Silly_Socrates

I can answer this. Like Monadology, I am also living in Milwaukee. I've grown up near, and have done my undergrad and masters in MKE. I love it. Our city is perfect sized, not too big and not too small. Drinking is definitely a big part of our culture. We have lots of breweries (and even distillery) around the city, and brewery tours are a great thing to do. They are usually pretty cheap, and you get to drink tons of beer. We also have many bars. You can find any atmosphere you want- quiet, rowdy, fun, craft drinks, tiki drinks, craft beer bars, etc. Playing bar trivia is a pretty popular, and great way to win free beer and bar tabs! Like Monadology said, we have an awesome art museum. It is free the first thursday of the month (as is our public museum), but a student memebership only costs $25. There are tons of great exhibits there. Also once a month, the art museum as "after dark events" which is essentially just a party at the art museum. You can buy drinks, there are free appetizers, live music, crafts, and a free photo booth. Each one is a different theme and they are ton of fun to dress up and have a good time at! You get in a free if you have a membership. I definitely recommend going to these. Given the size of our city, biking is a great option to get around. Buses will get you where you need to go, but I find it is often times just quicker to walk than wait for a bus. Safety is so-so. It depends what area of town you live in. Luckily, the worst that happened to me was that I had my car get broken in to once. I was living in a not so safe part of town though (south side). I have always felt very safe walking around the eastside or riverwest at any hours. The area around Marquette University is a different story. We have quite a bit of crime over there, and the university gives you recommended boundaries to stay within on campus. Also that area is classified as a 'food desert' meaning there are no grocery stores within a decent walking distance. There are like 4 sub places around that area and a qdoba. It gets old quick. Other areas of the city have great food. Even though we are the dairy state, we have a lot of great vegan options. In summer, we have a festival pretty much every weekend. We have summerfest, an 11 day music festival on the lake. We have weekend festivals like german fest, polish fest, mexican fiesta, etc. We also have movies on the lake in summer. They put up a huge projection screen and show free movies. It's pretty cool. Also a must is jazz in the park. Great jazz bands, food trucks, and wine, Bottles of wine are around $10. Unfortunately a few years ago they stopped letting people bring in carry-in alcohol to jazz in the park (but you can be sneaky and do it anyway). Finding good housing can be difficult. There are a lot of lake front apartments that are out of everyone's price range. If you look hard enough though, you can find a good place in a safe area. I found somewhere for less than $300 a month in a great part of the city. However, it gets cold here and heating bills can get pricey in winter. Summers can get pretty hot, and I would advise you not to ever swim in lake michigan. There are some smaller lakes you could swim in. If you want to do activities on lake michigan, the UW-milwaukee urban ecology center rents out kayaks and canoes in summer for very cheap.

MattDest, you mentioned you've heard of other Phil departments having less than desirable atmospheres for women. Would you (or anyone) mind saying which schools a women may want to avoid, or could you provide some kind of link for me to learn more on this? As a women applicant, I want to make sure I end up in a department I am comfortable in.

I received an e-mail yesterday from a school yesterday saying they could "not access my GRE scores in their system." To supplement this error, they asked I email them an unofficial report of my GRE scores. I took it as a good sign that they took the time to contact me for my scores,and I am happy they did so. However, I also felt frustrated for having spent $25 on sending official GRE scores to them which they are 'unable to access.'

This makes me hesitant to send an updated version of my CV. Both the new conferences are graduate level. Toronto and Cambridge are both highly ranked schools per The Philosophical Gourmet, so I thought acceptances to their conferences could be a factor not so much on deciding admission, but perhaps when distributing funding. To give some more background, I have one professional level conference on my old CV along with two graduate level conferences.

Hey everyone, I was recently accepted to two conferences (one at Cambridge, the other in Toronto). My advisor suggested I see if I am able add this information onto my submitted applications. Do any of you know if it is taboo to email the deparment secrataries or program directors with this new information?