Table
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Posts posted by Table
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Impt update: blue stripes have appeared on MIT's application page. We are all rejected.
to be fair though I just went to look at my blue stripes, and if I hadn't read about them first I definitely would have been like WHAT IS THIS WHAT DOES IT MEAN.
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Sorry. I probably shouldn't have really responded.
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But yeah, I guess the only logical thing at this point is to contact the department. I mean seriously, if they aren't reasonable enough to see that they offered me admission with a condition that I cannot possibly meet, even with perfect grades now, then there is something terribly wrong with the University.
This is a good attitude.
I obviously don't have the experience to say this with any authority, but I really do think it's likely you'll be able to work something out.Again, they accepted you for a reason. What is the point of offering an acceptance with an impossible condition? They are likely familiar with GPA calculations and they still admitted you. My guess is that the announcement of the condition is merely bureaucratic and obligatory. In fact, it usually comes in the form of "on the condition that you MAINTAIN your GPA above." So, if you make them aware that your GPA will never be above the required minimum, surely they will be able to work something out with you.
This is a good point. They obviously didn't realize that they were making an impossible request. Like Matinta said, they plausibly just include the condition automatically and didn't even realize they were asking you to get your grades up at all.
I should have said that getting my university to drop one of the entry requirements for transferring in (a GPA requirement I was far from meeting) involved me telling them I didn't meet it, and them being like "oh, ok, whatever. we just wrote that." It's of course a pretty different situation, but things like this can sometimes resolve quite easily!
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(putting this in a smaller font so it takes up less space in the thread!)
I don't know why you think I'm being unnecessarily pessimistic. It's a tough break. I didn't discourage him/her from contacting the department or anything, and I didn't imply that it was university-wide or absolutely iron-fisted in design. You're cranking my statement up too much. I wasn't being nearly as extreme as you seem to be portraying me, and I certainly didn't encourage a defeated attitude. Chill out with the strawmen. Of course he/she should talk to the department. I'm sure it's possible to reason with them and get something accomplished. It's just a tough break.
I don't know where you think I misportrayed you. All I said was that your advice was more pessimistic than I thought was warranted, and that you didn't think departments had discretion over the conditions.
If you honestly can't boost your GPA in time, then there really isn't much you can do. You could always talk to the department about your situation, but I think these conditions are a result of bureaucracy more than anything else, and I'm not sure if the department has much control over it. I'd say your best bet is to concentrate your efforts elsewhere if you can't meet the condition.
"If you honestly can't boost your GPA in time, then there really isn't much you can do. … I'd say your best bet is to concentrate your efforts elsewhere if you can't meet the condition," seems, to me, to be very clearly pessimistic about his/her ability to get the department to change the condition. You didn't seem to have any obvious reason to think there really isn't much he/she can do, and so I thought this pessimism was unwarranted.
"You could always talk to the department about your situation, but I think these conditions are a result of bureaucracy more than anything else, and I'm not sure if the department has much control over it," does not exactly encourage contacting the department, and seems, to me, to say that you thought the department would likely not have leeway to change the requirement. If you're sure it's possible to reason with the department and get something accomplished, you did a good job hiding it.
I'm really surprised you don't think your first post was pessimistic about the possibility of working with the department to change the condition. I'm hoping you now see why it came off that way. I was not trying to "engage in fruitless debate." I'm trying to give advice to someone who's had a tough break. I think the applicant has reason to be more optimistic than your post suggested, and I tried to make that clear.
I'm glad you've now clarified that you think he/she should definitely contact the department and are sure it will be possible to reason with them. That is, obviously, not what I got from your first post, and I imagine that is not what SL12 would have taken away from it either.
As for your post, it's not exactly compelling evidence. All it proves is that a different University in the UK made an exception for someone with similar circumstances.
Note that I introduced the link with "A little encouragement:", not "Compelling evidence they will change the condition:". (and you're the one talking about straw men?) I was clear that it was a different school.
As far as I can tell, you have no experience with trying to get the conditions on a conditional acceptance modified. I've gotten a university to relax entry requirements I did not meet, but have no experience with trying to change conditional acceptances to graduate programs. We don't really know what's possible here. I definitely think it's relevant that a department at another school modified conditions once it was made clear that the candidate cannot meet them. It shows it is at least something that does sometimes happen, and I think that's a reason for SL12 to feel a little encouraged.
(I want to be clear as well: I'm posting this in hopes of clarifying what I said. I have no idea what in my post you thought required a response like "I'm not going to engage with you in some fruitless debate. I'm adamant that this particular thread will remain positive in its nature, and debate-free if I can help it." But a good way to avoid fruitless debate: when someone (apparently) misreads you, go back and look at your post and think about why that might have happened instead of going straight for condescension.)
