jjb919

Hey isostheneia, thanks for the reply! I'm mostly looking for impressions about the atmosphere there, the kinds of relationships between advisers and students, how closely do they work with their advisees (I know everyone is different and has a different style, but are most professors more hands on or off?), how available the professors are, opportunities to work at the Kennedy Institute (how competitive are the spots for their graduate fellows?), camaraderie among the cohorts, if the students are helpful or really competitive with each other, the climate for women, experience with teaching and teaching mentorship (their website says there is no official teaching requirement, and I wouldn't want to end up finishing the degree with little to no teaching experience), anything like that. Their website is on the minimal side in terms of information about their program and the experience there.

Mine is still in the research and vague formulation stage, but it is a significantly reworked and streamlined version of my MA thesis. I am going to attempt to argue for the idea that in instances of extreme violence such as torture, the harms brought against the body and the harms brought against the victim's agency or dignity are not distinct kinds of harm. Relying on the work of feminist philosophers and those working on embodied cognition, I will try to argue that the body is itself a moral object or boundary.

Sorry if this is jacking the thread, but does anyone have any inside information on the program at Georgetown? One of my advisers turned me on to it and I'm growing more interested in their program, and would appreciate any information I could get.

don't email philosophy departments; they don't keep track of that stuff. It is the Graduate Admissions Office's job to handle that.

I think the standard to hold on to GRE scores is 1 year. After that they discard them. And depending on how organized the admissions office is, they may not even be able to find your scores from a year ago and you'll have to resend them anyway. Sucks.

I agree with Gnothi_Seauton. 156Q is a respectable score (average student at U Chicago scores a 158 I believe), and 169V is stellar. I think in taking it again you potentially run the risk of getting a lower verbal score (much more room to go down than up). I'd say relax and don't worry about it. Focus on your writing sample.

I'm doing the same thing. And while my writing sample is currently slightly over the stated limit of some schools I am applying to, I don't think it is egregiously so. Cutting down your thesis is a really good exercise; it helps train a good editorial eye that will be very useful in identifying the truly insightful parts of your work and separating the wheat from the chaff. So far I have cut my MA thesis in half and have come to realize (with the help of my advisers and other readers) that much of it was expository and actually hid my own voice and contributions. I'm currently just over 22 pages and am waiting to hear back from peer reviewers at a professional journal. If I get any comments I will hopefully be able to make it stronger and maybe even more streamlined (i.e. shorter) for when I apply next year. As much as I chafed at the the idea of not applying this year, delaying another year does have its benefits and I will have plenty of time to work on my writing sample as well as a couple of other papers in the works. I don't know the details of your writing sample, but generally speaking I think it's true that if we take a real objective look at our work and are willing to part with certain things that may not directly serve the thesis of the paper--even if we really like their flourish, nuance, or driving point--we come out with a much stronger paper.

As was said several times in another thread regarding GREs, there is no real evidence to support that departments use cutoffs. Will a poor score make the adcom look a little harder at your application to try to account for the score? Sure, probably. But I highly doubt they will throw away your application just because your GRE scores did not meet some threshold. You can also mention in your personal statement (as well as have your letter writers mention) why you didn't do that well: English isn't your first language. I'm also not sure--someone can correct me here--if all departments require GRE scores from international applicants, or if TOEFL scores are all that are needed. Apply to both, as much as your budget allows. I think there is absolutely no need to avoid applying to PhD programs simply because you feel your country's academic evaluation system is not equal to the US, but it is a good idea to apply to some (funded!) MA programs as well as a safety net of sorts.

Fordham is really strong in ancient and medieval philosophy, has a good number of Notre Dame trained philosophers, and compared to most of the other schools on your list would be more of a "safety school." Also, Cornell is really strong in ancient philosophy from what I know. As for meta-ethics and philosophy of action, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is one of the strongest. UC Riverside and USC come to mind as well. Georgetown is known more for its strength in applied ethics, but has some strength in meta-ethics as well I suppose.

For what it's worth, from having worked in a graduate admissions office before, we would send applications over to departments as soon as they were complete (all letters of recommendation, transcripts, and GRE scores received). Whether or not other schools do it like this, or if the departments actually read them when they arrived, or waited for the rest of the applications to arrive, I don't know. It's also important to note that the admissions office I worked for operated on a rolling admissions basis; there was not final deadline to apply. So that may have an effect on how and when they would send applications to the departments.

Most of my anecdotal evidence comes from a professor coworker of my fiancee's who taught at U. Oregon for a bit and whose wife had a really hard time finding work. What he said was that while the university is one of the largest employers in Eugene (one of the other largest employers being Walmart), jobs there are really hard to come by, don't pay as well as they should (even when accounting for the lower cost of living in Eugene), and if she does get a job my fiancee may have to settle for a position lower than what she has been working hard for many years to achieve at her current institution. Needless to say, this makes her very resistant to move across the country away from her family for a very little and risky opportunity. Unless I am able to secure some confidence that she would be able to attain an administrative job at the university close to her current level and with decent pay, then it is extremely unlikely that I would be able to convince her to move out there. And this is a fair deal I think.

That's a great list. I've heard great things about Penn State, Villanova, Emory, and Vanderbilt, but for a number of reasons I didn't think they were a good fit for me. I would absolutely love to go to Oregon, and work with Mark Johnson among others, but even if I get in I don't think I'll be able to convince my wife to leave her job for the dearth of job opportunities in Eugene. It's a very economically depressed city from what I can tell through the research I've done and the anecdotal evidence I've collected from people who've lived there.

