alethicethic

It can be useful to think about some Confucians as virtue ethicists of a sort. I recommend starting with Mengzi if you're into moral psychology. Hackett has a very good and cheap translation, by Bryan Van Norden.

Right? Although, I have a pretty weak definition of virtue ethics. I think that what is most useful about VE theories is their focus on character, moral cultivation, and moral psychology. So, that's compatible with different ways of slicing up what bears value. I chose VE because I'm mainly interested in moral psych & cultivation.

Claiming an MIT rejection! No surprise there; it's not a great fit for my interests. (I applied because it's a strong overall program and has a reputation for being a nice place to do philosophy.)

We on the waiting list thank you! Those are great schools, congratulations!

Received my first rejection, from Arizona! No desert living for me, although sunny Southern California is an option...congratulations to the admits!

Yep, they're out.

In what possible world would a deluge of emails *speed* up the process? Imagine that a philosophy department in which everyone is already exhausted and overworked is now getting 20+ emails a day from precious little snowflakes demanding to know the status of their application, even though the deadline is two months away. If you think about it, it probably takes more time to process rejections. Someone has to go through and enter in all of that information into a computer, so that they can send out a mass email to what is a very large list. So, someone has to match files to names, and then if you want them to say anything kind or specific, then they need even more information: "we received x applications for y spots, competition was fierce, etc. etc." It’s both easier and more important to take care of admissions first, because they need to arrange for prospective flyouts, which is a lot of work. It makes sense that they would then turn to entering rejections into the system. Now some schools are able to do that relatively quickly. Some departments are constituted such that they can send out early rejections--others aren't, and there's a lot of possible reasons why. Schools differ with respect to teaching loads, the number of professors available to do service work, number of support staff, number of applications to sift through, and the bureaucratic hoops they have to jump through to make an official offer or rejection, among many other things. In other words, be more charitable. They're not being disrespectful.

Thanks guys! I applied to the philosophy program, but I almost applied to PNP. It was a tough choice, but since my interests are more on the moral side of things, I chose the regular track. PNP seemed more cognitive/linguistics oriented.

I'll claim the Olin Fellowship phone call, from WashU. She couldn't say whether the department had admitted me or not, but that the department will be sending out their notices "soon". I'll be traveling to campus on Monday, March 3 for the finalists' interview. Exciting news!

I'm guessing that UNC has a pretty solid idea of how many students they need to admit + wait list to get their entering class. Other schools may not have that predictive knowledge, because their numbers may be more variable from year to year (one year, all of their first round admits could enter, while in another year, maybe they have to dig deep on their wait list.) The schools have until April 15 to notify you. That's two more months! We are still really early in the process. If it's psychologically easier, just assume a rejection and then be pleasantly surprised if you hear otherwise. These people are your future colleagues, even if you end up not enrolling at their school. Respect them. You're applying because you want to be one of them, so imagine for a moment what it's like to be in their shoes. You are teaching classes, mentoring students, doing research, writing articles, refereeing articles, reviewing dissertation chapters, editing a book, looking at a colleague's paper, organizing conferences, sitting on a half dozen department and university committees, writing letters of recommendation for your own students (for fellowships and so on), organizing a prospectives visit for the first round--and you have a personal life, perhaps a family, and you need a little downtime, too. It's not like academics are lazy. Most put in 65+ hours a week, and graduate adcom is only a small part of that. Also, that giant snow storm just slowed the whole south and eastern seaboard to a halt. Try getting through all of those aforementioned tasks with no power, and no ability to go into work. I really discourage anyone from starting a campaign to bombard departments with emails. That just seems counterproductive.

Not necessarily; the first round only just went out today. I've received acceptances from schools a few days later than the average. Perhaps you're up for a fellowship, or perhaps they haven't sent out their complete first round, or perhaps they'll dip beyond their initial wait list. Nothing is official until you hear from the school. How silly would you feel if you wasted today moping and then got a call tomorrow? I understand that this is a difficult and stressful process, but it might also be easier if you don't take the rejections so personally. Every year is different, and different for every school. The applicant pool is different. It could be that your ideal set of advisors already have too many students. It could be that a ton of people applied in your specialty this year, or last year. A rejection doesn't mean that you're not qualified, or not as good as students who are already in the program. Doctoral programs have to reject plenty of students who are well-qualified and could be very successful if accepted. Cutting down to the final few is a difficult decision and a lot of factors go into it, not least of which is balance in the incoming cohort. They probably don't want to take 6 guys from Stanford that do modal logic, even if they all have published writing samples, stellar letters, perfect GREs, and 4.0 GPAs. Realize that much of this is beyond your control, because you have no control over the applicant pool. If that post on Leiter is any indication, this is an especially tough year. You have the most important piece of information already: you get to go on in philosophy! Someone is actually going to pay you to do philosophy for the next few years. So...congratulations on your acceptance! Keep calm and carry on...

