Hi Mercadia and gre06,
I want to start by wishing you all the best for your applications. I'm in Comp Lit, so it's a bit different, but I think I can offer some useful advice. Apply to as many schools as you can afford but make sure you hand in as perfect an application as possible for each of your schools. 4 recommendations are OK, but make sure all are excellent, if you are unsure about what one of them might have written, toss it out and keep the ones you know are great. I also had a history professor write one of the
LORs because he was my thesis supervisor during my MA in American Studies, so he could say a lot about my research and writing skills. Selection of universities is very important and if you take into account that programs only admit very few students, you need to apply to a lot of schools. And indeed, safety schools do not exist and you'll see that many students will get rejected from lower-ranked universities and get accepted to higher-ranked ones. At the end of this year's round, nobody was left with a large choice of universities with funding, many were admitted to just one, some two, but very few had more admits with aid than that.
So, any questions, please post!
Ah, and don't worry too much about published papers and such, there are many other ways to distinguish yourself. Most people admitted to high-ranked Comp Lit programs had one or other international experience (exchange programs and such), but then again, languages are more important in Comp Lit than in Eng Lit. But, just to give you an idea of some other things that can be important: tutoring or teaching experience, other work experience or college newspaper and similar things, research with a professor, awards for honors thesis, etc. And, of course, things that you can still do now: outstanding gre and gre lit scores, great project proposals in
statement of purpose, great match with professors (contact some beforehand!!!), etc.
And now I'm going to watch the news about the terror plot at Heathrow! (I'm leaving in 2 weeks and flying from London to the US and a US plane, so I'm interested in the developments...)
