Schools That Don't Require Subject Test

[asleepawake]

I, too, would really like to avoid taking the Lit GRE, but I'm not sure it's possible. My research interests are so far outside of the canon that spending all of the time to study for this test only to end up with a mediocre score seems counterproductive... to the say the least.

While I can see the benefit of the test for some people, I just don't believe that every literary scholar needs to be overly concerned with the traditional canon. Ideally, I'd like to attend a program that agrees with me on this. I guess I'm opposed to standardized testing in the first place, but there could at least be multiple versions of the test for those with different concentrations.

[Timshel]

I, too, would really like to avoid taking the Lit GRE, but I'm not sure it's possible. My research interests are so far outside of the canon that spending all of the time to study for this test only to end up with a mediocre score seems counterproductive... to the say the least.

While I can see the benefit of the test for some people, I just don't believe that every literary scholar needs to be overly concerned with the traditional canon. Ideally, I'd like to attend a program that agrees with me on this. I guess I'm opposed to standardized testing in the first place, but there could at least be multiple versions of the test for those with different concentrations.

I am the same way. I am interested in contemporary ethnic lit and trauma studies, so the lit test doesn't really apply to me. Also, MOST of the schools I am applying to say they don't require it, but I don't want to be at a deficit, either, if people I am up against did take it and they did well.

[runonsentence]

Thanks for the clip, truckbasket—always love me some Stephen Fry.

If further study of Fry's message is of interest to anyone, Patricia Dunn recently wrote a book on grammar rants, which I saw her talk about at this year's CCCC. It asks students to critically—and rhetorically—examine grammar rants and the assumptions behind them, in order to get them to build an awareness of what kinds of writing choices work with what audiences.