How Exactly Is Your Application Reviewed?

[Thersites]

Hello. Since submitting applications I've been spending way too much time here, so I figured I would give in and just make an account so I could voice all of my anxieties anonymously to other anxious individuals! 

So I know that apps are in and there is nothing left to do but wait... But I am freaking out and need to know more about the process (a live webcam of the committees reviewing my applications would be perfect).

What is the first thing a member on the committee will look at? What's the second thing? What kind of things disqualify you from consideration? I presume that there are things professors look for to disqualify a candidate to avoid reading SoP and writing sample, so what are these things (if I am correct to presume, that is). The real reason I am concerned is that my SoP isn't terribly strong. I do not think it is weak; my intended focus is relatively clear, I refer to several faculty members and their work and how that would be related to my own work, it is concisely written with only one (short and relevant anecdote), etc. Nevertheless, I know it is not the most focused SoP, I have several areas of interest- my main interest being the phantomization of culture and the pathos of distance- spanning the premodern, modern, and postmodern periods. I worry that I should have narrowed my focus. That being said, I am extremely confident in my writing sample and my LoRs. Will the committee even read these things? How thoroughly do they typically read a writing sample? Will they get past my average SoP? I only applied to four universities- UPenn, UDelaware, Rutgers, and Princeton.

Thanks!

 

[Ramus]

1 hour ago, Thersites said:

my main interest being the phantomization of culture and the pathos of distance- spanning the premodern, modern, and postmodern periods

wut

[Ramus]

Kidding aside, no one can really provide widely applicable answers to your questions, even if they have experience serving on an admissions committee. Different programs review application materials differently. Each will have its own "disqualifiers," each will dedicate different amounts of time to different written materials, etc. In general, though, I wouldn't assume all that much time is dedicated to reading any given piece of your application. Keep in mind that there are usually hundreds of applications for a committee to review and the amount of time dedicated to reading application materials closely is time lost on the committee members' own work. 

Regarding your SOP: yes, you should have narrowed the scope of your declared interest. As you'll see reported elsewhere on this forum, and as you may know from experience, English departments are almost exclusively organized around literary periods (that's partly why so few people do genuinely transhistorical work). If admissions committees can't quickly "label" you, that puts you at a disadvantage. 

[Thersites]

Ah I see. I have a feeling I will not be receiving any offers this time around, but I'll have to wait and see- hopefully I can be quickly labelled!

 

44 minutes ago, Ramus said:

wut

I'm referring to Nietzsche's pathos of distance (or Rabate's application of Nietzsche's pathos of distance in modern lit), and by phantomization, I guess I am referring to the spectral experiences or feelings of moderns, specifically in the wake of Cartesian philosophy; I draw a lot from the phenomenology of Husserl, Hegal, and Bradley. Directly I guess I'm using the terminology of Geoffrey Hartman. Idk, it's all a lot to explain I guess and I think/hope I did it effectively in the SoP. Now I'm beginning to doubt my SoP entirely... Oh well!

Edited January 16, 2017 by Thersites

[Thersites]

But thank you for answering the question. It was my first time around and I worked on the SoPs for about two months, putting far more effort and time into the writing sample. Based on what I've read and what you've just told me, I should have adjusted that ratio 

[tvethiopia]

19 minutes ago, Thersites said:

Ah I see. I have a feeling I will not be receiving any offers this time around, but I'll have to wait and see- hopefully I can be quickly labelled!

 

you never know! even if you didn't describe an especially narrow area of focus, this is one of the reasons you talk about POI; if the people you indicate have interest in your application, that can be enough for them to label/claim you. it really is impossible to predict what any particular committee will be looking for in any particular application cycle, so don't count yourself out yet!

[Warelin]

42 minutes ago, tvethiopia said:

you never know! even if you didn't describe an especially narrow area of focus, this is one of the reasons you talk about POI; if the people you indicate have interest in your application, that can be enough for them to label/claim you. it really is impossible to predict what any particular committee will be looking for in any particular application cycle, so don't count yourself out yet!

On a side note: There are some programs that might not want you to list any POIs. They figure that if fit is there, you'll find a spot within the program. There's also the issue of naming POI's who might be retiring/leaving/not taking on any grad students.

On a different note: What may get you rejected this year could get you rejected next year or it could get you accepted since different people on the committee tend to have different preferences. Also, a few members on the committee might be different year to year so they may or may not have a bigger interest in your work.

[Thersites]

Do universities typically disclose who is on the admissions committee? I never came across such information while researching faculties.

