Anxiously reapplying
Hi everyone,
I've really enjoyed reading all of the posts here--I joined LiveJournal specifically so that I could join this community. This is my first post!
I was rejected by English PhD programs at NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, and the CUNY Grad Center, and have spent the past couple of years improving my credentials--I got an MA in an interdisciplinary humanities program (yes, one of the little cash cows attached to a university--but I used it to work with some amazing professors who are now writing me LORs), took German classes, heavily revised my writing sample, and am taking a GRE prep class to get my scores up. Here are my worries:
1. Before reading these boards, I always assumed it would be "tacky" to contact the program for feedback after being rejected. Now it's been a year and a half since they turned me down--would there even be any point in writing to their DGS now?
2. My previous GRE score made me look pretty dumb--I never really did test prep growing up (in my world only the very rich or very neurotic took test prep), and went into my GRE cold. Doesn't the ETS send out my previous scores automatically? This is to ask, will my old scores outshine--or darken--my improved scores?
3. Should I at all address the work I've done to improve myself in the past 2 years, or will it draw attention to having been rejected?
4. How often does someone get into a doctoral program after being turned down?
Forgive all my anxious questions--before this experience I didn't really have a history of being rejected by academic programs, so it really shattered my confidence. I've been trying like crazy to use the experience to improve myself and all that, but you know, there's still that small nagging voice that says "there's no use."
Thanks!
I've really enjoyed reading all of the posts here--I joined LiveJournal specifically so that I could join this community. This is my first post!
I was rejected by English PhD programs at NYU, Columbia, Rutgers, and the CUNY Grad Center, and have spent the past couple of years improving my credentials--I got an MA in an interdisciplinary humanities program (yes, one of the little cash cows attached to a university--but I used it to work with some amazing professors who are now writing me LORs), took German classes, heavily revised my writing sample, and am taking a GRE prep class to get my scores up. Here are my worries:
1. Before reading these boards, I always assumed it would be "tacky" to contact the program for feedback after being rejected. Now it's been a year and a half since they turned me down--would there even be any point in writing to their DGS now?
2. My previous GRE score made me look pretty dumb--I never really did test prep growing up (in my world only the very rich or very neurotic took test prep), and went into my GRE cold. Doesn't the ETS send out my previous scores automatically? This is to ask, will my old scores outshine--or darken--my improved scores?
3. Should I at all address the work I've done to improve myself in the past 2 years, or will it draw attention to having been rejected?
4. How often does someone get into a doctoral program after being turned down?
Forgive all my anxious questions--before this experience I didn't really have a history of being rejected by academic programs, so it really shattered my confidence. I've been trying like crazy to use the experience to improve myself and all that, but you know, there's still that small nagging voice that says "there's no use."
Thanks!