sidebysondheim

Thought I'd jump in and just say that if the future resembles the past, UNC only lets prospective students know they're on the waitlist if they're being invited to the prospective weekend. From what I can tell, all people come to the prospective weekend this year are accepted. Otherwise, prospective students sit in limbo until enough people reject offers so that they need to pull deeper from the waitlist (this has happened the past two years with people being given an acceptance on the deadline day in April). I don't have any official knowledge on this, but based on what UNC looks for when creating a cohort, I doubt the waitlist is strictly ranked and that there are multiple factors that go into deciding who gets an acceptance next. Hopefully, some of that helps! I'd say day before/day of the deadline would not be a bad day to check your status at UNC if it would change your decision. Someone in the cohort below me emailed Laurie the deadline day and was told to wait to make any decisions for some specific period of time to hear back from another applicant. Again, I have no official knowledge of the issue, I haven't talked to Laurie, the adcom, or prospective weekend organizers, but based on my experience as a former prospective weekend organizer, so this is my educated speculation and so on and so on and so on.

Yeah, this is just not true for philosophy programs. Pretty much all top 25 or so programs give around 21k a year for 5-6 years, and that's for all admitted graduate students.* Some programs may be less (I know UW Madison and CUNY are known for being closer to 17-18k) and some are more (I'm pretty sure Duke is something ridiculous like 28k), but the same general principle holds there: all admitted students get roughly the same funding package. *Some programs (Georgetown) instead of waitlisting students will accept them and waitlist them for funding, but it makes the most sense to really consider this a waitlist than an acceptance since the norm is funding.

It has become my regular practice to make up something different for each person who asks me this question. I think it's a very good idea to visit. Particularly if you're doing a PhD, these people are going to be your primary (or only) friends for the next 5-7 years. Getting a good idea of what it's like to hang out with them is important. Unless you have antisocial personality disorder, I guess.

Usually, there is a UNC grad student who roams the boards during this time, but I noticed there wasn't any. Sorry to everyone waiting on UNC! I am not sure what's taking so long other than us having lots of faculty on leave at various points this year. That plus having some new faculty that may not be put on committees yet would be my guess for the holdup. Based on my best available evidence, decisions had not been made as of Tuesday. Since the prospective weekend will be taking place in a little over a month, I'm guessing that decisions will be made soon and emails will be sent quickly after. I'd apologize for the delay, but this is not my responsibility at all.

Yeah, really if you knew you were in the running you should have already been emailing grad students.

Congrats! let me know if there's anything you want to know if you weren't one of our prospectives this past March and haven't been in contact with grad students.

This could also happen at UNC. After all, the first picture that comes up for Ram Neta on google is this:

Based on my experience, the dominant subculture of academic philosophy may very well be one where people do not regularly use deodorant, tbh.

And others waiting on UNC: One of our current first-years was in the position last year where he had heard nothing from UNC up until the week of the 15th. He was about to accept an offer somewhere else when one of his professors encouraged him to email UNC. He did and was told that they were waiting on a decision from one other person and to wait out a little longer. I believe he ended up getting accepted the morning of the 15th. I recommend that if you have not heard anything you email UNC *close* to the deadline to get some sense of your standing. We do things a bit differently, and whether or not is the best way is really beside the point at this moment. Sorry, this process really does suck. Hang in there.

You should be receiving emails soon from our grad reps, but if any UNC acceptees want to ask questions, feel free to PM me. To others: no clue if we're done sending acceptances or not.

While a lot of what you said is true (high GREs won't hurt you and probably help), I think it's a lot more specific program to program than in general. I think there are programs that do not care about it. I did not score over 160 in verbal or math, came from a large, unknown, community based state university, letters of rec by professors who are not generally well known (though they know some people at programs I was both rejected from and accepted to). All this is to say, it's possible. But ultimately you're right: make every part of your file strong, including the GRE. But I think some people sweat it trying to get high GREs when really they should be putting more time building their writing sample, etc. Just my $.02.

Yeah, I think Davidspring is inflating the importance.

Yes and no. I got into some great places with quite poor GRE scores (UNC, WashU, Georgetown). But also, I got rejected from places that were less awesome than those three, and it's hard for me to figure out why since they were roughly the same fit and so on. GRE definitely seems like it'd play a role in that, especially if they made cuts based on that before giving my writing sample a more serious look (or something). I guess what that tells me is that some programs definitely care about it, and some could care less if the other aspects of your packet are strong. EDIT- I should probably include my scores, iirc, 152Q, 159V, 5AW.

I didn't do it last year. The glories of full funding.

I think it is blatantly more than "kind of". I think it is downright worrying that one would more strongly desire to continue using a particular pronoun in their writing than attempt to build inclusivity among a marginalized population. Face it, this isn't about prescriptivist vs. descriptivist linguistics, clarity of speech, or any intellectual debate about what's in the extension of "archaic". It's simply about the fact that we live in a patriarchal society where women are given a lower normative-value than men, and any and all possible remnants of that should be altered to try and make society more inclusive. Since it doesn't seriously affect the readability (as opposed to say the example, "bt l0l l@ngge b wt 1t b3, l3ts n0 grmmr') or meaning of one's work, why be so adamant to stick to it? It may very well be the case that only "some feminists" care about it, and the complement set of feminists are apathetic. But that seems like a weird reason to be passionately against the change, instead of being for it.