Kand

Somebody worked really hard all through middle school and high school, and got into a good school. Now they are an "elite person"? How about someone whose hard work paid off? I suppose given your rhetoric also that if you went the non-traditional route and got into the same good school, you are still not an "elite person"? I agree that you can end up at a good school through all kinds of ways and journeys, including the traditional route. All the "it's funny when.." rhetoric makes me wonder just how happy you are with your non traditional route, that you feel you need to stick it to anyone who didn't take such a route. 
 
I agree with BowTiesAreCool's thoughts above -- the people who are described in the article seem to have worked hard and had strong accomplishments. They should be allowed to be upset at not getting admitted, especially since we know that the comments that were quoted were written just after they found out. I'm sure their accomplishments will earn them a spot in some other good school and they will be successful, so they will overcome the setback, but they are allowed to be upset at it. 

I can't imagine having busted my ass since middle school. I'm glad I took the less glamorous road. Where my high school dropouts and community college graduates at?! And since this is a grad school forum, I think you learn later in your academic life that those unattainable schools are much more attainable when you apply for a PhD, if you earn it, no matter where you started your journey. It's funny when somebody went to a top high school and elite university for their BA only to go on to some undistinguished grad program. It's even funnier when the reason they got rejected from an elite program was because some nobody stole their spot. I guess I just have a thing against elite people. You'll never beat it out of me.

Stanford Skype interview on Friday. Terrified the South African Skype connection will fail on me (I'm on a conference/lecture recital tour right now, such stressful timing). Also HOLY CR@P I GOT AN INTERVIEW!!

I think people drawn to the gradcafe are generally the more "test focused" individuals. They ended up here because they were studying for the 'test' of admission.
 
The people who don't bother to study, have "ok" test scores, and may or may not end up in your next cohort are not here because they inherently don't have quite that many F's to give.

I agree with the idea of this vendetta that Loric has against this prototypical college do-gooder. I know people like this do exist and there are many of them (probably many on this site). But I don't know if people like Eigen and others are these people, and I don't care to get to know. I guess it doesn't bother me as much since I didn't grow up around it. I went to shitty high schools, dropped out, got a GED from a converted 7-eleven, joined the Armed Forces, got out of that mess, wandered the country, went to community college, then transferred to a low-tier university where being a student is a bottom-shelf priority. But I've come across these people and they do annoy the shit out of me. You know the type. Loric's put it in much betters words than I can. These people who don't do anything if it can't fit on their CV. These people who didn't realize school was optional until after they got their PhD. They're a big part of the reason I don't know if I can deal with a life of academia. When you're a professor and you're younger than all your students, maybe you should pull your dick out of your Mac and look out your window. I guess I'm just an advocate for life experience. And Loric is an advocate for free thinking. Some people will get offended. Big deal. 

No, not vanity published kiddo, but thanks for trying.
 
And if you knew anything about the industry you'd know there aren't "industry standard margins."

Well.. that was unintentionally condescending (i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt).
 
I spent christmas morning getting tweets from people who got my books, the ones I wrote, as gifts. I find your defacing of the work annoying and couldn't give two craps about your relationship to the text. Go wank that out in fan fiction, not in my carefully designed margins, thanks.

I just find it fascinating that people are so "hardcore" emotional and involve themselves so deeply in something they have a roughly 50/50 shot of not finishing.
 
Think of all the people who post as if getting into a graduate program is "the most vital" step in their lives. Half those people are either making a mistake, or the school made a mistake in choosing them.
 
I certainly think they should modify the admissions processes to cultivate completion. Survey those who complete and use those as the "standard" for admission. Also survey those who don't complete.. and use that profile as a "red flag" when doing admissions.
 
I'm assuming there's norms in background, experience, gpa, etc.. between the two groups. You'd have to actually study it to know for sure. I have this suspicion that a lot of the higher-end of the GPA/scores people are the ones more likely to drop out.

See? Immediately downvoted.
 
Google the debate on misandry and it will all suddenly make sense.

Oy..
 
The reason "they" wont allow there to be discussion of "reverse-racism" and "reverse-sexism" as just simply racism and sexism is because you'd have to accept misandry as the counterpoint to misogyny.
 
"They" refuse to allow that.. primarily because acknowledging the existence of misandry weakens many concepts that are at the core of feminism.

youd be doing me a favor. these people are awful. its terrible that philosophy attracts such awful personality types.

im looking forward to studying and publishing on my own. me alone im better than fancy-pants faggot earning his funded MA

PS blow me

I hold in distain anyone who still uses 'he' and 'him' to denote the neutral human. But that's just me.

is idolatry.

