Scraggle18

Thanks for the congats. :) Yes yes, I'm definitely saying yes! I am very excited. I'm visiting the campus in April! Hurray! :)

I had some great news today! I was admitted to U of Rochester's PhD program!!! Fully funded!!! Hurray!!! Best of luck to all of you waiting to hear. Don't lose hope!! :):):)

When I call for feedback I just call the front desk. They either (1) transfer me to the right person to ask (which is awesome), who then reads me what my file says, or they (2) give me the right person's email address, and tell me to email them, or they (3) tell me to go away. The only schools that were lame and said, "oh, we don't do that. bye" were Berkeley and Michigan. I got GREAT feedback from Emory, Columbia, and Duke. I'm waiting for a bunch of people to email me back. :) The Masters programs with late deadlines that are coming up include: (these are schools that I also am okay with moving to) SUNY Cortland in upstate New York (half hour north of Ithaca), Sacramento State, Wake Forest(?), Northwestern, St. Bonaventure U (upsate New York), and University College Cork, which is in Cork, Ireland (where I studied abroad). It was tiresome - I basically just browsed Masters websites and when I found a program with a deadline that hasn't passed yet, I wrote that name down...unless it was somewhere I just refuse to go to because of location. Heh. I was not systematic at all - I'm sure there are more out there. :) Pray for me, for U of Rochester. Its my last hope, along maybe with U of Illinois. I called all my remaining schools today, and these two sound the most promising. UC Davis said that they already sent out acceptances, and now are figuring out who to put on their "pending" list. (I'm going to post this before I accidentally delete it. My keyboard has been being weird and suddenly highlighting all the text, causing me to delete everything, gahhh!)

Also, for those who (like me) have not gotten any acceptances yet and are feeling bewildered, you can try calling the schools you were rejected from and asking for feedback on your application. I did this with the first few rejections I got, and it helped to have an idea of what they thought of me - they were very positive about reapplying next year, with a fresh writing sample. That might be what I have to do! In the meantime, I do hope to get into a Masters program of some sort - there are MA programs in English with deadlines that have not passed yet. (Only a few, but hey, its better than nothing!) Hope this helps! I feel the pain too, and it definitely is a downer - but we have to get back up and keep trying. For me, it sounds like my writing sample was too specific about critiquing one single author's model, and too law article-like. Now that I reread it from a fresh perspective, I can see what they are saying. I need to make it more like literary criticism and less like a law review article, heh! Getting a Masters will help give me the background to write a more literary writing sample, I think. Chin up, everybody!

Me? No! I've seen like, two acceptance phone calls on two very different dates on the various grad results sites. It looks like thay are calling people they accept as they accept them, in a trickle - one at a time? I don't really know, though. I am still waiting to hear from Brown, UPenn, UC Davis, U of Rochester, U of Illinois, and Harvard. I am hoping and praying to get in to U of Rochester! Oh, and with Columbia - remember that you can now apply to their Masters in English for no extra fee. The due date for that is April 15th. :)

I applied to 14 schools, and have been rejected by 6 of them. I am still waiting to hear from the other 8 schools. Insanity! Angst! Despair! I am hoping and praying for Davis, Illiniois, and Rochester!! I'd be over the moon with joy, if I got into any of them. I'm especially hoping for Rochester, because its close to my parents. Best of luck to all of us! *hugs*

That website - The Grad Cafe - is poison. What I mean is, I looked at their "results" page, where people post (anonymously) the date they received notice, what it said (accept/reject/waitlist), what school, what program, etc. Many of the schools I applied to have sent out acceptance emails....and I haven't heard from them....so I got completely freaked out, assuming I have been rejected by all of those schools. I panicked and emailed my friends who have gone through this process, asking about that website and whether it freaked them out too. So, they didn't look at the site, and they advise against consulting such sites because they will make us CRAZY. I agree...I am trying very hard not to look. My friend Karen told me that sometimes they send acceptance letters out first to those that applied early, and are still working on the more recent (closer-to-the-deadline people like me) applications/acceptances. That made me feel better. Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts. :) I think during this tough time of waiting, we all need to stay busy and do activities outside as much as possible. (away from the computer.) This is very hard for me to do, because I am so attached to my computer. But breaking away and reading outside, going for long walks, riding bikes, going skiing, etc is helping me stay calm and enjoy life. I hope this helps!! :):):) *hugs everyone*