[Dr. Old Bill]

I'm not adding much to @Ramus' excellent post, but I do think that a transhistorical approach isn't the way to go on an SOP. I say this from experience: last time around, my stated intention on my SOP was to study the evolution of sonnet form, grounded in the early modern era, but by no means limited to it. As I recall, I even made some vague claim about anticipating where it might go in the future. Needless to say, I had very little success in that cycle, even though I'm ultimately happy with how things turned out. I realized after the fact that despite the "trendy" appearance of transhistoricism, transatlanticism, interdisciplinary studies etc., adcoms are generally (as Ramus states) stratified by eras, and applicants need to be categorized in such a way.

One huge piece of advice I received from a former adcom member is that the goal in an SOP is to get admitted. The research goals stated in your SOP are in no way binding. In other words, while you should never be disingenuous in any of your application materials, you can also be a bit strategic in how you frame the picture of who you are as a scholar. In the OP's case, I imagine you could discuss the "phantomization of culture and the pathos of distance" without breathing a word of transhistorical interests. Mentioning one or two modernist works that are emblematic of your research interests can position you as a modernist, and you can then mention a few modernist POIs who could support those interests. If you get in, you can start working with postmodernists, premodernists, or pretty much anyone else who might help further your research. Or you can shift gears entirely if some other line of research strikes your fancy.

Personally, I have every intention of doing the things I mentioned in my SOP this time around, but I was also careful to craft it in a way that makes it both specific to a period and genre, but broad in potential. Frankly it was only the experience of going through the process a couple of years ago, combined with getting some excellent feedback on assorted drafts of my SOP this cycle that made it as strong as I think (hope?) it is.

 

[erosanddust]

2 hours ago, Ramus said:

Kidding aside, no one can really provide widely applicable answers to your questions, even if they have experience serving on an admissions committee. Different programs review application materials differently. Each will have its own "disqualifiers," each will dedicate different amounts of time to different written materials, etc.

As Ramus says, each program (and each individual committee) will have different processes and priorities. That said, I found OSU's "How we determine who gets offers of admission" section helpful (at the bottom of the linked page). It is, of course, one perspective on one program's process, but I was glad for the move toward transparency and it gave me a general sense of how applications are reviewed by some programs.

[Axil]

16 minutes ago, erosanddust said:

As Ramus says, each program (and each individual committee) will have different processes and priorities. That said, I found OSU's "How we determine who gets offers of admission" section helpful (at the bottom of the linked page). It is, of course, one perspective on one program's process, but I was glad for the move toward transparency and it gave me a general sense of how applications are reviewed by some programs.

Wow that was really helpful and it's a pity I never encountered this document before, though it appears that I might have fulfilled the checklist accidentally.  @Thersites Don't lose heart; it appears that you have located an area in English studies even if not a historical period. Perhaps such a categorization would be enough. 

[Warelin]

45 minutes ago, Thersites said:

Do universities typically disclose who is on the admissions committee? I never came across such information while researching faculties.

I don't think there is a single university that would release said information. Doing so could taint an admission committee's decision on certain applicants. Unlike the sciences, English is one of the few programs that don't require applicants e-mail prior to submitting an application.

[claritus]

13 minutes ago, Warelin said:

I don't think there is a single university that would release said information. Doing so could taint an admission committee's decision on certain applicants. Unlike the sciences, English is one of the few programs that don't require applicants e-mail prior to submitting an application.

Actually NYU has it publicly available on their website, right here: http://english.fas.nyu.edu/page/leaves.committees#phdadmissions. It's not a common thing to do, by any means, but I don't think it could taint the process like you suggest. 

[Dr. Old Bill]

17 minutes ago, claritus said:

Actually NYU has it publicly available on their website, right here: http://english.fas.nyu.edu/page/leaves.committees#phdadmissions. It's not a common thing to do, by any means, but I don't think it could taint the process like you suggest. 

That's fascinating. It obviously works for NYU, since they're a fantastic program, but I can't help but wonder how many more emails admissions committee members there receive, not to mention how many more SOPs with adcom members listed as POIs... It's funny, because from an applicant perspective, transparency seems like the ideal...but realistically speaking, I think the typical hermetic nature of the process is probably better in the long run.

[Warelin]

14 minutes ago, claritus said:

Actually NYU has it publicly available on their website, right here: http://english.fas.nyu.edu/page/leaves.committees#phdadmissions. It's not a common thing to do, by any means, but I don't think it could taint the process like you suggest. 

NYU is indeed a rare exception and a fairly large program. NYU also has a very systematic way of handling e-mails.

