Table
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Posts posted by Table
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I run, meditate, write in a journal, keep up with friends and family, and restrain the caffeine to a medium buzz. It's good to practice good habits now, because it only gets harder from here.
This is good advice.
When I'm stressed, I usually get excessively focused on the future. The most effective way for me to manage stress is to get centered and focused on my everyday life. Things that help with that: meditating (5 minute chunks). Waking up early enough so I can start my day in a non-rushed way. Paying attention to how I spend my time. Hiking and walking. When I'm walking somewhere and it's not freezing, taking the time to pay attention to my surroundings—asking myself what I can hear, smell, etc. Keeping a "journal," where I just write down 3 favorite moments at the end of every day. Avoiding my computer for the 2 hours before bed. I don't do all of these things regularly, but I should.
There's a lot of evidence that exercise can be really helpful in managing stress. It's something I would like to do more.
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If you spend a large portion of your writing sample discussing empirical results, I think there's some risk that an admissions committee would feel that they hadn't seen enough of you "doing philosophy."
It is sort of a surprise that your writing sample relying on a priori arguments helped you to get into Duke and WUSTL. … But I do not think you are a Kantian. Otherwise I would be really shocked Duke and WUSTL would take a Kantian student into their program.
Both departments have faculty members who work on Kant...
I would be pretty surprised if there are any departments that only accept students whose writing samples include some kind of empirical investigation.
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I'm hearing a lot of people talk about GRE scores. While these matter a little, at some point, they don't matter that much. A 4.0 versus a 6.0 on AW, for instance, means almost nothing in philosophy admissions. And though some departments use cut-offs, after an application makes that cut, the rest is about the reputation of the institutions attended, the strength of the letters, and the strength of the writing sample. I'm in a particularly good position to comment on this. I teach test-prep with a well-known, national brand in the industry.
Also, common sense suggests that the GRE can't be much of a factor beyond the cut-off. GRE numbers won't tell a committee whether one applicant with a great writing sample is going to be a better philosopher than another applicant with a great writing sample. Everybody knows that many great GRE scores were purchased not with strength of intellect but with time and money.
You get a reasonably high score, and the score becomes a non-factor. You don't get the reasonably high score, then your score becomes a liability.
Many admissions committees may think that GRE scores become a non-factor after initial cuts, but I doubt that's actually the case. All the research on racial and gender bias in hiring and admissions seems to show that expectations based on initial impressions of a candidate seriously color the way their file is interpreted. Anything that makes someone opening your file think of you as a "smart person" is going to help, because that's just the way human brains work. It seems likely that very high (as opposed to "passing") GRE scores will often do this.
I also have heard that one person who is often on the adcom at my school does take GRE scores very seriously. It seems plausible that some schools do give them significant weight.
Where did you hear that some schools use cut offs? If I remember correctly, everyone in the Leiter thread denied it.
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G. E. Moore's open question argument is one that comes to mind. … I don't think anyone thinks either of those arguments are good anymore, or at least not in the form those two guys presented them.
There are plenty of people who still think he was on to something, though.
I also like Moore's proof of an external world.
doodedoo
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I JUST GOT WAITLISTED UVA I'M FUCKING FREAKING OUT HERE AT WORK AND IT'S ONLY A WAITLIST.
Congrats! Did you make the turtle face?
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opening your email to find good news:
- v_e_r000, Golem, DHumeDominates and 1 other
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Thanks for explaining your intent, Ian. I think it's really impossible to predict how an overstressed stranger will respond to being told they're out of options and should give up, and trying to get them to reflect does not seem worth the risk of seriously upsetting them. I don't really see how parem/logos's offensive comment is relevant here.
I agree that this forum should be a place for support, which is why I and others wanted to comment on a pretty unsupportive post. Will move it to another thread next time.
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You're not going to like hearing this, but I think it's important enough that I'm going to say it anyway.
I looked up Wipf and Stock, and I read through their (rather lengthy) "Author Guide". They are clearly a vanity press. It appears they publish some works on a more traditional model in order to achieve some "credibility", but a wolf in sheep's clothing is still a wolf. They make their money by charging authors for copy editing and/or typesetting (depending on which imprint you use). After a very small initial print run of 20 or so books (which all go to the author, and which are funded by a part of the fees authors pay), they operate as a print on demand service with no marketing and essentially no distribution system.
I also looked at their author guide, and it looked like only one of their imprints requires authors to pay…?
