literary studies in general--that paradoxically allowed me to become a far better literary scholar when I returned to it a year later (while prepping for applications). I've been reading over my old papers (always a scary venture), and the change is somewhat incredible--all the more so because I wasn't studying/researching at all in the meantime. It just took time--and real world experience--for those 4 years of education to simmer and finally come together. (excuse the dangling metaphors).

Yeah, I totally agree, applying as a senior at least for me was really tough. There's just too much going on, and that last year is crucial. I didn't choose to take a year off from literary study but the time working independently (after being rejected) really gave me the focus I needed. I recently looked over one of my papers from senior year and was horrified at how amateur it sounded. I couldn't believe it, it didn't even feel like my writing. My four years in college were nothing compared to what that year off did for me in terms of growth as a writer and a scholar.

[diehtc0ke]

This is actually a really great post and I wish I had seen it before I applied last year (long story short, I took seven classes in each of my last two terms and sent out a couple of humdrum applications that obviously got rejected. I sent them out just so I could get a feel for how this process plays out).

If I could add my own two cents, it's just felt like adcoms need to be wowed. This all ties in with what keila said about having focus and not only a writing sample that ties in to that focus but a personal statement that does as well. No one's going to take those two pages as a binding contract that delineates your next 5-6 years of study but you need to let admissions committees know that they're not wasting their precious funding on someone who hasn't given considerable thought to a future project. I was just interviewed yesterday for a fellowship and my interviewer had been on the graduate admissions committee. He point blank told me that he was floored by my application because I conveyed a level of confidence about my work and myself as a academic that said, "I clearly know that I'm a scholar and I know that I can do this work. What can YOU offer ME?" Not that I assume that everyone or anyone does this but I didn't spend more than a few lines discussing my past work or my experience as an undergraduate. My personal statement became about my intended future research, showcased that I had already done considerable research on this topic and sketched out how each school offered something to help facilitate my studies, whether it be through a particular cultural institution, a specific set of archives, etc. I really think this is what was able to set me apart from other applicants.

[madhousefluent]

Thanks for this -- it's good to hear of successes as a second-time (or third, or whatever) applicant, since at this point that's all I can hope for. I'm already planning how to improve my application for the next round, though -- and it'll be easier when I'm NOT a senior. (Yes, I am doing that ridiculous thing.)

[Branwen daughter of Llyr]

If I could add my own two cents, it's just felt like adcoms need to be wowed. This all ties in with what keila said about having focus and not only a writing sample that ties in to that focus but a personal statement that does as well. No one's going to take those two pages as a binding contract that delineates your next 5-6 years of study but you need to let admissions committees know that they're not wasting their precious funding on someone who hasn't given considerable thought to a future project. I was just interviewed yesterday for a fellowship and my interviewer had been on the graduate admissions committee. He point blank told me that he was floored by my application because I conveyed a level of confidence about my work and myself as a academic that said, "I clearly know that I'm a scholar and I know that I can do this work. What can YOU offer ME?" Not that I assume that everyone or anyone does this but I didn't spend more than a few lines discussing my past work or my experience as an undergraduate. My personal statement became about my intended future research, showcased that I had already done considerable research on this topic and sketched out how each school offered something to help facilitate my studies, whether it be through a particular cultural institution, a specific set of archives, etc. I really think this is what was able to set me apart from other applicants.

Thanks for this - you've given me some GREAT ideas regarding the structure of my next SOP. And yes - it is all about wowing the adcom, isn't it? Well, that's what I intend to do!! (oh GOD I hope I can revise my writing sample to publishable on my own...)