Phil2013

Going to Indiana University

So how does this April 15th business work? I've already emailed CUNY a few times saying "hey I got another offer, should I stick around on the list" and they've said yes, but sometime today I have e-mail him to say that I have to have a decision in on my Indiana offer by noon tomorrow. Should I expect him to reply to me in a timely fashion before noon? Should I call him?

These are the reasons I'm excited about Indiana - I definitely picked up on all of this during my visit. The only reason Indiana wasn't a shoo-in for me was because Bloomington is very similar to where I'm coming from, and I was looking forward to grad school as an opportunity to live somewhere different, perhaps in a bigger, more exciting place. New York City would definitely fit that criteria, but as I've mentioned, I have worries about the nature of the department, and the money offered. $25,000 a year to live in NYC is chump change - it's not very exciting to live in a big city if you can't afford to do the occasional big city things... I think I'm going to try to contact a grad student there and try to contact Stephen Neale again, because otherwise I'm tempted to take myself off of the list if I'm worried and unsure about what I'm getting into. It's just that going to a top 15 program in a great city seems a bit irrational to pass up without that info. I feel like I'm in a bind here.

Right, I noticed that too. My worry is that the program is too big to substantiate a good placement record, and that it is deceiving the extent to which all the professors listed actually do teaching there.

Okay, so I've been coy about my admissions, but now that all my results are in, I'll go ahead and post my stats: Accepted: Indiana (Bloomington), U of Illinois Chicago, U of Iowa, U of British Columbia Wait-listed: CUNY Graduate Center, UC Riverside, Boston U Rejected: Harvard, Pittsburgh, UC Berkeley, Chicago, Texas (Austin), WashU, Colorado Boulder, Northwestern I visited Indiana last weekend, and was pretty set to commit there, but I just found out about this waitlist at CUNY and it's throwing me for a loop. It's hard to turn down a Top 15 program in NYC, but I don't know a whole lot about the program, whereas I know a lot about Indiana now and I know and really like the work some of the professors do. There are a lot of confusing factors - CUNY has 45 listed faculty, 100 listed grad students, and its PhD funding seems a bit inadequate for living in NYC. Also, they don't seem to have as much an emphasis on history of early analytic as Indiana does. While I have other interests and do want to branch out to contemporary work, and CUNY would be a great place to do so as phil of lang is one of those interests, I'm a bit in the dark about the program and how I can relate what I'm interested in to them. Any of you have thoughts about this?

And Stephen Neale just told me I was waitlisted. Hmm...

Just re-sent my inquiries to CUNY and Texas, and Sally Jackman of UT promptly replied with a rejection. Finally.

Still waiting on CUNY and Texas...this is stupid. Pending their sure-to-be rejections, I know where I'm going, but their not telling me is making things worse off for everyone.

To add to the oddity of your situation, I applied to Austin, was not accepted or waitlisted, and do not have any new notifications on my status page. Also, I emailed Sally Jackman a few days ago and have yet to get a reply. I'm assuming you've emailed someone about this, but considering I haven't gotten a reply I'm not sure how successful you'll be in getting a speedy response.

I'm guessing you'd like to get somewhere in, say, the PGR Top 15? Because if you come from UCLA and have been admitted to top MA programs, I imagine you could probably get in somewhere like the Top 30. I was never targeting Top 15 schools myself, in that I did not expect to get into them. I applied to two top-5 schools and two top 15 schools, but only because I had the resources to make such a reach. My inhibition which would have given me reason to apply to MA's first was the fact that I came from an unranked department. However, I didn't apply to an MA program. I somewhat regret this, as I think I overestimated the risks of doing an MA, although there are obviously some. However, looking at the PGR-mentioned MA programs I didn't find any that matched enough with my sample and interests to warrant doing so, and even if I was going somewhere where I could change my interests, my sample and background all gravitate towards that area which matched poorly. I've gotten into a Top 25 program, so the process turned out well enough for me, but the idea that I perhaps could have done something which would enable me to shoot higher is making me a bit regretful. Another reason for my regret is anecdotal. There was a student who graudated from my same school a year ago, went to the (unfunded I think) MA at Boulder, and has been accepted to Michigan and Berkeley.

Whom should I e-mail at CUNY if I want to solicit them for a response on my application? I've seen things on the results page about getting contacts from Stephen Neale, but I want to be sure whom I should contact...

