PhD applicant

If you could only do one or the other, then I think you're right. Sample should take priority in that case.

I'm glad I had an upvote left for that.

Well, since the point of writing a good philosophy paper is to contribute to the prospective community by either publication or presentation at conferences, I'm guessing it looks better to be published. But frankly, I thought it would look lazy if my writing sample was a publication so I wrote something new for that.

I'm not saying it has to get published... just saying, writing it for publication makes it more fun...

Well, every day will be boring until we get what we want... that's how I feel anyway... start writing another paper for publication, on a topic just for yourself, it takes the edge off.

I feel like a cow waiting to get slaughtered for the meat packing plant.

Maybe it's because self-important assholes can't get in anywhere else.

Not sure what to say.

He must be really depressed because that glass won't fill up and he just keeps pouring liquid in... it's an optical illusion. It must be. ...

I was just reading through pages and pages of old postings to see what dates were likely for some of the remaining schools. Saw someone that got rejected from Princeton say they were bummed because Princeton was their "safety school" ?? I had to laugh.

Wow, I'm just really happy for anyone who got accepted anywhere. That must be a real comfort, and load off your minds and all that. I can't quite imagine the feeling at this time... hopefully within the next ten days or so. But it's pretty cool a lot of you are getting exactly what you wanted so we can't be too wrong about how we go about this stuff.

I'm surprised too. My school just lets you do that as an option in their website, you don't get charged or anything. So weird. I guess all I did right, according to that was proof-read. I still haven't found any type-os in anything I sent out. But I know there were some failures in other areas... is what I'm sure of.

I was curious about this too, so I decided to do some research to answer your question and my own... (and I'm a total nerd who looks for excuses to do research)... Men performed better on this test Gallagher, Colin, and Teresa Burke. 2007. "Age, gender and IQ effects on the Rey-Osterrieth Complex Figure Test." British Journal Of Clinical Psychology 46, no. 1: 35-45. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 28, 2014). This study showed men higher in math, and women higher in writing Kaufman, Alan S., James C. Kaufman, Xin Liu, and Cheryl K. Johnson. 2009. "How do Educational Attainment and Gender Relate to Fluid Intelligence, Crystallized Intelligence, and Academic Skills at Ages 22–90 Years?." Archives Of Clinical Neuropsychology 24, no. 2: 153-163. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2014). And this paper might explain why - females had larger thalami, correlated to higher verbal IQ: Xie, Yuhuan, Yian Ann Chen, and Michael D. De Bellis. 2012. "The Relationship of Age, Gender, and IQ With the Brainstem and Thalamus in Healthy Children and Adolescents: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Volumetric Study." Journal Of Child Neurology 27, no. 3: 325-331. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2014). This paper (laughably?) suggests that reading requirements for males should be lower because their gender makes them worse readers, LOL Share, David L., and Phil A. Silva. 2003. "Gender Bias in IQ-Discrepancy and Post-Discrepancy Definitions of Reading Disability." Journal Of Learning Disabilities 36, no. 1: 4. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 28, 2014). This study showed females out-perform males through age 25, even with the same IQ Sheree J., Gibb, Fergusson David M., and Horwood L. John. 2008. "Gender differences in educational achievement to age 25." Australian Journal Of Education (ACER Press) 52, no. 1: 63-80. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2014). This study showed that we do show some accuracy in judging others' intelligence based on their appearance (like gender) Murphy, Nora A., Judith A. Hall, and C Colvin. 2003. "Accurate Intelligence Assessments in Social Interactions: Mediators and Gender Effects." Journal Of Personality 71, no. 3: 465-493. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 27, 2014). This study showed that women with schizophrenia have preserved emotional and semantic processing whereas men lose their visual-spatial processing advantage Scholten, M. R. M., A. Aleman, and R. S. Kahn. 2008. "The processing of emotional prosody and semantics in schizophrenia: relationship to gender and IQ." Psychological Medicine 38, no. 6: 887-898. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 28, 2014). That's how far I got before my brain wanted to go back to hulu.

You guys are cracking me up pretty bad right now.

Thanks, I enjoy reading about this problem, even though it annoys me so much. Yes, there are a few ways to take the principle of charity. I think, like much of philosophy, it also has one application in their papers and another in real life. That may be why most majors don't transfer the understanding the way I'm expecting them to.

not much hope left now desperation for emails poverty awaits

I've actually taken a little advice from this thread and jogged/sprinted about a few times. It was good advice... it actually worked... smarter people than me around here. Some of the advice I don't think I will take though. No offense.

Of all the concepts I have learned in my philosophy education, nothing has ever been more important to me than the principle of charity. (aside from pure logic/reason...) I was actually discussing with a course designer earlier today about how to better teach philosophy majors this concept. I prefaced that discussion with the fact that most philosophy majors get their BA with absolutely no notion of it whatsoever. Sure, they can define it up and down and sideways for you, but I'm pretty sure they never once practice it in their personal lives. That was part of the reason I started this thread, so I'm glad you moved some of this here. I think it would also be fitting, given the last dozen posts or so, to engage in a discussion of what constitutes 'philisophical maturity,' with whatever bowel movements must come along with that.

That makes me feel a lot better, I think I was over that on both... I confess I've forgotten and I can't remember my password into the GRE site. LOL

Using this diagnosis then, a person from a small school would just be... screwed. Because no matter how high a percentage ranking their professors say they are in their department, they're just top 1% of crap, which is still crap. That's really too bad. There should be some way of getting useful recommendations from unrecognized programs.

Shit you guys are bumming me out, my sample was on religion... I guess I'd rather know this stuff. But I agree that it is off topic.

Also, don't forget to look into your school's policy on retaking a class. I was able to significantly raise my GPA by retaking a few classes because my school had an over-ride policy - the new grade completely erased the old one. But some schools do an average of the two so it wouldn't do you any good to retake them in that case. Certainly double check the policy if you're that worried about it. You might be able to do some repair work.

Yeah, that's a disaster. I mean, if you get accepted to 6 schools, there's no point in holding any more than two acceptances at one time if you know you prefer one to the other, you should be declining whichever is least desirable as soon as possible and only have one or two open at once while you are making that choice. But if you have like 5 to 10 of them open and you're just sitting on them because it gives you a *___* Well, I'm sorry, but that's just a douche-bag right there when there's so many stressed out people on wait-lists and stuff.

Shit dude I didn't even think of that... hey, lurkers, if you are my letter writers, wassup? Also, um, nothing personal or whatever? (have I identified myself? ...) uh...

In response to your comment about not shopping around, I know I didn't. The first school I looked at I fell in love with, like a big dumb animal and it stayed my first choice. I admit I have no realistic expectations, I expect to get into the awesomest schools, and then I will bad-mouth them for not thinking as much of me as I do after they have rejected me. But I walked into it knowing this, so were they really unrealistic. I mean, isn't our abnormally obnoxious ego what makes us philosophy majors. I mean, there are theater majors... but I think of those more as 'attention sluts'.