PerpetualApplicant No More

Riverside? Anyone? Bueller? Hit me up!

I did my undergrad in Philly and now I'm moving to So-Cal, too--you'll have to let me know if you find a decent cheesesteak anywhere out here.

I think the forum is a victim of its own success. You're right that we've made connections with people, and we'll be entering a fairly (if not very) small field with those same people. But that's exactly it--we've talked a lot, and will as likely as not meet each other in person at some point (APA's are huge). So whereas this forum started as a great place to connect with people we might not otherwise run in to about something that was all important to us, I'd prefer to talk to those people on facebook, without either anonymity (within such a small field, why bother?) or having to post everything publicly.

I'll be on and off, but not here as obsessively any more. Feel free to PM me if you want to facebook; half of what I do there is philosophy crowd-sourcing anyway.

After a pretty insane amount of deliberation, I chose Riverside (over CUNY), mostly based on the insane number of faculty I want to work with there. As I was drafting a withdrawal email to CUNY, I got a note saying I didn't get the nice fellowship, so that made things easier. Either way, I'm excited!

Valid question. I don't have complete info on SFSU's placement this year, but from what I know, it definitely beat several schools on the list.

If Wisconsin calls you (first) on Tuesday, say you need a couple of hours, and then frantically start calling people at Texas. EDIT: I'd make a point to have the phone numbers for the relevant people at Texas (DGA, DGS, POI's) on hand by Tuesday morning.

In that case, I'd say discuss this all with the person who went to bat for you, and lean far more heavily on his/her advice than ours on this forum: not only is he/she a prof and we are all just 'prospies' (and a few bored current students), but *much* more importantly, he/she has epistemic access to particulars of your situation that we do not. EDIT: He/she might also be able to 1) tell you if the people you've emailed at CUNY are just bad at responding to emails or actually not interested in working with you, or 2) as aduh says, suggest some people he/she knows at nyu/columbia/etc who you could work with and thus avoid the potential weirdness since you were recommended by him/her directly.

Ok a few thoughts: 1) To tie a few other posts together, I understand your frustration, logos, but this forum probably isn't the best place to vent unfiltered, for the reasons aduh mentioned. From what I can tell, you expressed regret in March for things you said in February, so, given that precedent, I'd find a more private place to vent. 2) I have no idea if these professors aren't interested in you or not. Do they have office hours? Show up and see. If not, I think a single, follow-up email, several weeks after the first one is not out of the question (they may still not respond, but they also are unlikely to interpret two polite emails, several weeks apart--when they failed to respond to the first one--as pestering). But be apologetic in the second one anyway 3) I wonder if you'd benefit from a new start. It seems like you have some frustrations with CUNY (which may or may not be warranted--I have no clue and am not in any sort of epistemic position to make any claims about), and, from what you've said, at least one or two profs don't really like you there. So my advice might actually be, if at all possible, to move and take classes in a different department (if you don't move, people at nyu//columbia will be like 'why isn't this guy just sticking with cuny?'). I did something similar. I did my first MA at a ph.d. program, we'll call it X, and didn't do so well, wasn't admitted there (and was shut out) etc. But I passed, and was doing better by the end, and could have stuck around to take classes as a non-degree student if I'd wanted. Instead, I took a few years off and moved (I don't think the few years off point is relevant here, just mentioning it). So when I looked into coming back and taking classes, I asked my adviser at program X, who was friendly to me but didn't love me or write me a great letter, who I should take clases with at local program Y. He mentioned a few people, and I emailed some of them, saying I was a MA graduate of program X and who I'd studied with, and they were all more than happy to have me sit in on a seminar. And I did really well in my first seminar there, and built a relationship with that prof, so that when I inquired about subsequent seminars at program Y, I just said I was a graduate of program X taking seminars at program Y, and had already taken one--and really gotten along with--a particular prof. And then they were all more than happy to have me take their seminars, and that was that. The reason I feel the fresh start really benefitted me was that, if I'd gone back to program X, my letters--even from different profs--would have at best said something like "perpetualapplicant is a great student now, but [i've heard] he was not so great when he started here," whereas the letters--that I used this year--from school Y said "I don't know what happened at school X, but perpetualapplicant has been fucking fantastic here." And it seems from what you are saying that you are thinking about getting new letters, that is, from different people than the ones who wrote for you this year (again, I have no epistemic access to your situation so I cannot say if this is necessary or not). But if that's what you want, then this is my advice.

Unclear--I PM'd you.

YES! Today is really the wrong day to be out of upvotes...

Withdrew my UConn application. No idea where I was on their list, but, in case it was high, I hope this helps. I'll be deciding whether or not I'd take CUNY's offer (which, apparently, I won't find out until next week if I get a fellowship) or UCR's as soon as I can.

True story: the other day, I was grading midterms in green and I thought to myself, "Man, I hope something works out for greencoloredpencil." So glad that it did. Congrats!!

Let me see if I understand you correctly: is your dilemma between visiting this weekend or visiting after April 15 *once you have made up your mind*? Or is it between visiting this weekend and hoping to somehow visit on April 15 itself, or April 16 *prior to making up your mind*? If it is the latter, I am not sure what to tell you. If you were holding offers, you would't be able to do it, but if (AND ONLY IF) you receive two offers on April 15 and cannot make up your mind, you can ask both of them for another day or two and try to scrable out to visit (in response to those who say this is unethical--I think that's only the case if you have an offe)r--any offer--in hand before April 15. If you receive the offer on April 15 itself, then you simply are part of the chain, rather than holding up the chain). If it is the former interpretation, I would say the exact same advice applies to you regarding whether to visit while wait-listed that was discussed in the thread "Wait-listed and Contacting Professors." tl;dr, it can hurt you to be seen as a supplicant/do something silly when you are there, but it is generally worth it if and only if it will help you make your decision. Given that you've already made your decision (i.e. you know in what order you would take the offers), my two cents is don't go while wait-listed, as, from what you have written, I am not sure what you would gain out of it.

Yeah, I don't think I'd have applied to UConn (or Yale) straight out of college--I needed a little more time away from Connecticut at that piont in my life. But I more just meant that, given your MA success and especially the time and thought you put in to choosing programs (to apply to as well as attend), I expect you to own Ph.D. admissions next time around.