My sample and undergrad thesis are in history of analytic phil, and it's my main interest at the moment. As the former compares Wittgenstein and Carnap and the latter is about Wittgenstein primarily, I imagine I would have been paired with Juliet Floyd at BU were I to have remained on the list. I also have an interest in philosophy of language and a general interest in various periods and thinkers of 18th-20th century history of phil. The latter probably molds well with BU, although I'm not sure about the former.

No idea. I got into a top 25 school, but I got into lower ranked schools that I could see going to over BU, so that's what compelled my decision.

Just took myself off of BU's waitlist. Hope this helps someone. They are too comparable to some of the other schools I got into that are not my current top choice to justify sticking around on the waitlist for them.

Still haven't heard from CUNY...I'm fully expecting a rejection but this is kind of getting annoying.

CUNY rejections and waitlists getting posted, but I haven't heard anything...

No.

I am visiting a campus for a place I will probably attend, and in that case would decline my other offers after the visit if all seems well with the visit. However, I am on the waitlist for somewhere else which I would seriously consider also attending, so I'm not sure when I would inform said place I will visit...

Thanks.

I also got waitlisted to BU. I'm probably turning it down, but I'd like to know what I'm turning down. kelizabethphilosophy, did you get any funding details?

PM sent

A fellow UIC admittee! Do you think it is likely you'll go there? I'm weighing my UIC admission with a couple others.

This is probably the best page for advice on applying, written by a professor at a good grad program: http://schwitzsplintersunderblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/applying-to-phd-programs-in-philosophy.html Also, if you weren't aware, there is a ranking system for schools just for philosophy. Don't rely on it too heavily, but consider it a valuable resource: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/overall.asp Here's some advice that combines some of the above with my own experiences: 1) I hope you're aware that you'll have to wait an extra year as submission deadlines for probably every sort of school have passed 2) You need to make sure you have a well-polished writing sample for programs to evaluate your philosophical acumen. Your sample is your most important bit of data, with a close second being letters of rec. It usually consists of one of your best papers from a class which you spend extra time (and by extra time I mean perhaps months and not weeks!) making more rigorous. In my case it was not a paper I had written originally - I actually wrote it in my independent study for my honors thesis. I had taken a grad class the semester before my honors thesis (last year) which was in the topic at hand in the sample, and so my writing sample was sort of a transition between that class and my honors thesis, in that it showed what I learned from that class and foreshadowed issues in the thesis I would be writing. The sample needs to show a modicum of originality - it can't just be a fairly obvious historical exegesis or comparison. It needs to dip into secondary literature on the topic in order to show committees that you at least have a taste of the subfield you are approaching the sample and know in general what important has been written on the topic being discussed. 3) I also come from a large state school. It was formerly ranked school which now has a slightly smaller department due to budget cuts. The thing to worry about here is how far your letters go. The less well-known the school, the less likely a person on a grad admit committee will be able to trust the content of the letter. Also, your grades get slightly devalued - a 3.6 from Princeton is better than a 4.0 from No Name U. Your high philosophy GPA probably means you'll be fine, as GPA is not as important of a factor, but keep that in mind when you see people with 3.6's getting into schools you applied to.

I think double majoring depends on the case. I feel in my case it helped me - I double-majored in linguistics. The double major helped me because many of my classes were fairly relevant to philosophy (two semantics classes which discuss in broad outline Frege, Russell, Davidson, Kripke, etc. a pragmatics class that discusses Searle, Strawson, etc). Also, it might have helped justify an interest of mine that wasn't fully developed. My listed secondary interest is in phil of language. However, a phil of lang course wasn't offered until this past semester. Having a linguistics background especially with those sorts of classes helped me justify putting phil of lang as an interest even though I did not have as well of a developed background in it as others might have were they to list phil of lang as an interest. Not only that, but time devoted to the other major is probably key. I took essentially only the miniumum amount classes required for my linguistics degree, and took many classes above the required amount for my philosophy major. So your point that a double major could hurt a focus in philosophy doesn't apply in cases like mine where it is decently clear from my record that linguistics was the "secondary" major. It also depends on your academic history. I actually entered undergrad as a linguistics major only to realize I wanted to do philosophy soon after. Since I wanted to take time to make sure philosophy was right for me, I decided fairly early on to keep the linguistics major and double rather than drop the linguistics major. Once philosophy became my focus, I consistently took 3 phil classes a semester and 1 to 2 linguistics classes.

Should I immediately reject an offer I know I'm going to reject?