TheVineyard
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Posts posted by TheVineyard
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How about class rank (within the major)?
I don't even have such a thing, and I can't imagine that that is relevant to admissions over and above GPA/school information.
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Thanks for all this. If I have time, I'll put more into the survey tomorrow. I'd like to launch it by next week.
I know that traffic to this site and my site is wayyyy down, so my fear is that people are just dropping off at this point! I'd like to catch everyone before they're gone. I know it's particularly tough talking about admissions at this point: fatigue, frustrating, disappointment, or just a feeling of moving-on. But, wow, I think this could be the best thing to happen to philosophy admissions in decades (if it works like I hope it will).
Continued discussion/thoughts appreciated!!!
I think one reason that traffic to your site is down because you stopped updating during a huge traffic time. I used to use the notifications section to keep up with stuff but when you took a big break it just threw me off and confused me so I quit checking. However, most people have heard from most of their schools now so it will probably be downhill traffic from here.
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I know this is a ways off but I wanted to post while a lot of people are still on here.
It appears like I've probably struck out in my PhD apps, but I am in at GSU and am very excited about the opportunities I'll have there. I think my biggest weakness was pedigree and unknown letter writers, and GSU will hopefully solve that problem and make me damn competitive in a few years (GPA and GRE are excellent, and hopefully I'll have a strong MA GPA).
So, I was hoping I could get some recommendations on schools to have my eye on in a couple years when I apply to PhDs again. My primary interests are metaethics (particularly moral skepticism), ethics in general and philosophy of biology, with a lesser interest in continental (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Camus, Marx). My tentative list as of now is Duke, Texas, UCSD, Vanderbilt, maybe Berkeley, maybe Stanford, maybe Wisconsin, maybe Arizona. I know there is a wealth of knowledge in this thread and I hope you guys and gals can give me some good recommendations!
Thanks!
Have you taken phil bio courses yet? I'm surprised to see it considering your interests. The philosophy of biology is interested mostly in the actions of scientists. Explaining/rationally reconstructing models, identifying and explaining idealizations, working directly in biological science texts...its basically theoretical biology... None of the philosophers you listed are read in phil bio, and phil biologists are not really interested in ethics...its typically a "we will talk about ethics for one day" kind of thing in phil bio courses. Applied ethics or bioethics might be more what you are thinking?
I'm sure I'll be downvoted for this post because some will see it as negative, but I'm a primarily phil bio applicant (and as far as I know, I'm the only one with phil bio as a central focus on these boards) and I just wanted to better explain phil bio because the info posted didn't seem like the sort of thing that phil bio applicants are interested in.
I will second the Calgary recommendation for those interested in the phil bio that I described. I didn't apply there, but only because I want to stay in the USA. Also, keep track of Cincinnati...they are incredibly strong at phil bio. They have made several senior hires in the last year, and plan to make more. It will be clear just how good they are on the next Leiter report. Duke and Wisconsin are obviously top phil bio programs, not much more needs to be said there.
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Can anyone claim the recent UPenn rejections?
I can say that all of their waitlists and acceptances have been given out.
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I think this would be fantastic. I'm especially interested to see the data on minority/women applicants vs the white male majority. The only factors that I think would be unhelpful to the quiz are method of notification and date of notification. The rest are all the right kinds of questions to be able to put together a "profile" of a successful applicant, and maybe give future applicants a better idea of where they should aim (or at least, where applicants like them have ended up).
- TheVineyard and ianfaircloud
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Confirmed rejection for me. Thanks for the ez link.
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FWIW, Vineyard has now taken jabs at Notre Dame and Purdue. Can we conclude from this that he/she is some sort of all-things-Indiana hater, i.e. an illini of sorts? Or, perhaps an IUB person who is duped into the ideology of college rivalry and detests the rest of the Indiana Unis? Why not answer this one for us, Vineyard. What do you have against these two Midwestern institutions? The Christian-bias is one thing, but what did the Boilermakers ever do to you?
Oh I have nothing against Purdue, it is a fantastic school. I just have heard the term and PurDUPED reminded me of it. I watch college sports and I know a bunch more. Give me a school and I'll give you a little rhymey name that others use to make fun of it.
