sidevans

Some of you may remember me from last year - Ian Faircloud and I ran the Philosophy Admissions blog in order to create predictions and keep track of information regarding the release of admissions information. Many people seemed to find the blog a helpful resource while trying to navigate the admissions process. But since I'm now in a PhD program, I don't have the kind of time that I did last year to maintain the blog and keep up with the daily updates in February and March. It would be unfortunate, though, for that to mean that this year's applicants don't have access to the kinds of resources that such a blog provides. What Ian and I are looking for, then, is someone involved in the admissions process this year who would be willing to take over operating the blog - at least at the day-to-day level. (Ian and I are both happy to continue to provide whatever advice and support time allows us.) The job primarily involved doing the amount of checking of results and releases that I was going to be doing anyway, but with the added benefit of helping out some fellow philosophers. So it wasn't much extra cost (though there was some work involved at points, such as with creating predictions for the various schools), and gave me a welcome outlet for my obsessiveness with respect to philosophy admissions. If anyone is interested in having this kind of editorial role on the blog, please let me know by replying or messaging me. Best of luck to everyone applying this year!

I don't know about any of these aspects of the program, but I've been told that the department is hoping to release decisions this week, although it may not be until next week.

Oof, good point. I suppose that only strengthens the possibility that more acceptances are coming. Well, I don't want to compromise anonymity too much, but I've been accepted to a few programs throughout the PGR top 50, so I'm pleased with the way it's turned out for me. Nothing decided yet, as I'll be making some visits, but I'm just happy to be able to start a PhD program in the fall.

I agree, it's a bit strange to have only one acceptance. The person I corresponded with made no mention of a fellowship, but it's possible. It's also worth noting, however, that there was only one acceptance to UConn posted to gradcafe last year. It's hard for me to guess whether there are more offers coming. The fact that there's only been one makes me think there's a decent chance, but the fact that it's been nearly a week seems to make it less likely. Wish I had more info on this, but all we know is that there's been at least one acceptance released at this point.

That wouldn't be out of the question. They sometimes don't tell people on internal waitlists of their status until fairly late (if ever). It would be reasonable to inquire about your status if you haven't heard as of mid-March.

Regarding JHU, if you haven't heard from them, it's not a good sign, since they've released acceptances and waitlists, all on the same day. I think they're probably through, but it's only been a day, so there's an outside chance that they'll contact a few more people. Regarding CUNY, I think there's a bit more hope, since they have a history of taking a few days to contact accepted applicants and because they don't appear to have released waitlists yet. Regarding Notre Dame, I take it to be a good sign if you haven't heard from them. If you didn't receive a generic rejection letter, and if there's still no decision on the application page, then it's quite possible you're on an internal waitlist, especially since there haven't been any waitlists posted on the results page.

It is odd for them, but some schools (notably WUSTL) use this procedure every year. My understanding is that it's often used when a school decides on a group of applicants to either accept or waitlist, rejecting everyone else before settling on who gets accepted and who gets waitlisted. It's hard to say, though, without a pattern of them using this procedure year after year.

As am I, at this point. The two posts came within a couple minutes, are identical, and come much earlier than NYU's previous release dates. We'll wait and see, but I'm skeptical as well.

This is turning into quite an eventful day, after all! Can anyone confirm Harvard or NYU?

I put up an official notification based on 1) the posted acceptance, 2) aduh's comment that s/he knows someone who was accepted (it's a few pages back now), and 3) the timing. I took aduh's comment to be confirmation enough, though so far we don't have anyone reporting that they were themselves accepted.

Just to update everyone, we now have the initial results of the funding survey published here, with entries from Georgetown, Arizona, UC San Diego, UChicago, and Penn. Filling out the survey would be greatly appreciated if you've received acceptances!