I haven't heard anything yet!! But I'm definitely starting to obsess too. I've been working on FAFSA - we have to figure out our 2006 tax stuff to fill out FAFSA, so I'm thinking about that as busy work to do in the meantime, to keep me from dwelling on what schools might accept me, etc. :):):) My friend Peter went through this process last year (applied to PhD English programs) and said he didn't hear anything until *late* March. He didn't apply to as many schools as me, but still - LATE March?? Gahh. I swear most of the schools said mid-March...didn't they?? *succumbs to obsessing*

Thanks! Yes, I applied to Davis! I know Professors Alessa Johns and Joanne Feit Diehl. There are so many Davis profs that share my interests in literature and women's rights, and literature and progressive legal movements. :) Who was your favorite professor?

Oh, and dmdonig -- some schools don't require the GRE Lit! Duke, Columbia, and Emory are schools that don't....did you apply there?

Who knows what will happen to us. My 700 on the verbal turned out to be in the 97th percentile. That is the only good score I have to offer! My analytical writing score was 5.5, but that was only 87th percentile...and my GRE Lit and math scores were abysmal. We will just have to see what happens. I really hope that I get admitted somewhere. I applied to 14 schools. The schools are: Duke, Cornell, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, U of Michigan, U of Illinois, U of Pennsylvania, Emory, Brown, Columbia, U of Rochester, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. I really have no idea how these schools will react to my application. It is very strong, except for the GRE Lit score and the weird, patchy GRE general score of 97th percentile in verbal and 28th percentile in math. (that was a long story, lets just say I didn't answer most of the math questions...) It would be extremely petty for schools like Harvard to winnow me out immediately just because of my patchy GRE scores, but its possible that they will. Or, they could use it as a tie-breaker and eliminate me further along at the end of their comparing and choosing. I'm trying not to get my hopes up. *covers face* I just hope one of my alma maters allows me through their doors.... I wish someone who went through this process already could pop in and tell us all that its going to be okay in the end!

I do feel a bit better, knowing I'm not the only one out there that was disappointed. It does seem like schools don't obsess over this score, thankfully! I guess we will find out by where we get in... I took the regular GRE finally, and freaked out and almost cancelled my score. I begrudgingly kept it, and was so surprised when I got a 700 on the verbal! It felt like every question was horrid...I'm just thankful that I have a decent regular GRE score, to make up for feeling bad about the GRE Lit. I also don't really know what my GPA is - technically I have a 3.6 at my BA granting university, Duke -- but I took courses from other places (a semester of study abroad English courses, and others too) whose grades didn't get factored into the Duke GPA...they were just "TR" on my transcript. So, the transcripts from those other schools show that I got many A's that aren't factored into my Duke GPA. So, what do schools want to know, when they ask for cumulative undergraduate GPA? One that includes the letter grades from ALL schools? I just filled out Berkeley's application on the 11th, and it was fairly maddening. (I'm doing them all at the last minute because I'm NUTS and JUST finished my final, final, final draft of my writing sample) I hope all of our hard work actually pays off, and we get into some schools! *hopes intently*

Congrats on your score, Bookgov! Thats really good! I did horribly. I was in the 60's, percentile-wise, and not above 600. (though almost) For me, I just hope that schools pay more attention to the fact that I've been in law school for 3 years and working in the field of law for 1 year...so, my head was out of literature for a long time. I studied, though!! And I usually do well on these tests!!! Humph. I was pretty disappointed. :( I would have taken it again if I had known my score with enough time to schedule the December exam. I did talk to a friend at Emory who told me that people at Emory had scores similar to mine, and they won't pay *that* much attention to a lower score, if the rest of the application is fabulous. (which I *hope* they think mine is!! Hope, hope, hope!!) The other thing to remember is that some schools do not require the subject test -- Duke, Columbia, etc. That makes me feel better about the whole thing. :)

Oh wow, thanks so much for telling us!!! :):):)

Yikes! I would definitely call ETS. Did they actually return your money? If they did not actually give you any money back, I would assume you're still on for December, and the weird email was a mistake. If they did return your money, I'd be more worried...either way, definitely call ETS and ask. Did you register online? Best of luck with everything!!