isostheneia

I don't think it would be un-kosher to ask, but there's a very good chance they won't tell you. I don't think there's much to lose if you've already been rejected.

Seeing all these Princeton acceptances, I'm somehow a bit sad despite the fact that I didn't even apply.

It's not automatic - I would've been happy to go there if I didn't get in to some of my other places. But mainly because the research interests of the department don't line up as well with mine as the others. Georgetown seems to cover German philosophy with much wider scope and context (a good thing, in my eyes), and it would be amazing to work with Pinkard, since I tend to focus on Hegel in terms of history. UCSD doesn't have a big-name Hegel scholar like Georgetown does (though they do now have Allais who focuses more on Kant, and who would be great to work with), but they have some really cool interaction between history/German Idealism and logic, in Tolley and Sher. Tolley is probably the person whose interests line up best with mine at any university. In terms of JHU, I think Forster's work is great, and they do have a Hegel person in Moyar (though he tends to be more on the social/political side), and I like Michael Williams's work on skepticism. But in general, UCSD and Georgetown seem to be increasing their focus on the convergence of things like German Idealism and epistemology/logic, while JHU seems a bit weaker in each and less focused on the convergence. Also, I grew up in Maryland and spent a fair amount of time in Baltimore, and I really would rather not spend the better part of a decade living in Baltimore. But this isn't to say that JHU isn't a great place, or even that it isn't a great place for my interests.

I'm most likely going to be turning down Johns Hopkins in a week or two (after I've had a chance to talk things over with my letter writers). I'll later turn down UCSD or Georgetown, but that won't be until after visits, so early April. My current thinking is to stay on the waitlist at Pitt until April 15, and if there's no news from them, then accept at either UCSD or Georgetown, depending on which I like better after the visits.

God, there sure is a lot of red on the results page today. Keep your head up, folks.

I think this is probably a useful lesson for admissions season sanity: in the absence of sufficient evidence to draw an informed conclusion, you might as well be optimistic. Unfortunately, I can't really contribute to the actual issue at hand - it's indeed confusing and hard to interpret what it could mean.

Thanks for the write-up. I also think fit/AOI are incredibly important. The place I've been admitted/waitlisted are, it seems to me, the places where I have the best fit. There aren't always faculty members doing exactly what I do at each place, but there are at least a couple at each place which cover my interests quite nicely. And at all the places I've been admitted/waitlisted, they list the things I work on as specialties, which isn't the case at most of the places I've been rejected.

Waitlisted at Pitt! So if everyone who got in could just turn them down, that'd be great...

Jeez, congratulations so much. I'm incredibly jealous. Still waiting for that email to appear in my inbox...

Guys, it might be best if we stop feeding the troll and keep this thread for its original purpose - announcing acceptances and congratulating each other on them.

UNC has already released acceptances, so if you haven't heard anything, I don't think you got in, unfortunately. In fact, I'm a bit surprised that you haven't heard anything - they've even sent out some rejections as well. I'm still confused. What do you mean by "I'll be attending in the fall"? Don't you have to be admitted to attend? Did you apply to their PhD program?

I'm confused why you think you've been admitted if you've received no notification of the fact that you've been admitted.

This is fascinating, thanks for sharing. It's amazing to see all the professors who are now incredibly prominent who were then just going on the job market. Also interesting to see how much of Leiter's advice has stayed exactly the same, down to the wording. Also, "It has been suggested by some that there will be significantly more academic job opportunities in the near future than there have been for some thirty years. Many of the faculty hired during the job boom of the 1960's will be retiring over the next fifteen years; and there will be an increase in college enrollments beginning in the mid-1990's." Hilarious. (Though to be clear, he doesn't endorse this view.)

What an incredibly uneventful day. Disappointing.

Yes, it's $20K with TA duties starting first year, maximum six years of TAing, and one year of dissertation fellowship.

Many thanks. I've heard that as well. And as a side note, I got an acceptance from UCSD half an hour later. So... today is a good day.

Accepted to Georgetown! I'm incredibly happy. This is amazing. I'm going to grad school!

If I had to guess, I think it's that MAPH decisions aren't finalized until all humanities programs have made their recommendations and the MAPH program itself has reviewed the recommended applicants, and rejections with and without MAPH recommendations (for any humanities program) aren't sent out until that process finishes. The posts from previous years seem inconsistent between "recommended" and "admitted" to MAPH when rejected from philosophy - if it's the latter, then I think the version I outlined is possible, but if it's the former, then I have no idea what would take so long.

Great idea, thanks for starting the thread. For what it's worth, Chicago doesn't keep a wait list, so you're not helping out any other applicants by declining their offer early. Of course, the department would probably appreciate knowing as soon as you've decided, but I would feel even less pressure than normal to make up your mind quickly about the offer.

Gambo. But I just looked up Oka, and Oka makes cheese, and Gambo doesn't, so... that may help narrow it down. Of course, there's also the small matter of Buddhism vs Catholicism, but I think I could be happy enough with either, really.

Since this is a rejection thread, I'll just say that UChicago is my first rejection. No fun at all. I was really hoping to be this year's ungerdrag. And since this is a plan b thread, I'll also say that I found a sweet monastery in Canada, and maybe I'll become a monk if I don't get into philosophy. More realistically, I would continue working on my philosophy app but also do some law apps next year if I don't get in anywhere. Not totally kidding about the monastery idea though.

I think it depends partially on what you're looking for - so, what percentage of people who go on the market get jobs, how good those jobs are, any jobs vs TT jobs, etc. I think the most reliable method is to check the ProQuest dissertation database (and narrow by school and department) to find the amount of people who successfully defended their dissertations, and then manually search for each to see whether they now have a job. This will inevitably include some people who decided not to go on the market, and some people who went on the market but took a job after not finding a job, and some people who left the profession after a few years doing adjunct work. The extent of each of these factors just mentioned, it should be noted, would likely vary a bit based on program rank (people from NYU are much less likely to have to take adjunct work than people from a much lower-ranked program, for instance), but 1) it should be fairly reliable among departments of similar professional standing, and 2) it seems much more reliable than simply going based on individual departments' websites, since they vary widely in their reporting practices.

I'm surprised that only after 6 votes, there's already some consensus, given the amount of options! 3 votes for UChicago being most under-ranked, and 3 votes for USC being most over-ranked (another 2 for Berkeley as well). Regarding UChicago's fall out of the top 20, it's perhaps not too surprising given the faculty they've lost. The most impactful one, I would think, is Michael Forster's move to Bonn. They also lost Anat Schechtman to Wisconsin, Christopher Frey to South Carolina, and Ted Cohen died last year. They are, however, doing three job searches this year - early modern, philosophy of science, and German idealism. I've heard that they're considering making offers to Clinton Tolley (UCSD) and Matt Boyle (Harvard) for the German idealism job. Which could be pretty impactful for those of us applying to all three places for German idealism. Hopefully we know where people will be once decisions have to be made!

Congratulations! You must be ecstatic. It's an amazing program.