alethicethic

It's official: I received my offer from Duke! I'm thrilled. It's a great school, and the fellowship is quite generous. Good luck to everyone else waiting to hear back!

Thanks! It's official now, though. I received the offer letter.

This is my favorite piano piece, probably. (Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto, for those that don't want to check it out.)

I received an unofficial notification. I definitely did not reach out to the department. Rather, a faculty member contacted me to tell me that I have a formal offer forthcoming. Perhaps I shouldn't have said anything. But, it seemed that others were posting their unofficial notices, so I did as well.

I am also trained in classical piano, which is exactly why I *can't* listen to classical when I'm studying. It's too distracting. I get caught up in the music. Well, it depends. Sometimes I can manage some familiar baroque. Generally, though, I prefer to listen to simple, not too melodic, electronica. Ellen Allien, Daniel Avery, Livity Sound...those were some of my constants last year when writing. I am fascinated by how we use music to help regulate our lives and activities. On a long run, I need either upbeat pop music, or a really interesting album that I haven't heard before.

Somehow, by applying to Utah I got on their mass email list. Today, I received an email saying, "It's not too late to apply to the U!" I nearly had a heart attack. I was like, "I thought I already did?" I freaked out and checked my application, and sure enough, everything is complete. Whew!

I gave them handwritten thank you notes, and a nice little package of tea, because these are people who have mentored me for the last three-odd years. Nothing too flashy or expensive; I feel that that would be inappropriate.

Seems a shame to "work on a book for several years" and then not be able to persuade an editor to catch the grammatical errors in the book description. tl;dr

Thank you! Hmm, I suppose there's no harm, since others have also posted acceptances: Duke!!! I am thrilled. I feel as though something could go wrong, though...like, oops, just kidding, it was unofficial, we've decided not to admit you after all. I guess that explains my hesitation to tell anyone?

Yes, someone told me that it was unofficial, but to expect an offer of admission + fellowship. But I feel like I shouldn't say where until it's "official"? Or am I being silly?

Wow, that's great! I saw that it says the notification was unofficial. Does that count? I'm just curious because I also received unofficial word from a school, but I haven't posted anything because it's unofficial and I thought I ought to wait. But I'm dying to tell everyone, because I'm thrilled.

You can set your preferences such that it only sends you a once a week "recap email", although you can check your analytics anytime. Although, I think many academics are hip to the fact that if they click through to your profile, it registers. It's quite useful to have a public, professional presence online, including an academia.edu page. And to philosophe: perhaps keep two twitter accounts: one private, or anonymous, for friends, and one public, for professional purposes?

Looks like OSU is first out--someone posted an acceptance, which seems plausible. I'm guessing Duke will be next. I think that Riverside will be later this year, since their application deadline was three weeks later than last year's. Good luck, everyone!

I'll be the optimistic one and predict that at least one program will send out first-round acceptances tomorrow, January 17.

ETS has revenues close to half a billion dollars, and they also produce for-profit test guides and so on. Graduate schools require the tests, so oftentimes departments can't opt out (because they are required as a condition for fellowships administered by the graduate school.) I'm guessing ETS would pitch a fit if schools started allowing unofficial score reports, or "unofficial ok until accepted" policies. At minimum, we would probably see the cost of the test itself rise. But, one of the reasons that schools push for more quantitative measures is that qualitative measures (such as letters of recommendation) often serve to privilege the already-privileged (because admissions committees are biased towards letters from people that they know, or who are well-known, etc.) That's also the case with test scores (because the tests are designed and normalized in ways that tend to favor certain populations), but at least it's a blind process, or a different form of bias. It also gives a uniform measure that can cut across different schools and measures of grade inflation (this applicant has a 4.0 from this university, that applicant has a 3.3 from that university, etc.) So it's not perfect, but it might be better to keep something like it than not. But, yeah, $25 per score is too expensive. A professor told me that ETS doesn't even send the score to the school. Rather, the graduate school itself logs in and grabs a set of scores from ETS. If he's right, they have like, zero marginal cost.

Eep, my bad. Sorry, I missed that sentence.

Hmm... although I'm not necessarily committed to schools strong in Chinese philosophy, I did apply to schools that I think would be very good for working with Chinese texts, in addition to Duke: Utah, UBC, Riverside, and Berkeley. Hutton is at Utah, Slingerland at UBC, Raphals and Schwitzgebel at Riverside are willing to supervise students with interests in Chinese philosophy, and Shun just returned to Berkeley, which also has Nylan in the history department and Czikszentmihalyi in the Chinese department. I also applied to schools that have outstanding East Asian departments (or have cross-enrollment with nearby universities with strengths in that area.) So, even if no one in the department has a specialty in Chinese philosophy (and few departments have specialists, really), I will still be able to read and discuss Chinese texts at any one of those schools. I am interested in moral psychology, which is how I ended up with an interest in East Asian philosophy. One of my classes included the Mengzi on a syllabus and I fell in love with the text. Anyway, it's a very small field, so I'm pleased to make your acquaintance!

There seem to be cognitive benefits to language learning that are independent of one's ability to communicate fluently in that language. Perhaps that's not a strong enough consideration to warrant a requirement, but it's something that has yet to be mentioned in the thread, at least, so I thought I'd throw it out there. In my own case, speaking several languages enables me to think in different ways about certain concepts. So, for instance, in one language one concept might have one range of meaning and related metaphors, and in another language there might be some overlap, but then also a quite different range of extended meanings. It's quite interesting to see where they overlap and where they diverge, and it enriches my ability to make new conceptual connections. Reading newspapers in a foreign language provides me with access to more information, as well as a richer and more nuanced understanding of current events. This is particularly salient for me, because I study moral and political philosophy, so I can more easily call up a range of possibilities of human values and justificatory reasons, and so on. This is beneficial, even though I work in English. Finally, learning a language is a deeply humbling experience, particularly if one travels elsewhere to participate in an immersion program. It's one of the most difficult things that I've ever done. Just the experience of being a language learner has shaped my character in positive ways, and provided me with additional motivation to be a compassionate and patient teacher. I would sooner see departments offer more funding and support for language study, than to do away with the language requirement altogether.

Hello everyone! Coming a bit late to the party, just discovered this forum. Good luck, and we'll wait it out together!