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That's rough. If you honestly can't boost your GPA in time, then there really isn't much you can do. You could always talk to the department about your situation, but I think these conditions are a result of bureaucracy more than anything else, and I'm not sure if the department has much control over it. I'd say your best bet is to concentrate your efforts elsewhere if you can't meet the condition.
This seems unnecessarily pessimistic. (And axiomness, that was, uh, totally inappropriate. This is obviously a stressful situation for someone. If all you have is a snarky comment, it would probably be best to keep it to yourself.)
DEFINITELY talk to them. If you're a second semester senior, it's just going to be mathematically impossible for you to boost your grades that much in a single term. (Likely the same if you're a 4th term grad student) Even if you got all As. This isn't a matter of you not being able to the grades needed, it's just an impossible task. They obviously don't realize that. They accepted you for a reason. Try to work with them. Ask if there's any other way you can demonstrate an upward trend, etc. If you think you could get all As this term, tell them that. There is no reason to give up.
I would be pretty surprised if this is a strict university-wide requirement that departments have no leeway with. (Especially unsure why you think that, BSG, when you had a different requirement…) Seriously, talk to them!
A little encouragement: the first post here is someone who received a conditional offer to a different school with conditions they couldn't meet and convinced them to lower the conditions.
- wandajune, shelbyelisha, TP24 and 1 other
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Some people post results later in the evening, and the results will appear as Saturdays or Thursdays, though the department likely contacted those people on Fridays or Wednesdays, respectively. If you've ever posted on the results page, you'll notice that the page operates on UTC time. So a post at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on Jan. 23 will appear as Jan. 24.
The date added to the decisions page is on UCT time, but that's separate from the date of notification... They're in two separate columns. Look at the form. You put in the date of notification yourself.
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I don't think that the interviews are intended to distinguish between those students who are especially capable of studying philosophy and those who aren't. Presumably, they will already know this from the rest of the application. Rather, I think that the interviews serve either (1) to acquire any information missing from the application relevant to admission and, more importantly, (2) to select from among the academically excellent applicants the candidates they would be able to tolerate close contact with for the next 5-10 years of their lives.
So a lot of the interview process would seem to be a "luxury" thing, for those schools that can afford to split hairs among the "best" candidates. This is surely not the case for every interview, but I think it's a reasonable way to look at them in general.
To return to they hypothetical why-not-do-interviews thing, I don't think depts would see interviews (and maybe informal interactions at a recruitment weekend...) as distinguishing between who is capable and who is incompetent. But I do think they would see them as providing some information about people's abilities, and not just who is personable and who is not. People tend to be impressed by their judgments of students "seeming smart." These judgments are generally pretty bad, and like hopephilly said, are very subject to a variety of biases. Interviews aren't even particularly good at telling you who is personable and who is not. They are good at telling you who gets nervous in interviews and who does not, though.
The link I posted earlier is limited, but would give you some idea of the problems with this kind of interview.
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Thanks for clarifying, Vineyard.
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Having 10 people interviewed face-to-face and then picking 5 of them would really be humiliating. Obviously, Cincinnati has decided to admit any one of the 10 people, but is very sure that at most half of them will accept their offers. That is why they are sending out 10 offers. Even a prestigious program like Michigan is expecting that only half of the offer receivers will accept the offer that they make. I regret so much that I did not apply to Cincinnati.
I don't think that's obvious at all. They haven't actually sent out 10 offers. They've sent out 10 invitations to a recruitment weekend, with a note that they intend to take 5 of those 10. If they are so sure at most 5 will want to come, why not just accept all 10? If the weekend will have no effect on who's chosen if it comes down to that, why not accept 7 (or whatever) and tell 3 they're on the waitlist?
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Oh re: your earlier comment,
Speaking of interviews... A friend of mine asked me why philosophy doesn't interview and I had no good answer. Thoughts on this?
I'm curious about this too. I don't think they would actually get any useful information from interviewing, though. There's a fair amount of evidence that interviews in general are not effective, and I suspect they'd be especially unlikely to be accurate for distinguishing between philosophy grad school candidates.
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Apparently University Of Cincinnati sent out interview emails for it's Philosophy PhD science track. Only planning to admit 5/10, no pressure! Good luck to those competing.
This sounds awful. I guess it's standard for other fields, but damn I would hate spending a weekend with 10 people when only 5 would get in. I wonder if applicants were expecting to be interviewed?
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This year's deadline was 1/5. I shouldn't really say deadline, because both years it was like "Although there is no absolute deadline, applications completed by DATE will receive first consideration."
I wonder how much the work the adcom did between 12/17 and 1/2. I'd guess not much.
