MissingBlue

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

Hey, don't do that. Don't explain away and shove aside your achievements like that. You demonstrated original thought, you have a B.A. You have teaching experience, a decent GRE, and favourable letters. These are good things, to be proud of, and indicate your ability and talent. Own your success. It's yours. 

I guess I don't understand why we should strive for a formula for graduate admissions. I get that a lot of people invest a lot of their lives into these applications and end up with nothing to show for it, and to some extent there's something morally repugnant about that fact. But on the other hand, there are good reasons why philosophy admissions aren't as formulaic as law admissions. Unlike many law schools, philosophy programs don't have hundreds of spots -- they often only have 5 or 6. I think it's obviously better this way, because if they accepted many more, very few of them would be able to get jobs after investing 5-7 years of their lives in grad school, and there wouldn't be enough funding for everyone. But if we're going to accept that it's best to keep matriculating numbers low, we will also have to accept that admissions will always have an element of luck and uncertainty; when admissions rates hover around 2 or 3%, it's just not possible that everyone will be able to get in where they want to go (and some may be shut out). And the numbers of accepted candidates at any one school are so small that it's hard to glean anything of statistical significance from the people who were chosen. Additionally, the writing sample is an important part of philosophy admissions (often it's the most important part), and evaluating writing sample quality is always going to be somewhat subjective. It's not something you can really account for in a formula or a survey. At the same time, I think the admissions process would be worsened if writing samples weren't a major element -- after all, composing philosophy articles is the cornerstone of what it means to be an academic in philosophy, and we are/were asking admission into that world. 

My BS-detector just went off. I'm guessing either 1) you are naive enough to think that the world functions in black and white, and that additional information or altered circumstances do not change prior agreements all the time with no moral fault or ill intention, 2) you have not realized that you are one of countless incoming masters students that will be forgotten about by the school within a day, 3) you have failed to see that fully-funded PhD students and post docs have wrestled with similar decisions and lived to tell the tale, 4) there is another piece of the story that you have failed to tell us, or 5) you have the need to find someone to tell you whatever it is you want to hear.
 
There are people here still on waiting lists, and it annoys me that you would be selfish enough to stew in your own made-up drama for days instead of picking up the phone, declining the school you obviously want to decline, and perhaps making that spot at school A available for someone else. 

Well it's Pittsburgh for me! Just accepted their offer.

Go speak to one of your letter-writers--preferably the one you trust the most.

They'll give you the same advice as everyone here, but I think you'll feel more comfortable following the advice.

I think these are right. The application process is lonely and obscure, and chances of getting in are low, even for those lucky ones that manage to put together an ideal application. I think most of us here are aware of this, so I think many people merely hoped to get in--genuinely expecting to get in seems excessively optimistic.

I didn't even hope to get into what I called my 'pipe dream, you had to at least try' schools. I was hoping for UCSD--really good fit, and I know multiple faculty members, all of whom encouraged me to apply there.

But I didn't get into UCSD. And I was crushed. I was starting to make plans to do my PhD in my home country. I thought the American option was over.

And then I got into Pitt. Also great fit, and all the faculty members I've spoken to have pointed to my WS as the reason. But I'm from a nowhere school, with sub-par GRE scores, and no GPA (we don't have that). Hoping for Pitt would have been ridiculous.

I think these are right. The application process is lonely and obscure, and chances of getting in are low, even for those lucky ones that manage to put together an ideal application. I think most of us here are aware of this, so I think many people merely hoped to get in--genuinely expecting to get in seems excessively optimistic.

I didn't even hope to get into what I called my 'pipe dream, you had to at least try' schools. I was hoping for UCSD--really good fit, and I know multiple faculty members, all of whom encouraged me to apply there.

But I didn't get into UCSD. And I was crushed. I was starting to make plans to do my PhD in my home country. I thought the American option was over.

And then I got into Pitt. Also great fit, and all the faculty members I've spoken to have pointed to my WS as the reason. But I'm from a nowhere school, with sub-par GRE scores, and no GPA (we don't have that). Hoping for Pitt would have been ridiculous.

You should look in the neighborhoods of Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, Lawrenceville, Bloomfield, Greenfield, and Regents Square. All of these have multiple bus lines that go into campus. I currently live in Squirrel Hill and love it--a sort of long walk to campus, but you have 4 bus routes, and a good street with a couple great bars and a grocery store.

accepted at UCONN!!!!!!!!


Ahhhhhhhhh

Oh my goodness. I just got off the waitlist at Pitt. I'm total disbelief, but I'm absolutely thrilled.

Hi! I'll be starting at Pitt this year (yay!), but I won't be able to visit before August so if anyone has any advice regarding finding housing from afar, please send me any info you have. Thanks

Also better than I'd hoped.

I'd say better than I had hoped.

California does not allow international students to become residents, so they can't take advantage of the tuition break available to residents. This means that Californian schools have to spend more money on internationals for the entirety of their degrees. UCSD also explains this somewhere on their website. So they tend to accept a higher rate of Americans (which makes sense if they want a bigger first year group). You'll notice that this is confirmed by the acceptances posted on the results page for UCSD this year. As far as I know, this is not the case in other states.

As I said, I don't think it was a deal breaking factor, but it is the reason I was given over and above the generic rejection email that came yesterday. And I find an explanation more comforting than no explanation.

I use this "philosophy is communal" line to justify going to bars with my cohort after class.

Well it's Pittsburgh for me! Just accepted their offer.

The relevant question seems to me not whether Pollan is a philosopher, but whether he's the best person to use as a primary source in an undergraduate thesis. You could certainly engage with many of the topics he discusses by investigating arguments made by people specifically within the discipline. Here's a page on the philosophy of food which might help. Discussing people who are in published conversation with other philosophers will probably make your project much easier in the long run, I would think, regardless of the question of whether Pollan is a philosopher. You could always cite him in passing or in footnotes, while engaging other people's arguments as well.