Griswald

I'm wondering if you plan on sharing any insights or conclusions reached on the FB thread with the male audience here. I for one (I'm a man btw) would really appreciate it. I'd be very reluctant to accept an offer from a department with climate issues.

There are seven of us so far, so you will be in good company.

Is Warwick really clearly stronger in post-Kantian philosophy? For what it's worth, Leiter thinks that GSU is the strongest MA program in the US for 18th and 19th c. German philosophy (see here).

I just received an acceptance email from Wyoming. I'm very excited! This is actually my top choice for MA programs. Very small, personal department with a strong focus on phil science. Still waiting to hear about funding. Very excited!

MattDest, 
 
I suppose my recommendation was a bit biased, given my interests in Post-Kantian European philosophy. But, seeing that BSG applied to Warwick, and lists Nietzsche as an interest, I assumed (maybe wrongly) that they had an interest in this area as well. In which case, it is not even an argument: Warwick is clearly the strongest of the three in this area. I know full well that GSU and Houston specialize in PhD. placement, and, as that is the end goal of the MA route, maybe their placement records should take precedent over the research interests of the staff. 
 
Either way, I too was not trying to push BSG one way or the other; just spit balling my thoughts. 

At the couple schools I have seen that post these kinds of statistics, minorities (including women) are accepted at a significantly higher rate than average. Take Duke for example http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitphl.html . Women always over a 10% acceptance rate, white men from America are always below 10%.

There are a million possible explanations of the lack of women+minorities in grad school/professorships phenomenon. It is unfortunate that the only explanation that is allowed to be publicly supported is the position that the power-hungry white man is asserting his dominance and forcing out all of the women and minorities and making them all feel unwelcome, etc. If I were to say something like, "At my university, there is a black female philosopher who gets along famously with everyone and does not at all make any sort of complaints about feeling unwelcome, etc" then it that very piece of testimony will be tossed out because I am a white guy who is part of the problem and is indifferent to my privelaged status, etc. If a black woman said, "Things are great here I never feel any discomfort" then, although it will probably be taken more seriously, it might be said that they have just become numb to the oppression, etc. The position is unfalsifiable.

This is not to say that these concerns are not real...but I believe that social desirability concerns are so intense that there is no way anyone posting non-anonymously would ever take the position that...maybe things most of the time are fine in many/most places. Maybe the lack of female philosophers is an indication of a genuine lack of interest in the subject from the majority of women. Again, the commonly publicly taken position, that females/other minorities are under deep unconscious oppression that keeps them systematically out of the academy, is unfalsifiable, because almost nobody is allowed to speak otherwise without being either the "systematically privileged who cannot see faults because privilege has been ingrained in them" or the "systematically underprivileged who cannot see faults because they only know oppression."

Just make sure you thoroughly investigate Tech's placement record. Does Tech consistently place their graduates in programs that are at least as good or better (whatever that means for you) than UVA?

Branching from try out this take arguments out of original threads thing: 
 
 
 
This is bizarre. We have a thread that's dedicated to announcing our acceptances. I don't know how that would actually be helpful to anyone, and it can obviously be upsetting. But discussing things to consider when looking at different departments is too smug and potentially harmful? 
 
 
Uh, ok. 

I think my decision will depend primarily on fit, and based on my thoughts after visiting.
 
 
I don't think this thread was meant for the bolded option, but rather for people to discuss their considerations. It's a bit presumptuous to suggest that's what anyone will post here.

Personally, I value stipends 1.5x more than average, and I really want the campus to be on a hill. I value hilltops 3x as much as the average applicant. I mean, who cares? What someone else values is not going to change what I value, nor should my values change yours. This thread cannot possibly be helpful to anyone, but will just serve as another circlejerk for those of us lucky enough to have multiple acceptances under the belt. As much as I love circlejerks...I just can't see this being helpful, but I can see it being harmful.

 

If you're in the same boat as me without an acceptance, here's a special haiku just for you:
 
Checking my email
A blank stare through weary eyes
Please bring good tidings

Here is my official decision formula:

First, I take the number of interested professors, multiply it by their PGR ranking, then divide it by 2 if I was waitlisted first. I then take the square root of the stipend and add it to the average age of my POIs to determine what I call the "K Variable." At that point, I.......
 
Really, why even post this? There is no set way to decide, its 100% up to you and what you want. You have your own set of values that your mommy should have told you is special and different from all the others. You know why you applied to each school. You know what you like at each school. You applied to CEU? What is CEU? You know, I don't. You obviously know the various sorts of considerations that people make when they choose a school (you listed them), so figure out for yourself how they work. Hearing how I make my decision should have no bearing on how you make yours, and so on.

This seems like a thread where people who have gotten accepted to multiple schools can brag about how "tough it must be" to choose between them. Woe is me! As much as I'd like to join in the fun and namedrop my schools, this thread will help nobody, and will instead make those who haven't been accepted feel bad.

TL;DR: No need for the humblebrag.

I would let my letter writers know as soon as possible of my plan to reapply, and I'd ask them how I could improve my application before the next round of deadlines. I might even ask what I could do to get even stronger letters from them. Then I'd try really hard to follow their recommendations.

