perpetuavix

You should probably do some research about what it costs to live in various neighborhoods if you're thinking about moving to NYC. $1000 for a studio on the UES is not realistic at all. Do you want to live somewhere near the 4-5-6? You can look in Harlem, although you still might struggle to find something nice at that price point. If living on the UES is very important to you, you could probably find an apartment share for that price. But NYC has one of the most expensive real estate markets in the country. You should have a solid idea of what you're getting yourself into before you move here.

BU is the only school I haven't heard from because I was assuming rejections... did they say anything about why you weren't in the first round of waitlists? They definitely sent some notifications after their admits.

When submitting info about grad program, it requires a time stamp as well as a date. You might want to have instructions to put 12:00am if you don't know the time (or even get rid of it). But thanks for organizing this!

I live in New York and will probably be attending CUNY if I receive funding. I just looked at the GC housing, and it's really quite expensive for the neighborhood. I've walked by the building and it looks nice enough, but you can definitely find better deals. For example: http://lexingtonheightsnyc.com/index.php The building is closer to the express subway stop at 125th than GC housing, but there's about 4 blocks away from each other. The two bedrooms are about $1600 for the whole apartment, compared to $1250 per bedroom in GC housing. It gets even cheaper if you live in a 3 or 4 bedroom. I live pretty nearby and I pay less for an entire floor of a brownstone with 12ft ceilings and a washer/dryer than for a much smaller 2 bedroom at GC housing. I love living in Harlem and I prefer it over Queens, just because it's much easier to get almost anywhere I want to go quickly. On the other hand, the NYC market is insane and there's something to be said for being able to know in advance you will have a place to live that's full furnished. It is way, way too early to start looking and it's basically impossible to get an apartment (that you would actually want to live in) from a distance. Feel free to message me if you have any questions. Good luck, and maybe I'll see you around next year!

Just a reminder that there are all sorts of reasons one might prefer one school over another that are totally unrelated to PGR: POIs, two body problems, better fit, need to be close to family, etc. I'd also like to hear why philospheme is interested in UConn, but that's mostly because I find Storrs to be a super boring place.

Whoever said that it's the "least accessible rejection" is definitely right. You should assume you're rejected, but if you really need to see it: 1. Log into the application. 2. Click application status on the top right 3. Click 'Respond to Offer' (it says that regardless) 4. Log into Wolverine Access (I set it up a few weeks ago to compulsively check my application status but this requires a few more steps) 5. In Wolverine Access, go to 'Students', then 'New & Prospective Student Business' 6. Click 'Application Status' and finally, 'View Decision' Considering how involved this process was, I would be surprised if they didn't send rejection emails pretty soon.

NYU is definitely a top program but that doesn't mean 1. it's the best program for you or 2. it's the only place you should consider going. Philosophy PhDs are incredible competitive. The philosophy board is full of strong candidates with excellent grades, GRE scores, writing samples, and letters who get rejected from much lesser programs than NYU. I don't know if NYU gave you specifics, but they get probably 300+ applications for 5-10 spots. If it's the only place you applied, the odds are against you, no matter how good you are. You should also consider how good of a fit the program is at the PhD level. What is your AOS? Does NYU have multiple professors you could see yourself working with? Did you talk about these things specifically in your SoP? I didn't apply to NYU because I couldn't write a convincing statement about why I would want to go there; they don't have professors or strengths in my AOS. If you think you can make a more convincing case next year, you can reapply. But there's a strong element of randomness in philosophy admissions results (there's people who have applied to the same school more than once and made it on the waitlist the first time and were flat out rejected the second time, despite having earned an MA in between applying). It's best to apply to multiple programs that work for you, and once you're accepted you can worry about the perceived quality of the institution.

Not sure about that post, but I just got a rejection email from Illinois Chicago.

Was this solicited? Any more info?

You also might consider adding a question about work experience and/or teaching experience.

Past years results show that they do keep a waitlist.