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Even if Iamparem's comments are insensitive and offensive, I don't see how crude and curt responses are warranted. Comments like those only exacerbate the tension and trolling on these forums. In what way can they help?
The issue is not whether lamparem's comments are misguided and excessive (which, to me, I agree with you that they seem to be); the issue is with how you respond to those comments, and, as far as I can tell, those responses seem to be discourteous and unhelpful (much like lamparem's)
Addendum: this post should be prefaced with the observation that it seems highly unlikely one can assess someone else's capacity for philosophy based on gradcafe forum posts. If the entire reason for those comments toward lamparem's are only based on lamparem's comments on this website, then that just seems a little silly and presumptuous to me.
Sorry to backtrack a bit, guys, but I agree with this and I think it's important. I don't know how telling someone they have run out of options and that "it's clear that you should give up" on the basis of a few forum posts could ever be warranted. Especially in response to someone, clearly distressed, saying that they feel like they have run out of options and don't know what else to do—a sentiment I'm sure many here can relate to. It may not have been intended to be mean, but it was. You may not have meant to kick someone while they're down, but you did.
You're right, Ian, that lamparem needs to hear from someone who will speak honestly about his situation. That person is not you, because there's no possible way that you understand his situation. Like philophilosopher said, his forum posts don't tell us anything about his ability to succeed in philosophy. They just (if real) show a person under a great deal of stress that seems to really lack support in the discipline. My initial response to to many of his posts was frustration, but I don't think that's actually appropriate.
I think dfindley is really coloring people's interpretations here. I don't see the arrogance with lamparem. He's snapped a few times about his book, but I imagine I'd be a little snappy too if people responded like we have to something I considered one of my most significant achievements.
lamparem… It's too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you don't need to rely on people, especially if you're shy, depressed, anxious, etc. It's too easy to make excuses and tell yourself little stories: You don't need to talk to professors about the application process, there's plenty of information available online. You don't need to talk to anyone about a book you're working on, you'll just wow them when it's done. They're busy. It would be rude. You're good enough to do it on your own.I think most of us have done something like this at some point in our lives, and we've all come to regret it. We can all benefit from feedback, and you really seem to be at a point where you need to talk to someone about your worries and how to move forward if you don't get in this year. If you're not comfortable talking to your professors at this point in the admissions process, what about another MA student? You said that there are some people at CUNY who were accepted from the MA program… what about one of them?I said this earlier, but I also think it would be really worthwhile to talk to a therapist about your stress. There's likely low-cost mental health services available through your school. -
Statement from CU women faculty. An excerpt:
First, we are all distressed that the Report may damage the reputations of male colleagues who are completely innocent of sexual misconduct. It could also harm the prospects of our male graduate students currently on the market. We faculty women strongly believe that none of our currently untenured male colleagues or current male graduate students has engaged in sexual misconduct (nor, indeed, have most of our tenured colleagues).- Monadology and TheVineyard
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I really really recommend meeting with a therapist to talk about this stuff. It's something that has been very helpful for me, and it seems like you're under an enormous amount of stress.
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Now he has to accept the academic consequences.
What do you think the academic consequences are for writing a letter that the applicant does not consider sufficiently stellar?
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For some reason I'm feeling so impatient to receive a rejection letter from Arizona. I have no idea why.
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I missed this, too. This NYU rejection doesn't look legitimate. We'd see quite a few more than this. Many of us applied to NYU, and no one has posted about it. So unless this person was rejected through a personal contact in the department, then it's almost certainly not legitimate.
Hey, maybe we're all getting into NYU.
- Philhopeful, Ryura, v_e_r000 and 1 other
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I think you're half-right. I don't think a committee would literally throw a piece of an application in the garbage. But I think a piece could be completely disregarded, and I think a dutiful member of an admissions committee would overlook any extra pieces that do not belong in the application file. No one should be able to gain an advantage by submitting materials outside the list of what's expected in the file. So it would be inequitable for an admissions committee to take a look at the book, in my view.
I think the situation is basically identical to submitting 2 writing samples, which some people do. (ex. if one is very technical)
I'm not sure why it would be unfair for people to be able to get an advantage by submitting materials beyond what is required. You can submit extra letters, which I'm sure has the potential to sway a decision. Many applications have a specific spot to upload any extra materials you think are relevant or a place to put a link to something. These things might not get a lot of attention, but they don't seem unfair.
