Duns Eith

Don't worry, there are plenty of other people in departments who want to make sure you feel like like crap and an imposter while their own work doesn't receive the accolades as they hoped either. Narcissism is not uncommon among academics.

I hope you get into a great program. Just because you have met a pile of necessary conditions, I hope it is clear we make no pretense to claim to have found jointly-sufficient conditions for your acceptance. If you have 20 applications in at schools with about a 5% acceptance rate, you've got better odds than a coin-flip! May the odds be ever in your favor

To echo what others are saying, you should not be worried about that GPA. It will meet all of the cutoffs that exist at any school that matters. But you might be cut out for other reasons. You should be most concerned about your writing sample and your letters of recommendation.

I'm at UB, but in Philosophy!

You're right the optics don't look good for undergrad. But it is possible to get accepted. It needs to be balanced against everything else. Your grades in grad school are not bad, not the best, but it is possible to get accepted. Again, all things considered. Your letter writers, though, should mitigate against this. They should be able to say that your grades put you in the 85 percentile or 90 percentile, or ideally, >95 percentile. Make sure you have excellent letter writers with plenty positive to say about you. The things you need to work on: writing sample should be immaculat

To add to what @you'll_never_get_to_heaven said, if you have very distinct interests and it pigeonholes you in the department, this could work in your favor. All the faculty will know who you are, because you're that guy. All the grad students will give you an opportunity to be the butt of jokes and take it with grace or respond with wit. When opportunities arise for your interests, they will tend to get forwarded to you. The opportunities would be there, but you've got to have the right personality and character to make the best of them.

You're welcome In all seriousness, I sometimes wonder if I should've taken warnings a little more seriously. I went into this with eyes wide open as a newly married guy. But now I have a child. And the idea of gainful employment and security increase in their value to me personally each day. This is doable to some extent with an MA. There are plenty of applied philosophy programs. For example, if you're into ethics, there are programs that are intentionally interdisciplinary and geared toward application. Medical humanities, business ethics, engineering ethics, etc. S

Hi, @JesusFdz What are your long-term goals? I saw elsewhere that you were thinking of going into philosophy in order to teach. I hate to be the Donny downer, but you realize that this is not the kind of thing you just go into. Teaching jobs that pay more than rent, clothing, and food are hard to come by. If you go into a PhD program, you need to accept the possibility that you never get more than an adjunct position. Adjunct pay right now is somewhere between $1,600 and $3,000 per class (from where I have seen in large metro areas/big state universities, not cities like NYC, LA

Expect to have the flexibility to move your work load around. You call the shots. It is in your hands. No one is going to force you to work 11 months of the year. How often do you have flexibility to go places over summer? Every year. During semester? Probably ABD (all-but-dissertation). Financially and professionally, it is wise not to take more than a month off. But you are given freedom. I know grad students who have 4 months per year off (3 mo. in summer, 1 mo. in January). I think it is foolish to do so, but this just tells you that you have a lot of wiggle room if you want to t

You don't need to worry. There are people who are accepted into programs having little more than Critical Thinking. Expect to kick it up a notch though. Graduate level logic courses are significantly harder, as they resemble more analysis in math departments than philosophy. Depending on the program, they might have you take a remedial logic course, accept what you've got as fine as long as you can pass a standardized exam (which you may have a semester to prepare), or they may have a very high bar and you will need to sort out your remedial logic chops before you attempt the grad level. Reall

Haha. Wow. That's funny. And intense. How far did it you edit it down? 30 pages? 20?

How much later, like December and January? jk jk I kid I kid

Yes. Definitely a chance. Work on your writing sample.

I am just now realizing this is your first post on GradCafe. Welcome to the forum! Feel free to tell us about yourself, check out our different sub-forums. Are you a philosophy major?

Wouldn't it be better to just have a google form or an open spreadsheet? I'd rather not provide all that information (some of which might be sensitive) associated with my username here. I'm not opposed to making this information available. I'm opposed to providing it in this manner (a way that does not promote useful data organization for analysis;a way that may reduce significantly one's anonymity). Make only a few fields required for submission.