jjb919

I hear ya

Thanks, and congratulations!

Awesome. Yeah, I checked my status quickly and it also still says complete and under review. But there are two more Boulder admits on the results page that don't mention a fellowship nomination, so I'm a little nervous.

Hey, Congrats!!! I didn't expect CU Boulder to send out notifications until late February. Did you receive an email or a call? Or did you just check your application status through the online portal? Oh god now I'm nervous...

For anyone who applied to the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought program, I emailed the administrative assistant to inquire about when they might start notifying applicants, and was told probably by the end of the week. Fingers crossed.

I tried applying out of my MA program a few years ago and one of the schools I applied to was BC. They did send their notices by snail mail. I guess they're still doing that haha.

Me too!

This makes me so nervous...

Congrats!!

Man, I feel like a kid standing out in the cold winter wind looking through the glass of a department store. I've heard nothing yet, but have one assumed rejection. It's early yet, and I didn't apply to many schools, but I feel like I'm being left behind in this storm of emotions haha.

I see, congrats!

Are these phone calls acceptance or interview request phone calls?

I've heard nothing so far, although Fordham is the only one I applied to that seems to have started sending out notices. Maybe that's bad news for me, maybe not. Nothing to do but wait and see until I hear something definitive...

end of the road for me; if I get shut out, I'm moving on to some other career. Either stick with non-profit administration (at least for the next 10 years so I can cash in on the student loan forgiveness program...assuming it's still around in 10 years), or something else, not quite sure. I've been taking a data science specialization through Coursera so I can do some higher level analysis for my current job, but maybe I can use that to get into a different career track. At this point though I don't think I really enjoy doing data analysis enough to do it full time, especially if the data I'm working with doesn't interest me.

I know NSSR has a Philosophy MA with a concentration in psychoanalysis, but I'm not sure if that's close enough to your interests. You can check out the program here: http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/philosophy-degree-programs/

Leiter's blog linked to a very interesting book review on IHE. The book is coming out this month and is about practices of PhD admissions committees at some elite universities: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/01/06/new-book-reveals-how-elite-phd-admissions-committees-review-candidates Granted there are some important caveats that must be taken into account that I think preclude any kind of conclusions about philosophy admissions committee behavior in general: 1. Posselt only conducted interviews at three research universities; a pretty small sample and the behavior admitted to in interviews may not be representative of adcom behavior at non-top departments, and may not even be representative of behavior outside of these three departments. 1a. We don't know which universities because Posselt had to offer complete anonymity in order to get the interviews. 2. Philosophy was one of six departments interviewed, so any behavior admitted to may not be typical of philosophy adcoms. (Leiter himself does not seem to give much credence to the GRE obsession, but he may not be in the best position to assess this.) This being said, I was a bit (although not overly) surprised to see that behavior that I have in past posts chalked up to inordinate worries of very anxious and stressed out applicants actually goes on and seems to be commonplace: conservative and political committee appointments; GRE cutoffs; affirmative action that disfavors certain international applicants; prestige biases in favor of elite undergraduate schools and against some Christian institutions; not offering admission to highly qualified and minority applicants for fear that the offer would be turned down in favor of other (potentially more) prestigious schools to protect the yield; the list goes on. Thoughts? Certainly makes me have a brief second thought about my GRE scores, haha.

I have a full time job, so I am just focusing on work (although the field my organization is in is higher education so I can't get too far away). I'm reading some literature, playing music, spending time with my wife, catching up on old and new shows. I've had my applications done and ready for a long time so although I have been submitting them piecemeal up to last week, I haven't worked on them or changed anything since August or so. I've just been keeping my mind off it as best as possible.

I have also heard from other grad students that the funding is pretty poor. Coming from someone who graduated with a Master's from an institution with poor funding, I strongly caution against it. In my opinion it's not worth it. That money is better spent applying to programs with better funding.

I just submitted my last application! Now the waiting game begins...

Each school is different; from the schools I was looking at, about half required official transcripts and half allowed unofficial transcripts (and if you are accepted you must submit official transcripts in order to enroll). Also, not many but a few schools require you to send two copies of transcripts (usually, one is to be send to the graduate admissions office and the other is to be sent directly to the philosophy department). I've found it helpful to create a spreadsheet of all the admissions requirements and deadlines of the schools I'm applying to.