I wonder about this as well. I don't know why schools would have mid-December deadlines if they weren't going to do anything with the apps until January, though, since I'm sure they know it would be easier for many students to submit them over the holidays. So I expect something happens with the applications. Maybe not by the actual admissions committee... it could just be people in the grad office preparing them for the department.
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I have it on good authority (someone that I know read it on WGI and saw my post here) that the deadline for UC Riverside was 12/17 last year. So, I would expect a later date for feedback.
Yeah, the archived version of the page also has last year's deadline as 12/17.
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I do think some math background can make parts of philosophy easier, though like others have said, it varies by area. I really recommend Eric Steinhart's More Precisely: The Math You Need to Do Philosophy for people with limited math experience. It's great.
As for whether admissions committees care... I would guess that many people take extensive math background as evidence that a person will do well in logic, etc. Like others have said, how much this matters presumably depends on your areas.
One of my applications did have a section asking for math experience. Maybe USC, but I don't really remember. And I have no idea if that was specifically for the philosophy department or just a question on the general graduate school app.
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I'm curious to hear what people's plans for the summer are, assuming you get in somewhere and will be heading to a program in the fall. Will you be working? Trying to do something to prepare for grad school? Focusing on relaxing?
I've been so focused on applying that I haven't thought much about the summer. -
Someone last year heard about funding in late March... It seems reasonable to guess they didn't have to accept or deny before then.
The conditional acceptance thing is funny. If you have a 3.9, you could probably fail every class you're taking this term and still have a 3.3. -
I was just writing earlier in response to a few comments that language requirements are redundant because of google translate or other technologies. If there is frequent publications in a foreign language in a given field, I don't think google translate is practical or reliable.
No one said "language requirements are worthless, I can get a perfect translation from google translate." No one thinks that you can put a philosophy passage into google translate and get a great result. I guess you're talking about catwoman, but what she said was just that because the language exams are ostensibly testing your ability to translate passages back into English, it's frustrating that you can't use google translate, which is the first tool she would use in real life.
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Nitty-Gritty Application: I would get all of your materials collected in one area, and then complete all of the applications in one time period. This makes it easier on your letter-writers (who don't have to wait for each individual school that you apply to), and on yourself (you don't have to remember which applications are still incomplete).
Transcripts: Order transcripts all at once. Do not order them when you are applying to each school. Instead, make sure you have your schools narrowed down early and print off a copy of each school's address to have them send it to each school that requires it. I just sent my transcripts to every school that I applied, because I didn't want to have to deal with the process over again. But if your school charges a lot or you'd rather not go through the hassle, just look at the guidelines for each school.
I want to add to this that for all but one of my apps, I could set up my letter-writers to do their thing before I submitted the application.
On the transcripts note, you may be tempted to wait for your fall term grades before sending out transcripts to your apps with later deadlines. If you want to do this, be 100% sure that there's enough time after you'd receive your grades, and that the registrar is actually sending out transcripts during winter break. If it's doable, you should still only send out transcripts in 2 chunks: one chunk at the beginning of the term, and one chunk as soon as you get your fall grades back. As soon as you get them back, seriously. It's too easy to lose track of something like that around the holidays. I did and had some unnecessary stress.
My advice would be to start really early thinking about and preparing a writing sample. I waited until the last minute, just assuming I'd have a great paper saved up by then, and have had to submit some less-than-stellar work as my writing samples. I think it's now one of the weakest parts of my applications. Maybe that's common knowledge for everyone else, but I flaked in that area, and it's my biggest regret regarding applications.
If I was doing it again, I would talk to professors earlier about my writing sample. I considered a few papers, and I tried to revise them all into more writing-sample-y shape before asking professors to read them to see which would be a good sample. That was stupid. It took me way too long, and I also now worry about my sample being less polished than it should have been.
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GPA: I don't have a great cumulative GPA (3.75ish) but I doubt the adcom will make a big deal about it unless it is under 3.5 or 3.3. However, major GPA plays a huge role in admission. I saw in all program that GPA is more important than GRE in evaluating your potential as a Ph.D candidate. Moreover, in some programs I saw that they even take major GPA over your WS. According to the statistics I gathered, a major GPA over 3.8 will be good and 3.9+ will be an advantage.
Like Matt, I'm curious about your sources here. I would be very surprised to find that major GPA is more important than GRE for all programs, given that only about half of the programs I applied to even asked for it.
Letter writing: talk to them as early as possible, and leave the impression that you really count on them to writing the letter.
I'm not totally sure what you mean by this. Maybe you just mean that once someone has agreed to write a strong letter for you, you should make sure it's clear that you're counting on them to actually do it. I agree, though I would expect that to ordinarily be understood.
It sounds, though, like you're suggesting that when people first talk to potential letter-writers, you give the impression that you really need them to agree to do it, like you don't have any other options. I think that would be a very bad idea. You want to leave plenty of room for someone to decline if they would write an at-best lukewarm letter.
