philstudent1991

Congratulations, and thanks for the very helpful post I'm sure a lot of people will appreciate this. Texas is a great program, and Austin is a great city to live in.

^ thanks. I heard from some students there and it sounds like it's gone up a bit since then. Thanks everyone!

Certainly there are unranked or lower ranked programs that place well, and highly ranked programs that do not. And the PGR does not take placement into account in its ranking whatsoever. But I think it's a distracting quibble from the main point, which is true, that highly PGR ranked programs in general place better than others. Sure there are exceptions, sure there are some schools that place well in a specialty area, etc. But in general, going to a highly regarded PGR school is the best way to increase your chances of desirable placement. I think prospective students need to understand that.

Just my opinion, but here you go. Specialty rank, and working with a top name in a field even if it isn't at a broadly known program, is worth something. But all else equal, take the overall rank. Several reasons. For one, your advisor may leave, or pass away, or be hard to get along with. So, only apply to programs where there are several faculty you could work with. Second, I think people that want a job in philosophy after the phd need to be shooting for top 30. Obviously there are exceptions, but broadly speaking placement gets weaker after that. Third, and perhaps most important, is that having a specialty area is overrated for most jobs. Having an active and narrow research program is good if you want to work at a research school. But 90+% or whatever of schools are more focused on teaching, SLACs, smaller state schools, community colleges, etc. They don't care about your research as much. They'll want you to be able to teach philosophy generally. Maybe you'll teach Kant, maybe you'll teach the Greeks, maybe you'll teach Existentialism. Having a broader background in philosophy can be a highlight on a resume at these kinds of schools. So perhaps being an expert in a subfield is overrated, considering the reality of the job market, which is that you won't waltz into a TT job at a PGR school, probably no matter what, but especially not if you take your PhD at a school ranked outside the PGR T20 or maybe T30 (31). That might be more pessimistic than is warranted but I figure that's better than more optimistic than is warranted. So in summary my view is that if all else really is equal, take the top program over the weaker programs strong in your specialty. If nothing else, you may change interests once you get there.

For people in the program, does anyone know 1. Standard funding package 2. Average matriculating cohort size 3. If transfer credits ever happen Feel free to PM me or post on here. I scoured the site but couldn't find this information. Maybe I'm just dense.

wow, in favor of what, if I may ask

Bump Funding packages can differ by more than 10,000 a year even among ranked programs (and it's not always the highest ranked program with the best package! private vs public is a better indicator). Please take the few moments to fill out this form!

So what are your prospects, Sid?

It seems like you should infer nothing. Literally every possible option except rejected outright is still on the table. Probably not what you want to hear... But who knows. Maybe it means you made the first cut. Fingers crossed.

That's amazing, not bad news

I wonder what will become of the Wisconsin Workshop in Metaethics, as you alluded to. This seems all around unfortunate for students interested in metaethics, as top names become more centralized at the top. Great for students at those programs, but less access to top scholars for others.

Yes, the Temple people not emailing you back seems very weird to me. I agree that if they cared about you coming to the program. they would email you back. Especially since it's multiple people giving you the cold shoulder, that would be a red flag to me.

Like, final review? Or do they mean the entire review of applicants happens in that span?

Did you apply to any MAs? Georgia State and I think LSU do some stuff with Nietzsche and continental figures in general.

I don't see any confidentiality breach here. There is no identifying info, the generic email goes out to hundreds of people, and there is no privileged information on offer in the emails. However, I'm not sure what work showing these emails does that compiling the funding details elsewhere does not do. I think the funding details project is awesome and I will be consulting it extensively when I apply out. But the letters are not as helpful to me, if they are helpful at all. But it's totally baseless to jump on Ian as not trustworthy. Ian has contributed more valuable information and insight to this forum than anyone else.

It's not naive. No one seems has it quite figured out. Schools have an obvious incentive to notify acceptances and waitlists as soon as possible. So if someone sees that acceptances and waitlists have gone out, and they have heard nothing, then it makes sense to assume they are not on either list. But this is an imperfect method. Schools can only make an educated guess as to how many initial offers will accept so their waitlist has to be flexible. They might need to add more people to it if it's a low yield year. Something like this happened for UCSD. Two years ago an unusually high % of their first rounders accepted the offer, so the next year they could only take like 2 candidates, as opposed to the usual 5-10 or whatever they shoot for. Conversely, Chicago has no waitlist. It seems like schools should just accept who they want, waitlist any plausible applicants, and then reject the rest. Why some schools seem to wait months to reject people that seemingly they know for sure they won't be extending an offer to is not clear, and was frustrating to me as an applicant as I'm sure it is to you. If someone else knows the reason, I'd like to know. Perhaps it's a higher level administrative thing that the department has no control over.

I hear great things about their program.

I also encourage you to take the few moments to fill this out. I think this can be very helpful. Some people think of funding as binary: either there is funding or there is not. This is not the case. There is a wide range of funding and that matters greatly. Please do share information about your program.

Didn't they have the earliest deadline among ranked programs, like 12/15? But anyway, Stanford can afford to wait as long as they want since everyone really wants to go there.

how so?

Ya, I can see why one would think getting rejected from an MA is a bad sign for their PhD apps, and maybe it is, but you never know. These are just legends and I cannot confirm their veracity, but I have heard tales of someone that got rejected at Tufts and accepted outright to UNC, and of another who was waitlisted at Virginia and accepted outright to Harvard.

Wow some of those were right on the money, and most were in the right neighborhood. Nice work

Yes this is exactly right. They aren't giving you the run around they are just telling you the truth. They have to give their admits until 4/15 to decide and their hands are tied until then. And just because one person got in off the waitlist doesn't mean you are in trouble. Could have been a fake, but idk why someone would fake a Miami waitlist acceptance. The fakes are generally Harvard and NYU direct acceptances. And anyway yes, the information is perfectly consistent with you being as high as number 2 on the list, or number 1 in your AOS. who knows. but don't get discouraged!

Don't get discouraged! You knew coming in that this was going to be a shitty ordeal, and that rejections don't mean anything about you as a student, an applicant, a person, etc. There are two reasons that immediately come to mind as to why UVA passed on you. One, of course, is fit. Even if you are very very good, if you aren't interested in something that they want to do, or if someone very very VERY good already got an offer from them in your AOS, then maybe you just were screwed out of it by unfortunate chance. Alternatively, maybe Virginia realised that you were such a good applicant that you would undoubtedly get offers from top schools and ultimately reject their offer, so they decided to save themselves the heartbreak of thinking you might go there just to have you go somewhere else. So, a rejection DOES NOT mean you are bad, or worse, or any such rubbish as that. Be confident and don't give up!

^Columbia should easily have the best placement record, right? Though of course they do a lot of analytic too.