Haha, something similar happened to me with Utah. They put me on some sort of an email list to promote the school. I received an email the other day saying, "It's not too late to apply to the U!" I nearly had a heart attack. I double-checked my application to calm down. Once I read through the email, I realized it was a mass promotional email aimed at undergrads. Whew.

Thank you! The streak is likely to end soon. Most programs have yet to go out, and I've gotten into programs that are REALLY strong fits. Yep, I did an MA. I never applied to a bunch of places the first time around; I only applied to my current program. So this is my first time in the doctoral round of admissions, although I've watched a few friends go through the process before. For what it's worth, I do think that it made me a stronger applicant. I look back on where I was a couple of years ago, and where I am now, and I am really glad that I did the MA. I mean, a few years of reading and writing and teaching and breathing philosophy will do that to you. I also love my program, not least because I've made friends with some real philosophy geeks who are going on in the field, so that's pretty awesome too. Quite a few of them also read and commented on my writing sample (and I did the same for them.) And, I had a chance to professionalize a bit, like present papers and such. But after the post on Leiter, who knows how the admissions committees view it? Note that one of my AOI is quite unusual (Chinese philosophy). Every single admissions person has said that competition is especially fierce this year (which gels with that Leiter post) but I think that, for schools that do Chinese philosophy, I'm probably competing against a much smaller pool of applicants. Whereas, if I only did epistemology (which is also one of my AOI, and the area of my sample), I would be competing against nearly everyone. I think that's probably a major part of why I got in to Duke and Riverside, but who knows? Just speculation.

Davis! So awesome. I am surprised that they turned the apps around so fast, with a 1/15 deadline. I was shocked when I opened the email. Kudos to the adcom!

Same here: email from the graduate school, not the department. I'm sure we'll hear from them soon, no doubt they're quite busy. Congratulations!

Just received the offer from Riverside, with the Dean's Distinguished Fellowship! Guaranteed 5 years support. What a great start to the weekend.

Wait....let's not seriously downvote acceptances. Because, we want people to post them, right? So the rest of us have more information? I thought that was just a funny mistake.

Hah! Thanks Matt.

I'm also on the UNC wait list. Received a nice email from LA Paul this morning.

Congratulations!

So, a lot of us are really stressed out. But, the truth is, academia is stressful. It's only going to get more stressful. According to the Chronicle, associate professors are some of the busiest and unhappiest people in the academy. So, if you're going to make it, you'll need some solid stress management techniques. Actually, you'll probably need those regardless of your career, because it seems that most people are stressed these days. So, I thought I'd start this thread, to share what I do, and to see what you guys do. First, calm.com is amazing. You can set a timer to take a short break from work, or do a short guided calming exercise. They also have an app, so you can fit it in on public transit or between classes or whatever. Try committing to doing just one short 2 or 5 minute calming exercise for a month straight, and see if it makes a difference. Second, I run almost every day. I don't have time to run very far, but I run at least a short 2-3 miler, which takes barely 20 minutes, and another 10 or so with post-run stretching. It's easy to fit into my day. I find that I get more done, because I am more energetic, more able to focus, and more calm throughout the day. Also, they've shown that exercise boosts your ability to learn and retain information. Tip on building a running habit: you will never feel like running, so don't put that emotional burden on yourself. That is a lot harder than simply lacing up those shoes and heading out the door. You will feel better by the end of the run, and be really glad that you went out. Morning runners have a higher rate of success in maintaining a habit. Good luck!

I share your concern for the relative unfriendliness of the modern academy towards women and families. Yet, I support MA programs, for a number of reasons already stated by others. I'd rather see a restructuring of the discipline, the academy, and the social structure to be more humane in general, in terms of allowing young people to balance careers with families. Because in an academic career, first, you get the BA; possibly an MA; then a PhD; then the tenure clock; and then you're an associate professor, who are the busiest people in the academy. So really, only people who make senior professor could have children? In what, their 40s? At the height of their career? The time in an academic career when you have the most free time is during the dissertation-writing phase. But, most grad students can't afford to have children (who can, these days?) The point is, two years on that kind of time scale makes little difference. And it's not healthy, necessarily, to plow straight through like that. Students get a lot of benefit from taking some time off between a BA and graduate school--in part to find themselves, and in part to be sure that they genuinely want to commit to this career path. So, I think that the solution is rather to change the overall structure, which currently reflects outmoded assumptions that the worker has a partner at home who cooks, cleans, and takes care of the children.

Congratulations!

I didn't know about Boulder. I had heard about Austin.

Congratulations to you as well! I think the interview weekend sounds like a blast--I'm sure you'll have a great time meeting everyone.