torpedofish

here to verify the Chicago acceptance (and one of the Berkeley ones)--I know how shitty the wait/suspense can be. Hopefully you'll hear back soon. 

Waitlisted at Berkeley =)

Claiming one of the Berkeley acceptances!!  

Claiming the Miami acceptance. Email including details of the assistantship package and of a campus visit.

My mum suggested the same - I laughed at her. If I really want to restrain myself from checking my email in a realistic way, I'll make a rule of only checking it once every hour.

So how many days are there in 24 hours?

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

Congratulations!!!! They contacted you on Weds, right? Any idea whether they are done with sending out acceptances (& waitlists)?

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

I can claim the Berkeley. Still kind of in after-shock - I think I've just had a continuously happy day and a half. 
(Extremely long-time lurker; I've even had an account for the longest time, never got around to posting.)

Hi there,
I'm a longtime lurker, first time poster, and I can claim one of the Duke Admits. It is my impression that the first round of Duke offers are done, and that all successful applicants posted on the results page.
I'm very excited about the prospect of Duke. I also have a number of other applications out there that I have yet to hear about.
Good luck everyone!

Hi folks,
I thought I would go ahead and round things out, since we already have the acceptance and rejections threads for this cycle.
I'm hoping that this will be a place where 1) we can anxiously discuss our fate and 2) where people who are turning down offers will be able to let us know (and give us some hope).
I'll start -- I'm currently waitlisted at Northwestern.

Just been accepted into Duke!!!

I congratulate you. Also, I am jealous of you. 

Great news, I just got accepted into vast swathes of anxiety and self doubt. Technically, that's 1 acceptance, no rejections, so we're off to a good start.

I want to thank @piglet33 , @123hardasABC , and @gingin6789 for their support on here these last few days. I ended up getting invited to recruitment weekend at my #1 school with my #1 POI. You guys rock and I know good news is just around the corner for you as well

Whining about dreams again, but just a scary dream, not a PhD-related one. 
In my dream, I get a phone call from my next door neighbor. My house was built in 1902, and my bedroom is a spacious attic which we joke may be haunted. In my dream, my neighbor calls and says "Samara isn't going to take it anymore. She's not gonna stand for you being there."
I hang up the phone, and my fiancé asks what that means. I tell him it means I can't go home again...  unless I try to stop Samara the ghost. 
My fiancé and I end up IN a video game about koalas. Koalas are one of my favorite animals, so it's cute. But it gets scary quickly. A koala bites my fiancé, and I wrench the koala off his hand and take it away, allowing it to latch to my hand, since I know it's a video game and won't really hurt. 
We hide out in a clear plastic tent, and an old man passes by, stares harshly at me, and runs his finger across his throat quickly as if to say my death is near. Angry, I look back at him and do the same motion before pointing as him, as if to say "no u". 
The koala in my hand has turned into plastic, which I crush in my hand since I'm so angry. I quickly realize that, since I accidentally killed the demon koala, I'll soon pay for it... Worse, I made an enemy of the man who threatened me.. 
The most terrifying music begins playing, and I wake up. 
Even after I wake up, the tune remains in my head... Thankfully I can't remember the tune now. 
So freaking scary, and might have ruined one of my favorite animals for a while. 
 

I'm starting a one-year MA in the Classics department at the University of Toronto in September, with a focus on ancient philosophy (the department's willing to let me do nearly all of my coursework through the philosophy department as long as I also stay on top of the... intimidating Latin and Greek reading list, which is pretty exciting). This year will be my second round of applications: last year, I was accepted to a couple  Ph.D. and Masters programs, but wanted to take the year to consolidate my abilities in Latin and Greek before starting my Ph.D.. 
As you can guess, my principal areas of interest are the history of philosophy (specifically ancient/Patristic/medieval philosophy) and philosophical theology. Ideally, I'll have a chance to fold the two interests together during my doctorate - I'm really interested in the interplay between 'religious' and 'philosophical' commitments in the works of ancient philosophers (I put the terms in scare-quotes because I'm convinced that no such rigid distinction was recognized by the ancients, and modern attempts - primarily by analytic historians - to separate out 'philosophical' positions from other theological beliefs are hopelessly misguided). In particular, I want to look at the divinization of truth over the course of ancient philosophy, from Plato (where the Forms exist, at least in the mythological framework of the Phaedrus, beyond the realm of the gods) to Augustine (who repeatedly declares in the Confessions and elsewhere that God is Truth) and the influence that this divinization of the telos of philosophy had on philosophy's development. 
My writing sample is hopefully representative of one of the first steps in the developmental narrative I want to investigate in the coming years - I look at Plato's Meno and present (what I think - hope? - is) a novel interpretation of the underlying epistemic commitments that shape the theory of anamnesis as presented in the work, and show how these commitments represent Plato's first attempt at providing a theoretical foundation for the Socratic practices captured in the early dialogues. I've spent the last couple months working on the paper, and am quite happy with it... but am trying to reserve judgement until some of my profs have had a chance to read it over for me. 
I'm applying to a ton of places, from smaller Catholic schools where I could focus more on Aquinas and other Scholastics (e.g. CUA, SLU, Fordham), to Chicago's Committee on Social Thought, to all the major American ancient programs (Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley etc.). I really appreciated this community during my applications last year - I hope things start to pick up again as the application season begins in earnest!

It's been rather quiet on the philosophy forum this summer, and no one has started a 2016 applicant thread yet, so I thought I would. Pretty much all my relevant information is in my signature. I was going to apply for the Fall 2015 term, but decided to postpone a year so my wife could put some time into a promotion she got. As a result I have had a long time to work on my application materials and everything is pretty much ready to go; I'm just waiting on all the applications to become available so I can fill them out and send them.
 
Who out there is readying their applications for Fall 2016? Who out there was unsuccessful previously and a gearing up for another go? Tell us about yourselves, whatever you would like to share: What is your background and what are your interests; where are you thinking of applying; what areas of your application are you most nervous about; do you have any graduate work under your belt or are you applying straight from undergrad; have you targeted anyone you really want to work with; what are you using as a writing sample?
 
Let's get this going!

I'm a classicist, not a philosopher, so I can't comment about your chances with philosophy departments.  Regarding language proficiency, I'll say that Infinite Zest's suggestion sounds rather optimistic.  I'd encourage you to get some language coursework on your transcript with one of the intensive summer courses offered by places like CUNY or Berkeley, but it'll take more than a few months to comfortably read philosophical Greek or Latin prose.

I don't think we run the risk of making philosophy "prefer good test takers"--there are so many other factors involved, and GRE scores are by no means the most important component. No adcom would say, "Well, she turned in a terrible writing sample and her statement indicates that she has absolutely no overlap with the research interests of our faculty, but look at these test scores! Maybe we ought to give her a shot."

I'm also not sure what you're talking about vis-à-vis Asia. Speculative is an understatement. I presume you mean northeastAsia (typically considered to consist of China, Japan, and Korea). I think it's problematic to treat these different countries as if they all utilized the same educational system and shared the same values. I also don't know about referring to nations of people as "hardworking populations" who, for all that, are not as inventive or dynamic as their counterparts in the US. And per capita, scandinavian countries, Germany, and the UK produce far more nobel laureates than the United States--and for much of the Nobel prize's history, it should be noted, the United States was the only real scientific and academic arena, since much of Europe and East Asia were recuperating from decades of war. It should come as no surprise that China has not produced as many Nobel laureates as the US--but I don't see any reason to suggest that the Chinese aren't as innovative as anyone else.