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...Because I don't want to bother the admissions committee with questions about my application status and chances, especially when they have hundreds of applications to go through as it is. Besides, plenty of graduate philosophy schools detail the admissions process, most notably University of Chicago, and what I've read on other sites seems to corroborate what they say to a high degree. That's why. Besides, I asked a graduate admissions person back in July, well before the admissions season, and he never got back to me. All I told him was that I had some questions about the application process, and he didn't want to be bothered. So I didn't want to push my luck any further. There is such a thing as being too pushy, eager, and nosy, Double Shot...
but how has it never come up with a professor in your department? like when you asked people to write letters for you?
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I can't imagine they would split hairs and actually sit there and say, "yes, well, he did publish a book on philosophy, and it has a publisher, *but* the publisher this and the author that and blah blah blah." To me, if they did that, they would be massively missing the point. The point is, HE WROTE A BOOK GOOD ENOUGH FOR PUBLICATION, and, by the way, if he can write a 132,000 word BOOK, then a fortiori, he can PROBABLY write a 30,000-40,000 word DISSERTATION. At least, that's the way I see it. I don't quite think they'll be as nitpicking and critical as some suggest. BUT I could be wrong. I have never been on an admissions committee, and have never spoken to an admissions committee member about the admissions process. It sure would help if I could. HOWEVER I am not saying at all that I am a sure thing at ANY of the schools I applied to and sent the book to, only that it will overall HELP, instead of HURT.
It's not nitpicking to look at the publisher before being impressed that an applicant wrote a book good enough for publication… it completely determines what "good enough for publication" means. It looks like Wipf and Stock does some vanity publishing. If that's the case, it won't help.
I don't think you should worry over this. If you're worried, though, it might be helpful to talk to someone in your department about it.
On that note… how have you never spoken to an admissions committee member about the admissions process when you're a student at a department with a PhD program?
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you have to pay to get that sort of ad, no? how much is it?
I would guess that it's just a targeted ad that's the result of viewing the item before on Amazon and not purchasing it. (killjoy, sorry.)
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It's about the writing sample, the letters of recommendation, and the SOP/fit with the dept. I can't imagine that members of admissions committees would penalize an applicant for sending something extra. I also think it's highly likely that the committees immediately discarded and forgot about the book altogether. So while their reading of the book could hurt, I really, really doubt that anyone read it.
I think it's incredibly unlikely that a committee immediately discarded a piece of an application. Of course no one would have read the book in its entirety, but I would expect a committee to at least glance at it, especially if the applicant survived initial cuts.
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If this evidence of Ludlow's accuser making friendly communication with Ludlow during the time that the accuser was supposedly trying to kill herself/in the hospital and extremely depressed does exist, and it surely does because they are obviously ready to show it in court, then this accusation, as I feared, has done a terrible injustice to Ludlow's name, and the damage was done before Ludlow even got a chance to share his side/evidence.
Huh, that's an interesting epistemic principle: assume that when people say something knowing they will likely need to verify it in court, what they say is probably true. So then, surely, we should think the student's claim that a Northwestern investigation found Ludlow had acted inappropriately—the basis of the student's lawsuit against Northwestern—is probably true.
From the other thread, where this was unfortunately cross posted:
MattDest, you say: There is evidence that we should take these allegations seriously (despite your claim that there is "no evidence") which includes the testimony from the university officials which concluded " The complaint alleges that a university official (Ms. Slavin) concluded, "based on the totality of the evidence...that Ludlow engaged in unwelcome and inappropriate sexual advances toward Plaintiff on the evening of February 10-11, 2012. In particular, Ms. Slavin found that Ludlow initiated kissing, French kissing, rubbing Plaintiff’s back,and sleeping with his arms on and around Plaintiff on the night of February 10-11, 2012." (link)
Read that over again, and see if you can see what's gone wrong. You say there is evidence. You cite as evidence that "the complaint alleges that a university official concluded..." So, the university official's report is not itself evidence...it is an alleged report. As the lawyer's statement explains, the report hasn't even been presented to the accused's lawyer.
Awkward.
If there is anyone that actually thinks Vineyard is a fair-minded skeptic suspending judgment, that should be enough to convince you otherwise. (The fact that he considers a statement from Ludlow's lawyer denying the allegations to be "new information on the Ludlow case suggest[ing] the whole thing might be made up" should also be enough to convince you otherwise.)
Vineyard, for the exact same reasons you think Ludlow actually has the texts in question, you should think the student really was in the hospital. As others have said, the existence of "friendly" texts from the student does not suggest there was no sexual assault. You don't seem to know a great deal about sexual assault. You also seem to think the existence of these texts would mean she was not actually in the hospital when the lawsuit she said she was. This may shock you, but you can actually send texts from a hospital.
