ships

Thanks for a very quick response, everyone! alopachuca: I stumbled upon Prof. Grush's video some time ago and found it helpful. I do in fact worry that there might be moral reasons for me not to elaborate on my background. For one, I can't predict how individual members on admission committees will take such information, since I am an odd case. If it turned out that the advantage I stand to gain from providing a piece of information significantly outweighs the advantage I actually deserve, then I think I would be inclined to say that I have a duty to withhold that information! Gnothi & Matt: I appreciate your encouragement. I agree that such information would come out much better in a letter. I intentionally didn't tell my letter writers about my living situation--though I know that at least one of them knows, because he apparently overheard grad students talking about it! But he doesn't know that I know that he knows, so I don't think he wrote about it in his letters. By the way, I really wish I had applied to UNC--my writing sample is about epistemic normativity.

This is my first post--I've been reading through the forums for the past month or so, but finally decided to come out. Hi everyone! My question is about an optional section I've found while filling out my graduate applications. I've noticed that some schools--Michigan and, if I remember correctly, Berkeley--invite applicants to mention any financial hardships they have overcome throughout their education. And most other schools ask questions like "please tell us any additional information that you feel may be relevant to our consideration of your application." Now, I have encountered some financial hardship: I come from a low-income family in an East Asian country (my dad farms squashes for a wage back home), and I managed to miraculously land in a PGR mid-ranked (American) university by attending a selective high school in my home country. My university waives my tuition, but I'm responsible for my own living costs; my external fellowship ran out after my first two years, so I have been homeless and sleeping at various places on campus since the start of my junior year. I am wondering whether I should, morally and pragmatically, describe my situation in sending out my applications. My homelessness hasn't really affected my GPA negatively, and I think my application is otherwise solid: I've been preparing for graduate work in philosophy by finishing my major early and taking graduate courses since my sophomore year (I will be taking my thirteenth next semester), so I expect to get in somewhere, given the wide range of schools that I am applying to. I suppose my question is twofold. Will including such information be gratuitous--will it be seen as an attempt to garner an advantage over other applicants? More interestingly, will it in fact confer a (perhaps unfair) advantage to my application? I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.