My problems with Notre Dame are just problems with religion generally. I'm assuming I don't have to say more about that? It is also a great school with many great students and some great faculty. Again, though, my criticism was about the one-school-centrism of the supposed "foundation in metaphysics." If someone had said that most of the philosophers of mind you need to read before going into graduate school are from Duke or CUNY and are straight-up hardcore reductive physicalists, I would question that list just as strongly, even though I agree with those authors and love their programs.
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I'm interested in finding out what the lowest successful GRE scores have been this year. This will help future applicants figure out the answer to the inevitable "how important are GRE scores?". It might also give us an idea as to where different departments are making their cutoffs.
Only post if your score is actually low (below 90% verbal, below 75% quant) - nobody cares about your writing score, and only if you got accepted or wait-listed at a PGR top 50. Please give you raw and percentile score, along with the PGR ranking of the relevant school.
I'll start!
I was accepted to Indiana (25 PGR) and Syracuse (38 PGR), and wait listed at USC (13 PGR).
My GRE was 160V (84%), 159Q (75%). The rest of my app was stellar.
Can I ask how you knew the rest of your app was stellar?
- AcademicX, Ritwik, philosopheme and 1 other
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You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
You've clearly sipped on the kool-aid!
I can't believe that people would defend a reading list from a Notre Dame PhD that lists primarily Notre Dame Christian philosophers as the "must read" philosophers for a foundation of metaphysics...and then say it's unbiased. It's just laughable.
But whatever, anyone who can't see that that is an incredibly biased reading list has too much "faith" to overcome. If you want to study only Notre Dame Christian philosophers, be my guest. I didn't say anything bad about them. I didn't say that they are bad, motivated by supernatural claims, unscientific, radically speculative, or insulated from the rest of the world. I'm just saying that the universe of metaphysics doesn't center around Notre Dame Christian philosophers as your list makes it seem.
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Ah yes, van Inwagen's "Material Beings", a classic work of Christian dogmatic philosophical metaphysics which argues for the non-existence of ordinary things which has contributed to a much larger debate over ontological metaphysics with other Christian metaphysicians, such as Eli Hirsch, Ted Sider...
I'm not sure exactly what your point here is...I don't know if you are trying to say that the proposed sample of mostly-Christian, mostly Notre Dame philosophers is an accurate representation of a "foundation" in the field, or if you just mean to say that Inwagen is influential in metaphysics. I believe he is, but that doesn't make the former true.
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Here's my (new) summary:
You don't win this war without people to fight for you.
Make it your undergraduate life's work to get people excited about you, invested in your success, and willing to sacrifice for your well-being. Be the most interested and most engaged student in the department. Develop a "hit list" of professors to take and get letters from. Find ones that you think could help you reach your goals, take classes with them, ask for letters early, and consult these professors often. Do what graduate students do.
This, I believe, was the key to my application-season success coming from a philosophy program that hasn't placed a student into a top 30 school in 15 years or a top 50 school in 7.- Kantianisms, ungerdrag, TheVineyard and 1 other
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Anyone who lists Plantinga, Loux, and Inwagen (three very religious Notre Dame Philosophers) as the most important/central/fundamental writers on metaphysics (or anything other than mainstream Christian apology) is exposing some extreme Christian centrism and taking you on a ride. If you are only interested in religiously-motivated metaphysics or Christian apology/theism, they might be a good place to start, but by no means do those philosophers accurately represent a "groundwork in analytic philosophy." It is a groundwork in Christian philosophy and Christian metaphysics.
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Congrats!
I'm really interested in what happened to Logos... I hope s/he got in somewhere.
I'm dying to find out as well.
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Still nothing new from Mich or UCLA it seems. Carnegie Mellon, same issue. A couple rejections way back, but no acceptances/waitlists, I am among those waiting to hear back.
I received Princeton rejection as did several others on here. They haven't sent out waitlists so maybe you got lucky and are waitlisted. I'd contact them.
I didn't apply to NYU so I have no info there. -
I want to know if logos got waitlisted at CUNY now.
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Does anyone know if CUNY sends out acceptances and waitlists all at once, or whether they send them out gradually over the course of a few weeks?
This has been answered and discussed with you in particular multiple times on these forums.
