overoverover

Yep, that's what I'm thinking.

Congrats! Hoping for some good news soon.

I'll openly admit to getting a lot of help with my writing sample. I sent lots of drafts to lots of people. If I were publishing it, I'd be morally obligated to probably list 8 people (minimum) in the acknowledgments section. But I don't think that makes my sample any less a measure of my philosophical acumen (and mine alone). I got a lot of help because I'm still a young philosopher, and at this stage it'd be absurd to not get as much feedback as possible from anyone whose opinion I trust and respect. After all, we are students currently, and part of that process is learning to do philosophy professionally.

Acceptances often get spread out. Don't get discouraged!

I have no reason to think this, but in addition to thinking I'll hear from Berkeley this week, I can't help but be very optimistic about what I'll hear. This comment will probably come back to haunt me, of course, but whatever. If anybody can understand the weird mix of anxiety and optimism I'm experiencing right now, it's you folks!

Well, isostheneia wins the overoverover award for Best Post. Don't worry, folks, there are others (Best Supporting Post, for instance).

I don't actually get the implicature that the letters weren't enthusiastic. Odds are the person with whom riverstyx corresponded was mainly conveying information about the incomplete app (as ianfaircloud noted), and then added on the part about letters needing to be really good too just because that's the standard line. I mean, Northwestern read hundreds of applications (300 seems not implausible), all (or just about all) with 3 letters of recommendation. That means they read 900 letters! I doubt the correspondent remembered riverstyx's letters in detail.

I posted on Jan 1 that I felt like we'd hear any day now because it was 2015. I take it back, this month has been excruciatingly long. But tomorrow is February 1, so we'll all hear any day now!

The only complication I could see arising is that some universities base your funding on what external fellowships or scholarships you have and if you have more than a bachelors degree. Not saying this will sink your chances at it all working out, but it may make things complicated depending on particular policies (as such, I'd recommend talking to people at the various universities about your situation, as it really will vary).

Cheers to a night of drinking, I'd say!

Someone got into Northwestern and said "Woohoo", so I know it has to be one of you folks!

Just like you should never go grocery shopping on an empty stomach, I suppose you should never form preferences about graduate schools during a blizzard!

I should also add that I'm getting incredibly anxious, even though the earliest I'll hear from any school is next week (if UC Berkeley remains consistent). I'd really, really like to get in to UC Berkeley (after this blizzard, California seems so warm and inviting).

I'm currently buried in snow from a blizzard. BU had two days off for the city to clear the streets and such. As such, I've been going stir-crazy (I have a really hard time working from home). However, I did read some good stuff in between refreshing the forum page and the results page.

Sorry to hear that, NF. It's only the start of the acceptance season!

Northwestern acceptance up.

Chalmers sees himself as vindicating something in the spirit to the Aufbau, but I don't think he'd be bothered by charges of poor interpretation. Same with Amie Thomasson—she has a new book I just picked up, Ontology Made Easy, where she argues for a deflated view of ontological disputes and puts forward an interpretation of Carnap, but if you told her that wasn't really what Carnap was saying, she'd probably just say "Fine, but my view is independently interesting." And she'd be right!

Though I'm a PhD transfer student, I guess I'd fall under the Masters category.

I'd read the Aufbau, perhaps supplemented by Alan Richardson's book (the only monograph on Carnap I know of, but I've heard good things). The Cambridge Companion to Carnap is nice too.

That's my exact struggle. Every day around 10am our department administrator forwards emails about talks, conferences, etc. That 15 minutes of constant buzzing almost gave me a heart attack.

Florida State accepted someone!

I think the attempt to diagnose the behavior as a result of anxiety or insecurity is rather ill-founded, or at least pretty uncharitable. I'm a philosphy PhD student, but I live with two English PhD students. We talk a lot about the ways our seminars differ. I think that, at least in part, it's just conventional differences. Philosophers see themsleves as by and large interested in argumentation--so we want to get at the arguments themselves, looking at premises, checking inferences. Lit people seem to be more interested in interpretation (makes sense). I don't think they care as much about the arguments themselves (for better or worse). To the non-philosopher, then, it might seem like philosophers are overly aggressive, but I genuinely think we aren't trying to attack someone personally when we attack arguments. You should feel free to press them on issues or points on which you disagree. They won't take it personally (or shouldn't at least). And don't worry about seeming stupid: we all do sometimes, and I'd rather be in a seminar with someone who was interesting but wrong than someone who is boring.

Well, WUSTL sent out at least one rejection.

Congrats!

Fellow transfer student here!