maxhgns

Every year, previous applicants inform new applicants about the importance of fit. Every year, they're met with disbelief and incredulity. But it matters, and it can matter a lot. For (yet more) proof and some solid advice, see [url=http://dailynous.com/2016/03/24/getting-in-next-time-ought-experiment/]this post[/url] at Daily Nous.

That's exactly right. The April 15 deadline is the legal deadline for American departments to extend their first offers.This practice has resulted in most programs giving those first offers until April 15 to decide. That's it. If you're offered admission close to the 15th, just ask the department to give you a few days/a week or so to decide, and do what you can to decide as quickly as you can. You can speed up that process now by asking them to put you in contact with some current students (or, indeed, by reaching out to them yourself), among other things.

Yes, they often do. I've applied for around 90 jobs so far this year (in philosophy). They're a mix of postdocs, TTs, VAPs, and other part-time gigs. I'd say that between 1/4 and 1/3 of them require copies of all your transcripts. Some of them even ask for your high school information (though not, as yet, transcripts).

Check your acceptances. All are conditional upon you completing your degree, which you probably can't do if you slack to the point of failing a class or two, or getting a grade below the threshold required for it to count toward your major. Sometimes acceptances are also conditional upon you completing your degree with a certain minimum GPA or letter grade. Yes. Not every job, but a lot of them do require you to submit all of your transcripts. More importantly, grant and fellowship applications require your transcripts, and definitely do factor them into their decision. And you'll be applying to a lot of those as a marketeer and later as a faculty member somewhere (if you win that particular lottery).

A combination of PhilPapers (it always results in way more papers than I have time to actually read, though), NDPR and subdisciplinary book reviews (e.g. in specialist journals), conferences (where I attend all kinds of talks, even those that seem kind of dull), and the usual blogs (Leiter, Philosophy Smoker, Daily Nous, Feminist Philosophers, Crooked Timber, Digressions & Impressions, Blog of the APA, occasionally PhilPercs, etc.). Also through teaching and TAing (if you can design your own classes, include some material that's new to you and captures your interest). Absolutely everyone should sign up to PhilPapers and PhilEvents in their first year of graduate school, though. Those alerts are amazing. The most important thing I do, however, is write. When I have an idea for a paper, I jot it down in a Word file. When I feel like writing something new, or when I have to (e.g. to send/deliver on a conference abstract), or when I have time to kill, I go through that file, pick an idea, and start writing. As the paper progresses, I do more and more research on the topic. Ultimately, that's how I end up doing most of my reading.

Phone or email the housing people, they're the only ones who know the answer. This forum can't answer your question because housing policies differ from university to university.

No kidding. I was first on my waitlist, but found out on April 18 (after I emailed).

That seems exactly right to me. I would not put too much stock in how a department behaves towards you at this stage. They all have a vested interest in recruiting people they take to be strong students, faculty have an interest in recruiting students to study under them period, and five or six years down the line you will be a very different person/student/job candidate. Also, you're just not that special. I don't mean that as an insult: you're probably a great person and a stellar student. The thing is, so is everyone else who'll be around you, as well as the bulk of students at other programs. The "courting" is as much about them as it is you, probably more, and it's based on some pretty shaky data. So... yeah. Don't decide based on the "courting". Talk to current students, email those who are on the market this year or who went on last year. Students still in coursework may still be under the influence of the wonderful program that accepted them; students facing the despair of the market will have a better sense of how the department helped them, or didn't (they may also be overly pessimistic, however!). Ask about your potential supervisors, how good they are about feedback, that kind of stuff. Ask about professionalization initiatives in the department. Ask about what the placement director does for students.

Fair enough. I didn't say it never happened, just that I hadn't heard of it.

I'm pretty sure I have not heard of PhD applicants never finding out whether they've been rejected. Plenty find out late in the process, of course.

I'm not sure I recall hearing about this for PhD admissions. It's pretty commonplace for job applications, though.

