Duns Eith

Congrats! I hope the interview becomes fruitful!

Yes. And that's why we are doing it.

The probability I was considering was the event being accepted anywhere. Imagine you've got 10 different lotteries or raffles, each with a probability of winning 10%, you've got a probability increasing for each ticket purchased, because you may win multiple times, for one of them, or not at all. But the probability of winning at least once is increased with every ticket. If they are statistically independent, this is exactly right: we're interested in the denial of the probability "I will get in nowhere". This also intuitively means that the more applications you put in, the resultant likelihood of being rejected everywhere approaches zero (asymptotic curve). The intersection is at 10 applications when the average is 6.5% acceptance, when applicants are chosen at random. Right. There are a lot of conditional probabilities we may figure that make the "acceptance rate" figure less than helpful/meaningful.

Yeah, I've been thinking of this as well! I applied to 17 programs, in which I figured that the "average" acceptance rate was 6.5% (Michigan is 2%, but Michigan State is 15%), if chosen randomly. 17 x 6.5% = 110.5%. There's something wrong with the probability, but I haven't worked it out. Because 100% means certainty, and you can't have it go above that; moreover, it is a priori uncertain, so it can't be the upper bound, 100%, either. I haven't done all the conditional probabilities, either. Because, as you've highlighted, if you're above 50 percentile at one school, that is a very different statistic. If you're above 70 percentile at one school, it is likely you're above 70 percentile at many schools. The corollary is that if you're below 50 percentile, your odds diminishes quickly, because they almost always admit only 70 percentile. Whatever strength in your application that justifies your acceptance at one school is likely to justify at another school; whatever is weak is likely to be considered weak elsewhere.

Congrats to the both of you!

That works. But I can't change the title of the thread.

Thanks all!

Thanks! I am not shut out... which was one thing I was really, really hoping to avoid. To know this this early is shocking.

Moderator Note: The users of this forum asked for three separate threads for acceptances, waitlist and rejections. For your convenience, please follow these links to the appropriate thread: Acceptances: (you're already here!) Waitlists: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/86843-waitlist-thread/ Rejections: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/86842-rejection-thread/ ----- original post follows below ---- Let's start...? University of Buffalo (SUNY) just sent out some initial decisions. I know of only myself and one other person who have received acceptances. From the survey results, I see that some UK schools have as well (late December): Edinburgh Durham

Ah, but those are initial decisions. You could hear back on many late March or early April. I personally expect some to come at the zero hour: 4:50pm, April 15.

Yet people want to announce that they were accepted, ask if they might be waitlisted, or vent their rejection ... That's pretty darn common.

Oh my gooses! Northwestern offers $35,000?!! ...

So, you're a little bit more than amazing.

For pete's sake, if van Inwagen can't even use a traditionally known word "univocity" (being univocal), but instead says "univocacy" in a famous essay, then surely a lowly student can have a typo or two in an unpublished work.

I saw a typo in my writing sample the other day, and I was impressed with myself that I didn't even care. I could, technically, have swapped out the file for at least one of the apps when I saw it. Not even gonna care. Whatever. A typo is exactly that: a mistake that even published works by top philosophers make. So what? The reviewers likely won't notice it anyway.

Speaking of non-applicants, don't bots and webcrawlers also show up as hits, as well?

The big reveal in season 6 finale ("Game over, Charles") was underwhelming or rather just so random that it was dissatisfying. In the waiting period, I'm taking two classes, teaching two classes, and hoping to conference again: I've submitted my writing sample to 8 different conferences already. Not much time for anything else! Though, my wife and I got a 3D puzzle of Neuschwanstein Castle. It's gonna be epic. If I get to reading, I'll catch back up on fundamental metaphysics books I got for Christmas.

It's crazy though, I forgot that initial decisions will be rolling out very soon. Like 3 weeks. That's NUTS. Some apps are still due, and we could hear back? Geeze.

How would you read this? "Each year the Department sets aside a number of Graduate Assistantships for entering PhD students (we no longer offer graduate assistantships to entering MA students). In the current academic year, graduate assistants received a total financial package of at least $21,523 for a level 1, ½-time assistantship. This package includes a waiver of up to nine credit hours tuition each term, health insurance coverage, and for out-of-state students, waiver of out-of-state tuition." I think the word "includes" might be ambiguous, but I read it as stipend ($21,523) + tuition waiver, health insurance as well

I PM'd and emailed you the data

Exactly my experience as well.

Sorry I never got back to you! I think the second set just looks better over all, but I think there's a few things to consider: 1) GRE scores are typically not that important. Your scores are so similar that it might not matter, especially given how much weight is given to the GRE. 2) You may want to contact MIT and ask them how important they are, and whether you should send them the other set. They may be able to tell you frankly what they would benefit from in assessing your application. 3) Since you want to do social epistemology, I am tempted to say that you might not be into formal epistemology and mathy-stuff. Is that true? If you are, send the higher quant. If you are not, then send the higher verbal. 4) I was scanning other forums here and I noticed that we should really, really calm the frick down about the GRE. In other disciplines applicants can be accepted with a 40 percentile in verbal and quant. To me, this just tells me that a graduate college (or grad admissions) can't seriously regard as advantageous an applicant with 170v over another with 167v for our discipline, when Communication Disorders allows for a 148v.

I was here two years ago, and there was a lot more traffic. I would credit a lot of that to Ian Faircloud, who would post in every single thread that existed. Though, I will say I thought there was far more traffic as people were anxious, waiting, and expecting replies as well. Expect an uptick around late January. There's also Facebook. I think the group on Facebook is substantially larger this year, and thus traffic and comments are there rather than here. [If I were a mod or owner of this site, I'd consider taking a hard line stance on not advertising to Facebook or banding together to make a Facebook group. It kills the forum.]

Sam, if we want to contribute data or add certain schools (say, for next cycle) how should we best get you the data we've harvested or voice a request?

You rock! Thank you for taking the reins!