SelfHatingPhilosopher

Wow, this is... an incredibly dramatic rendition.

My plan B was to enlist in the Marine Corps. Thankfully, I escaped that possibility. Maybe it served as a good motivator? We'll see when I apply again in the fall.

The thing is, all I can say is that sometimes things aren't fair. I don't think the issue is that MA's are driving out BA's. Even without MA's, there'd be far too many applicants than there are PhD positions, and that there'd be far too many PhD positions than there are jobs. Not everyone can become a philosophy professor. I think it's misdirected to be worried that the underprivileged are disadvantaged to become a philosophy professor. Everyone else is already enough disadvantaged. The philosophy admissions process shouldn't be concerned with correcting for histories-long woes of socio-economic discrimination. That should be the focus of government policy, so that there are no longer any underprivileged, and who can then compete on the same level as everyone else in competiting for MA and PhD slots.

I'd almost say to go ahead and tell your department chair. They might be able to send an email to your programs admitting that the fault with the delayed letters lies with the professor and not the applicant, advise you on how to proceed, as well as motivate your current letter writers and possibly even take note of this serious infraction.

By and large from my experience, although it can take time for the acceptances to trickle out (even using the "first round" terminology, it can take a few days for the first round acceptances to be sent out), you should know where you stand by the end. From my experience, by this time students have been rejected who are going to be rejected, and everyone else not accepted will be put on the waitlist. Most of the time you should be made known, though sometimes you have to inquire. Particularly from those programs that carry humongous waitlists (like UConn) they probably won't let you know, but if you email they'll tell you that you're waitlisted. So, waitlistees should know fairly soon their status by the end of the first round acceptances. However, you'll often be stuck at this spot for a long time, because movement doesn't really happen until April 15th when people have to committ to a school. Between now and then, admitted applicants will sit on offers while they wait for their other decisions to come in so that they can make their decision.

The original emailer is just clearly confused as to what goes on to MA programs and is speaking from ignorance. First, as many commentators mentioned, MA students are by no means a distinct class of wealthy philosophy students. In fact, if anything it's the opposite. A number of students who seek an MA seek it because their undergraduate eudcation wasn't the best. If one came from wealthy parents, one would not have gotten a less than first rate education in the first place. Second, the charge that writing samples aren't reflective of a student's work is just confused. First of all, philosophy has for a long time been collaborative. Pick up an article or book, and you'll see a list of acknowledgements of other philosophers who had suggestions that helped produce the final product. I don't see anything inherently wrong with feedback. Second, I think the emailer has an incredibly wrong impression regarding the sort of feedback MA students receive from professors. Thirdly, as one of the commentors mentioned, undergraduates often have writing samples that have experienced some sort of advisement as well. Many writing samples are products of senior theses where a student has worked with a professor closely on a paper. The original email confirms my suspicions that I've mentioned before on this forum: "If I voted to admit the best 20 writing samples, they would nearly all come from MA programs." I'm offended though that he attributes this to some conspiracy from MA programs to game the system rather than the simple fact of what MA programs are purported to be: programs that fund promising philosophy students to devote two years of their time exclusively to philosophy at a graduate level. It's no wonder why MA students are submitting the best writing samples.

About your philosophical capabilities. It also expresses itself through imposter syndrome. You feel inferior to your peers and your teachers, and that you won't be succesful. It's a near universally felt emotion.

Things wouldn't have come to this point if the department's filth had been taken care at first sight.

If you've read Nomy Arpaly, then remember her look at Huckleberry Finn. We can praise Huck as he is responsive to the right moral reasons even though he himself feels as if he has done wrong in helping Jim the slave.

I wonder. Just my own ancedotes, I'd be curious to hear from others their own experiences from their undergraduate universities: my undergrad program had at least 4 applicants including myself that I knew about. We were the "loudest" four of the department that everyone knew, so it's possible there were some quieter undergraduates who applied out the same year as well but weren't being talked about. On the one hand, my undergraduate university is large (>40k students). On the other, the philosophy major isn't that large in proportion. There were like 3 philosophy majors who graduated the year before me. I have no idea how many graduated my year. Probably no more than 8 or 10. But still, that's a good percentage of students applying out.

