cridamour

Hi everybody!!! I haven't been around much, but I'm on Spring Break now (which basically means I have to do the work I couldn't get 'round to while I had classes...) :) I just wanted to congratulate the WLTers who are getting showered with fabulous admits this year and wish them all the best deciding where to go!!! Well done!!! :tup:

Was browsing TM after a very long time and decided to look how you all were doing... I'm happy to read your post! Congratulations on some great admits!!! :tup: And good luck in grad school! :grad:

Happy Birthday Kron!!!! :tup: Ish, I can't believe you've already had some snow! I'm not looking forward to it... It's already getting really cold here and I know the winter will be long, so, the later it starts, the better. I prefer the Fall. ;) I guess you don't get any snow in India, so enjoy it while it still excites you, you'll probably come to hate it later on when you're late for class and you can't run because the street it snowed under... Haha, sorry for my apparent pessimism. :D I'm waiting for my warm bedding to be delivered. I hope all of you are doing fine and studying/applying hard and that you've had time for a little Halloween fun here and there. (I'm still recovering from my pre-Halloween fun of last weekend...) :blush: Take care and be happy WLTers, wherever you are!!!! :tup:

Hi all! I came here and actually noticed a message alerting me that I haven't posted here in a long time and encouraging me to do so... Who am I to refuse such an honorable request? :D I want to thank everyone for the birthday wishes here and on orkut. It's nice to know you were thinking of me. :) I hope everyone is doing fine, whatever they are doing! I've been extremely busy here, reading, writing, presenting, etc. for my classes, but I'm really starting to feel at home. It's a lot of hard work, but I'm learning a lot and I like it. Take care everyone and post how and what you're doing these days! TM for ever! Cri :tup:

Finally, there she is! :D Glad to hear you are being challenged at Duke and living up to the challenge! :tup: My classes haven't started yet (they'll start in two days) but I went to get my books a short while ago and it looks like serious stuff! (I've already started reading, you know, I can't wait for classes to start!) And Brown is great, my flatmate is really nice and she's been a great help in showing me around for loads of practical stuff, on top of that, she's in the same department, but she'll graduate in December, so she knows everything! ;) There's three of us starting this year. I've only met one the others and she's very nice, so I'm all set to start a new phase in my life here. Only downside: the weather has been a bit more rainy than usual for this time of year. Best of luck at Duke and stay in touch! :)

Good luck to both of you! Let's hope some of Karthik's diligence will brush off on you! ;) I've also started reading a bit (even though classes haven't started yet...but, you know, I like to be prepared). We had orientation day yesterday and tonight we're having a department dinner. So, I'm having a good time, even though it's raining like crazy here!!!

Hi guys and girls! I hope all of you are doing fine! I have an orientation day today and classes start next Tuesday, so it felt like time to post here before it gets really busy. I got my books last week and I'll have really read a lot, but that's what I'm here for, right?! Anyhow, let us know how you're all doing, what you're up to, when your classes start, etc. Greetings from Rhode Island! Cri :)

Hi Aarushi! I'm in Providence and I brought your chocolates! :) I might be going to NH this weekend but I'm not sure yet. Tell me when and where we can meet up for the chocolate delivery! ;)

Hi there! The tiers are actually divisions that are not linked to your personal situation but that people use in general to talk about universities. It's like talking about ranking with the only difference that a tier is never clearly defined. Anyhow, it is wise to apply to universities across the board in terms of ranking. Depending on what you want, you need to make sure you only apply to schools you are willing to attend, so don't apply too low, unless you would still want to attend that school. What I did was to go through all schools for my program in the top 60, browse through their programs, eliminate the ones I didn't want to attend based on location (in my case, I didn't want to be in LA or NY for housing prices and in general because I prefer smaller cities). Since I'm in comp lit and Italian is one of my main lits, I excluded every university that didn't have a full program in Italian (hence not enough courses for me to choose from). So, that way, I went along and eliminated. It's also good to search for information on funding if you need it. E.g. some universities don't fund a large part of their students while others only admit the number of students they can fund. I was then left with a list of about 30 schools and had decided to apply to roughly 15. (my professors told me: "As many as you can afford" and I believe they were right) I then selected based on a more thorough review of the programs and faculty and made sure I had enough universities of the rankings I was willing to go for. I had about 4 Ivies, 4 big ten, and concerning ranking: about 6 ranked in top 10, 3 in top 20, 5 between 25 and 40 and then 2 in the top 60. Chosing is for many a bit of a guess, unless you have a BA from an Ivy League or other fabulous university with a super-gpa and super-gre and a super honors thesis etc., which was not my case. The best thing you can do is talk with your undergrad professors and ask them which kind of universities you would make a chance. (Beware though, they will usually be a bit more optimistic about your chances and might sometimes exaggerate them...) You can also ask them for suggestions of universities with faculty strong in your area of interest. If your recommenders know someone in the program you're applying to, you'll at least get some extra attention. You can also apply to the universities your recommenders attended for their PhD, unless they left a bad impression, if their program suits you. Good luck! :tup:

Hi Aarushi!!! How are you?

