ungerdrag
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Posts posted by ungerdrag
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That's a great question, HHH. I never asked, but I can ask someone this weekend at the department retreat and get back to you.
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If anyone has any questions about MIT, I'd be happy to answer them! For what it's worth, I think everyone who gets in there should go, unless they have unusually good reasons to prefer somewhere else. (E.g., they want to work on Plato.) I've heard plenty of other philosophers express the same opinion -- even philosophers at other top departments.
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What are your areas of interest ?
They're broad: metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action. Whenever possible, I work on all of these at the same time. (Example: metaphysics of pain/pleasure.)
I'm also getting really into formal semantics, which is unbelievably fun.
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I have a complex love/hate relationship with you.
I'm sorry, ZS. I know it's kind of douchey posting about successes like this on TGC, even in the acceptance thread. Maybe there's some way I could make it up to you. (Tossing my copy of The Puppet and the Dwarf, perhaps?
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Great discussion so far. Hypatience, PHLSTUDENT22, monochrome spring and others are making solid points.
I'll just add that the writing sample is probably the most important part of your application. Four things about that:
- Write something you know a lot about. (If you don't know a lot about any one topic yet, get a short reading list from a professor.)
- Try to keep your main idea simple. Your first couple of paragraphs should summarize it clearly—so clearly that even people working in other areas will know what you're trying to say.
- You won't win points for sounding dismissive, but you will for sounding fair-minded.
- Please, please, please: simplify your prose. Avoid clutter, delete fancy words, use short sentences, and stay on topic.
Hope that helps. Good luck, future folks.
- lesage13, Dialectica, ak71 and 1 other
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BPhil puts me at 10/10. What the actual fuck.
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Hello, philosophers of The GradCafe! New member and (thus far) unsuccessful Ph.D applicant here. A few questions, if any of you have the time:
1. Has anyone heard anything from Yale or Michigan? From what I can gather from the forum posts, the results page can be unreliable.
2. Did anyone apply to joint-programs in Classics and Philosophy/programs in Ancient Philosophy?
2.a. If so, would you mind briefly going over your background in philosophy and/or classics?
2.b. Do you think applicants of those programs are, in some way, evaluated differently from applicants of the general program?
Congratulations to all those who have been accepted to graduate programs. I wish I were in your shoes!
Welcome to the forums, lakobos!
1. Yale has sent out first round acceptances; Michigan hasn't. But Michigan did admit one or two people (including me).
2. Wish I could help you, but I don't know anything about this.
Good luck!
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You certainly kicked ass.
Where do you think you're going to go?
I still don't understand completely (or maybe you haven't made it explicitly known) how you knew you were going to get into every school, and why you only applied to top 10ish programs (but applied to all of them).
Thanks, Vineyard! I'm probably going to go to NYU, given how strong it is in all my AOIs, but I'll visit some other places just to be sure.
Believe me: I didn't expect to get in everywhere. I applied to some safety schools, but withdrew once I started hearing back from top tens. (The safety schools aren't in my signature anymore.)
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Yeah, underdrag is too cool for me. But I think efforts on a good writing sample, etc. should be rewarded, so I'm glad you were, underdrag.
Edit: unless you're just pretending you got into everywhere to shame us... then you're a punk.
Joke's on you—I actually applied for a PhD in communications!
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Just heard back from Rutgers. The best half hour of my life.
Attaboy/girl, Mavngoose1.
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I am freaking the fuck out right now and one school away from buying everybody in this thread a beer.
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Huge congrats to the Princeton admits! Any info you can share? I'm dying and will be perfectly happy to live vicariously through you.
Even though I'm lucky enough to have an offer, I'm soooooo depressed I didn't get the email.
The email was super short. As in, two sentences.
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Into Princeton. I don't believe it. I might throw up.
CONGRATS!!!!
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I wonder when Rutgers will drop acceptances? It looks like they've come via e-mail in the past...
Not that you really need to wait for Rutgers, at this point
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Underdrag, you have done well in you application season, but I have a small question to ask you about your writing style. I have never once in life been advised to use contractions in formal writing, but you frequently say "I'll" and "don't" instead of "I will" and "do not." Is there any reason why you do this or have you never been advised against it? Or is there something else I am missing here?
Great question. I prefer contractions for "I will," "will not," "do not," "I have," and several others. ("Could've" and "should've" are a bit too informal.)
Contractions are unstiff and easy to read, so I use them whenever they don't sound too informal. Formality and informality are both fine, but not if they get in the way of the flow of ideas: you want prose that's maximally clear and minimally distracting. But that's just, like, my opinion, man.
- Mavngoose1, isostheneia and Page228
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This is definitely a great idea for a thread!
Here's my sample, FWIW: https://www.academia.edu/6287019/Reason_Passion_and_Conflict_Non-Naturalism_and_Humes_Arguments_in_T_2.3.3
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I was kind of disappointed yesterday because I hadn't heard from NYU. I woke up and saw this email from Stephen Schiffer!!! "I wanted to speak with you personally by telephone but couldn't find a number for you. So this is to tell you that we were very impressed with your application and that we have recommended to the Graduate School that you be accepted into our entering PhD class of 2014" This is the best day of my life!
Wow! Congrats
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In case people want to see, here's my writing sample. I spent a pretty long time polishing it. (Except the last two paragraphs of the intro, which were just added last week.) Hope you dig.
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Got into NYU. Holy fuck...
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Accepted to the MLitt at St. Andrews
CONGRATS! I have some friends up there, and they love it.
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Got a voice message from NYU... saying that I forgot to upload my transcript.
Despite the heart attack, it's nice to know that I'm still in the race, and that they'll be meeting soon.
- kant_get_in and philosophe
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I should add that only extremely overqualified applicants are going to get into the PR as undergrads, or even as MA students. (Maybe Analysis would be easier; I know it's been done before.)
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I dunno. If you have a publication, then I feel like you just send that sucker in and make the bank. Just because your writing sample got you into some good programs, doesn't mean it's Philosophical Review good. Whereas Philosophical Review good is probably more than enough to get you into the best programs.
Of course, if you're an undergrad, this is pretty unheard of. But if you've got an MA, there's the occasional student that'll achieve such a thing.
(Of course, we have to understand a publication as being in something like the Philosophical Review, or some other top, professional journal. We're not talking about some regional journal, or some undergraduate/graduate journal, which really aren't ever worth your time and if anything can come back to bite you.)
Fair point. A paper in, say, Analysis or The Philosophical Review would make your application look nice. But I've talked with plenty of admissions people, and not one has ever said they've made a decision based on publication history.
If you use your publication as your writing sample, great! The fact that it was published will make the adcomm read it more carefully. But ultimately you're not going to get in unless the committee thinks you can write philosophy, and they're not going to make their judgment based off of the judgment of a couple of journal reviewers. They're going to make that judgment for themselves, by reading the sample.
So don't get me wrong: I agree that publishing in a top journal would help your chances. It's just that a published paper isn't necessary for this. A strong writing sample, on the other hand, is both necessary and sufficient. So the following principle seems reasonable: given the choice between polishing a sample and getting published, polish the sample. If you've already put in enough time for the sample, then go ahead and try to get published if you want.
top philosophy program interrogation list
in Philosophy
Posted
Okay, this is an absurdly late response, but I finally remembered to ask someone the other day. It looks like it was pressure from the administration that did it.