Davidspring

That's great news for me! They told me that they had three acceptances so far. Thanks again! Best of luck to you as well.

Thanks for your information! Do you mean ND? They are my first choice, so I'd be super excited if they admit me off the waitlist before April 15.

Thanks for the suggestions. They still have many students to hear from before they admit anyone from the waitlist. I'll keep my fingers crossed for more good news.

Is it always the case that if someone declines an offer then some other student will be admitted off the waitlist? I was told that I was one of the first on ND's waitlist, but I still haven't got a spot even if two students in my line have turned down their offers. They just initially admitted more students than the number of students they can have in the incoming class. Moreover, since Harvard's visiting days are from April 11 through 14, a few top students will decide very late and this will create a log jam for many programs. Here I want to encourage our people, who are not waitlisted in clearly better programs, to decide by April 14 so that our waitlisters can have a good chance of being admitted before the deadline. Thank you very much for your efforts.

I'm still waiting for a spot at ND, and I'd be able to help some people out in three other programs if I got the spot at ND. More people to decline ND's offer or remove from their waitlist because of better offers?

I appreciate your early decision as well.

I don't think we were blaming anyone. Neither did we intend to hold resentment toward anyone. Most of us would totally understand that a lot of top applicants need to wait to make decisions after they have visited the schools that admitted them. But you are right: everyone of us should feel free to take our time to make decisions, so do our top applicants. We would only be very grateful to those top applicants who decide early if they are able to.

I can't agree more. A DGS told me that they had very many talented students on the waitlist and hoped me to make a decision as soon as possible. But given that my waitlisted schools, at least one of which is my top choice, mentioned to me that only very few of their initially admitted students had made decisions, I have to wait until they have done so. I hope to help some folks out, but I just need some people to help me out first.

I also got an update from Syracuse. They've decided to offer me a university fellowship. Are you going to visit Syracuse? I'll be there on March 29. Any others?

Thanks for this information--that's good to know. I look forward to receiving my last rejection =_=

I presumed a rejection from Stanford. But since I haven't received a notification yet, I'm wondering if they are still sending out rejections. Any thoughts or information about this?

If you ended up in North America to do your PhD, you'd have more time to cultivate your philosophical interests by taking grad courses in your program. I think that this is extremely important for those of us who are not from English-speaking countries. We might also need time to make our English totally fluent.

Thank you so much for your early decisions! Would you mind claiming your AOI? I'm waiting for a spot at ND.

Anyone wants to claim the new waitlist at UMass? Did anyone get accepted off their waitlist?

I just observed that GSU didn't successfully place any of their students into top 20 schools this year (maybe some of their students will be admitted into top 20 off waitlists later). Does this suggest that this is a tough year for applicants out of MA programs? How about other MA programs? I bet responses to these questions will help applicants into such MA programs to make good choices. For GSU's 2016 placement record, see: http://philosophy.gsu.edu/graduate/placement-record/

Thanks for letting us know about this. I definitely take your point. But those of us who are in a tricky situation in which we have to decide between waitlisted schools to which we really want to go and admitted weaker schools would very much appreciate it if people like you could decide at least two or three days prior to the deadline.

It's quite obvious that if people who got offers from top schools made their decisions as soon as possible, they would help a great number of students to be admitted off some top schools's waitlists and then these students would be able to help other students to be accepted off some decent schools's waitlists. On the contrary, if everybody waited to make a last-minute decision before the deadline, then most people would be in trouble.

Thanks a lot! It's great to know you removed yourself from ND's wl. Hope to see more good news here!

Thanks for the feedback. I think international students have more difficulties: given the limited spots for them, non-native English speakers have to compete with students from UK, Canada, Australia, etc. This year, I was admitted into a few decent schools and they suspect that I'd be admitted into top schools, given the strength of my file. But unfortunately, I didn't get into any top 20 schools, though I was waitlisted at very few of them. The only weaknesses I can think of is my low GRE verbal score and my unknown foreign institutions. To add, I got very strong letters from great people and they thought very highly of my writing sample: they recommended me to publish it in a well-respected journal.

I should have made my claim clearer: by high scores I mean scores over 160 (better: >=90%). If you are from a prestigious school or have recommendation letters from great people, then maybe that's different. Many people claimed that they had poor scores, but they didn't make clear that how poor they were. And they didn't tell us anything about other parts of their file. Moreover, most students admitted into top schools scored very high in the GRE. How do you know you would become the exceptions? We'd better have a cautious attitude towards any ecouraging (and maybe misleading) results in this respect. My recommendation is to try your best to make every part of your file strong, which, of course, includes the GRE. Many schools don't even carefully read your file if your GRE is not impressive in their eyes. But as I said, good or perfect scores alone won't promise you an offer: they only make people take your application seriously. Given my experience in this season, I come to not believing that GRE is trash, though it is trash. I do hate this sort of standardized tests! If one day the US schools didn't use these stupid tests any more, then I'd be more than happy to apply again.

GRE is VERY important: if you got high scores, people in top departments would take your application seriously (this wouldn't be enough for them to admit you, though). Otherwise, you would probably be shut out immediately, especially if your education background isn't impressive either. They don't need to find diamonds in the sand, given that there are plenty of diamonds in front of them. I'm so sad about this.

Congrats! I'm still hoping more people to turn down ND and to do so sooner than later

I would probably do that if I were to be admitted off the waitlists of other significantly better programs. I really hope that I can help you, but that totally depends on what other strong applicants would do in the coming days.

You are a perfect person! Maybe I'm just selfish, but I sincerely hope that the lucky birds who would probably decline Notre Dame's offer do so sooner rather than later. I was wait listed at Notre Dame.

Yes, Cornell doesn't require GRE and so they won't use the scores as a measure to discard some files for sure.