tarski

I've been checking out places around the Annex (phil department is near st george station). Most of the ads are all for March/April starting though, but there are some arpatment building websites that make reference to waitlists, so maybe it's just a good idea to call and ask about that? Any recommendations about that, or places in the Annex in general?

Congratulations on your acceptances, Thelonius! I'm curious about your interests and your sample- how did the MFA lead you to philoosphy, and what was the more loose/creative piece about?

Hmm, various things to say. Take it all with a grain of salt; what do I know. This is definitely bad- you really want *someone* to read it all, even if just to check it for clarity. Does your university have a writing tutorial center? I used mine. They give advice on clarity, nitpick the whole thing in great detail. I've never done it before (didn't need to), but it was useful for the writing sample, which is very important. You really do need people to be reading the whole thing... maybe if you give them a long time to do it & get back? (like a month). I don't think I agree with this. It depends on what substantive stuff he was changing, I guess: if your interpretation of an issue was different from his, that's fine, as long as you have sufficient reason to take your stance. But if his arguments are better than yours, that's that. You don't want to submit a sample that contains weak arguments. It sounds like you're just working with one prof- more is always better. What I did was make one read it and give comments, work it over, then give it to a different prof, etc. This way you don't annoy one prof too much. No worries . I hope my thoughts help, somewhat. And people often have success in their second tries (if you follow the who_got_in, there's a lot of stories of that this year).

Anything specific on how the feedback you got wasn't what you needed? As in, not enough, or something else? Just curious if I can offer any advice.

99.9% sure I'm heading here. Anyone else?

Interesting . You don't necessarily have to redo it, but show it to many (3+) profs to get advice on refining it.

My results are in my signature. Cognitive Science BA, 3.8, 1420. There aren't many philosophers around here, though. You're better off looking in the who_got_in philosophy thread (a livejournal community) or in the philprospectives community on livejournal. philprospectives actually has a thread that's all about this- undergrad background, where accepted & rejected & etc. You still have a lot of schools to hear from! But if the worst happens and you need to try again- well, it depends. You could try asking some programs that rejected you for areas to work on (but wait until they're a bit less busy). How much time did you spend on your sample? That's what I've been told is the most important part.

Posting this here so some people doing research this summer might notice it... a wiki with various bits of information about applying to philosophy PhD programs at various schools. It just started today, so there isn't a lot of info, but it should pick up over the next couple weeks. Got started by a post in the philosophy who_got_in thread (livejournal). http://philprospective.wikia.com/wiki/2010

Bwaha, yeah. I'll be 21 when I start my PhD, and this post reminded me of one of those first-year undergrad icebreakers and the person I was talking to was 21... Oh well, I've been reading various bits of advice for being young and dealing with students, and I'll manage (academicsanon and gradstudents livejournal). Will be interestng, though .

Sorry, haven't read it . My highschool philosophy teacher loved it and you just reminded me of it, maybe I should check it out...

Beat me to it . CUNY and Stanford were my worst, $125.

Heh. I posted here a while ago, but now that results are coming in I'm also glad this approach worked out. I've got lots of rejections (but a few accepts, which is all that matters to me).

Are you done your undergrad, and waiting to apply next season? There's not really much to say other than what's already been said (assuming GRE is good, you won't get cut due to numbers, and after that, who knows?) but I'll try to say a few things. -Reinforcing what johndiligent said, rewrite your writing sample again and again and again and again and again and again and get many friends and professors to give you their advice on it. Your university probably has a writing tutorial service; show the essay to them once you think it's fairly polished and they'll probably still have advice on the language. Get all your letter writers to read and comment on it. - Apply widely, PhD and MA programs. Apply to well and poorly ranked schools. As you can see from my sig, it's very possible to get rejected somewhere with a lower rank and get accepted somewhere with a higher rank. (I'm going by the philosophical gourmet report). It's just very unpredictable. I applied to 18 PhD and three MA programs. - Don't just apply for MA programs. In discussions on Leiter's blog, professors have mostly said that the MA was good for switching disciplines or if your undergrad is totally unknown. Maybe the spread-out-undergrad thing will hurt you, I don't know, and I suppose if it does completing an MA in a timely fashion will help that, but you should still apply for PhD programs. I also don't know whether the community college thing would hurt you, but again, the MA would help if it does. - In another thread, I saw you asking about mentioning the kids in your statement (I think). While this might fit in the diversity/personal history ones, your statement is usually just research interests. - You put not much extracurricular stuff in your negatives, but they won't really care about this . Your CV will just have academic stuff on it.

I did it for you . It's a really tough situation and I wasn't sure what to say, but what's they're saying sounds good. I hope it works out for you.

One of the female professors at my school (PhD not too long ago) has 4 children and tons of publications, and her husband is a prof, too.

I'm not in lit, so I don't know much how incest and other specific stuff turns out for you guys, but I just wanted to comment on (2) and some general stuff. If you feel you're ready, you probably are . I have several friends who took off a year and felt like they really wasted their time- they got crappy jobs, spent most of their money on rent and food, and were bored out of their minds. Of course, if you can get a more interesting job the year might be more productive for you- I've noticed some of the lit people having pretty interesting jobs. As for getting in to more schools- in general admissions are competitive and there's an element of randomness, so if you did get it together and apply to a lot of places, you might very well fare better (note my sig and my rejection-acceptance ratio, heh ). But if where you are is so good for your subfield, maybe there aren't that many other places that would be better for you.

Another vote for always Dr X unless Dr X says otherwise. I came in because something slightly similar has come up for me- what about talking about a prof? I've been emailing my advisor about a guy at one of my schools that is a potential advisor for me. My current advisor is someone who I call Dr X, and he's old, and has known my potential advisor since he was a grad student, and keeps calling him "Bob"... and so far I've just been referring to him as "Dr X". I guess I'll keep doing it? It just feels slightly silly to write an email about Dr X and then get an email back about Bob.

Even with that, I'd be careful about being certain that someone isn't telling the truth. Example: couple nights ago I got a call admitting me to OSU; calls were spread out over a week. Today, some people who haven't heard anything emailed the department to ask them if they made any decisions, and got this response: "The admissions committee is in the final stages of reaching decisions. You may expect to hear something by the end of the month."

You should probably ask your department. Here's some stuff from their website that might be relevant: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/Guides-Guides/PGSCGSRegs-ESESCRegs_eng.asp#other

Haha, definitely. The library would be my first stop on any visit, unless a grad student drags me somewhere.

Yes, I'm Canadian, and currently at a Canadian school. None of the following quote is true for philosophy: It used to be, but it's not. For philosophy. I just feel it's important to make this clear for any future readers, because I have many peers who think they need to do an MA when they don't, and one of them is curently stacking up some debt in the States because he didn't even bother checking if he could get in without an MA, so he didn't apply to any PhD programs.

Several philosophy PhD programs that used to ask for an MA no longer ask for an MA. What else do you need? In philosophy, anyway, it is changing.

I thought of that, actually. It's a possibility, but not even all IB schools offer philosophy. I did IB, at two different schools through grades 11 and 12, and neither one offered philosophy (or psychology). They also offered the normal local high school programs, and in an effort to combine IB classes with that, they only offered 'traditional' subjects. I guess there are some out there, though.

This is a trend that is changing, depending on discipline. For philosophy, the top programs are Toronto, UWO, UBC and McGill, all of which accept students directly to the PhD.

Professor, pretty much the only career a philosophy PhD leads to . Wherever they'll take me. Don't even really have high school as a fallback because it's taught in almost no high schools.