Ziz

I did that program a couple of years ago - you'll love it

Woohoo! Thanks for emailing him...

I wish they would make usernames required to post results. Even if people could still create a fake account, it might be enough of a deterrant to eliminate some of the fakes.

One for the team! We are very grateful...

Couldn't have said it better myself. Rejects last year got a letter by post a week later.

Schools that require you to accept their offer before being allowed to apply for financial aid.

Not completely true for all disciplines. U of T philosophy, for example, does require the GRE. I only know of that one department because I haven't investigated any others...

Yeah the first one was probably fake and then the 2nd one was put up because of our reaction.

I just checked last year's results (for the millionth time) and saw that last year Harvard sent out email acceptances over 2 days. If they do that again this year (assuming the acceptances we've seen are legit), that means more acceptances will be out today. So now of course I am in a tizzy of "oh my god, imagine I got into Harvard today!" I try to remind myself it's not going to happen, but I can't help it.

I'm too afraid that the email back to me will say "No decisions have been communicated yet. However, when yours is, it will not be good news." I mean, I know that the chances of getting into Harvard are slim to none, and later in February I will prepare myself for the rejection, but I kind of like the fact that at the moment I can still hope .

With respect to Harvard, it is possible none of the accepted are Forum members, but at the same time, in order for them to post on the results page, they have to at least be aware of the board. I don't know about you, but if I got a Harvard acceptance and saw all the questioning about it being real, I'd start an account and claim it!

It's probably good I'm not planning to go into psych because I really don't understand why anyone would bother posting fake results. It's not like you get attention for it because it's anonymous, and what pleasure do you get from seeing us debate its veracity?

Of course maybe that's just what I want to believe

Do we think the Harvard acceptance is legit? Seems early compared to last year and there's only one...you'd think with the number of people who apply, there would be another one on Grad Cafe.

I'm gearing up to hear 3 big nos in 2 weeks. Last year it looks like Princeton notified admits on Feb 19 and rejects on Feb 20 and Harvard was around the same timeline. I also got a letter from UCL saying I could expect to hear by Feb 19. So I just want that day to come and get 3 out of the way.

Yeah Im not really sure what is accomplished by sending an email like that to applicants. It gets your hopes up without actually telling you anything except that your odds of rejection are slightly lower than before.

Chances are they will be reading your SOP so quickly that their brains will just assume they saw the word. Apparently when your brain is anticipating something, you often don`t even notice it`s not there. Even if they did notice, I`m sure it won`t matter

I think theory also has the same problem as comparative. There may be lots of spots, but it also depends on whether you want to study history of political thought, methods, continental, etc. Some schools have lots of spots in one area, but almost none in another other.

Subfield: theory Research interests: non-human animals, intergenerational justice, just war theory

What do you want to get out of contacting them? Most people contact profs to find out whether the school is a good fit and whether the prof would be interested in supervising their research. They use this info to decide whether to apply or not so contacting profs after the fact seems odd. However, if you just want to get your name out there and hope to influence the decision, it might come across as kind of transparent and work against you.

Ah I see! I'm not acquainted with who_got_in but that would explain it. I'm not sure I want to subject myself to that! I will content myself with the nice philosophers who do post here Saw the Leiter report comments yesterday too - I have to admit I was a bit relieved even though I don't think I have anything scandalous online .

...that philosophy is such a competitive PhD programme to get into (no matter what rank school you're looking at), there are always hundreds of applicants for each school, yet this forum is DEAD?

Congratulations!!!

I was always under the impression that a mid-2:1 was 3.5, a high 2:1 was a 3.7 and a first was 3.8+. I have no idea how to convert mine either, but I wasn't asked to do it. I'm from a Canadian undergrad that uses percentages but those percentages are lower than the US ones, but not as low as the UK. I'm afraid the US schools are going to use their conversion tables and I'll end up with a GPA that puts me in the middle too, when really I was top 10% at least.