Dear Cridamour,
Congratulations on your admission at Brown! I would also like to thank you very much to help us with valuable information , advice and encouragement.
I also applied to a number of American and Canadian universities for PhD program last year but got rejected from most of them. Some of them told me to reapply. So I am thinking of retaking the GREs. The university authorities were generous to let me know why I did not get admission through personal e-mail. Since they do not mention the reasons of rejection in their formal letters I wrote to them to find out the reasons. They usually look into the students' undergraduate result, an excellent
statement of purpose and theoretical background. My interest areas are Postcolonial Literature, Diaspora Literature and Feminism.
It seems the English Departments in the West are becoming more and more theoretical based. I got rejected in most cases because they thought I did not have much theoretical orientation. Another reason for rejection was my undergraduate result!
It seems that the Western educational institutes do not have much knowledge about the system of South Asian grading system. According to my university I rank in the top 5% ( upper second class) which they presumed to be a very low score. No one got a first class in years! Where as other departments get first classes in abundance. It is difficult for them to understand why English students do not get first classes. I tried to make them understand through my application that I am a serious academic person but in vain. I felt they are sometimes over critical of Asian applicants although many of us end up doing quite well when the chance is availed! Maybe it is difficult for them after all to understand our OLD SYSTEM.
I was wondering if you would kindly send me your private e-mail address so that you could could give me some helpful advise on my
statement of purpose and make it better. I am a 29 year old, female lecturer teaching in some university in Asia for the last couple of years and badly needs to have a PhD to get promotion. What else is there to do but keep on trying even when I know there is very little chance of getting admission and not to mention the huge amount of money spent for the admission procedure?
Good luck with your academic life!
--Grass-is-singing