That's a fair assessment, I think. What schools are you looking to apply to?

Yeah, I pretty much agree with this.

what was the topic of your non-traditional writing sample? Do you think it was a big factor in your being shut out?

This is pretty compelling evidence, but it is also somewhat circumstantial. There is definitely a correlation between GRE scores in the 95th percentile and offers of admission, but this does not mean that an applicant's GRE scores (if below that threshold) are the reason for rejection, or, what a cutoff really implies, that his or her application was not reviewed at all.

Maybe. Or maybe premise (1) is a myth. GRE scores are nice, quantitative packets that assist in ordering applicants along a spectrum of (highly contestable) reasoning skills prized by philosophy departments. What better use for such a metric than to use it to narrow down a dauntingly large applicant pool so adcoms can focus on the really promising ones. It's easy to see how nervous applicants can fall into this mindset when perhaps the real value of GRE scores to adcoms (and I'm not claiming I know what this is) is something entirely different. That being said, it is possible to think that (1) is true and (2) is false. The shitstorm caused by swaths of bitter applicants who were victims of a GRE cutoff would be enough to deter top departments from admitting they have a cutoff. It seems any anecdotal or apocryphal evidence I have heard for GRE cutoffs have been stories of professors from one department claiming that a different department uses them. Why would any department willingly admit that it uses cutoffs? It doesn't seem like there is much benefit to admitting it, if they do. Personally, I lean toward the first possibility. Having worked in graduate admissions (albeit not at a top department!), I can say that our department did not use cutoffs. At most they were used as a means of gauging consistency among an application (a very strong application but weak GRE scores could mean that a promising student doesn't test well, or it could mean that a promising student's application was doctored to some degree. Something worth looking into closer). I think to some extent we applicants want to believe that there is a GRE cutoff; it makes it easier to pinpoint the weakness in one's application: "I was rejected because my GRE scores weren't high enough for the adcom to take a close look at my application. If I can just get those scores up, I'll be sure to get a fair shake." It adds a much-desired element of certainty in a frustratingly uncertain process (if my scores pass the cutoff I still may not get in, but if they do not make the cutoff then I am certain to not get in). But I simply haven't seen strong enough evidence to think that cutoffs are actually used at any department let alone top ones, and I think there is more than enough evidence for the failings of the GRE (as HegelHatingHegelian aptly points out) to make it unwise for adcoms to use cutoffs. Too many good applicants would fall through the cracks, and I think adcoms know this.

I agree with dgswaim. From the anecdotal evidence and claims from professors on adcoms, the general message is that top programs don't use GRE cutoffs; a poor score may make them look a bit harder at your other application materials to try to come to terms with the discrepancy, but they won't drop your application altogether just because of the scores. I just took the GRE last weekend and got a 165V and 155Q. I would have liked to do a bit better on the quantitative section, but I think I did well enough that I won't be taking it again.

My writing sample is on a pretty contemporary topic in ethics, although granted it is not a topic that many analytic philosophers I know of have been interested in. It's not on a historical figure, and I draw on both continental and analytic thinkers. Although all things considered I would tend to put it more in the continental camp, I like to think it has a foot in both.

Haha, that's a relief, good thing I was wrong about that one!

For what it's worth, Chicago, ranked 20th in the country by Leiter, states on its website that the average GRE scores for its philosophy grad students are 167V/169Q

That sounds like a very interesting paper. Have at it!

10 schools, listed in my signature.

Given your pedigree, impressive accomplishments, and heavy-hitting support, it may not be as big of a risk for you. For most of the rest of us, however, that would be a bold move and a big risk; the probability of being shut out entirely is much greater.

Thanks for this. As much as I hate to admit it this might be the realistic option. My ideal career would be to be a professor, but I know how slim those chances are, and I also know of the many opportunities PhDs have off the academic track. I was planning on giving my best shot for a few years on the market when I'm ABD and recently minted, but I have no stomach for lingering in temporary positions year to year, potentially constantly uprooting my family in the vain hopes of landing that golden ticket. If I don't secure a TT job within a few years on the market, I plan on going back to the non-profit work I'm doing now, for which a PhD will still come in handy. We do plan on having kids, within the next 4-5 years. Ideally she would love to be a stay-at-home mom for a few years at least, but also knows that even if I don't go for my PhD and stay in the work force we may not be able to swing a single income. While she does work in higher education, and so theoretically could land a job at the university I attend, or one nearby, the economic situation in Eugene is so bad, jobs at the university so hard to come by and paying pretty little, that a move to Oregon could be a killer for her career, and if she can't find a job at the university then there aren't many other options (Walmart is one of the largest employers in the city). While she will probably have better chances in a city like Chicago, DC, Toronto, or Chapel Hill, it's still a big risk and if she isn't able to find decent employment quick, my stipend is not going to be enough for both of us to live off of. Given these realities, it may make sense to just apply locally, go wherever I can get in, and not worry too much about placement success or how perfectly the department fits my research interests. In which case waiting a year may not really make any difference and I should just apply this season. Thank you for the suggestion, but neither of us want the added stress of a long-distance relationship. I've done it once when I started my MA with a previous girlfriend, and it wasn't something I want to repeat.