reixis

Thanks! Yes, I thought of that too, but he told me that it would be a good idea to send them a message later this month. Anyway, I'm still reluctant.

I would second what Gnothi said. I guess I didn't post it here, but I received an offer from the University of Otago (New Zealand). It seems like a very good place, and I have heard a lot of great things about the department. I was very tempted to accept the offer straightaway, but was advised by my advisor and my girlfriend to at least wait for US decisions to make a more informed decision. Luckily the timing was right and I will be able to wait until Feb/March to accept the offer. Anyway, it was particularly good to receive an early offer, as I was very suspicious of my prospects of going overseas. In time, one of my letter writers (a US professor) told me that I would do good to let US programs know about this early offer. What do you guys think? I think there are two possible scenarios here: one in which they hear about the offer and feel tempted to make me an offer as well; and another one in which they use this fact to reject me since I have somewhere else to go. I suspect that the second case is more likely to happen, but I might be wrong.

I am having similar troubles with UPenn. The deadline was December 15th and the status now says that almost all applications had their scores matched, but mine still marks "needed". I'm waiting until next week to contact them. EDIT: Oops, sorry for the double post. I meant to edit the previous one.

Do early acceptances happen often in philosophy? I heard about it in other areas, but it seems like a rare thing.

Happy New Year! Same thing here. I'm still missing one letter and Harvard's and MIT's deadlines are tomorrow. I'm constantly checking applications systems looking for status updates. Not so much of a pleasant first day of the year.

Thanks everyone for sharing! I will try to read them as soon as possible. Thanks. I still have some trouble adapting some sentences. When revising, I often find a few sentences that mirror usual constructions in my native tongue, but that are not so common in English.

My sample is on my Academia.edu page. The link is below. If anyone bother reading it, I would really appreciate commentaries, especially regarding problems with my English writing skills. I suspect that many of you (if not all) are native speakers. Thanks in advance! https://www.academia.edu/8251592/The_nature_of_the_qualitative_English_

Hey Nathan, thanks for the post! I have one question about department visits. I heard that departments usually pay for students to visit, but what about international students? Granted that I can secure a visa by my own, is it a common practice to help students from overseas on their expenses?

Thank you for the advices! I sent an e-mail to the person responsible for philosophy graduate admissions. I am waiting for her answer.

One of my letter writers missed yesterday Penn's deadline. Any advice on how to proceed? I read on Schwitzgebel's blog that admissions committee are usually lenient with later letters, but I am not sure whether that is a rule of thumb.

Thanks for the advice. Actually, I wrote each chapter separately and at different times, so that is not much of a problem in my case. I asked my advisor whether she thought it to be a good idea to rewrite all of them in a monolithic text or to maintain the paper format and write an introduction indicating how each paper relates to the others. Her take was that the second option was better since all the papers dwell on very related topics, but each of them could stand on their own. She said that this could save me some time as I wouldn’t have to rewrite each chapter if I wanted to use only a part of my thesis in the future. It is true that by going this way you lose in the breadth of your work, but for practical purposes, I thought it was a price worth paying since it’s only a senior thesis.

Thanks. It is actually a part of my senior thesis composed of three chapters. Luckily, I wrote each chapter as individual papers, so I didn’t have much trouble detaching it from the rest. I was not sure whether to send the actual sample or one constituted by the third chapter of my thesis (which roughly discuss how this dual-aspect view of qualities relates to the empirical search for the neural correlates of consciousness), but given that I received more positive feedback on the first one, I decided to go with it.

My writing sample is on philosophy of mind/perception. I try to argue for a primitivist and realist theory of secondary qualities. I first discuss why secondary qualities are considered less real than primary qualities and then argue that the reasons supporting this ontological distinction are weak. I propose instead a dual-aspect view of primary and secondary qualities in which both have specific aspects, but in which neither is ontologically prior to the other. In the end, I discuss cases of hallucinations and illusions to show how my approach helps understanding a few intricate philosophical problems of the nature of perceptual consciousness.

Hi, I am from Brazil. And yes, that was really hard and I thought of giving up a couple of times. Hopefully, I had very good professors who were always encouraging me throughout the whole process. As for my colleagues, there are a few of them who are going to study further, but the reason why they don’t go to the US or other English-speaking departments is, I suspect, more of a cultural factor in Brazilian academic philosophy than any other thing. We have a very strong exegetic and conservative view of philosophy, much due to the French ‘colonization’ in Brazilian philosophy departments around the 60’s and 70’s. There are many Brazilians who have gone to pursue their doctorate in France, but only a few to England and the US. As far as I know, only two individuals have gone to what we now call high-ranked programs (one in Oxford in the 80’s) and another one at UCLA (in the 90’s). Using more familiar terms, I would say that Philosophy in Brazil is more friendly to a ‘Continental’ or historical view of the discipline. Hopefully, things will change in the future, and there are some signs of that lurking around. But the main problem for me was always geographical distance and money. I used to earn 400 Brazilian money, which amounts to roughly U$150-170 each month, and I had to make this budget work both for my expenses and to raise money for applications. I had to start planning applications early in 2012 to be able to raise enough money. College here is different from the US and UK (we choose our major before entrance) and we do four years of course work on a single subject (in my case, Philosophy and a few other courses on Teaching Experience), so I already had a vague idea of what I wanted to do by that time. I did not travel much to international conferences, but I had the luck to be introduced to two American philosophers by my professors. They have been helping me out and I got letters from them, which gave me way more confidence. It took me sometime to convince myself that I even stand a chance on this process, and sometimes I am not sure yet, but I had support from my family and professors, which gave me confidence to at least give it a shot. Hope it works out in the end! Yep, I tried that already. But I was thinking of applicants to philosophy more specifically. Many students from my country apply to schools in the US, but only very few of them are from philosophy. I thought other philosophy students from overseas might be at the same situation.