I also work at a test prep company (although I mostly work with pre-college tests). The writing section is graded by someone who probably either has or is getting a PhD in English. They generally take less than a minute to score your essay. The ETS is a little coy about it, but it's probably also graded by a computer. Generally, length, varied vocabulary and sentences structure, and well developed examples are enough to get you a high score (5.0+). The ETS sample responses are somewhat illustrative of what they're looking for: http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/issue/sample_responses and http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/analytical_writing/argument/sample_responses

I read (most of) The Genealogy of Morals so I was probably going to skip over Thus Spoke Zarathustra, and now I definitely am. Anything specific you would add to the list?

I did my undergrad at a school with concentrations, so I took fewer philosophy courses than someone who majored in it. I'm decently well read in my AOS, but I haven't read most important philosophical texts that were published after the ancient Greeks and before 1950. I'm also underemployed right now, so I have a lot of free time. I'm working on this list: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/?p=6093 which is definitely a little broader than the one posted above.

Just got accepted to CUNY off the waitlist, but I'm still waitlisted for funding, so I don't feel like my position in life has substantially improved.

Most birth control failure rates are based on a 12-month period. Condom effectiveness rates also vary greatly based on 'correct use' versus typical use; if you're using condoms correctly, it's much closer to 90-95%. So, 80% efficacy rating means that 20 out of 100 women who use condoms for an entire year will become pregnant. I don't how frequently this assumes that you have sex, but the risk of pregnancy for each occurrence of condom use is much lower than 20%

I got an email from CUNY late last night (11:30pm) that I'm on the waitlist for admissions and doesn't mention funding. They did offer me a spot in the MA (presumably unfuned) and said they had 230 applicants for 10 spots. I'd love to stay in NYC, but I don't know how much the waitlist will move.

The Bronx has some really nice areas! I would generally say above I95 is much nicer than below I95. Kingsbridge/Riverdale is pretty nice (and a little expensive, but there's deals to be had). The further east you go, the more residential it gets. Throgs Neck and Orchard Beach/City Island are kind of like being in the suburbs. New York is really a very safe city, including the Bronx. If you want to check out crime data for various areas of the city (it goes by precinct, though, not neighborhood so it kind of can obscure a good neighborhood if it's in a bad precinct), this is a fun website: http://maps.nyc.gov/crime/ NYC real estate is a CRAZY market, but you can make it work.

This is something that's been covered on Leiter's blog; I saw it (probably someone on here linked it) not all that long ago. I'm not trying to pull a LMGTFY, but I'm definitely not interested in adding to his page views right now.

I saw a few apartment ads that mentioned income restrictions, so clearly there is low/medium income housing available. A quick google brought me here: http://www.seattlehousing.org/housing/ You can fill out a form there to indicate your interest, but there's a waiting list for housing. I have no knowledge about Seattle's wait list for housing, but I know in NYC the lists can be very, very long. It might not work out, but now is probably the time to get on the list.

Why aren't there timestamps on the results pages? Anyone claiming that Boston acceptance?

Something a friend who's in the history department at CUNY pointed out, is that New York academics like to stay in the city/state and are willing to make sacrifices job-wise to do so. Anec-data, to be sure, but all the 2013 placements were either foreign or in New York State (although only one was in the city).

My undergrad GPA was 3.27, although my major GPA was 3.9 or so. I also have a Masters degree in education with a 3.95 GPA. I've been admitted to UW Seattle with funding and I'm still waiting to hear from a few more schools.

I used TT just because that's the distinction most programs use For me, I did this to answer the question of "Do I need to go to a top 20 school to get a job?". For me, the answer is no. I wanted to share the results I found mostly because it seems like people focus on the rating more than the placement record of a school, even though the placement record tells you more information. I would love to look at the placement records for various specialties, but I think the sample sizes would get too small to return statistically significant results. I'm not a professional statistician, but my fiance does computational neuroscience and used the data set for one of his assignments. But really, low correlation values just mean that relatively little of the variance in placement rates is due to the ranking of the school, and is associated with whole host of other factors (some of which you identified), so if you're interested in a program with a good placement record, PGR is not the best way to evaluate that.

Fair point. Although using 2006 or 2004 rankings with placement data from 2008 to 2013 is still give me low Rsquared values (.17 and .18) for a linear correlation.