Hi folks, Ian and I have now added a funding page on the blog, where you can fill out a response form with the funding details at each of the places you've been accepted. There'll be a table of responses on that page by the end of the day. Unfortunately, the table won't be updated immediately, but I'll be updating it daily. Hopefully people find it a useful tool, and it'd be appreciated if you could take a minute to fill out the response form so we can get responses for most schools.

Congrats to everyone who's been accepted so far. It seems like a lot of people are doing quite well. Can anyone confirm the Brown acceptance? I think it's likely legitimate (since they often release on Fridays), but I'd be more confident if there were more than one posted acceptance, or if it were confirmed. They usually release their batch of initial acceptances at once.

I nearly fooled myself doing the exact same thing. And for what it's worth, I've now confirmed the legitimacy of the UCLA acceptance.

Looks like we have a UCLA acceptance as well. As with the Brown acceptance, I'm a bit skeptical due to how early it is (UCLA typically doesn't release until the very end of February), so can anyone confirm it?

It looks like there's usually a gap between Toronto's PhD and MA acceptances. And thanks for the tip about SLU - do you know if they changed their application deadline from previous years? I was only basing my prediction on past release dates, and it's typically been mid-February.

Can anyone confirm the Brown acceptance? It's over a week before I predicted, and they usually notify most or all of their accepted students at once.

They're indeed only intended to be a rough approximation, and their accuracy and reliability are different based on how specifically you analyze the predictions. So, for instance, I think one can be quite confident that Stanford (Feb 14) will release before Princeton (Mar 5), but not very confident that Stanford will release on the 14th or that Princeton will release on the 5th. So you're right to point out that they're mainly useful for getting a rough sense of when schools typically release results. You're also right to point out that there are serious issues with the data. Not only is there bad data mixed in with the good, reliable data; it's incredibly hard to determine which data are reliable and which aren't. The methodology is roughly this: average the release dates from the past three years, with recent years weighted slightly more, and further adjust the prediction if schools have historically displayed a preference for releasing on certain days of the week (and also taking into account changes in application deadlines where applicable). That said, if anyone has suggestions for more reliable ways of predicting release dates, I'd welcome them, especially so we can improve the prediction methodology for next year!

They haven't been great, but I don't think they've been terrible either. There have been a fair amount of schools predicting on or near their predicted dates (4 on the exact predicted date and another 4 within half a week), but some that have been surprises (Northwestern a week off, WUSTL two weeks off, and Miami three weeks off, in addition to the schools I predicted to release last week that still haven't). This ratio seems pretty similar to Ian's success last year (see his post on the accuracy of the predictions here), with a little over half the schools coming within half a week of their predicted dates, and roughly a quarter being pretty far away from their predicted dates. I'd expect the rest of the schools to follow a pretty similar ratio (and perhaps doing a bit better, since some of the surprises were schools releasing far earlier than predicted).

Those are here. Wisconsin at Madison should release any time, though they took until mid February in 2013. They typically release mid-week, so I'd expect to hear from them Tuesday or Wednesday.

Sadly, I have no news on why UNC is late. They did take quite a while two years ago, so they just might not mind variability with release date. I think we can continue to expect them to release soon, but it's hard to say what's taking them so long.

I just posted on the blog about this, but I've heard that Chicago decisions are finalized and awaiting approval from the administration. Meaning there will likely be no news before the weekend, but they should release next week.

You're right, I must have missed that one. Sounds like they probably release fellowship acceptances before non-fellowship acceptances. Ok, new version of Minnesota's procedure: acceptances can happen at any time until wait list decisions are released (with fellowship acceptances coming first), but once wait list decisions go out, no more acceptances. Thanks for the tip!

True, many schools do this. But for Berkeley and Minnesota in particular, I can't find a non-wait list acceptance past the date on which they release wait list decisions.

I think that's the most likely interpretation of what's happening with Minnesota. It is worth noting, though, that admission is determined so much by fit and luck that where you get accepted doesn't necessarily track department rank very well at all. In other words, keep hope alive!