TheJabberwock

I solicited and did not get a rejection O.o They told me I am not accepted/waitlisted but not rejected yet. My emphasis is not language though so maybe I will not be so lucky. Edit: Where else are you debating between?

This! I'm still waitlisted at my only options and it's really painful. I'm glad to go to work the next two days to help take my mind off of the wait.

I've seen a few declining of Rice, is anyone else planning on doing or has done so? Thank you to those who have so far!

Ahhh, one week left and it's getting more stressful every day! The anxiety is worsening. It sucks being waitlisted at two schools without another prospect but here's to hoping the dust settles in everyone's general favor this week!

This. This seems to be the biggest thing slowing down everyone else: people who were admitted into a bunch of 'higher' up schools wait a substantial amount of time before making decisions. Then things slowly start to trickle down. As people said before, those in the 5+ category should probably whittle down their choices well before April 10th. I am dreading to hear back on April 15 and be on stand by to accept an offer if one is extended. I was last year and it increased the level of anxiety more than just regular waiting.

I want to bump this thread. Mainly because I am torn between placement and location. Assuming fit is good between the two schools, and programs are 'ranked' similarly, I don't know which to choose. One school has a superb location in my opinion and seems really nice (good weather, pretty, closer to other cities). The other is in a hotter, muggier with nothing else really nearby that interests me (I like to go hiking and do not prefer flat land). However, the placement record of the better located school is not very good at all, the poorly located school has a decent placement and seems to prepare it students better for careers in academia. The other thing to mention is I am not set on working in academia after completion of a PhD, but I would like the option to at least pursue it. So which do you all think is more important? All of this is assuming I will be fortunate to make a choice anyway (I being a bit optimistic and prepared in case I need to make a decision).

Yes, but not to Kentucky. Of the twelve or so schools I applied to last year, I only applied to two of them again (Oregon and Rice). Last year I applied to more continental schools. This year, with the advice of a professor who works on Husserl/Heidegger, I was recommended to not apply to the sole continental schools (e.g. Duquesne, SUNY Stony Brook, Emory) since they will look at my analytic tendencies in a less positive light (oddly enough). I like both sides of the divide, and the Nietzsche scholars I focus on are the 'analytic' types. So, I applied to schools with split departments, places where they emphasize working across the divide, and schools with philosophy of mind departments that are sympathetic to German philosophy.

I know! Applying and attending is a risky business and everyone should be well aware of that. If I had a choice between schools, I would definitely look at placement, but since I am still sitting on the outside looking in, getting in seems to be the first step. Now whether or not the end goal should be tenure track positions coming out of a phd program is up for debate, but this is not a priority for me. Therefore, attending a program is my focus and priority.

Thank goodness I don't necessarily do just continental philosophy (writing sample was in phil of mind/epistemology)! That being said, if I am extended an offer I will be happy to be pursuing my PhD and to continue doing research that allows me to publish and continue attending conferences. On the other side of a PhD, I have fortunately experiences and qualifications to fall back on. If placement were the sole reason we were going into PhD programs, then I think many of us would have the wrong idea. Even the best of us, who have the best offers and attended the best programs (hoping they make it through), will still have difficulty getting placed in a tenure track position. That's the sad reality of this whole endeavor. First step however, regardless of any school's record in placement, is actually getting in a program in the first place (and not going into debt to attend one)!

I just got waitlisted at Kentucky, very high among alternates! Fingers crossed, this is one of my top choices!

Thank you for doing it so quickly! I appreciate it.

I see three Oregon rejections via email, I have not received an email and the status of my application is still pending. Should I give into the false sense of hope? Looks like in past years they have done all their rejections at once... AHHHHH I don't know what this means!

Congratulations! I wonder if Saint Louis is contacting those who they are accepting today as well?

Okay cool. If I were in your place I would wait until I had visited the other schools as well. Thank you for the information!

Thank you, that is very kind of you. She did not invite me to visit, but I asked her roughly the likelihood of an offer being made to me and she said that people have received offers in recent years in the spot I am located. So I am guessing middle of the waitlist maybe higher based on some of the positive feedback. She was being prudent not to give me false hope though, you never know if this year will be like recent ones or not. Do you know for sure yet if you are going to turn down an offer from Rice? I would say wait until you are fairly certain you are not going to attend. As much as I would appreciate moving up the list, I would also like for you to make the best decision. I will gladly wait. : )

That would seem unlikely since their deadline was February 15th. And, that is for fellowship applicants. A program having an 8 day turn around seems a little fast to me.

Congrats? I was just waitlisted at Rice! I'm taking this as good news since my other contact with a department was not.

No worries, thank you! And congrats again on your two acceptances so far!

Congrats! I was waitlisted last year and I was really hoping for some good news from them this year. Do you know if they reached out to all of those they accepted?

This. Also, as a white male (who unfortunately shares a name, albeit differently spelled, with Shawn3007+) I would like to say I am in favor of affirmative action and some badly needed diversity in Philosophy. Now for sarcasm: "Boy! Women and minorities sure do get better treatment in philosophy programs, that's why all of the programs are full of women." Affirmative action isn't in place to punish white people (although given some people's attitudes, I garner less sympathy if they are punished...), it's to help under-represented groups and to try and better reflect society. If (A) we want everyone to have an interest in philosophy (presumed by our valuing of it), then (B) we should want our philosophy departments to better reflect our society (thereby representing everyone and hopefully inspiring diverse groups to work in philosophy). A. Therefore, B. This is one of many arguments of why affirmative action is good, one I felt was neglected in the above discussion. Congratulations for all of those who have been accepted thus far, and on to the point of this thread: "I want an acceptance too! And, I must be rejected since I haven't heard anything (even from the school that had a February 15th deadline). AND, I can't stop checking my email........ AHH!"

