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Curious if anyone here has experience renting an apartment directly from UofC. Some of their grad housing (http://rp.uchicago.edu/graduate_housing/index.shtml) looks decent and pretty comparable price-wise to renting a 1-bedroom in Hyde Park independently, maybe even a little cheaper. The idea of having something lined up before getting there and not having to worry about hunting for a place is really appealing. I guess I'm curious about (a) how nice the apartments actually are, since there are no pictures of the units and ( what the environment in grad housing is like -- e.g. does it feel like living in a dorm (bad)? what percentage of grad students rent from the univ? and so on.. I'm also curious if anyone has any sense of the rates of turnover and which buildings tend to have the most vacancy, and hence have students assigned to them most regularly.

No sorry, I was unclear -- I know a couple people who study/ied anthropology who also applied to Social Thought at U of C, so I thought I'd ask on here...

Has anyone reading this forum been accepted? Not in poli sci myself, but very eager to hear any news (I'm waitlist there...) if there are any coming from that direction who applied there...

Has anyone reading this forum been accepted? Not an anthropologist myself, but very eager to hear any news (I'm waitlist there...) if there are any who've applied there...

Any chicago social thought acceptances reading this?

Thanks for the response! That does make quite a bit of sense. I think I might have misrepresented (unintentionally) what I've been calling 'reading groups,' however -- they're in fact 'workshops' and it looks like they're formal courses on individual texts. Not sure if I could swing taking them for credit/graded, but I imagine doing those in both Greek + Latin after taking intensive summer courses would probably go a ways...

Hmm thanks for the responses -- certainly daunting though pretty much exactly as expected. i'm curious why the idea of doing intensive formal language training during the summer seems inadequate (not that i don't believe it! just curious) for what it's worth i already have fluent french and german, but that seems like a pretty marginal leg up...

another suggestion would be to look at northwestern, although this is perhaps slightly biased, as i'm likely going to be attending next year. i'm only secondarily interested in later german philosophy, but they seem really strong in critical theory, although a lot of the focus tends to be on post-adorno developments (habermas taught there regularly for a long time and remains close to the dept and various people from uni frankfurt are scheduled to come in the next few years -- christoph menke, rainer forst etc.) the philo dept also has close ties with people in german and comp lit (peter fenves and sam weber, who actually studied with and translated adorno ages ago) who do a lot on the earlier frankfurt school. perhaps something to look into...

hi everyone, so as the admissions season winds down i'm already starting to think of re-applying in a year or two and trying to switch (from philosophy) into a classics department. i'm actually not an ancient philosophy specialist by training, but i've become increasingly interested in both ancient phil as well as classical philology more generally and given that i'm starting to feel an impulse to get out of philosophy, which i'm realizing can be a pretty toxic discipline, i'm starting to consider the possibility of switching disciplines entirely, although certainly with the intention of focussing primarily on philosophical texts and traditions. so, with all that said, i'd love to hear people who have more experience with the ins and outs of applying give me a sense of what i'd need to do to make successful application. - first languages: i'm finishing up a full year of greek and latin (the latter just audited unofficially, so with the disadvantage of not being on my transcript, but the content is there at least). from reading past threads, it seems like 2-3 years of each is standard -- would doing an intensive summer course of each greek and latin over the next two summers (at uchicago or cuny's programme, perhaps) and participating in greek/latin reading groups at the university i'll be attending for philosophy next fall possibly cut it? another option would be to go back and start an m.a. from scratch, i suppose, although that's a little less appealing. -second: what, besides languages (which is obviously far and away the most important) would be particularly helpful to get under my belt. regardless of what i end up doing i'll be taking a handful of courses in ancient phil topics, so i should have a good grasp of classical philosophy, but is it absolutely vital to have studied other literary texts *formally* to be competitive? i.e. would making an effort to read widely (in the original, ideally) and participate in reading groups etc. be any substitute at all for a solid background in classics coursework? ok, that's all for now! thanks to anyone who made it through what ended up being a much longer than expected post! looking forward to hearing your thoughts

Seriously! I would be very, very surprised if they hadn't contacted their admits in early February, but honestly who knows. This whole process is so inscrutable.

Hey -- hopefully you get this, since you posted a while ago. I'm the waitlisted person, and like you am absolutely dying for information. One thing to consider is that they forward applications to the MA in Social Sciences (and possible the Humanities, too, depending on the person) -- so if you haven't heard from them yet, that could be what's going on! I'm sorry I don't have anything more. The accepted people seem to be hiding...

Did any theory people here apply to the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago? I know they're perhaps notoriously Straussian, but thought I'd check. I'm currently waitlisted there and dying for more info, so curious to hear anyone's thoughts/news...

Not necessarily. Judging from past years they consider a lot of people for the MA program in Social Sciences automatically before notifying them of anything. Still no word on anyone actually getting in though...

That's very interesting to hear. I guess too late at this point to have any effect, but interesting nonetheless. Definitely hoping someone declines, though I was told that they haven't used their wait list in something like 5 (seriously?!) years.

Did anyone reading this forum apply to the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago, either instead of, or in addition to the philosophy department? A lot of their faculty is based in philosophy (political philosophy/theory and history, which I guess is pretty obvious) and it looks as though a lot of the theses that come out of there are pretty straight-philosophy too. Curious to hear anyone's thoughts/opinions/news -- I'm currently wait listed there and very anxious for news!