Anyone else applying as an international student? I have seen a great deal of discussions about inclusion in the discipline in the philosophy blogosphere. It would be certainly nice to collect information that might help prospective applicants with similar background in the future. I myself have had a hard time preparing for applications since virtually no student from my country went to study philosophy in the US in the past (as far as I know, there were only five students in the past ten years who did their entire PhD in PGR departments). I am not sure about other countries, but I suspect the situation is similar.

Hey, thanks for the answer! It's my first application round, so I'm not really used to the process as a whole. About Cornell, I was also expecting to be able to work with Sider in case offered a place at Cornell. Anyway, Karen Bennett is likely to stay (I heard she turned down an offer from MIT a few months ago) and there is also Nicholas Silins who works in philosophy of mind/perception, which is one area of my interest. That wasn't really good news, but I'm still confident that there will be people to work with in my areas of interest.

Anyone who applied to Penn had the GRE scores matched to your application? I submitted my application about two weeks ago and the status still says "needed".

No worries. I didn’t feel offended by Chiki’s commentary, but that’s not the kind of commentary I myself would do either. The reason is simply that I don’t see any major drawback in someone not reading Descartes at this time of their intellectual life. Actually, I know that my educational background is likely to raise some doubts (consciously or unconsciously) and that is something I know I will have to deal with in the future. I’m not implying that this has happened here, but that I’m not really bothered by such situations.

Not that this matters, but I wasn’t the one who downvoted him (I can’t even see a downvote on his post). Anyway, just to be clear, I don’t see why someone who did not read Descartes’ Meditations or any other classical work would be a so surprising state of affairs. I’ve actually taken many courses on the history of philosophy and have read many classical works, but have also missed many important and central ones that you just don’t have the time to read in four years of study. It seems to me merely arbitrary to make some sort of list of important works to read. Philosophy has more than 2,000 years of history and it would require an entire life just the read the really “important” works.

Oh no, I did read it a few times before. It's just that it's been a few months since I read it for the last time (actually, it was in 2012), so I decided to read it all over again. Same thing for Plato's Theaetetus.

I have just finished Descartes' Meditations and Plato's Theaetetus as a requirement for an MA's admissions process in my country. I've been reading C. S. Peirce's papers this week and I am planning to start reading John Burgess Philosophical logic and Arthur Prior's Time and modality in the next week. Next to that is Harold Simmons' Introduction to category theory. For what it's worth, I would recommend Ruth Millikan's Language, thought and other biological categories. I've really enjoyed this work. Oh, I've also been reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina. It's a nice piece of reading for those interested in Russian literature, though I prefer War and Peace much more.

Yes, from what I gathered by looking at previous years statistics, the schools I'm applying to have reached out to students in late February. I guess I'll take my free time to read some philosophy/literature and watch movies/series that were on the waitlist for the past few months.

I've just sent applications out! Now I need to find a way to keep myself distracted until March.

Hi Maya, I think that scores are evaluated differently across different areas, so it’s hard to tell from the outside whether it’s worth applying now. It’s really up to you. My suggestion is that you consider whether you are willing to spend another year studying for the GRE. With the value of two or three application fees, you could afford taking another test. One other thing you might consider is looking for a temporary plan B. I don’t know how things work in Mexico, but it is a common route for students in Brazil to get a Master’s degree here and then apply to PhD programs outside the country. The obvious advantage is that you gain valuable research experience, and if you can secure some funding, you can also raise some money to apply all over again. Another possible route is to look for funded MA programs in the US. Anyway, I wouldn’t see that as giving up on your dream, but just as a smart way to postpone it until you’ve got good credentials. Now, if you have the money to apply this season, I think it wouldn’t hurt to send out your applications (if you are in financial hardship, there is always the possibility of contacting Admissions Offices and ask for application fee waivers). Bear in mind that, above all, admissions are really unpredictable, so it might turn out that the adcoms looking at your profile do not give much weight to the GRE. But, again, that is a risky alternative, and only you can weight your whole situation and decide whether it is really worth going through this process at this moment. Hope this helps! Good luck!

Hi, I'm in a similar situation to yours. I’m coming from Brazil and have had a good undergraduate experience, though I graduated from an unknown school. I took the GRE in August (I used Magoosh for a month) and got pretty low scores. I also thought of giving up this season, but I was advised by my letter writers to apply anyway. Their take on my case was that my tests scores did not reflect in any way my abilities to succeed in graduate school. Personally, I think that taking standardized tests are more of challenge to us than to American students. I had to travel 500 miles to take the GRE and there are no test preparation companies in my city (and very few in the country as a whole). Moreover, it’s a really expensive experience (1 US dollar is about 2.45 Brazilian reais), not to mention the fact that language is often a concern. Anyway, if you have the money, you might do well to take the test again. Perhaps you were only in a bad day. But if you don’t have the money, I wouldn’t give up at this point either. As for the TOEFL, I think you should not worry. Your scores are good and many schools require a significantly lower score. I would advise you to check about the prospects of receiving a TAship though. Some schools might have restrictions about that.