UChicago numbers

[lyonessrampant]

I just emailed a prof I know at UC. He said they accepted 11 out of 540+ applicants. Sigh. I don't know what any of this means in terms of the waitlist, but I don't think things look good if we haven't heard already. I'm pretty despondent right now because not only was UC my top choice but I was pretty much told by my MA thesis advisor that he would work with me and help get me in. I guess that shrinking the cohort (they used to admit 25-30) precluded that. I wish I had on paper what some of you do. Good luck at UC and congrats if you got in.

[DEClarke85]

UC was a high reach goal for me. I'm coming from a no name school in Texas, but I wouldn't give up hope yet. If they took 11, I've only seen about 3 people post they got in, so it seems less than half of the new cohort is talking about it at all (kind of weird). However, I feel that since neither of us has heard anything from them, we are probably waitlisted.

According to the Department secretary, no official mailing have left yet. She told me that they wouldn't be mailed out until March 6, and that we should definitely know our decision no later than March 16.

[lyonessrampant]

Guess we'll just keep waiting! Good luck to you!

[LOLhedgefunds]

so who here's on the waitlist? i am, and i saw someone else post something about this. would love to go there but they said they won't be able to tell me anything until after april 15. ;-(

[even man out]

I'm the other person who posted about being on the wait-list. Have you contacted them about the size of the wait-list or whether it is ranked? I haven't yet, partly out of fear that such knowledge will vanquish my already faint hopes. Anyway, good luck.

[lyonessrampant]

I'm not. As far as I understand, the people on the waitlist have been contacted. I haven't heard either way, so I'm assuming I didn't get in and am just waiting on a rejection letter. I'd do pretty much anything to go there. I'm thinking of applying again next year. Any info you might want to share would be awesome. My test scores were 700 V, 650 Q, 6 AW and 680 subject. I've been accepted to 3 conferences (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies twice and Medieval Association of the Pacific once) and presented at my state's annual education conference once. I have no publications, however. I have an MA with a 3.9 GPA and a 3.85 UGPA. I was told by my MA thesis advisor that my writing sample was strong, but who knows since he also told me he'd work with me as a Ph.D. advisor and I don't think he went to bat for me to get in. I am interested in late 16th century poetry and English late medieval saints' lives in particular but Renaissance and medieval lit in general. Any suggestions you might have for me would be appreciated. Thanks!

[hopskipjump]

Out of curiosity, what was the topic of your writing sample? You said you were interested in the lives of saints--why the lives of saints?

I have gotten emails from Mark Miller and a few other people in the department. They said that what made them like my project was that I was trying to grapple with the Middle Ages on its own terms, rather than trying to make it feel "relevant" by linking it to contemporary culture; and that I had a philosophical background, not only in the sense that I liked philosophy, but also that I was willing to delve into abstractions about time and historicity, rather than just study tropes or literary forms. I don't know if that's useful at all (I wouldn't recommend saying any of this verbatim, of course, because I substantiated all this in my writing sample, using some of Aquinas' philosophy to make my point--if you don't have a philosophical background this is all just going to look fake), but I think they are pretty big on the way Medieval thought, as a whole, is constituted, and the implications that this thought has for ethics, identity, history, etc.

Good luck. Someone who wants to go to UC as badly as you do damned well deserves to go.

[lyonessrampant]

Hi hopskipjump,

My main focus is early modern poetry. My writing sample was about the construction of identity through the development of relationships in the poetry of Edmund Spenser. I did a lot of work on voicedness of the female love object and the construction of the self in relation to the other in a sonnet sequence. I developed my interest in the saints' lives in a class with Mark Miller. I wrote a paper for him about the excess in the hagiography of the saints as it relates to sex, suffering, and spectacle. My interest in medievalism is more of a secondary concentration, so my SoP and writing sample focused more on my early modern interests and questions. I, too, have a strong background and interest in philosophy and critical theory. I mentioned that in my SoP, but I don't think I developed the overlap of my interests as well as I could have. Mark read my SoP and said he thought it was dead on, but I feel in retrospect that I needed to go deeper with my questions about construction of the self, poetry, and philosophy/theory. I think also that I should have gone with a more critical writing sample. Due to the page constraints, I focused on the close reading sections of my thesis and should maybe have done more with the earlier bit where I worked with Lacan, Terrada, and Martel more. I am very much a research-oriented writer, lots of footnotes and critical support for situating my entrance into the conversation, but maybe my own argument got subsumed by that research? Again, I really appreciate your support and info hopskipjump (and others). Good luck at UC!

[hopskipjump]

I also am in love with Spenser, and used him in my SoP. Honestly, I think you're much better read than I am--I don't even know who Terrada and Martel are, and definitely don't have an MA. I think the reason I got in (and this is based on the emails I got from them), was not so much the content of my app--it was (to paraphrase them) the way I thought about literature. My advice, then, would definitely be to try to delve deeper (that is, more philosophically) into the questions you are asking. More than asking how hagiographies reflect ideas about sex, or how spectacle informs the nature of sainthood (obviously I haven't read your stuff; I'm just throwing examples out), go for what lies behind that--what that means about ethics, and human nature, and the nature of God. You know? I really get a strong feeling that it's that sort of inquiry, that goes deeper than tropes and forms, that they're really interested in.

(And I apologize in advance if I've mischaracterized your positions--again, I'm not trying to tell you what your paper was about, but rather trying to explain what I did that, I believe, was most successful).

[lyonessrampant]

Thanks hopskipjump. I think you're right. The ultimate issue I wrestled with in that paper was what I called the fantasy of Christian unity, which I see the hagiographers, saints, and faithful involved within in late medieval society. I feel like I should have pursued that in more depth. I think maybe I get bogged down in the details of the argument. I appreciate your advice. I think you'll really love UC, especially Mark and Jay