greencoloredpencil

Just received a UCSD rejection!

I don't think this is the most charitable reply. I think this topic was simply a place for people to share what factors they would take into account most in making a decision. It could be interesting to hear what others value. EDIT: I see you've edited your original post that I quoted. I still don't think your new one is the most charitable reply. Unfortunately, I'm not one with multiple offers (at least as of now ) so I can't contribute positively.

Congratulations! Was any information supplied about how many offers they made or if the committee is finished making decisions? I only ask because it's my top choice. Of course if you don't feel comfortable answering I understand.

Take the GRE seriously. I didn't and I have a low quantitative score because of it. I've heard that committees tend to value the verbal part more, however, this still becomes a liability. Even if you have an excellent application, you don't want a single stain to bring you down. When it's this competitive you can't afford to have a flaw that's so easily preventable.

Yes, they did basically exactly what you guessed. We talked over each school on my list and I heard opinions from them regarding things like you said. I removed some schools and added others based on their recommendations. My AOI is a little divergent (I have two separate areas that I am very interested in) so I wanted to find schools strong in both areas. I asked professors who specialize in each respective area of my AOI for help.

Absolutely.

Well in deciding a breakdown I had to ask myself if I would be okay attending a program outside of the top 20 or 25 or if I'd rather reapply next year if I was not admitted anywhere. I ultimately decided on very few schools that I'd be happy to attend outside of this range, 3 to be exact, so they became my safety schools. I suppose "safety school" might be a misleading term to use since admissions are so competitive and it would be mistaken to count on being surely admitted anywhere. Anyway, I decided to really target the 10-20 range in terms of Leiter rankings for this reason. My reaches were the number of top ten schools I applied to. I've been told by my letter writers that I have a very good shot for the programs I've applied to. However, so far I've only been waitlisted at one program in the 10-20 range.

As far as picking schools my list was composed in the following way. First I used Leiter rankings and department strengths (this included things like a particular professor of interest, etc) as a rough guide to forming a preliminary list. After that I thought about my chances at each and trimmed down my list so that I had a certain proportion of reach, good-shot, and safety schools. Then I showed my list to several professors in my AOI at my undergrad institution for advice. With their help I further edited the list.

Wait listed at UT Austin. Really hoping to get off of it!...

Brown! (though I see I've been beat to claim one)

That doesn't bother me, I wouldn't be surprised if they told that to the top 5-10 on the wait list.

I'm one of the UT waitlists as well, I'll take it as good news since it's my first official news of the season.

I've had experience with two universities and both have had adjuncts who taught upper division classes. How common this is, I don't know. I do know you're right about everything you said regarding research positions, but for me, even if a research position is unattainable I want to at least be in a teaching position that allows me to teach advanced courses.

Personally we have opposite fears. I'd rather be an adjunct at a university (even a non-prestigious university) than work at a community college. Though, your point is well taken when it comes to pay.... My only experience at a community college was taking classes at the local one during summers as a high school student. So, I can't say I have much knowledge of what they're really like. I have known graduate students who were excellent teachers who went on to have community college positions though. I've also heard many good things about community college professors from others I've known who went to a community college. But, what bothers me about teaching at a community college is the thought of only being able to teach introductory courses. Also, I find the idea of publishing and researching to be a lot more appealing than teaching (though I specifically say "the idea of" since I don't have any real experience of what either teaching or publishing research are really like at this point).

But this fails to account for students who simply have a poor aptitude for standardized tests. Some students just don't read as fast or work as fast and this doesn't mean that they're any less qualified to be graduate students. Other students have disabilities that make taking the GRE very difficult--and are you aware of the "accommodations" they make in such cases? They don't solve much in certain cases. So even if the idea is to measure how dedicated someone is to a particular task (albeit a pretty expensive and useless task) it still unfairly puts some students at a disadvantage.

For whatever it's worth, I have anecdotal information regarding a school that is fairly close to the bottom for the Leiter's rankings that the majority of their graduates end up in community college positions.

Perhaps, though I think at very least they ought not to give consideration to the quantitative portion nor the writing portion. The quantitative is entirely irrelevant and the writing is not a good measure of one's writing or argumentative ability. Besides, we have the writing sample for that.

I understand the desire to want an objective measure of an applicant's potential. However, I think standardized tests will never be able to produce a meaningful objective measure for success here (I also think this is true for high school students applying to enter a university as an undergraduate, though I suppose that's somewhat of a different topic). Answering multiple choice questions under time pressure is simply not the kind of activity that is relevant to how one will do in a graduate program. Alternately, if the idea is to objectively measure the quality of a student's overall education at her or his undergraduate institution, then I think there are three points to consider. First, this is a very hard goal to accomplish. It is very difficult, and it even seems unclear to me, how one would go about deciding upon questions that measure the overall quality of an undergraduate education. Secondly, even if we had a test that somehow perfectly accomplished this task, it still wouldn't account for a student's aptitude to take a standardized test. Some students fold under time pressure, other students have disabilities that make taking a 4 hour standardized test extremely difficult. Though, we need not consider cases even as extreme as these. Some students think, write, read, do math, etc at different speeds. Thirdly, and perhaps this point is just a restatement of my very first statement, I'm not sure how useful evaluating the quality of a student's overall education is in the first place. A graduate program in philosophy should perhaps care to a certain extent about this, however, the main goal in discerning between applicants is finding out who has the best philosophical ability, not who had the best quality education.

It's as though the admissions committees that do take the GRE seriously are reducing their work in distinguishing among applicants at the expense of putting us, the applicants, through a useless, time-consuming, and expensive process. This process helps them differentiate among applicants, but their basis for differentiating has absolutely nothing to do with what makes a great philosophy graduate student. Though, of course, I'm sure the committee members don't see it this way. I've heard many genuine arguments that the GRE is meaningful and worthwhile, though I haven't heard a convincing one to date. EDIT: I want to stress that I don't mean to say that committee members who take the GRE seriously do it to put us through a useless process. Of course they are well meaning. I'm simply saying that in reality the GRE is a useless process.

If you're talking about the application status website, I haven't been able to access it for at least an hour now.

I completely agree. It's frustrating to see the GRE taken into account at all. I understand that committees are looking for some way to distinguish applicants, however, GRE scores are a horrible factor to use for this task. Once you analyze what a GRE score really tells you (eg how fast one reads, how fast one come up with mathematical tricks, how much an applicant prepared and studied for a standardized test, etc) it obviously shouldn't be used in admissions decisions. GRE score indicates absolutely nothing relevant to a student's potential for a graduate program in philosophy. I'm also skeptical that it indicates anything relevant to a student's potential to succeed in a graduate program in any subject...unless professional test taking graduate programs exist these days of course!

I voted other. I'm particularly a fan of the type of contractualism given by Scanlon.

Any argument for utilitarianism...

I do a lot of shipping and I'm pretty sure tracking has been 90 cents for the longest time. It may have even gone up to $1.10 now if memory serves. Outrageous!

I absolutely LOVE grape juice! I sure hope you get an offer!