DanJackson

Yes - just found out I was nominated by my university for Trudeau also. Both a one in a million chance, but feel like it's a great thing to have been nominated.

On the topic of prestige, and reputation of the program and such.... When I was applying I would have said that these were so important, 2nd only to fit. But now that I'm actually doing my PhD I've changed my mind a bit. After getting offers from top programs and some not-so-top programs and being in a position to choose, I realized that there was also the issue of support, funding, freedom, the 'feel' of the department, and so on... and so I turned down a few top programs and decidd on a less prestigious place because they offered me full funding, guaranteed for the program along with the freedom to do anything I wanted and no work commitment at all. What I've realized is this allows me to do the things that really matter for the job hunting later: publish, go to conferences, network, collaborate, be involved in the discipline. Instead of being locked up as one of a many students competing against each other to get a meeting with a supervisor, I get all of my committees attention whenever I want, I don't have to worry about funding so I can research and write. I can teach if and when I want. This isn't the way for everyone, but I would advise to remember that you're making decisions about your life, not the ideal life of an imaginary candidate or researcher or professor. So choose what is right for you. The university system is collapsing into a skills-based factory for churning out employable undergraduates, tenure and faculty control are being taken away, research money is drying up. Do what you love not what you think will give you the best career because the job market, the carerr expectations change, but you'll always have what you love.

I had no interviews and several great admission offers with full funding. Not all schools interview, none of mine were schools that interview. The ones that do, do.... ...do be do be do.

I actually do this all the time, use TOR to look at scholars web pages and Academia.edu... The stats on my own are SO revealing that I started covering my own tracks!

Could be fake - those definitely happen here. Could also be the one that they knew they wanted - that happens also - a lot of departments make an offer to someone that is a bright shining star so they can try to outcompete other schools. Or it could be a typo for an MA, or who knows. Whatever it is, it doesn't impact anyone else's chances, so don't worry.

If they ask you "do you plan to visit and meet some other people in the program?" then your answer should be "yes, I do!" They're not asking because they think it's a bad idea, they're asking because they think you should do that. Personally I would only visit after you get offers because that's when you're actually deciding, so I would say - "once the decisions are made, I will be visiting all of the schools to talk with students, have a look at camputs and such to help me make my decision."

If you have established relationship/rapport with your POI, there isn't any harm in reaching out to ask them about your application IF have a REASON. But they'll make an offer or they won't - they know you applied. The real thing is once you have a few offers, how long you can get them to wait to hear your decision, you may at that point need to reach out to some schools and tell them that you need an update because you have offers you're considering. Truth is, being offered a place in a PhD program is being offered a research job. You aren't a powerless subject of their whims, you're choosing where you want to work as much as they are choosing you - and at the end of the day if your POI is annoyed by you reaching out to them, how great do you think it will be to actually work with them? Don't take the process too lightly, how they behave during the process tells you A LOT about how they will be once you are actually there working with them. Don't be afraid to turn down an offer if it's not a good fit, if they're jerks - don't approach this with a culture of scarcity, you might be talking about 8 years of your life with these people, make sure they're awesome, supportive, understanding, and a good fit with your style!

Side note, but I find this sort of thing really annoying: "As part of the admissions process, we are conducting brief, informal Skype interviews..." So, they're part of the admissions process - but they're informal? What does that even mean?

Amherst is a great prorgram with wonderful people. But the funding is a disaster - it's like CUNY Grad Center used to be before the new funding program there. My offer from Amherst was $18,000 with a tuition waiver. This is pretty standard there despite what they say online. Sounds ok at first, but the problems with it are: Tuition waiver ONLY applies when you are working as a TA. You stop working? You owe them the full yearly tuition (~$29,000). Funding is ONLY gauranteed for your first year, after that, they can do whatever they want. Funding is a TAship, so it requires that you start working 20 hours/week in your first year. Most students I spoke to there said that after 2 years there aren't really any TAships or funding. Average time to finish there is 8 years, LOTS of requirements to complete before you can start research and writing. If it weren't for the funding I would have accepted their offer. They recognize the issues which is why they write that they don't fund most students, but it's kind of deceptive when you get an offer from them because it sounds like they're going to fund you until you really look at the details - details they don't talk about on the web site. None of this is their fault, it's the public university system they're stuck with. Feel free to message me with questions about it too.

So many great suggestions - thank you all, I ran out of 'reputation points' to disperse, but I'll be back...

Thank you again all! I have seen Upstream Color, great film Monadology - I liked Primer quite a bit as well. Thanks for The Stalker, dgswaim, adding that to my list. Establishment, thank you for the many films you mention, all of which I'll look at. I'm a film watcher so I've definitely seen many of what you describe as philosophical films. On that note - since there seem to be a handful of films that try to serve as "philosophy films," and few that depict anything close to "philosophy in practice" - how about lectures? I've really enjoyed listening to Avitall Ronell, Agamben, Diane Davis, Butler, Badiou, and others in the lecture/course videos that European Graduate School posts on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/user/egsvideo/videos). It's like a Derrida party over there. In order to get broader representation of ideas, I would be interested to know: What are your favorite online lectures or videos in this style?

Thanks! I actually loved his take on A Scanner Darkly, so I should look at more of them. Hadn't heard of Days of Heaven, thank you for that too.

Thanks for those, added to the list! Watching "Being in the World" now - only a few minutes in so far, but not bad so far.

Hi Philosophers, Do you have any favorite films on philosphy/philosphers? Documentaries? Would love to know. I do mean those explicitly addressing philosophy, but of course those you find useful for thinking around problems would also be intersting to hear about. Thanks!

