Platonist

Yes, I agree. I was just curious why philosopheme is very interested in UConn at Storrs; I did not mean to be offensive. Congrats to philosopheme on the multiple acceptances to choose from!

I really do not understand. You have so many much BETTER offers than UConn, why care so much about UConn? If you are offered admission at UConn, would you choose it over Stanford, Northwestern, UT-Austin? Sorry for my remarks. But I am really confused.

Wait list is a killer! You never know you will get off, but at the same time do not want to give up delusional hope.

Hi Hopeful, 1. What will you ask UPenn? Ask them who they have hired? 2. How did you know that there is a "very reasonable chance" that you will get off the waitlist at Wisconsin? (PM too)

Definitely. So if one is wait listed at her dream school, say, Harvard, and accepted at a non-PRG ranked school, say, N, should she reasonably wait until April 15 to decide if she will take the offer of admission from school B? Doing this means she would have to bear such ridiculous pain of waiting off the wait list without certainty. It is a ridiculous situation one could find herself in.

Great. Let's get the wait lists start moving now!

Thanks for the info. wandajune. Congrats on your multiple offers of admission!

That makes sense: UC Davis is ranked below all the other 3 programs you are admitted to. Just out of curiosity, do those programs (Wisconsin, UIC, and UIUC) offer as good funding as UC Davis?

Of course. Do that. If you are wait listed, you will learn this from their response.

Yes, waitlist is ridiculous. I would imagine that if one is wait listed at the top one program, but accepted to a lowest ranked program, she would or should reasonably take the latter offer instead of waiting until the hell April 15.

congrats! Yes, both the acceptances and wait lists have gone out. So no news means a rejection. Thanks for the info.

Have not heard anything from Michigan. Surely means a rejection. So depressing....

Thanks for the reply! So helpful. I will give a look at the book you recommend. Frege's own works are very difficult to follow. He seems to treat quantification as a second-order function of truth values. Russell's idea is probably better, as quantification is taken as the first-order function. Need to read more about this stuff.

Re: all of the posts above regarding logic: (1) Would you guys please recommend good textbooks on second-order logic? I've never taken logic courses beyond first-order ones, and want to read over some good second-order logic texts. (2) A humble opinion: Logic, first-order or higher, cannot really avoid ontological commitment. Frege seemed to try to avoid the ontological import when he based logic on such notions as functions and concepts, but he eventually took a realist position regarding mathematical objects (and on universals, I think). Thanks.

School A would reimburse for your travel cost from where you live to A, School B is responsible for the travel from A to B, etc. The last and unlucky school might reimburse your travel costs to and from it. Just email them to ask with a specific travel plan in mind.

Michigan has sent out the second-round acceptances and the wait lists. Sadly, if one has not heard anything from it so far, it means a rejection. This pattern has been confirmed by numerous cases. I hold out delusional hope with many schools, but discovered later that I was rejected. Best of luck. (Many people are interested in if you get in CUNY, by the way. Hope you did.)

Philosophy of language is really hard. To do it well, one would have to be good at logic and metaphysics. Did any body read the Philosophy of Language by Scott Soames? It is a pretty challenging book.

Yes, you are right. I agree.

Yes, at a lower ranked program. Do not hold much hope though, because I am not high on the wait list.

Yes, this is the last week that we will hear good news from schools like Michigan. Michigan will sent out the acceptances this week. Given many people will sit on the extra offers and wait lists for a while, the wait lists will not move significantly until April 15. Best of luck to all those who are dying to get off the wait lists. Zizeksucks, you WILL be accepted to UV off the wait list, because Lord of Analytic Philosophy is very pleased by your aspirations to serve analytic philosophy.

Thanks for the inputs to this imagined scenario. Yes, there is a way of getting out of this dilemma. But this would be the last thing to do, because this would make you a not-nice-guy for the lower ranked school, which would surely be disappointed.

April 15 is absolutely ridiculous. Suppose a person received an acceptance offer from a bottom-ranked program B, but wait listed at a very-high-ranked program H, both of which set the deadline for their offers for April 15. Suppose the person has to accept or deny B's offer on April 15 when she does not hear from H. The most rational choice is to accept B's offer. But it turns out that she received an acceptance off the wait list at H after April 15, which she had to painfully deny because she was stuck with B. So April 15 is so ridiculous. This is partly because it is the standard deadline and almost every school follows it. If programs do not adopt a uniform deadline, the April 15 disaster would be avoided. Thanks for all the responses to my post regarding how the competition of application to philosophy programs would compare to other fields in the humanities. Acceptance rate is a useful indicator. Usually every well ranked program receives about 200 applications and fills in about 3-5 spots. So the average acceptance rate is about 2%, which is ridiculously high. I do not know if other humanities fields have a higher or lower acceptance rate than 2%.

For unknown reasons, I still cling to the delusional hope with some schools that I have not yet heard a rejection. It is so stupid.

I was wondering if admissions to philosophy programs are more competitive than other fields in humanities like literature, history, etc. I was told that philosophy was not as much as competitive than many other disciplines of humanities for many reasons. But now it seems that philosophy competition is very difficult too, though I have no idea if it is more so than other fields.

The feeling of uncertainty is killing people. Most of schools have sent out acceptances and wait lists, but not rejections. For those who have not heard anything from these schools, they never know if they are on the secret, extended wait list or they are rejected. If it is the latter, then hope those schools will release rejections as soon as possible. Do not leave them behind, please.