Yes! Thank you so much for doing that. Oregon and New Mexico are two of my best of fit schools.

Can anyone claim the New Mexico acceptance? Also from a while ago, the Kentucky one? I know these places may not be one many's radar, but they're on mine. : P

I agree my speculation was a bit wide. Presumably, if everyone on here is an underdog then being accepted is what they hoped for (this also could just be the case for the vast majority of applicants). I still think there are interesting questions, with the results we have. I will bring these up at the end of this post, because I'd first like to address a couple points that we haven't mentioned. In applying we all (hopefully) were picking schools that were a) good fits, and schools we would be happy in attending. Out of those schools, presumably we had a favorite, and I would think we were hoping to get into that school as equally as the others if not more. The point in highlighting a weaker set of hopes and a stronger one, was an attempt at highlighting the difficulty of answering the question without a bit of context as to what we were hoping for. I was hoping to get in at least one of the schools I applied to and I was hoping to get into my top choice. So either way for me I did not get what I had hoped for. Some people might even be extremely stoic and not had hoped nor expected to be accepted at all (which would raise questions about why they were applying in the first place). For me, I did not expect to get in anywhere, but I had hoped I would. As to the interesting questions being leftover, of course there are! Just the results alone raise lots of questions, furthermore I do not know if my questions were legitmate or right, but I am interested in seeing what people on here think. A question I did not raise, and I thought of it today, is more fundamental; viz. What is the relation between using this site, applicants hopes and applicants preparations for their applications? I think all of my questions fit under this larger and wider question. Hopefully the answer to the question is that Grad Cafe is good resource (I think it was even though I didn't get in anywhere) and that it appropriately informs its users of what to expect and what to hope. It is really difficult to get into any single PhD program. Grad cafe also allows people to ask questions about the difficult process and get good answers from those who have gone through the process or are more intimate with it in other ways. So the relation between the forums and users hopes is a good one that helps people form appropriate hopes and good applications. My fear is that there is another explanation of the relation between grad cafe users and their hopes. And that is those with weaker backgrounds and those who did not attend 'top' programs are not using the forum, and that this explains why everyone got what they hoped for. I sincerely do not think that this forum is full of privileged students who attended top schools (priveleged in this sense, not in wealth, that is a separate discussion), but it seems likely that a lot of users attended a PGR top 50 school or a top continental school. However, I don't think that people attending top schools is why their hopes were met (surely there are plently who go to those schools and are not successful), it is just one more hurdle for those of us who didn't attend those schools to overcome. I think that the results are best explained in the informed nature of the forum users and them being informed because of this resource. Furthermore, it seems safe to assume that in actively searching for information here, they are also actively searching for information elsewhere. To sum up, the best take away from my points is to raise the question of the relation between the forum and its users' hopes, and that the best explanation is the helpful nature of this forum and its users.

Thanks. Well, the majority being 50% plus one and I'll assume even the places that extend the most offers don't exceed 12% of applicants get accepted (e.g. Oregon sites that after it reaches into its waitlist it still only extends offers to 11%). It's hard to say that if those odds would be compounded with the odds of applying at other schools. Without knowing where everyone applied, and the overall acceptance of all schools put together, I think it still would be safe to say that 50% of applicants did not get accepted anywhere. Some people only applied to a small number of schools, others applied to maybe 12 with a decent range of rankings across their interests (e.g. in my case I applied to 2 top 10 pgr schools, 1 top 25 and 1 top 50, the rest were continental schools of varying prestige, and I was waitlist at the top 50 school). Also I am strictly considering PhD spaces and the spaces with funding. You are right in pointing out that it is hard to say clearly that a majority of applicants did not get at least one funded phd offer, but then again the odds in any single instance is usually less than 10 percent. It seems extremely unlikely that those odds go up beyond 50 percent after applying to several schools. (Also congrats on going to Pitt. I was extremely happy to see you got in off the waitlist after you had visited and felt at home there.)

I was completely shut out after being waitlisted at one school. I thought I had better odds than this, given my letter writers thought I was an ideal candidate and that my writing sample was good. I had above average gre scores and a 4.0 equavelent (I attended an international graduate program) MA GPA. I am assuming my SOI was not that great and maybe some bad luck. Probably will not apply next year, it seems like a large expense (a year of my life, further stress and pain, plus money). I had viewed this application season as getting a job doing what I love. I know the goal of most is a tenure track job, but for me I simply wanted to continue researching in philosophy while also earning enough to live. I can continue to do philosophy while I work, but it'll be much harder. I can't help but think if my undergraduate pedigree (I had a 3.5 overall and a 3.9 major GPA) were better, then I would not have been shut out. It didn't help that my waitlist rejection didn't come until the end of yesterday. Aftet being in close contact with the DGS for a couple weeks and then people finally made their decisions. I think I would have rather been rejected out right a month ago, so I could have been better applying for jobs and so my hopes wouldn't be raised up so much to be brought down so harshly. Sorry for the negative post, but that's what this thread was for, right? Well best wishes to all who got accepted, those who will try again and those who will move on to something else.