All of my advisers during my MA program told me to apply to at least 8-10 schools, for the simple reasoning that the application process can't be predicted and the more schools you apply to the greater the chances that you'll be accepted somewhere. I originally planned to apply to nine schools. But given my individual circumstances that I've laid out in previous posts, I know that even if I am accepted into multiple programs, it is more likely that I will not enroll in a PhD program than I will (how much more likely I can't quite say). I could no longer stomach the idea of paying over $1,000 on a shoestring budget to maybe get accepted to one or 2 schools and maybe not even go. So I looked back at my list and decided to cut the schools that I felt I probably wouldn't go to, even if they re the only school I am accepted to. My list went from nine to four. I'm much more comfortable paying around $450 than over $1,000, even if that means my chances of getting in to one of the four schools I apply to is smaller. From a purely probabilistic standpoint, I have shot myself in the foot. But from a wider standpoint (given my family, financial situation, and potential career options), I think I'm making the smarter choice to limit my applications.

I agree with what sidebysondheim says above. I'd like to add one more thing. I remember reading on a philosophy blog (I think it was a post on Leiter's blog but I'm not positive and can't find it at the moment) a professor stating that he doesn't pay much attention to the analytical writing section much--unless there's a big divergence between the AW score and the applicant's writing sample. In other words, if the writing sample is excellent, and the AW score on the GRE is really poor, he may take a closer look; it could be that the applicant is not great at writing strong analytical essays in a short amount of time, but it also could be an indication that the writing sample isn't the applicant's own work. Again, take this with a grain of salt as I can't find the source.

As distasteful as it may be, I have to agree with the advice given here. Of course adcoms want letters from people who know you well and can speak to your strengths as a philosopher. If the unknown adjunct professor knows you better and can write a stronger, more personal letter, then you may want to consider including that one. An excellent and personal reference letter can trump a luke-warm letter from a big name. But assuming that all the letters are equal in strength, which you seem to suggest in your post, then a strong letter from a well-known philosopher is going to trump a strong letter from an unknown adjunct professor. Unfortunate but true. Adcoms are going to stick more weight on to a reference from someone they know and whose reputation is known. It gives more substance and context to the letter. Further, given that one of the three very well-known philosophers specializes in continental philosophy, I think you have enough of your bases covered to justify dropping the letter from the unknown adjunct. I've seen online application systems not allow you to register a fourth reference if three have already been registered. Or, in the case where they accept 4 references, but only read three, it would be unfortunate (again, assuming all four letters are equally strong) if they read two letters from well-known philosophers and one from an unknown adjunct, where that third from a well-known philosopher would have helped your application a bit more.

1. Echoing what philstudent1991 said, since you are an international student it is more important to rock the TOEFL exam. Your GRE exams are low, but not horribly low, and there are extenuating circumstances since English is not your first language. Personally, I wouldn't bother taking them again; I would just have a letter writer mention your nervousness about taking tests to help explain. Focus your attention on doing really well on the TOEFL and polishing your writing sample as much as possible. 2. Being published doesn't matter (or at least it does not hurt not to be published). I had similar worries coming out of my MA program, but every professor I spoke to said not to worry over publications as an MA student. It used to be a few decades ago that no one was published coming out of their PhD and it was actively discouraged (the idea was to take all the time possible in graduate school letting your ideas marinate and not force a premature publication). Now it's common for PhD students to have 1-2 publications under their belt as they hit the job market, but you still see people getting jobs with no publications at all after finishing their PhD (granted, usually those are students from elite institutions). But even with things as they are now, it would be insane and completely unreasonable to expect an MA student to have published in order to get into a good PhD program. 3. I don't know of any strong PhD program that doesn't require GRE scores, but again, how seriously they take them is up to debate and I think prospective students have a tendency to over-inflate their importance. Again, don't worry so much about them and focus on the more important aspects of your application (writing sample, reference letters, major GPA...)

Philosophy students generally do very well on the GREs (most philosophy majors score in the 160-164 range for verbal, 50-154 range for quantitative, and 4.5-5.0 in analytical writing; see here). What counts as a good score will vary depending on what kinds of schools you're looking to get into. The University of Chicago (currently ranked 21st in the US) states on their website that the average GRE scores for their admitted students was 167 V / 158 Q / 5.5 AW. Schools ranked higher may have higher average scores among their admitted students, I'm not sure. Personally, I don't think the GREs are worth stressing over too much or spending too much time on preparing for. It's unclear how departments use them, but according to the testaments of professors on philosophy blogs out there they are not used as a benchmark to cut anyone with scores below them without looking at the rest of their application (although if they did do this I don't see why they would admit it). As long as you're hitting the mid 160's for verbal and 150's for quantitative, I wouldn't lose sleep over it and would focus on the rest of your application. What I think is generally accepted as true is that your writing sample is more important than any other single aspect of your application, so spend the most time on that.