Don't get me wrong but everyone is set to have their own biases built in. Given the time that the committee puts into this committee as well as other committees they serve, the more e-mails they receive from prospective take away time from something else they could be doing. If I remember correctly, 2/3rds of e-mails received by professors at my current university are related to questions found on the website; this annoys them. They answer them regardless but I'm not sure if it does any favors to the applicants. I think most schools are against making their committees public because it would result in a lot more e-mails from certain professors and as @Wyatt's Terps mentioned would most likely result in certain people getting a lot more mentions in their SOP. This could make certain fields oversaturated while being less saturated in a different field.

Part of the reason that some schools don't allow for visits prior to acceptances is because they don't have the resources to provide you with what the program's culture is like and they want to remain neutral on the people admitted. They don't want visits to the department to impact any decisions.  There are other schools that encourage visits but say that visiting will not impact decisions or that department visits aren't possible due to how busy faculty may be. Committees change on a yearly basis for the most part because it allows different applicants with different life experiences to be represented.

Some programs do prefer their own applicants whereas others like Stanford (I think) disqualifies you from applying if you have a BA from them.

[claritus]

I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I also don't think any of would lead to a "tainted" process. The professors on these committees are intelligent enough to be able to sort through genuine, informed interest and applications tailored to flatter committee members. And it's a similar situation when it comes to annoying emails; if you've sent enough of those to faculty members to be known as someone who sends annoying emails, you've dug your own grave. People do this with faculty members and Graduate Directors as is, whether the Admissions Committee is made public or not. 

[Bumblebea]

6 hours ago, Thersites said:

Ah I see. I have a feeling I will not be receiving any offers this time around, but I'll have to wait and see- hopefully I can be quickly labelled!

 

I'm referring to Nietzsche's pathos of distance (or Rabate's application of Nietzsche's pathos of distance in modern lit), and by phantomization, I guess I am referring to the spectral experiences or feelings of moderns, specifically in the wake of Cartesian philosophy; I draw a lot from the phenomenology of Husserl, Hegal, and Bradley. Directly I guess I'm using the terminology of Geoffrey Hartman. Idk, it's all a lot to explain I guess and I think/hope I did it effectively in the SoP. Now I'm beginning to doubt my SoP entirely... Oh well!

I don't think that failing to specify a time period in your SOP will doom you outright (though it's hard to say without seeing your writing) as long as you were specific in your interests and you connected those interests to your writing sample. If anything, the committee will just go by the time period of your writing sample and consign you to that area. The one thing that would cause a great deal of consternation is if your writing sample and SOP didn't match up at all, i.e. your SOP is about Renaissance drama and your writing sample is about Uncle Tom's Cabin.

I mean--to use myself as an example: My writing sample was about a 19th/20th-century author but my SOP talked all about how much I loved the eighteenth century. So I think I ended up connecting the two things thematically (luckily they were on the same side of the Atlantic) and making a big deal about the transhistorical construction of disability, criminality, and masculinity as they manifested in colonial geography. LOL. (Now I work in book history, by the way.) So anyway, I got into a fairly decent program, but when I came to visit I noticed that they didn't send me into to talk to any 18th-century people--I was hooked up with a 19th-century prof, a postcolonial prof, and a guy doing global south stuff. When I started at the program, they assigned me an advisor who was an Africanist. By the end of the year I'd switched over to a suitable advisor who did 18th/19th century, and it was a match made in heaven. 

So anyway, my point is that the way I got into a program wasn't pretty. The program apparently thought my interests were postcolonial in nature ... or maybe even transnational ... and perhaps having to do with gender/disability studies ... and I ended up chucking all those things. But it really didn't matter--what mattered was that I got in. And that was just a lucky break (since a lot of other programs said no). 

Edited January 17, 2017 by Bumblebea

[becca11773]

On 1/16/2017 at 4:45 PM, Warelin said:

On a side note: There are some programs that might not want you to list any POIs. They figure that if fit is there, you'll find a spot within the program. There's also the issue of naming POI's who might be retiring/leaving/not taking on any grad students.

On a different note: What may get you rejected this year could get you rejected next year or it could get you accepted since different people on the committee tend to have different preferences. Also, a few members on the committee might be different year to year so they may or may not have a bigger interest in your work.

This is reassuring to me, because I was afraid I may have destroyed my chances by not mentioning professors by name- My statement of purpose is very clear about the faculty groups I want to study with at each school, and I was careful to do my research to be sure I was applying to school with strong departments in these areas: feminist theory and contemporary literature, but I don't mention specific professors. I do mention research I've already done in these specific fields and authors I've been studying.  Hoping that this is enough to get me in somewhere, lol.

[vitabrevis]

On 1/16/2017 at 6:30 PM, Warelin said:

 NYU also has a very systematic way of handling e-mails.

 

Could you elaborate on this point? Fascinating post, would love to hear more.