tarski

- Don't worry about asking too much of your letter writers. They expect to do this stuff every year, and they'll almost always send the exact same letter to every school, maybe with slight alterations. Although, of course, make it as easy as possible for them (give them your sample, statement, CV, list of deadlines, etc, and all of this early). But don't let concern for them limit your number of applications. - Fees. This is a more concerning factor, I guess. I tried to weigh my total application fees against what I would get from one succcessful application (so, $2000ish vs 5 years stipend) . The 2000ish includes the GRE and their diabolical charge for every additional score report. Maybe it was closer to 1800, I forget. It's up to you, in the end. I applied to 18. 3 acceptances, 4 waitslists (2 of which became MA acceptances, one of which later expressed interest in me). Personally I'm on the "err on the side of caution" side. On the other hand, there were some people last season who only applied to a small number. If I recall correctly, on the who_got_in forum someone only applied to (and was accepted at) Princeton. Other people only applied to 3-5 because they felt that they had the time to more properly focus their applications, and so on.

If you're also interested in the PhD program at Chichago, I'd advise to just apply for that. This year, lots of rejects from the PhD program were offered MA admission. And there's nothing wrong with applying to MIT (you have good reason to), my criticism was more about only MIT (PhD). I focused my program research on phil of cog sci, so I can't tell you much specifically, but I'm sure there are more schools (PhD programs) for you out there other than MIT and Chicago. Lots of the schools that offered minors in cog sci also offered minors in linguistics, I think (Indiana Bloomington, Ohio State, UMD, others. UMD had lots of great people in linguistics and philosophy, now that I think of it). As for that C- well, it is in your major, and if retaking it takes the C off the transcript, that would be nice. But considering that lots of programs have early/mid-December deadlines (MIT was January, Chichago mid December I think), even if you retake it in the fall your old grade would be on the transcipt you submit with your application. Unless you can take that course in summer? Alternatively, you can try to excuse it as a long ago grade and there has been an upward trend, and so on...

Various things... take it all with a grain of salt. (1) Chicago's MA isn't funded, and I'm guessing the CMU one isn't either. Are you prepared to deal with that? (2) Admissions to even mid-low ranked schools are difficult and unpredictable. The one real application you're looking at is MIT, which is high ranked and extremely competitive. If you really want to take a shot at this, you need to apply to more schools. I applied to 18 programs last season and got 4 acceptances, 3 waitlists... applying to only one PhD program is a mistake, in my opinion. Why do you only have an interest in the three programs you've named? Your interests are pretty broad, from what you've posted. Have you talked to your professors about your school selections? (3) Your writing sample needs to be much more polished than an A paper. Show that A paper to the prof that graded it, say you want advice on turning it into a writing sample, edit edit edit. And then edit some more. You might already know this, just making sure. (4) It's great that you have that letter writer, but make sure you have good relationships with two other people (and that one!). (5) As for your grades- sometimes an upward trend is good. Maybe the Cs were all when you were a freshman, but every since you've been taking pilosophy courses and getting good grades in those ones? Although I'm not sure if 3.2 is bad enough for a statement-mention... your GPA isn't the strongest part of your application, but it's not as bad as you think it is.

I'm one of the don't-know-anythings. All I know is it will probably be around 10 students . We all visited when we chose, so maybe some students had overlapping visits, but I didn't meet anyone from my cohort.

Considering the agony I seem to remember you going through this season, I'd just go for it now. You can improve that one aspect, but is admission really guaranteed after that? You'll be up against all of next year's applicants next year, and no one really knows what their applications will look like.

I'm really waiting on the SSHRC, too! As nice as getting an award is, an OGS seems to only have a slight affect. First years normally get 20,000, and according to an email I got from my department, getting an OGS results in the OGS 15k, top ups, paying tuition, which leaves you with... $20,876. Although I think the description going along with the $20,876 invovled less teaching than the standard $20,000, so maybe that's the real benefit. The SSHRC would make a much bigger difference. For anyone who wants to share, how does your department treat the OGS, and what's the final result like?

I agree! Except: you can email them and ask if X words is ok or not.

-Sleep for the first month or so -Visting various relatives, 3 small trips -Write my PhD SSHRC (grant) application -Read some stuff (Phenomenology of Perception & others) - LFG 2010 (conference)

On the first screen it just said web app submitted, but when you click through to the next screen is says status: successful applicant .

Soo.. while a bunch of SSHRC people are watching this : I'm in the 4th year of my BA and going somewhere else for an MA + PhD program, so I applied for the MA SSHRC and OGS. Next year presumably I'll apply for a PhD SSHRC (the MA of the MA+PhD is 1 year)... but presumably all my letter writers will be people from my undergrad, since I'll have been at UofT for all of 2 months by the time the deadline hits. I'm starting to think I should work a lot on my proposal this summer while I'm in the same city as the profs that know me? Or am I expected to work on it really fast when I get there? Or am I expected to apply for it after I've been there for a year (But I think that option's out, because I think they require all eligible students to apply).

My undergrad advisor (cog sci) emailed 4 of these advertisments to all the seniors, and I was about to copy/paste them all but the deadlines are past (March 31-April 7). I'll put up new ones, if they come up...

Good luck!

I'm not in sociology either . But some of the different philosophy waitlist practices I've seen: this year UMD wanted a "balanced" set of interests in their incoming class, so who got in off the waitlist was based on the subfield of people that declined offers. Last year Northwestern had profs send personal emails to waitlisted people, and it was speculated that people got in based on the level of interest/fit/etc they showed when communicating.

Hey, there's another Toronto thread here. I know I started this one, but it seemed to disappear : If I recall correctly, there's a bit of discussion about grad house in the Toronto thread in the city guide forum... was tempted initially but I've more rerecently just been wanting to live alone.