Monadology

Some historical papers may be toxic in virtue of being too niche. It's also possible a writing sample can be toxic if it doesn't match any of your declared interests. Last year I applied for the first time from my terminal MA program. My writing sample ended up being a paper I wrote on Berkeley since it was the best paper I felt I had written at that time. A top scholar on Berkeley (and Early Modern generally) said it was an excellent paper and didn't think I should be worried about using it. Well, I got two wait-lists (FSU and IUB) but ended up being shut out. In retrospect, the top Berkeley scholar said, Berkeley might be too niche a topic given that I wasn't applying to historically-oriented programs nor pitching myself as interested specifically in history of philosophy. I suspect this is correct: FSU has a Berkeley scholar interested in the very same issues my paper was on. Berkeley may also be unpopular for other reasons (most philosophers misunderstand his actual positions and I often here people talk about him as if he is nuts and obviously wrong). It may also have had that impact because it didn't clearly line up with my AoIs: it was about Berkeley's account of notions which are how we understand spirits and their activities. Technically still agency related since it concerns practical knowledge, but few people would probably see it that way.

About your writing sample: Unless you're applying to programs with specifically continental leanings, the more analytic the more effective (generally speaking). I don't know how continental your current candidate leans, though. Maybe you could give a rough description if you're comfortable? By the way, I've heard that a good, clear paper on Kant is a great middle ground: lots of programs will have someone interested in Kant and nowadays Kant is a pretty widely respected figure among both analytics and continentals.

Congrats to the Fordham offers! Pretty jealous, John Davenport is there.

Really? UW Milwaukee's MA program has pretty poor funding, an $8000 dollar stipend, but I've scraped by on it (occasionally dipping into savings). It would really surprise me if someone couldn't live on two to three times that which is what most PhD programs offer (unless they have children, of course). There are usually cheap health-care plans through the university so your main expenses are, at worst: rent & utilities, food and if you have one, car insurance. I'm sure some cities are quite expensive to live in, so maybe some programs don't compensate enough for cost of living (but I know some compensate for this, apparently Columbia guarantees affordable housing for its grad students as long as they are in the program).

Congrats to the Pitt offers!

Congratulations!

Indiana is wait-listing. Congrats to those wait-listed. If Purdue is gonna be active today that's four schools for me to be anxious about. I'm already about at my limit!

One wonders if anyone is going to post an offer to the PhD program for Fordham.

Congrats! By the way, my girlfriend just got off the phone with Georgetown. They said she was wait-listed for funding (which sounded based on her description to basically just be regular old wait-listed) and that the person who called her said he had a lot of people to call/email this afternoon.

Congrats on the Austin and Georgetown offers (and the Fordham waitlist). I applied to Fordham and Georgetown so I'll be pretty anxious this afternoon.

It's not important, for your MA program, that you be able to pursue some sort of specialty to any great degree. I imagine you'd get a little bored or anxious if the program had no political philosophy courses, but your focus on political philosophy is premature at this stage. Match at an MA program really isn't as important as showing you can do graduate level work and, frankly, broadening your horizons as well. Also what's the difficulty with your "special case?" Most MA programs are used to taking special cases. That's partially what they're there for. If you have another round of applictions, apply to good MA programs, many of which provide funding. I know my own MA program, UW Milwaukee, regularly has political philosophy courses, provides funding has no problems taking people with unusual routes to philosophy.

I'm quite pleased by the number of non-naturalists, even if my metaethical view is in the minority at this point.

Sorry to hear that!

I assume that whether a waitlist is ranked or unranked in some cases just has to do with when the deliberative labor happens: I can either decide now who is next up of the 20 most viable candidates without offers or I can decide later on the occasion that an offer is turned down. For some it might be AoI related as Hopephily mentioned.

I think I'm just a non-cognitivist about everything.

Congrats to the Notre Dame admits and wait-lists. A friend of mine got into their HPS program yesterday, I was wondering if they were going to start sending out offers soon.

Congrats to the MIT admits.

G.E. Moore's proof of an external world.

I just thought I'd leave this here: http://philosophicalspaces.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/what-can-you-do-to-help/

Congrats!

Sorry to hear the news. I remember you mentioning Emory in the Acceptance thread and I was rooting for you to get an offer from them.

Oh, I see! Sorry I missed that aspect of your question. I don't think there is a clear answer. I think taking time off helps one get a sense of perspective, which can be quite valuable. On the flipside, the young (and I include myself in this number) are pretty bad at knowing who they are or what they really want. A large part of it, as you point out, just boils down to whether you decide it's what you really want to do. Plus, I don't think one necessarily needs much philosophical maturity to go to grad school (though, having never been to a PhD program, I might be wrong about that).

I doubt anyone is philosophically mature until some time after their PhD. I say this because my experience with philosophy is definitely of a 'light dawns gradually over the whole' character. I also say that because a number of faculty members have told me that their interests and sense of philosophical identity had changed quite a lot by the time they were done with their PhD. I do think a lot of philosophical maturation will come with more general maturation and I know I matured a lot during my years between undergrad and my MA as well as at my MA program (though I don't think I'd say I'm philosophically mature). Maturity as a professional academic, I suspect, is much quicker to come once you become serious about it: you just practice at the professional skills.

Why did you create a new thread?

Adcom members probably have varying standards of superior/inferior. Some qualities (like clarity) are probably universally well regarded, but others are probably more variable in terms of priority.