Apathium

Hi, I got into UVA Philosophy Ph.D. program with 165q/155v/4 with other quantitative credentials (GPA, the quality of bachelor's school) often worse than you. Its a decent department although surely not the best of the best. It seems from your credentials to me that you have a chance of getting your writing sample read in the best schools. A lot of other variables are at play though and that slight chance is all most people get. Do they know your recommenders, do your research interests align with what they are looking for etc. As long as you have that slight chance don't shy away from applying. Just have a proper portfolio beginning with your dream schools and ending with schools that are still worth not going through the application process one more year.

Thanks. That is helpful and it is now certain that we will come to Charlottesville. We always liked having additional flatmates. Currently we live in a 3 rooms house in the same room with my and my spouse, plus with 2 other flatmates. It seems in principle that we can live off solely with my own stipend if it comes to that. We just need to arrange that.

I gave it %50 chance to be accepted to at least 1 school out of the 10 that I applied. I was accepted into exactly one school, which would be my 5th or 6th priority (and also 6th school sorted with respect to the gourmet list). This school is no Ivy (I applied to 4 top ten programs), but a good school, a good city and the POI's are also among the top people in the department seems is very important. I guess the outcome is far better than I expected. Thing is it was striking in my case to me was to see the effects of random, seemingly irrelevant factors contributing to a Ph.D. admission. That one school accepted me right away, with POI's and department members sending personal mails about how much they want me. They sent me unofficial mails almost 15 days after the application deadline, much before they extended official admissions. None of the other schools even waitlisted me. I think this is due to the random variables I mentioned. I believe all schools get more applications with good grades, GRE, recommendations, and samples than they can accept. These factors can distinguish the top 30 from 300 applicants, but distinguishing top 10 among those top 30 is very hard. Even the writing samples will be almost equally good. So people look at other factors. In my case I think they were factors like: - My personal background, political situation, some of the classes I took from politics which aligns with chair of admissions of the school, and the POI. I was sure it would be a negative to some people, but also was sure it would be a plus for some others. So don't be afraid to be open and honest about your history. Someone somewhere will like you. - Their knowledge concerning my home school where I did the MA and BA. My non-US home university has a better reputation among non-gourmet-top-10 people since most professors here did their US Ph.Ds. in non-top-10 schools. I feel like lack an established name among the top schools. But my POIs in the school that accepted me knew at least some people in our home faculty. This is a factor beyond my control. A very important one. - One of the POIs in this school was was most engaged with the literature I engaged in my sample, among the POIs in other schools I applied. Don't use a sample outside of your AOI. You can get good schools like that, sending a political philosophy sample with epistemology and phil of language as top interests, but you will get better schools if you use samples in your AOI, and pick the schools to apply with good prior research on which POI's work closer to the exact topic you are writing in. I think I could not do this research sufficiently, but luckily that 1 school and the POIs turned out to be some of the closest people to my topic. Another explanation why only one school accepted me with enthusiasm, while others rejected right away. So, the final thought: Care for every detail that you send with an application package. Your implications, details pointing out on what kind of a person you are, like typos, or stuff in your cv, hints in SOP about your personality. Every small detail is an important variable.

I gave it %50 chance to be accepted to at least 1 school out of the 10 that I applied. I was accepted into exactly one school, which would be my 5th or 6th priority (and also 6th school sorted with respect to the gourmet list). This school is no Ivy (I applied to 4 top ten programs), but a good school, a good city and the POI's are also among the top people in the department seems is very important. I guess the outcome is far better than I expected.

Try to solicit a response from USC if you haven't. I haven't been notified a long time after they sent out admissions/waitlists (late February) and rejections (early March), contacted them late March, only to find out that I was rejected with the group that received the rejections . Neither the dept. mail adress nor their secretaries responded to me. I got this information from my POI. I still have no official response on the website. I trusted the response from POI and accepted an admission offer from another university.

Check out Bogazici University (Istanbul). We got a very good program, its an awesome city, and its cheap. The country is less western compared to other countries in Europe, which could make it more interesting depending on perspective. It has a very beautiful campus in central Istanbul. But the university is an American-founded one (though its officially Turkish after 1970), which makes it easier for us to prepare for continuing education in USA. It is completely in English in BA, MA and Ph.D levels. If you feel like you'll want to move toward higher education (Ph.D., MA etc.), Bogazici (being the top Philosophy program in Turkey) is very successful sending students to Ph.D. to USA and Europe. It is actually that top Turkish universities are able to send lots of Ph.D. students to the Western world (http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20130517145904763). I know some American students who came to Bogazici for BA or MA because it is even more convenient compared to studying in USA with those tuitions. As a Turkish citizen I did my BA and MA here. I'm moving to USA for a Ph.D. in the University of Virginia this fall. Dept. website: http://www.phil.boun.edu.tr/

Sorry, I forgot to add that I also contacted the dept. e-mail adress around one week ago. No response from there also. Edit: Oh well I actually did say that in the initial post, but you mean I should contact the grad admissions chair. Well yeah, I can do that. Thanks for your suggestions.

Is there anybody else without a positive or negative response from USC? People posted lots of admission/waiting list (20-22 Feb), and rejection (10-12 March) notifications from USC. Problem is that I didn't get anything. I mailed them a week ago, no response. The website (https://usconnect.usc.edu/Login.aspx - and the applyyourself system) says my app is still under review. I mean I can wait more but I know I am costing some people time, since I cannot respond to those universities that accepted me without getting a response from USC (which is the last school to send me one).

So what does it mean to get neither rejection nor acceptance nor waitlist from the USC at this point? A lot of rejections (and some acceptances etc.) have been posted recently. Do they reject people in groups or something?

Hi Charlottesville people! I'm most likely coming there next term for Ph.D. Quick question: Do you think is it at all possible to live off 1500$ as two married people in there? We can share one room and cook at home too.

Hey, I'm the dude who posted the Virginia international admission. I received the admission mail almost 2 days after the first admission report here. The university doesn't send out mails yet. It is just the department members (I think the ones that are likely to mentor the admitted people OR Mrs. Barnes the chair of admissions) send out personalized e-mails. This might mean that there could be more admissions to be sent out yet. Nevertheless I wouldn't lose hope before the waitlist for this year is released. They admit a lot of people off the waitlist each year. Even I have 9 more applications pending. I hope you get in wherever you want.