French PhD 2021

[FrenchStudent0303]

9 minutes ago, Sjett said:

Hi FrenchStudent0303!

I had an interview with the DGS and the head last Tuesday.

I wish you all the best in you grad school applications!

Heyo thanks for such a quick response and the info. Wishing you the best too!

[Castor]

On 2/4/2021 at 5:04 PM, Tyger said:

Hi everyone,

Anybody waiting for Princeton virtual week? ?

I am! Is Princeton your first choice? @Sjett @Tyger

[ronronpatachon]

On 2/4/2021 at 9:53 PM, Sjett said:

Hi FrenchStudent0303!

I had an interview with the DGS and the head last Tuesday.

I wish you all the best in you grad school applications!

Hello ! This might sound super dumb but what is a DGS ? (I am French and completely lost with acronyms English acronyms)... Since I applied to NYU too, I am interested in knowing what this means ! 

 

Best of luck to you all 

[ronronpatachon]

Hello everyone, I hope you are doing well and not stressing too much about you applications. We can do it !

I have applied for a PhD (or Dphil) in French starting in Fall 2021 with : Oxford, Stanford, NYU, UVA and University of Wisconsin. I have been accepted at Oxford (but if I do not have a scholarship I will not  be able to go there...). I had an email from UVA inviting me to their Open House to meet with the Faculty and the Graduate students. Will I see some of you there ? I am so unfamiliar with the concept of Open Houses ! 

 

Best of luck dear francophiles 

[senorbrightside]

2 minutes ago, oriane said:

Hello ! This might sound super dumb but what is a DGS ? (I am French and completely lost with acronyms English acronyms)... Since I applied to NYU too, I am interested in knowing what this means ! 

 

Best of luck to you all 

Not dumb at all! Academia has a ton of acronyms that even native speakers have problems with. 

DGS: Director of Graduate Studies.

Bonne chance à tous from a Spanish Ph.D applicant lurking in the French thread  

[brewing]

Is anyone else interviewing at Stanford? I got an email asking me to fill out available times, but have not heard back yet (as you might be able to tell, I am very nervous/anxious about it)

[sadboi]

7 hours ago, brewing said:

Is anyone else interviewing at Stanford? I got an email asking me to fill out available times, but have not heard back yet (as you might be able to tell, I am very nervous/anxious about it)

Hiya, I'm a finalist for the same department (albeit in Italian). I submitted my preferences within 10 minutes of receiving the email and have yet to hear anything. I have however received other communications. Feel free to DM me if you wanna get to know each other/do some group prepping for the panel interview : ) 

[ronronpatachon]

30 minutes ago, sadboi said:

Hiya, I'm a finalist for the same department (albeit in Italian). I submitted my preferences within 10 minutes of receiving the email and have yet to hear anything. I have however received other communications. Feel free to DM me if you wanna get to know each other/do some group prepping for the panel interview : ) 

Congratulations to both of you and best of luck ! Do you think that since I have not heard from Stanford, I should consider my application rejected? Maybe there were too many applicants and they did not send rejection letters to everyone ?

[sadboi]

14 minutes ago, ronronpatachon said:

Congratulations to both of you and best of luck ! Do you think that since I have not heard from Stanford, I should consider my application rejected? Maybe there were too many applicants and they did not send rejection letters to everyone ?

Hi unless there are differing selection timelines between the French/Italian faculty members within the same department I'm afraid that this is likely the case.. perhaps 'brewing' can confirm on the French side but the email from DLCL I received indicated that they had already chosen finalists. 

Edited February 9, 2021 by sadboi

[ronronpatachon]

7 minutes ago, sadboi said:

Hi unless there is some autonomy in selection between the French/Italian faculty members within the same department I'm afraid that this is likely the case.. perhaps 'brewing' can confirm on the French side but the email from DLCL I received indicated that they had already chosen finalists. 

Oh well. That makes me really sad. But I am happy for you two. Good luck ! 

[firefly22]

On 1/27/2021 at 3:04 PM, gouttedesoleil said:

Thank you, it definitely is! Was really excited to get the letter yesterday! What about you?

Hi! I'm from a different concentration language but I wanted to ask if that letter from Duke Romance Studies (I received it too) means that we are accepted or not. Does someone know about that? I don't know if I can assume an acceptance or not! Thank you in advance for the response and good luck to everyone!

[brewing]

21 hours ago, ronronpatachon said:

Maybe there were too many applicants and they did not send rejection letters to everyone ?

It's possible they're holding you in reserve in case none of the "finalists" work out?

Based on past data, I believe they are only taking one person in French, and the way they choose is very mysterious to me. I was very surprised to get an interview. I think the problem is they need a plurality vote from the faculty, but their research areas are so disparate—how do you convince the faculty who are not in your area?

[sadboi]

18 minutes ago, brewing said:

It's possible they're holding you in reserve in case none of the "finalists" work out?

Based on past data, I believe they are only taking one person in French, and the way they choose is very mysterious to me. I was very surprised to get an interview. I think the problem is they need a plurality vote from the faculty, but their research areas are so disparate—how do you convince the faculty who are not in your area?

It seems from the current list of students that the department isn't in the practice of reaching out in the case of finalists deciding not to attend/who are rejected at a later date. As you can note, there are students in different stages of the program; some years saw no admissions at all whereas others had two admits. 

What I think is that they likely extend their finalist offers and decisions are final irrespective of yield. 

I've been contacted by French faculty as well, which makes me wonder whether or not the plurality vote has to be obtained from all French AND Italian faculty, or just your core concentration faculty members. 

