Monday, July 10, 2006

Grad School

Things I will have to do in order to apply for Ph.D. programs:

1) Take the fucking GRE again. Probably next month, which means I need a refresher soon. Luckily, I aced the test last time . . . of course that was 16 or so years ago.

2) Get letters of recommendation from two professors to whom I haven't spoken in a decade. Naturally, the person who is most qualified to write a letter on my behalf died in 2004.

3) Prepare a writing sample. Of course, they want scholarly writing and a rather substantial amount. So I can't use any of my plays (creative writing) or any of my theater reviews (too short and not scholarly). The last paper like this that I wrote was a history of swimwear. It sucked. I have no clue what I'm going to do about this.

I'm a little freaked right now.

3 comments:

Jess said...

How big of a paper does the writing sample have to be? Do you have a subject in mind?

I'd be happy to help, but I don't even know where to start.

Maddog said...

I just finished grad school after three very short years. I found the prep work to get into school three times more challenging than the work I was expected to do once I was there. Maybe it was because the pressure was off. Just buckle down and get it done and you'll be all the happier because of it.

Anonymous said...

I looked into going BACK to grad school for a completely different master's degree earlier this year. I think I missed my GRE expiring by a year or so. I take standardized tests really well but I BLEW my near-perfect GRE scores on a program that didn't need them and there's no way I'll even get that close to them.
But all of that said, good luck!