Well, have you been paying attention to what's happened to Boulder in the last couple years? It's not really surprising that it's like that... (unfortunately). I hope you and your cohort will work to change the atmosphere. It can feel like a losing battle, but if you keep at it you'll build up critical mass after a few years of new cohorts.

FWIW, I know that prospectives are starting to visit the campus. They do tend to dig into their waitlist, though, so don't lose hope!

Just FYI: There's a very real possibility that, because of the current budget crisis, all public universities in Louisiana may have to cease all operations for a while. More info: here and here.

We don't pay application fees, but we do end up paying for other things. Like Interfolio costs, transcript costs, snail mail costs, APA costs, transcript "translation" costs (if one of our degrees is from a "foreign" institution, viz., outside the US), etc. Multiplied by 100 or more, not ten or twenty. Don't get me wrong: I think PhD applicants should be notified, and in a timely fashion. I'm just saying that departments don't care about those they reject at any level. Often, they don't even care about those they shortlist either.

They don't notify the people who apply for jobs with them. Why would they notify rejected PhD applicants? =/

The GRE mostly matters for securing available extra-departmental fellowships. Most (all, AFAIR!) adcomm members who have spoken about their practices publicly have agreed that the GRE is barely even a consideration, unless it's abysmally low.

Kripke teaches there, but don't expect him to supervise you.

Because the QS rankings are not compiled by philosophers. The PGR is the only ranking that reflects philosophers' perceptions. It has a number of limitations, some serious, but it's definitely the best one around. The real problem is that prospective students take it as a gospel ordinal ranking of departments with clear-cut differences between tranches, or clear correlations to job outcomes. It's not. It's just a tool to help students identify research concentrations and reputation. Yes, but that includes four English-speaking non-US countries, and it's actually pretty clear that the rankings do those programs something of a disservice, especially as far as the "overall" category goes. It's quite common to hear proponents of the PGR admitting, for example, that Canadian departments should have about .3 added to their scores to get a better sense of how they'd compare to their American counterparts.

Your paper would be 14% longer than the limit. That's a lot.

We have about 30 students and graduate 0-2 each year.

You can, of course, try, but be prepared for a firm 'no'. The letters are supposed to be confidential, and sharing them with the applicant just isn't done. There's really nothing to be gleaned from your letters, as TakerUK has said. Letters of reference (especially from the US and Canada) are all overblown and overly effusive (except when they're not, and that's a sign). Your references are introducing you to your prospective department, saying something about your interests, accomplishments, plans, and "ability". You already know all about the first three, and the last is just BS. Reading it might make you feel good, but there's not even much reason to believe those judgements are reliable in the first place (or that they even pick anything out at all), so...

Presumably the former. Visiting student arrangements aren't at all uncommon.

Going to conferences and being an active participant there has some benefits (at least in theory!): 1.) You become familiar with your chunk of the field (especially at specialist conferences) and they, in turn, become familiar with you. That increases the likelihood that people will read your work, ask you to contribute a paper/give a talk/write a book review, etc. 2.) It helps you develop friendships and professional relationships (e.g. finding people with whom to share work, people to write you external letters of rec. or to evaluate your tenure file, etc.). 3.) It gives you feedback on your own work, helping you to polish it for publication. 4.) It helps you practice your public speaking and presentation skills (this has a pretty direct impact on your classroom, job talk, and interview performance). 5.) It helps you keep on top of new ideas. 6.) It signals that you're research-active, irrespective of the current number of your publications. None of these is a direct help to a job, but they can definitely indirectly benefit your job search. The importance of publications in job searches is usually overstated: yes, they do matter. As in, you should have some. But other things matter too, and they matter a lot. Nobody these days gets a job just because they've published lots, and people with more or better publications don't really do better than those who don't have as many or as many good pubs.

It can be useful inasmuch as it can help you to get a letter of recommendation from someone who is not from your home department, and who is a big enough deal in your AOS. It can also be a useful scholarly experience for you. For those reasons, though, you'd want to do that in the last few years of your program, when you have work already under way.