[gouttedesoleil]

12 hours ago, firefly22 said:

Hi! I'm from a different concentration language but I wanted to ask if that letter from Duke Romance Studies (I received it too) means that we are accepted or not. Does someone know about that? I don't know if I can assume an acceptance or not! Thank you in advance for the response and good luck to everyone!

Hey firefly22!

I'm erring on the side of caution, especially given how fraught this whole process seems to be this year due to Covid-related budget issues. I assume that the folks who received letters from Duke Romance Studies are finalists and the virtual visit next week is an opportunity for the department to get a sense of how committed prospective students might be to the department before extending an offer and providing funding information. This is my first cycle, though, so I'm just going on intuition - happy to defer to someone with more knowledge!

[Tyger]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:35 AM, Castor said:

I am! Is Princeton your first choice? @Sjett @Tyger

Yes, Princeton is my first choice. What about you? Are you following the events for the Prospective Students at Princeton right now?

Regarding Harvard : Yes, all departments (EDIT: Sections, not departments) (Spanish, Italian, French) decide altogether which students are admitted. They have a common policy/budget/what-have-you so they must select students among the three sections.

I have been waitlisted for Harvard, so... I just have to wait for now.

Edited February 10, 2021 by Tyger
Correcting Departments --> Sections

[Proustianperambulant]

I’m glad to see so many people are getting offers in such a bad year! I was accepted to Berkeley, I’m in the long interview process with Stanford, and was offered an interview at Yale but declined. I specialize in 19th-20th C lit, especially Proust studies, with a philosophy/queer theory bent. 

I’m curious what other posters think of Stanford? I’m leaning towards Cal for a few reasons, but two big ones are the size of Stanford’s department (seems like there are very few French students and a rather small faculty compared to Cal) and lack of info on job placement. Does anyone have any thoughts (or questions about my own experience)?

[Proustianperambulant]

Haha, very bold, I know. I did have my reasons (one of which being that I already live in San Francisco and wouldn't have to move across the country, another being the presence of active Proust scholars at both CA schools). Berkeley has been my dream program for years, so I'm glad that people seem generally enthusiastic about it. I'm hoping to work with Michael Lucey and Damon Young specifically, two scholars I admire greatly. 

[EmailMeMaybe]

Does anyone know why some of these departments do not even send out a 'No' response? Duke for example... Clearly from this forum, some have gotten responses already, therefore clearly I am not part of that pool. They are not the only school to send zero communication. I think for $75 to $100 dollars in the application fee, the least they could do is go into the portal and click on "rejected" or "not accepted". 

 

[ronronpatachon]

14 hours ago, EmailMeMaybe said:

Does anyone know why some of these departments do not even send out a 'No' response? Duke for example... Clearly from this forum, some have gotten responses already, therefore clearly I am not part of that pool. They are not the only school to send zero communication. I think for $75 to $100 dollars in the application fee, the least they could do is go into the portal and click on "rejected" or "not accepted". 

 

I agree with you and understand the bitterness, it's the same for me with NYU and Stanford. I think the reason why universities do that is in case the candidates they have chosen refuse their offer (so that they won't fall short of potential candidates to interview). I suppose you will have an answer, but only when, for instance for Duke, they have chosen their final candidate and this candidate has confirmed their offer... 

[brewing]

I also cannot believe that these interviews seem to be extremely short. The Stanford panel interview seems to be 20 minutes. 

Does anyone have advice on how to structure the interview, and influence the topics (because clearly we cannot be comprehensive in this amount of time)?

[Liquirizia]

1 hour ago, brewing said:

I also cannot believe that these interviews seem to be extremely short. The Stanford panel interview seems to be 20 minutes. 

Does anyone have advice on how to structure the interview, and influence the topics (because clearly we cannot be comprehensive in this amount of time)?

I'm not a total expert, but I would say:

Keeping your answers as brief as possible always allows more time and is reasonable considering how brief the interview is. Don't ramble the time away. 

In your answers, you can leave things open ended to provoke a question on their end for you to talk about what you left open ended. Lead them into the topics you want to discuss or highlight. 

They have an agenda of questions to get through, which you can't control. They usually leave 5 minutes at the end for questions which isn't much. So when you answer their questions, you might bring up something in your answer that could spark them to think of something to tell you that you would have wanted to ask as a question otherwise. 

Being prepared as much as possible beforehand - polishing answers to prevent yourself from rambling. Also, preparing all the questions you want to know from them so they're clear in your mind and written down for you to reference.

I hope this all makes sense. Again, these are my ideas based on my experiences with these 20 to 30 minute interviews.

*edit - I also, have written down every question asked from all my interviews - which helped me prepare for the subsequent interviews.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Liquirizia

[philocajun]

howdy yall - happy mardi gras. been a lurker. heard back yes from emory today in french with a $ amt. still waiting on final details from berkely, uva, and yes/no from princeton. 

[2021]

1 hour ago, philocajun said:

howdy yall - happy mardi gras. been a lurker. heard back yes from emory today in french with a $ amt. still waiting on final details from berkely, uva, and yes/no from princeton. 

Congratulations! That is so impressive. 

[lalali]

Hello everyone. I am new to this forum. This journey is so hard on the nerves: congratulations to all, it takes courage to do this. 

I applied to NYU and CUNY for the French PhD, had interviews with both, but I am now in this very unpleasant waiting period. Does anyone have news? Thanks.  

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by lalali

[LOiseauRouge]

Hi guys, I'm a second year in NYU's French Lit program. Saw my FB grad groups going crazy waiting for results and thought I'd drop in here! Hope this admissions season is treating you as well as admissions season can!