ETA: I just read that the student's attorney has released a copy the email the student received from NU's director of the Sexual Harassment Prevention Office telling her the results of the investigation.
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Can we talk about how no one who posted for yale put any comments in the comments section? I would be freaking. What's up with these people.
I wasn't one of the posters, but I'd feel weird being like "I'M SO HAPPY" when I know so many people are having a tough time not hearing things. (I don't really have any info beyond what deverettf said.)
Detailed information about Brown:
Generic email telling you to check your status. This will go for any wait-list or acceptance.
Website, on page that says, "Activity for [insert name]", above the list of received things, there will be a link to view decision letter. If there's no link, then you're probably not getting in.
Is this the ApplyWeb page? Huh. I'd been assuming that those wouldn't be updated with results, I don't know why. Congrats to the Brown acceptances!
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That is one reason why I am hesitant about an iPad, because I really want to stop taking notes on physical paper, but I don't want to switch to typing, because I need the opportunity to draw things, together with the words I write. That's why a good stylus+ a good doodling-note-taking-app +handwriting recognition would be absolutely amazing. Together with being able to use the same on pdfs and downloaded books, of course. Could you tell me more about how the handwriting recognition on your friend's tablet worked? Does s/he use it regularly in lectures and seminars?
She was using write pad, which converts your writing straight to text. She used it for class notes for a bit, but I think stopped. It did a fine job recognizing my handwriting, but was just much slower than typing. (It looks like some people might have problems with getting it to recognize their handwriting) There are other apps that keep your handwriting as handwriting but have some text recognition to make it searchable, etc. I've never used one.
If your primary concern is being able to draw things but would be fine typing the text, I think an iPad + stylus would work for you (assuming these aren't really fine grained drawings). There are apps that let you switch between typing and drawing in a single document. If being able to handwrite the actual text is important to you, though, I think you'd need an actual note taking tablet that comes with a stylus. Some people have mentioned that you can buy styluses for the iPad and kindle, which is true, but it's not the same. The capacitive styluses that work with iPads (and all tablets) can feel more natural to write with than a finger, but they're just never going to be significantly more precise. You won't be able to get the kind of detail that you'd need for college (or probably even wide) ruled normal writing. The tablets that come with styluses like the sPen work differently. They have hardware that does electromagnetic pen magic stuff (i don't know)… the pen is smart, and is telling the tablet where it is relative to the screen, how hard you're pressing, etc., it's not just the screen detecting the presence of a finger (or whatever). I've never used one, but the technology is very different from an iPad stylus (and supposed to be significantly more precise). I think you probably need to go try one out in-store to compare.
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I use an iPad and a kindle paperwhite, and I'm really happy with them. I use the iPad for reading and annotating pdfs, and the kindle for books. (I really prefer looking at the eink screen, but the eink kindles are a disaster at pdfs) The pdf app I used is synced via dropbox, which works really well for me.
As for how much memory is recommended for academic use, I would say not very much. For some reason I have a 64 GB iPad... I'm using about 10. Of that, my pdf app is taking up about 1 GB, and ebook apps about 300 MB. (i have most of my kindle books synced with the iPad, and 2 textbook apps for publishers that insist on using their own) I could easily cut down on the space the pdfs are taking up; I store most of them locally because I have plenty of extra space, but I could be keeping at least 80% of them just in my dropbox without much extra hassle. The rest of that 10 GB is basically random apps… Again, I could easily be using less if I was thinking about it. I have almost no music, videos, photos, etc. on it. For me, the 14 GB iPad would definitely have been more than enough. Like Petros points out, though, if you need to use scanned books that will suck up some memory. I also don't use it for note taking. I have no idea how much memory regular doodle-style notes would require.
I sometimes use doodle apps, and I handwrite on my pdfs, but I can't imagine taking class notes via handwriting. Unless I'm zoomed in, my handwriting on the iPad is pretty large. I tried a friend's handwriting-recognition app, but typing is much faster for me. I always type faster than I can handwrite, but handwriting on the iPad is especially slow for me.
Admissions Data Regarding PhD Admits With M.A.
in Philosophy
Posted
Is the "rejected" option for people that have been rejected everywhere so far, or people that have just been rejected somewhere? Say I was accepted to 2 programs, wait listed at 1, and rejected at 1. Would I select admitted, wait listed, and rejected?