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FYI
A nice conversation is taking place at the Philosopher's Cocoon directly related to all of us here.
Thanks, this is cool.
A question: Aravan says "I know of at least one very highly-Leiter-ranked program whose student-completion rate is absolutely abysmal." Anyone know what that might be?
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Did anyone else apply to Penn State? Did anyone else find it weird that the self-reported GPA was only supposed to be the cum. from the last 3 semesters?
I didn't, but one of my apps (don't remember) wanted me to report like 5 GPAs: total, junior & sr. year only, 300+ classes only, major only, jr. & sr. year major only, etc. I thought it was pretty clever... I think looking at jr. & sr. year GPA in addition to total GPA is an especially good idea. I would guess the last 3-semesters thing is trying to get at junior and senior GPA and forgetting that some people have graduated.
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I thought it might be nice if we had a thread collecting advice for next year's applicants while the process is still fresh in our minds. Looking back now, what would have saved you time and pain?
I started my process by making a spreadsheet to keep track of all the schools I was applying to, which was enormously helpful. Information to include on your spreadsheet: deadline, whether GRE's are required, whether official paper transcripts are required, and anything additional a particular school might require (for example, a "statement of personal history" in addition to a statement of purpose). Be sure to check deadlines and requirements both the phil department's AND office of grad admission's site. Several of us have encountered discrepancies here.
I also kept track of whether I had set up my letter-writers, sent in the app, etc. on my spreadsheet.
I wish I had made all my files as small as possible at the very beginning. Early on, I encountered upload limits of 2mb and 1mb, and I had some trouble getting a readable scan of my transcript that was under that. The last app I filled out (Pitt) had a limit of 600kb, which my writing sample was over. Figuring out how to get it under probably took me about 4 hours. (seriously)
You want your files to be as small as possible for two reason. Like I said, some apps have pretty low upload limits. Even if you could upload a bigger file, though, the smaller your file is, the easier it is to open it on the receiving end.TIPS FOR LOWERING THE FILE SIZE OF YOUR PDFS:
Scans:- Scan in greyscale and at the lowest possible DPI that will produce a readable file. I think 170 worked for me. Try several different ways of scanning (change contrast, noise reduction, etc.).
- It was MUCH easier for me to fiddle with my scanner's features and scan in a small file than to scan a larger file and try to reduce it on my computer. If you're using a mac, preview's reduce file size feature is basically guaranteed to render it unreadable.
- There are many PDF-size reducers online, which may work for this, but I didn't try them. You may want to be wary of uploading your transcript to these services, though, especially if it has your social security number on it.
- Some apps require scans of the back side of your transcript, so be sure to get that too.
Text-only PDFs (exported from a word processor):
- Use a font that's on all computers for your writing sample, personal statement, and CV (because you'll want to use a serifed font, that means really either times new roman or georgia). It turns out if you use a non-standard font, it needs to be embedded in the PDF file, which takes up a fair amount of space.
- Preview's reduce file size feature and online PDF-size reducers try to reduce the size of your PDF by lowering image quality, so they will not work on a text-only file.
- Adobe Acrobat Pro's file size reduction tool is more sophisticated and worked for me. There's a free trial if you don't have it.
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it's understood that the .WS is the most important part of the application, but it is the most under addressed topic in the forum. I can't understand why there isn't more curiosity centered around such a significant aspect of the application.
I suspect it is because many of us are hesitant to reveal identifying information, and there's not too much we can say about our writing samples without it being potentially identifying.
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I'm trying not to think too much about location before hearing from programs. I almost didn't apply to NYU because living in NYC really doesn't appeal to me... but in the end I did, so we will see!
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I'm ignorning what a graduate school says if the philosophy department at that school says something different. E.g., Michigan says that it allows official or unofficial transcrits, but the Rackham Online Application says that applicants need to upload official transcripts ... or it calls an "academic record." I have no idea what that refers to. Regardless, I'm ignoring what the ROA says and just relying on the philosophy department's information.
Be careful here. It's not obvious to me that the department and what the app says really conflict... A scan of an official transcript is an unofficial transcript. So the app is accepting unofficial transcripts, but it wants a particular kind of unofficial transcripts—a scan of an official one and not a web printout.
When the department says they accept official or unofficial transcripts, I think they could mean they'll take either an official version sent from the school or a scanned copy. I know they say "One copy of official or unofficial transcript from undergraduate institution" but I think they could mean "official copy of your transcript" and not "copy taken of your official transcript."
basically: I don't think it's clear that the department wants to accept web printouts, if that's what you're using
2014 Applicants
in Philosophy
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KILL GREEN STRIPES