I suppose I have had an implicit understanding for sometime, and feel as though it has finally surfaced into something explicit.

thestudy of philosophy (love od wisdom, ya) is a historical movement towards truth. but what do we find it has become instead? primarily idolatry.

what do we find the most successful academics doing? research and commentary on historical and contemporary figures. there is value in this, but as a means to an end -- not as an end in itself.

at worst we elevate our favorite idols as authorities in philosophy.there are no authorities in philosophy. only gifted contributors in this historical movement.

but we idolize them and put them on a pedestal and, implicitly, understand that we are not their equals.

we idolize them andforget that we have the capacity to think for ourselves.

and when one is courageous enough to think for himself, we are contemptuous and hold him in disdain. and so we stifle originality and innovation. for our cowardice and our idolatry.

I think you have a crush on Bob.

I've found that people from CA have a tougher time moving out than most of the rest of the states. My experience with the socal mentality has been that it's almost as if the world ends at Las Vegas and then there's a huge jump to New York and nothing in between.
 
Your mental map of the world will open up, a lot. And things are done differently - very differently. CA is, for all intents and purposes, a nanny state compared to most of the US. There are few warning labels that you'll get cancer and there's not gas pump shrouds so you don't inhale the fumes either.
 
I liken it to how when people from the US travel abroad and then note at a tourist attraction how "dangerous" things are with no fences, barriers, etc.. at a cliff. You can just up and fall out of the leaning tower of piza for example. CA is even more bubble wrapped than the rest of the US, so keep that in mind.
 
As for coping - aside from being sure not to use spray paint indoors because when purchased outside of CA it contains much harsher chemicals - I think you just need to be open to new experiences. The culture will be a bit.. different..

But should academia be supporting what is just someone's personal goal and interest?
 
Shouldn't pet projects be outside of academia..?

I have to say, with this forum being a bit of a kludge of various interests.. some of the things that people are choosing to study leave me baffled.
 
Many.. many.. posters are going for fields that, while a bit cliche and "default" in nature, you can at least see why they're going for them. However, there's still these other programs that are outside the common interests.. but not really specialized in a "well you'd obviously need proper time to study that" sort of way.
 
They're the "Why don't you just apply for a job..?" fields and the "Ugh, stop trying to legitimize your hobby" fields. I'm sure there are others, but those immediately spring to mind.
 
Some of the areas I just don't get why you'd spend so much time, money, and effort to study at the graduate level. Why are people doing that...? What's that all about?

To succeed in life, the workplace, academia.. you need to be 2 of 3 things..
 
Good. Fast. Nice.
 
You can be good and fast. You can be fast and nice. You can be nice and good.
 
You cannot be good, fast, and nice.
 
He appears to be good and is probably fast. He doesn't have to be nice.

Very few places use "official letterhead" anymore. That was actual gold embossed, calligraphy, and dye-sub pieces of paper that they'd stick into a printer and print the letter onto. That rarely happens anymore and an "official letterhead" from anywhere might legitimately be a simple default template from a word processing application.  It's an antiquated hurdle to keep people from blatantly making their own letters up.  I wouldn't worry about it in the least.

I didn't fail out, thanks.. I do have failing grades because i was registered for the next semester and for god know's what reason wasn't dropped from the classes. I had quit 3/4 of the way through the prior semester though, and no one at the school can explain why the grades even exist or what to do about them.
 
"You need to submit this petition form, it's $3 to do so."
 
"What?"
 
"$3."
 
"Seriosuly? To fix your mistake..? That's messing up my transcript..?"
 
"Well, possibly. This is the petition for us to consider modifying your transcript. You also need proof you withdrew."
 
"How do I prove I was withdrawn when I wasnt there? Get people to sign off saying they didn't see me?!? Who? I wasnt there to know who was there!"
 
And that's the fiasco in a nutshell. It certainly does cement my opinion of the business of academia as a joke.

Loric--
 
My understanding of the Ivory Tower doesn't come from reading comic strips but rather from listening to professors talk about undergraduates and graduates like you.
 
IRT your view on the importance of grades, your previous posts on that subject suggest a different narrative than the one you're offering in this thread. You flunked out of one program and have subsequently rationalized your inability to put forth your best effort by casting yourself as some sort of anti-establishment crusader who doesn't care about grades. Yet, the question remains: if you really didn't care about grades, then why are you spending time trying to convince everyone that you don't care about grades?
 
It is my view that you are very much like those graduate students who "grade monger" in that you seek all the attention you can get and that you don't understand the difference between self esteem and self respect. The difference is that while those individuals seek approval for its own sake, you seek controversy.

