RumHaven

Accepted USC, removed myself at Princeton if that still means anything.

Just got the offer from USC! I will be declining the Oxford BPhil offer.

USC sent me an email today outlining the offer they would make to me tomorrow, if they are able to make it. But apparently they won't know if they can make it until tomorrow, so some people must still be deciding. Haven't heard anything from Princeton about the status of the waitlist. Still haven't had a word from UNC, even though their graduate administrator told me she forwarded my inquiry to LA Paul several days ago(and my thesis adviser told me he personally contacted her as well). This is really coming down to the wire.

Well I think the original language of the email said something like "if you haven't heard about funding by the 12th, you can assume you haven't gotten any".

Haven't heard so I'm assuming I didn't get any.

It's interesting the kind of asymmetry this posits between sight and smell. You're basically saying that I owe it to other people not be unpleasant to smell in public places, but I don't owe it to other not be unpleasant to see in public places. The kinds of considerations that I can think of that one might use to justify this asymmetry include: that bad smells are less ignorable than bad sights (one can simply look away), that one can fix a perceived bad body odor but can't fix a perceived unpleasant look, and that there is more agreement about what smells bad than about what looks bad. But there are certainly cases in which these considerations don't justify an asymmetry, and it's interesting to think about which way we would go in these cases (whether an obligation obtains or not). For example, in a small public place it might not be much easier it ignore an unpleasant sight than an unpleasant smell. Certain visual features are fixable and fairly universally thought of as unpleasant, such as having dried blood crusted on one's face. I think in that sort of case (the dried blood one), we might think the same sort of thing as we would about someone with bad BO, namely that they have an obligation to fix it before coming into public places. It should be noted that this all depends on the context of the public place and the people that might be expected to be in it. What about the greasy hair case? It is fixable, but I wonder how universally agreed upon it is in terms of its unpleasantness. Sorry about the tangent!

Received my college place offer at Somerville on March 13th. Haven't heard about funding.

I don't really know what's going on then. Maybe they are just releasing the hidden waitlists in a relatively ad hoc manner, or they are basing their timings off of things we just don't know about.

I have some more information about what might happen at UNC. One of my letter-writers contacted some friends at UNC and they told him that I am waitlisted and will be notified of my status on April 2nd. In conjunction with the other information on this forum, I figure that the visit days probably end on the 1st or 31st, and at that point they will feel comfortable making the hidden waitlist explicit. (One piece of information that doesn't fit into this picture is Witsclaw being waitlisted just last Wednesday, after the first-round waitlists who were presumably funded to visit, and before the unfunded hidden waitlist is revealed. Maybe he has more info?)

Funny that this news arrives the same day as the emails about the delay in their admissions process. It looks like they really have a mess on their hands!

What about meeting with professors for a program that you've been waitlisted at? Does this change the tone of the meetings at all? I feel like it's a bit odd for me to go to a program I've not been accepted to and ask all about what it would be like as an accepted student. I feel much more pressure to impress philosophically.

From what I saw looking at the MA for a few minutes, it's quite light on the philosophy (only one course taught through the phil department is on the curriculum) and heavy on the tuition. It seems somewhat tactless to me use a rejection email to advertise a program like this, especially since they make it seem as if they've done it because they think you are a good fit, when in fact they send it to everyone it seems.

I've been stumped by the practice of hidden waitlisting. You say it's because if these students were explicitly waitlisted, they would have to be offered funding for a prospective visit. I wonder how standard of a practice that is. My impression was that the majority of schools don't fund waitlisted candidates to visit. In my limited experience being waitlisted, USC doesn't fund all waitlisted candidates to visit, while Princeton does fund at least some. I personally would appreciate being explicitly waitlisted and not given funding to visit more than being kept on a hidden waitlist. And, of course, if UNC has divided the remaining candidates into those who are on a hidden waitlist and those who are rejected, they could still send out the rejections (though that might ruin the hiddenness for those candidates that check these forums and such).

Just got the rejection and I also received that message.

Anyone? Or has anyone even heard of others who are waitlisted at Princeton (perhaps in the FB group, which I'm not in)?