CVs are standardized in the US, if you're in the US just follow these rules: http://theprofessorisin.com/2012/01/12/dr-karens-rules-of-the-academic-cv

Another resource to consider when writing an SOP is current students in the department you're applying to. I had forgotten about this until now, but while applying I was also having long email conversations with students currently attending the programs I was interested in. Many of them shared their SOPs from their applications with me which gave me a sense of what kind of SOP is successful in that department. You might wonder, how did you ask for that? I just let them know the different ways that I was thinking about approaching my SOP and asked for advice, many replied by offering to share their own.

First, it's important to note that an SOP is not a journal article. And it can be written as a personal statement or a research proposal depending on the program you're applying to, the supervisor you want, and the kind of applicant you are. But for a 2 page research proposal, 5 pages of citations is actually quite standard, there are many funding competitions that have a 2 page limit on the proposal and a 5 page limit on the references. I do get the concern about the text, but I maintain that you are much better off over-citing than under-citing. Dropping in theory without citing is a red flag, and a real pet peeve for many faculty. Someone who uses words like "biopower" or "hegemony" but doesn't use them very specifically with context and citation, and clear understanding of their nuance (and ideally explanation of how you mean them) is percieved as either dropping in theory they don't really understand because they heard the word somewhere, or just lazy, or worse. So if you're talking about theory by naming theory, especially theory associated with people (e.g., Foucault, Gramsci) you need citations. Obviously if you're not doing that, you don't. If you are coming straight out of undergrad, and you went to undergrad straight out of high school, you can probably get away with writing an SOP that is more like a "personal essay" but if you have any life experience, or time out of school and have had time to be thinking about your PhD plans - or if you're like NOWAYNOHOW, and work as a professional academic editor and have published in academic journals - then you might as well have an SOP that reflects that. In other words, one with a seriously well thought out theoretical framework that is explicit and cited, and a good statement on who has worked on your topic before and how you're going to add to that work. You don't have to do that, you can submit whatever you want, but the other applicants you're competing against (those in your class of applicant) will have those elements. They will be submitting SOPs that look like professional research proposals for funding not college application essays. And if you're in doubt, ask a tenured anthropology professor to look at your statement and give you feedback. Or someone who is currently in a program, at least.

My addition to this is to be really careful about mailing things overseas. I applied to schools in several countries and many of my applications were just lost in the mail. I had to send a second application, sometimes overnight with FedEx, it was soooo expensive. But at least I got into the schools, though the one I spent the most money mailing applications to was the school that offered me the most funding, but I had to turn them down because of a bad research fit. It's so complicated. Sigh.

NOWAYNOHOW, did you vote my advice down because you don't agree? I'm certainly interested to hear other opinions.

I really like Duke's SOP samples and used them as models when I was applying - however I wasn't applying to Duke.. I'm glad they offer those, but it must be nerve-wracking to have them because it's obvious that's what they're looking for but you can't do anything too similar.

Just FWIW, all of my SOPs were fully cited. When discussing the work that I was contributing to, the way others have looked at what I proposed to look at, etc., all of that was fully cited. I had 5+ pages of bibliography for my SOPs and none of the programs were bothered by that. This included work by members of the departments at each school I applied to as well. It's one thing to say "Prof. X's work is relvelent to my topic" it's another thing to show them that you've actually read something by the people you're applying to work with.

Congrats to you all too! Any of you also applying for Trudeau?

A few posts back there was an interesting debate about including theory in your statement. My advice is that you must address theory in your statement for a cultural anthro PhD. I posted more about why in this pinned post so that it would be available for others who are looking:

I noticed there was a discussion in this thread about whether to include theory in your statement so I wanted to post about that here: My advice is that you must address theory in your statement for a cultural anthro PhD. Here's why... Anthro Departments all have a theoretical bent. If you want to know what it is, don't ask your POIs, they'll tell you their own ideas about it - ask a few students who have taken all their coursework. They'll say things like "I had no idea that this whole department was going to be so focused on political economy until I got here." They'll be able to tell you that all the most influential profs in the department are looking at affect, at capitalism, at infrastructure, at ontology, at social movements and activism, or whatever the main interest is. That is your clue to the theoretical trend in the department. And these trends have their own sort of gravity, they attract students and professors who approach those topics in similiar ways. There are always outliers, but they really are outliers. You must write about theory in your statement/research proposal because if you don't write about it you're STILL writing about it. Just because you don't explicitly state it doesn't mean it's not there underneath what you're writing. There is no anthro without theory, and if you don't state the theory then they're going to wonder why you're using theory without acknowledging it. So, this is why you want to make sure that your theoretical approach fits the department. This is more important than your topic of research. You might be interested in studying traditional dance in eastern europe. But more important is whether you want to study it from a Marxist perspective or in terms of ritual studies and embodied culture. Or maybe you want to merge the two. If so, the department better have people who are interested in those theoretical perspectives. If not, and they only have people who want to talk about topics in terms of nationalism or identity politics or structuralist theory - then you're not going to be happy there. Once you've figured out the way you want to approach your topic you can match yourself up with departments and POIs where they will be open to that approach and where they have expertise in that area. Trust me, if you don't do this you will be very frustrated with your coursework, your comprehensive examinations, and everything. And in fact, they probably won't admit you because this is the very definition of "fit".

I only did phone conversations with one of my potential supervisors. It was ok, but I really preferred the email conversations, learned so much more. But I would advise everyone to make sure that once you get offers you spend at least 30 minutes -1 hour talking to your potential supervisor - and do it TWICE. You can find out really fast if you'll be able to ask questions, and get great answers, or if they won't even let you get a word in edgewise. Some people can come across great by email and well, not so great in person! Phone usually demonstrates this.