I'm honestly perplexed by you Loric. I have not responded to you directly before but I feel I must express my confusion. You seem to be perfectly capable of giving honest, insightly and funny advice to a lot of people around here, and I think they do appreciate it. On the other hand, you're prone to personal attack and ad hominem too frequently to be a calm, reasonable person, and dare I say, intellectual. You respond vehemently and aggressively to everyone who disagrees with you and express contempt for them. Why? Simply because they disagree with you? Even if they're wrong (in some case they're not, in other cases it's a matter of opinions, and yet other cases who the hell really knows), that's no reason for you to find the person contemptible, only the idea (but then why would you reserve such strong emotion for an idea on the Internet?). Or because they are snide and snarky? Snide and snarkly alone do not deserve contempt, and furthermore you are snide and snarky. Sometimes it's funny; sometimes it's not; but being upset with another's attitude while displaying the same attitude is just childish.
 
Perhaps I've just never encountered a poster like you before. People are either hostile and angry or calm and reasonable on the Internet in my experiece, but I guess it was a false dichotomy and you just opened my eyes. I'm gonna venture a call this "bipolar poster syndrome" and leave it at that. It's the way you are, and while I disagree with quite a few of your opinions, I don't find you contemptible.
 
What I don't understand is you seem to be anti-academia (or whatever version of academia you have in mind, I'm not actually in that world yet and thus I don't know whether you or your opponents are correct) and have a lot of problems with a lot of people here, why are you hanging around? You've been helping a lot of people so I don't have a problem with that, but 2 things: first, you're applying just like the rest of us, and even a lot of admitted student said there are just too many variables in the process to be sure of anything, so I find it interesting that you are always absolutely sure of what you say. I think a lot of people have problem with this tone and attitude than just the content of your opinion. Second, since you're so sure of your opinions, you should be able to defend them without resorting to name calling. If you think you can't fairly defend them because people are picking on/bullying/persecuting you (which I don't think they are), simply stop coming here. Why give them your time of the day, especially for those for whom you have so much contempt?

Can I take a moment and be honest with you Eigen?
 
While I feel that leaving my response to you with just a snide remark - fitting of the offensively smug superiority you use to address others - I want something to be perfectly clear. Lest you continue to have even the remotest inclination otherwise.
 
I think exceptionally little of you, your clique, and your ways. I think you'll amount to nothing, but worst of all think you've accomplished something. I think you'll make no mark on the world and die unknown, uninteresting, and as unappealing as a human being as ever. You've constructed this entire little world where butt-kissing and doing as your told is the right and righteous way of being and you tell other people to do so to stay within the good graces of your chosen peer set.
 
I'm just waiting for the day the real world gets ahold of you and does what it always does.
 
I don't doubt you can eat data and crap out conclusions so you're "good" at academia - but I seriously doubt you've ever learned anything and I would never believe any of your research work is going to amount to anything other than a gold star from your superior... which sadly is all you live for.
 
My attitude toward you and your equally rotten little cohorts is contempt - and it is "justified."

In all my years here, I have yet to see such consistently bad information come from one applicant, over and over.
 
I've also noted in past years that it's always interesting to see significant and consistent differences in opinions between applicants, and current senior grad students. I would say that when people further along in a career path consistently and (unusually) are fairly united in disagreement with your advice, that you consider it strongly. They're likely more aware of norms in the field you may not yet know of.  
 
Lying to your letter writers is (i) an indication of the fact that you don't have a great working relationship with them, and (ii) a really bad idea, that has a fairly decent chance to backfire. 
 
Arguing that it's not unethical if the person who you're doing it to might be going to do something unethical/unprofessional is the old "two wrongs make a right" argument. In general, if you have to write long explanations of why what you're doing is "justified", I'd think it's a good indication that what you're doing would not widely be considered ethical or acceptable. 
 
If you have a letter writer that is bad with deadlines, I'd hope you have a good enough relationship with them to be honest. I have people I would/will tell that I'm worried about everything being in on time, and I'd appreciate it if they could get it done a few days/ a week early, as I know they're quite busy. No one that I would ask this of would bat an eye at it, they know they're busy and shouldn't put it off until the last minute too. 
 
And as to "not having a good relationship with your letter writers" having any bearing on getting into graduate school- i'd say it definitely says something about your academic/professional socialization, how good you are at networking, and accordingly how well you'll likely fit in at a graduate school, as a professional in the field, or in academia in the future. "Fit", "collegiality" and "networking" are usually one of the top reasons people do or don't get jobs, in academia or elsewhere. I don't think it's wrong for people to draw a correlative relationship between an applicants ability to do those things now and in the future.

And yet despite all your proclamations there's hundred of posts about letters not being written on time or at all.

Because a chance your prof would question the deadline you gave them is a bigger issue than not getting it at all....?

Because 2 weeks after the deadline when a prof "feels" they can submit is the time to be panicked and trying to find a new rec?

Telling someone you want something before an actual deadline because they notoriously are late is not unethical. Not everyone has the relationship you do with your prof and your type of person is not the only type worthy of education.

If you'd like to actually help people i'd love to hear it. Right now all I hear is your constant "maybe you shouldn't go at all" passive aggressive nonsense.