My main focus is psychoanalysis, mostly linked to limit events, such as the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and 9/11. Apart from limit events, I'm also interested in typically female maladies and urban studies. I haven't quite decided upon anything definite yet as I still need to take two years of courses anyhow and I will probably change my mind. But it will all be within the fields I mentioned. So yes, very theoretical, but all of that is up to you. In the first semester, I am taking 3 theory courses and 1 literature course, but I could've done it the other way around as well. At least at Brown (in comp lit), I've seen people working on something very theoretical and others nearly entirely focusing on primary sources, and I presume the same is true for Eng Lit, a dissertation topic can be very theoretical, or not at all and a lot of theses in Comp Lit could be theses in other departments (such as Eng Lit or MCM/film studies). The reason I chose Comp Lit is because I also wanted to continue to work on Italian Lit and film. It's very much of a choice considering all factors, it's not that clear-cut as some of the projects I've been thinking about could easily be done in an Eng dept, film studies, Italian studies, Romance languages, or American Studies dept. Luckily for me, all of them fit in nicely within Comp Lit. :)

Hi Karthik and Kabir in Syracuse!!!!!! :tup: Great to see both of you have already arrived. I still have trouble believing I'm really going to the US next week to study there! So, will you be taking classes together? And when are the classes starting? Tell us about live in Syracuse. Will either of you be playing sports in your leisure time? Or won't you have any free time? Enjoy yourselves before classes start! :) I just want to warn Karthik not to get too distracted from his work because we all know Kabir's leisure habits and they mostly take place during classes! :devil: Only joking, but still... :D

It was a short e-mail (two paragraphs) just telling them I was applying (or had applied, I only wrote in December or so) to this program and their work in particular had caught my attention. (naming particular things, such as, books/articles you read and they wrote, classes they are teaching and you are particularly interested in.) You then also want to include how this links to your interest and to your proposed dissertation project as you have mentioned or will mention it in your SOP. It can also be a genuine question to confirm or ask whether your proposed project would be something they would be interested in supervising and whether it falls within their field of expertise. (All of this depends on the particular situation) So you add your fields of interest while discussing this. All of this should be as brief as possible of course, I'd say 2 to 3 paragraphs. I then also included links to my CV, my SOP, and a writing sample reflecting my interests and overlapping with the research the professor is conducting. All of the professors I sent e-mails to replied, though, contrary to science programs, they do not try to establish some further communication, which, in our types of fields, is not necessary, because we're not looking for lab projects and RAs. They will usually reply something along the lines of: Dear X, Thank you for contacting me. Our research interests our similar indeed and I look forward to reading your application material." or "I will read your application material with great attention." And that is the main thing we want to achieve with the e-mail. You might have real questions about whether they'd be interested in your proposed project and such, but the main goal is to get them to remember your name when they have to go through a pile of applications. Of course, make sure to only contact those who's work you're really familiar with, when, e.g;, you've used one of their texts in your honor's or MA thesis. To give you an idea, of the 16 universities to which I applied, I contacted 5 or 6 professors. Of the 4 admits I received, 2 were from universities where I had contacted someone. My experience is really about 50-50, but I know that for small universities (like Brown) where only few students are admitted (in my program, it was 5 out of 200), they don't want to waste admits on people whom they expect will not attend. But I'm rambling and I've said all of this before; I'm getting a bit nervous for my departure next Sunday... :) Too little time, too many things to arrange before...

It doesn't guarantee anything, of course, and I didn't say to just send them an empty e-mail to tell them that you want to work with them, it needs to be better than that. I do know, however, that my contacting the professor I wanted to work with at Brown increased my chances. 5 students out of 200 applicants were admitted and at that point, the department's guess of whether you're really going to join is worth something. They want to know that you are particularly interested in their program and it's not just one of the many universities you applied to and for which you recycled SOPs saying the same thing about different universities. This doesn't mean that you should just contact everyone when you have nothing to say to them. I certainly didn't contact a professor at every university, but only those who had written something about my specific subfield. I just think it's worth considering if you find a professor who is a perfect match. It's a choice and it worked for me, but of course, everything depends on your particular situation and character. If you've just finished undergrad and have done very little research, there is really no need to contact anyone. If instead you have done some conference presentations, have published something, etc., you have a better idea of what you want to work on and you also have some work to show them. It's not for everyone, but it's worth considering. :)

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 SOP, 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...):(