Why do people always treat this like a bad thing? Some people say reading fine literature makes you more empathetic, and that's why you should read. I never connected with this line of reasoning. I'd still read fine literature and think it be an important thing to keep up with even if it had no practical benefits. Even though Fermat's Last Theorem doesn't get us anywhere, I think it's one of the greatest accomplishments of human history. If we can appreciate literature and pure mathematics on this basis, why can't we appreciate philosophy in this way?

Seconded. Thank you for bring some sensibility to this thread.

No, other people aren't as immoral as you.

10/10, would read again. I liked the part where the outsider contradicts what philsophy graduate program admission committees universally say.

Russell, G. A. Cohen, and Dummett have been the most influential on me. I don't really look up to any philosopher. The closest thing for me might be some historical mathematicians and logicians.

No, I don't think so. I think when isostheneia writes "one involves doing logic (in some sense)", included in that sense is metalogical work which is still acquired through the use of formal mathematical/logical reasoning. Because really, strictly speaking, no one really uses logic for anything. It's something that undergrads can be completely taught in a semester, at least as far as first order logic. When someone says they do logic, they mean they do metalogic, but that isn't the same as saying they do philosophy of logic.

I don't do philosophy of logic so I couldn't give you concrete examples, but my crude understanding is that logic is applied, it examines properties of formally axiomatized systems. Philosophy of logic does what isn't captured by the above. For example, Quine's criticisms about second-order logic. We all agree on the various facts about second-order logic which a logician will figure out, but what's controversial is whether second-order logic is a kosher way to express/serve as a foundation for mathematics, which a philosopher of logic will try to work out.

Ten percent is rather large. On your website you state: "Exactly how selective, I’m not sure. But I’m willing to bet that the average acceptance rate of top philosophy programs is between three and ten percent." The only data point you mention is that NYU says they accept 3% or less. That seems far less meaningful than arbitrary. Furthermore, as Table said, these aren't independent events. Generally speaking, if you're accepted at one place, you're more likely to get accepted at mulitple places. Each year there are a few power house students that get acceptances to many of the top programs. This makes sense. Generally speaking, if you're not accepted at one place, you're more likely to get not get accepted at other places, because you're rejection from the one program tends to signify a weak application. Sure, we can make "educated gusses" off of some arbitrary assumptions and baseless use of mathematics, and these gusses may be more meaningful than me pulling a percantage out of thin air, but Table's whole point, I am supposing, is that there's not much actual meaning behind these assertions because, at least with the predications you're making, there's no real data or rigor behind the analysis.

That's not what he's saying. In fact, the purpose of the post you quoted was to state that this was in fact not his claim.

For some reason, I've always been of the opinion that the GradCafe community was largely continental, whereas the WhoGotIn community was largely analytic.

That's probably where I saw it mentioned too. As another data point, one of the MA programs I contacted last year I was waitlisted at mentioned how they ran admissoins, which was along (I suppose) the lines of #2. Their budget is highly regulated, and so can only admit at a time as many people as they're financially able to. There's no room for admitting more one year and less the other year. I suspect that many other programs will face similar constraints with their budgets given bureaucratic tendancies.

It depends on the program. Some go the way of admitting more than they want to accept, knowing a certain percentage statistically declines. This sometimes comes to bite them in the butt, where more students accept them then they planned, and they'll mention that they'll be accepting fewer applicants the next year in order to financially offset the increased burden they took on this year. Other programs will run a long waitlist, and only admit as many students as they have slots for, and will run down the waitlist as students decline them until they've reached their desired class size.

"But are previous contacts really good and necessary for getting an offer of admission?" Absolutely not. In fact, I'd say most succesfull admittees got an offer without any prior contact.

The expectation is that you make all A's. Which again, is more or less the expectation of undergrads, except undergrads are maybe given leeway for a course or two, say early on in their career or if it was a particularly difficult course.

Meh. I started paying attention to philosophy grad admissions on thegradcafe when I was in High School.