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tarski

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Posts posted by tarski

  1. Every time someone asks about my summer plans or what I'll do next year, I get a sudden shot of dread and anxiety.

    Yes, I hate the summer plan question so very, very much.

    I've been having an interesting mix of confidence and fear these past few days because one of my schools has done some initial rejections, and I wasn't one of them.

  2. Are you applying to McGill Tarski?

    No, but I was considering it at one point (for philosophy) and remembered that their philosophy PhD also let you in without an MA, which is unusual (/used to be unusual/is becoming less unusual) for a Canadian school.

  3. Apologies if I didn't post in the right forum. Honestly I just thought I'd post my question here because I wondered whether applicants to certain fields studied more for the GRE than others (in economics for instance, given the importance of the quant score), so I wanted answers from poli sci applicants -- that said I'm sure the mods will move this post if they deem that appropriate.

    Anyway -- thanks for your answers. 1h per week is definitely doable -- I was just wondering how much time commitment is needed to prepare for this properly (for instance, is 6 months a good timeframe for prepping & taking the test?).

    I'm not poli sci so I apologize for barging in :P. However, I wanted to say that I don't think it's just about choosing some number- 1 hour a week, 2 hours a week, etc. Some of the practice tests, particularly powerprep, predict your score very well. Take a practice test and see where you are, and then you'll know whether you need to study all day or just a little, or somewhere in between.

  4. Here is a website about applying to grad school, particularly about applying with an SO in mind:

    http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mooreks/graduatehelp.html

    Here is a relevant quote:

    You aren't done working when the applications are in. As soon as one person hears from a school, the other person's department should be notified. This is essential for acceptances, and optional (although maybe risky) for notifications of interviews.

    If someone is wait-listed and the other person is accepted, be aggressive and act fast if you want to go to this school. Time is of the essence. In most cases, they will be willing to put the wait-listed candidate at the top of the list when you tell them about your situation.

    I spent a few minutes checking if they had a more detailed explanation of asking for this sort of consideration, but I think this was it. However, it seems like at least one person has done this and had some success. On the other hand, it sure seems to me like it has a risk of backfiring (part of this person's strategy was to apply to very many schools, which helps with that risk).

  5. Heh. Well, maybe it wasn't a joke (shudder)- I listened to talk last December where the professor accepted Hume's doubts about causation, Descartes' hyperbolic doubts about perceptions, and said that doing anything that ignored those considerations was useless :P.

    As for the why, why, why, I just pretend it's all about teaching. I do actually want to teach a lot, but I also want to research, but I don't talk about that as it becomes the more confusing element ("Philosophers do research?? I thought it was pretty much over after Plato.")

  6. Ah I see! I'm not acquainted with who_got_in but that would explain it. I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that! I will content myself with the nice philosophers who do post here :)

    Saw the Leiter report comments yesterday too - I have to admit I was a bit relieved even though I don't think I have anything scandalous online :).

    Oh my... I just saw the latest comment by Ludlow in that thread (AKA Sklar), who made the sensible comment that even if we aren't worried about our online footprint now, we should be thinking ahead to worrying about it for jobs. The "oh my" came from googling his pen name, it has some interesting results.

  7. Interestingly enough, the worry about revealing details online and so on was opened up for discussions on Leiter's blog today. One key quote:

    http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2010/01/do-phd-admissions-committees-google-applicants.html#comments

    So let me get this straight.

    The question is whether a committee that has maybe 200 serious applications to read in a four-week period while carrying on with teaching, administration and (perhaps even) family life will be likely to spend time doing possibly wholly irrelevant further research on candidates, beyond the fat dossiers they already have to read.

    I'm sorry if this is damaging to Brian's correspondent's self-esteem, but I think the answer's obvious: they're just not that into you.

    However, that's just about being worried about admissions people knowing who we are: maybe there is also a genuine worry about hiding from each other, because we (or some of us, depending on school) are in such a tight competition. The who_got_in crowd can definitely be a little aggressive sometimes, which is why I've adopted the practice of listening in there for interesting information, but otherwise posting here.

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