overoverover

Seems plausible: at least in the states, the economy has improved even in the two years since I first applied. With gainful employment more abundant, grad school becomes less attractive to some. Also, I was thinking recently that TGC seemed less active than in 2012-2013, but that's just going by some fuzzy memories.

I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.

I doubt they care about funding per se. Brandeis doesn't guarantee full funding (I think) but is well respected, e.g. However in general I think the New School is best avoided: I've heard nothing but negative first-hand accounts, and their funding/tuition situation is flat out immoral. To get a sense of how the program is viewed, I say look to the placement record.

At one point MAs were seen as a "failing degree" in philosphy ("you aren't progressing in the problem adequately, so grab an MA on the way out"). That's no longer the case. Multiple professors at multiple institutions have told me that they see good MAs or grad work elsewhere as evidence that one can succeed at the graduate level and finish the PhD in a timely fashion.

Welcome, comrade.

Yeah, and with a year of serious work (including time away from the paper at various stages) a good but unfocused paper can become a great one.

Probably don't write about Hegel if you say in your statement you're really into using Bayesian models of language understanding or something like that, but ad coms certainly don't require that the sample is in your area of interest—just make it your best work to date.

I'm pretty much in agreement with Infinite Zest and isostheneia, but I'll offer my own experience as well: My undergrad GPA was about the same as M.A.E's, and I got into one PhD program and was waitlisted at several others two years ago, so it is possible to go to a PhD with those grades. But I think MAs are incredibly good for some people, myself (sort of) included. So I'd highly recommend applying to MA programs. In addition: it's becoming more and more common for really good applicants to go to MA programs before entering the PhD. Everybody in BU's first-year cohort this year has an MA. And honestly, now that I'm in my second year of a PhD program and also reapplying to grad schools (so I basically am doing an MA at BU, but with funding and teaching), I can see why. I've been doing nothing but philosophy for two years; I know the landscape of the profession a lot better; my interests have narrowed and clarified; I've had time to go to conferences and a summer school; I've made connections at schools to which I'm applying. In a nutshell, I'm a better philosopher and a better applicant. I've received more guidance about admissions from profs at BU and elsewhere in the last six months (when I decided to transfer) than I did in four years in undergrad. That's so important when applying to schools, as I'm sure you all know. Long story short: I'd suggest MA programs, but maybe apply to a few PhDs where you know you'd be happy. Don't settle for a bad fit program just because you really want to go straight to the PhD.

I just saw you PMed me. I'll reply there.

I think this is spot on. You might also be a person who just won't be happy in a given environment (whether that be a city or a small town—different strokes and all). That might seem rather trivial when compared to faculty and such, but if you aren't going to be functioning well in that environment then none of that stuff really matters.

They won't use this as an excuse to reject you. What you're saying to them by letting School X know is that you have an offer but you are still interested in possibly attending X, but that due to different timetables this could be difficult if you don't know your status by around March. They won't hold that against you. Of course, some schools say "Congrats on Otago, but we can't tell you anything right now." But some school might have you on the fence between admission and the waitlist, and knowing you have an offer could tip the scales in your favor.

I guess I'm saying I wouldn't mind if Berkeley let me in...

I mean early as in sometime in late January as opposed to in March or something.

I'm just really hoping for an early acceptance. I only need to get into one school, and I'd like that to be the first school I hear from.

Don't worry too much--but do send an email to Northwestern and tell them that it will be submitted soon. They haven't looked at your app at all, as it's still January 1 and all. Try to get the professor to submit soon!

I think it makes sense to name some relevant profs you've formed relationships with in some way. E.g. I mentioned the name of a prof from a course I audited, since the course was at another institution and I had actually done everything for the course, including writing a term paper that became my sample. So I said something like "I audited course X with Prof Y at Z University, and the term paper for that course became the basis of my writing sample."

Or delusions of optimism.

Or delusions of optimism.

Happy New Year, everybody! For some reason it being January makes me think we'll hear from schools any day now. Temporal phenomenology FTW?

Currently trying to finish a draft of my MA thesis. But also reading a bunch of books (mostly not philosophy TBH) and watching Netflix. Oh and posting on this forum all the time and preparing to refresh the results page every few minutes.

There's the 2015 Applicants Assemble thread that can easily serve as an anything-goes thread!

I typically use an author-date style, e.g. (Lewis 1985), but with the citations in the footnotes. For anyone who uses LaTeX, I use the authordate1-4 package with authordate1 as the bibliography style. Or, when I'm feeling lazy, I use the plain bib style in LaTeX, so just bracketed numbers for in-text citations and references.

Thanks! Though odds are we aren't really in competition, given our different interests. Reixis and I, on the other hand, not only applied to similar schools but also have some overlapping interests!

I glanced at the first few pages and plan to read this tonight, but so far it looks interesting and your English is quite good!

I'm up for it. My sample is on my site (http://www.jaredhenderson.org/papers/).