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There's no regress here, I'm afraid
My reason is simple: You're criticizing everyone who prefers a considerate, warm rejection letter to a cold, perfunctory one. So I'm responding to your extremely broad criticism, since I'm in that 'everyone'-group. Edit: As mentioned before, you accused everyone who prefers such rejection messages as having an "obsession".
I am not criticizing those who prefer a warm rejection letter. I just don't think it is as valuable as most make it out to be. I guess that its better to get a nice one than a mean one, but really it is sent to everyone and is only faking personality and concern. There isn't anything behind them. Someone is assigned to write a letter that sounds nice that will be sent out to everyone. The content is always the same: You weren't good enough/didn't fit with us, goodbye.
Would you like it better if I didn't call it an "obsession" but rather a widely held over-emphasis?
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You're missing the point. Point is: Why do you care enough *about whether all people care*, so that you have to criticize what you take to be their "obsession" with receiving "nice" rejection messages?
Why do you care enough about why I care enough about what other people care about?
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Actually, I can certainly see why people would want a rejection letter that's not worded in a completely perfunctory and/or cold sort of way. Applications are very expensive and a ton of work. Moreover, the application process is so competitive now that even very strong applicants can expect rejections to be the norm from most top schools.
Here's something I really *don't* understand, though: Why on earth do you keep trying to belittle and insult stressed-out posters on TGC?
I'm not belittling anyone. I just don't understand the desire for a nice rejection. I paid my money to have my application considered...I wasn't paying for a nice, sweet sounding rejection that represents the exact same content as every other rejection: You aren't in. If I only got emails that said "check application" and the link sent me to the word "Rejection" it would mean the same to me as any other rejection. I don't think more or less highly of a school because of how sweet they are about rejecting me. Rather, I would think more or less of a school depending on how quick they are about rejecting me after they have sent out their waitlists/acceptances.
I would be much more grateful to the school that rejected me the day after they send acceptances with "Check Website" than the school that sends me a nicely worded snail mail 2 days later. Don't waste your time/money rejecting, spend the time/effort/money on the students you do take.
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I thought about starting a new thread, but it seemed most appropriate here... What were the best and worst rejection letters you received so far? I'm not sure about anyone else, but Toronto's rejection letter was hands down the best rejection I've gotten in two application seasons. It was honest and kind without being deceptive, and you could really tell that Jennifer Nagel put a lot of thought into it. Brown's was the worse, only because it's exactly the same letter as the one they rejected me with last year, word for word minus the year--it was also pretty terse and cold to begin with too.
I felt absolutely no different about any rejection letter. I only read the first sentence or so to confirm it was a rejection, then moved on.
I don't understand the obsession with getting a "nice" rejection letter. Even the letters people say are "nice" are the same ones sent every year. None of them actually were to me personally, none of them told me I was special and different from all the other people. It's just a letter that rejected me, I cross that school off my list and that's that.
I certainly understand the power of personalized waitlists/acceptances, but I don't think I will ever understand why people care so much about what is in the rejection letter.
- Edit_Undo, humean_skeptic and hegelbagel
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You can edit your old posts btw.
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It's not a humanities program, but Medical Scientist Training Programs (combined M.D./Ph.D.) are actually even more competitive than philosophy. My father works on the adcom for a fairly high-rated program, and says that to be admitted, one needs three letters from eminent faculty at a *very* well-reputed undergrad institution (no second chances by doing a MA) that basically say the student is God's gift to science.
Well...I wouldn't say that's any different than Phil, except the fact that we have one MA program that consistently places its kids top-10...Acceptance rates for Harvard M.D. and Harvard J.D. are much, much higher (around double) than Harvard PhD in Philosophy, this was posted a couple years back and remains true.
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Purdouches, we call them.
- TheVineyard and Edit_Undo
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Vineyard's post is at -19... I don't know that I would quite call this being forbidden to make threads.
I think what you mean is that I command immense moral authority in the face of a populous who wishes to put me down!
Yeah, looking back on that post it was probably pretty stupid. A thread about how people make decisions was no more useless than any other thread on here. I just thought that it would almost be wrong if someone was convinced to make a school decision based on how another makes a school decision, but then I found myself doing it and because I was doing it it seemed right so...yeah, my bad
- Ryura, wakeupright and MongooseMayhem
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Acceptance Thread
in Philosophy
Posted
Not positive, but if I've read the situation correctly, everyone here is rooting for me.