I would let my letter writers know as soon as possible of my plan to reapply, and I'd ask them how I could improve my application before the next round of deadlines. I might even ask what I could do to get even stronger letters from them. Then I'd try really hard to follow their recommendations.

I think it would be nice if we could avoid pressuring people to turn down other offers because they've been accepted by at top-10 school. Sometimes a lower ranked school can be the best choice, and it may be impossible to tell before you visit.

So, unless someone is playing an evil prank on me, I believe Jeffrey McDonough just sent me an email admitting me to Harvard!
 
... what?!?!
 
I am absolutely STUNNED
 
and, of course, thrilled!
 
EDIT: I hope no one hacked into McDonough's email account and sent me a fraudulent email. That is how shocking news of admission is to me. But I'm sooo excited!!!

Congratulations!!! I think you will take the Harvard offer of admission. So, would you please turn down the acceptances and waitlists at all other schools as soon as possible to help out other applicants? Thanks. 

I know that a few other fields on grad cafe have compiled lists of the standard funding offers from top universities in their field. Does anyone know if philosophy has one? 

My advisor said that I should thank the person who notified me and that's it. He said that if I haven't heard anything more by the beginning of April, then it would be okay to contact someone in the department to ask about the likelihood of receiving an offer.

Something about having now had my highest of dreams dashed to pieces by Notre Dame makes me feel a little less anxious about the rest of my applications.

So let me get this straight: you claim their is no overlap between continental and analytic philosophy. Your evidence for this is to pick parochial, highly specific (and technical) issues in the context of contemporary analytic philosophy and then point out that no continental philosophers have made contributions to those issues?
 
Are you serious? That's not the only level of meaningful overlap, first of all. Second of all, it's disingenuous to expect the person you're talking to to be familiar enough with four technical and highly specific problems in philosophy to the extent that they could provide a refutation in all four cases (as a matter of fact, I am familiar with none of them because you picked topics in four of the areas of philosophy I am least interested in). 
 
But here, I can point out to some more general overlap just off the top of my head:
 
As mentioned above, Lee Braver has written a book on how continental figures fit into the realism/anti-realism debate.
Philosophy of language (Habermas, Derrida, Deleuze, Heidegger, structuralism)
Philosophy of science (Deleuze, Foucalt, Bergson, Michael Polanyi, Catherine Malabou, Ernst Cassirer)
Epistemology (Any phenomenologist, Michael Polanyi, Foucalt, Cassirer, Gadamer)
Metaethics (Nietzsche, Deleuze, Derrida, Levinas, Sartre)
Metaphysics (Heidegger, Deleuze, Bergson, Badiou, Tristan Garcia, phenomenology depending on one's interpretation of it)
Ethics (Levinas, Derrida, Habermas, Sartre, Adorno, Arendt)
Political Philosophy (Habermas, Marx, Agamben, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucalt, Arendt, Adorno)
 
Now, if you want to find the relevance of Continental philosophy for particular issues within those fields you're going to need to actually read the continental philosophy or read people doing work on that very subject (some examples: Lee Braver, Hubert Dreyfus, Ray Brassier, Paul Katsafanas, Paul Livingston, Samuel Wheeler, Adrian Moore, Graham Priest). Sometimes the relevance will be oblique, sometimes more direct, and sometimes you won't be able to find any. Obviously you might not find it worth your while and would rather stick to analytic philosophy, since you'll have to do a lot of reading of unfamiliar authors. That's fair. But the claim that there is no overlap is just false.

Really? I'm curious then.
 
If I'm doing phil science, and I'm wondering about resultant and component forces, and I'm reading Creary, Cartwright, and Wilson, I'm wondering what continental philosophy has to offer.
If I'm doing meta-ethics, and I'm trying to provide a formal semantics for expressivism in light of Being For, I'm wondering what continental philosophy has to offer.
If I'm doing metaphysics, and I'm trying to defend Boolos' account of plural quantification in second-order logic, I'm wondering what continental philosophy has to offer.
If I'm doing political philosophy, and I'm trying to give an argument against Cohen's account of societal development as a functional argument revolving around a society's productive relations, I'm wondering what continental philosophy has to offer.
 
Because obviously they've made no actual contribution to these problems, but I also don't see how they ever could, or how anything they've said thus far could be relevant.

And Rutgers applicants, since that's where Ludlow is apparently moving.
 
(I really think all applicants, not just women, should be concerned about departments' climate for women and minorities. A hostile climate is bad for everyone.)

There's a good chance I'll be accepting an offer at University of Minnesota to start this fall.  I've read the thread about affordable areas of town and suggestions on property management companies and it's all been very helpful (I hope!)  I'm wondering how long the commute time (by car or by bus) would be from Calhoun Isle area / Kenwood / Lowry Hill to the campus.  Also, I'm wondering how bad traffic congestion is during peak commuter hours on 94 and 35W.
 
On a side note, I read in another forum that there aren't any good sushi restaurants in Minneapolis.  Please tell me that's not true!

I have no idea where I'm going to choose. I want to keep my options open and visit as many schools as possible to get a feel for where the best fit would be.