Coconuts&Chloroform

In at Tufts. Will be declining.

Well, I was told that decisions were ongoing, not just that decisions would not yet be released. So if this phrasing is deliberate, and they're not lying, then I think they must still be making some final decisions. Or so I hope, anyway.

Well, I solicited a decision from NYU, from which I presumed I was rejected, and was told that decisions were ongoing and would be released by mid-March. So for all those of us still waiting, there's a chance.

I will most likely be turning down my offer at WUSTL. Good luck to those on the waitlist!

This is just the kind of good sense I feared. But yeah, this speaks for itself.

It's probably the GRE scores, since everything else is stellar. Particularly the verbal score - you should have high 160s in verbal if you want to do philosophy. Remember that the people who get offers at top programs more or less do not have a weakness: they have excellent grades, recommendations, writing samples, and GRE scores. So you may have excellent strengths in the first three, but just having one weakness immediately sets you at the back of the line. However, the good news is that your GRE scores are perplexingly low given the strength of the rest of your file. This suggests that your poor performance was probably a fluke. Perhaps you weren't well-rested when you took the test? If I were you, I'd hit the GRE prep books hard and try again next year with better scores. If you got offers from schools outside the T20, I wouldn't take them - your file is strong enough, I imagine, that you can do far better provided that you ace the GRE.

I'm finding the decision between WashU (PNP) and Rutgers much harder than I thought it would be. Rutgers obviously has an excellent program, and made me a very generous offer, but I have an unshakeable suspicion that having something of a more ostensible background in the empirical realms of cognitive science - like what is offered at WashU's PNP program - might make me more attractive to future hiring committees than even a degree from a program as well-ranked as Rutgers. Am I crazy to even consider this, considering Rutgers' overwhelming advantage over WashU in PGR rankings?

I think you're being a bit too worried about this. Your overall and major GPAs are similar to mine, and I applied to only 5 programs this year, with decent results. Of course, I may have gotten lucky, and other factors like the strength of your GRE scores and recommendations are relevant, but 20 schools seems a bit much - that's a lot of money to spend on fees and test scores. Try this exercise - it's a tough one, but useful - for every school on your list, ask yourself: if you were rejected from all schools but that one, would you go there? If it were your last chance at pursuing a future in philosophy, and there were no other options left, would you take the offer? Think very seriously about this: I don't want to paint too bleak a picture here, but given how competitive the job market for philosophers is these days, going to a low-ranked graduate program is quite likely to be a waste of your time. Would that program be worth your time? If so, keep it on the list. If not, drop it.

Cool. Last year, when they accepted me to their MA program, a faculty member who I won't name gave me a call telling me that I could probably do better than their MA and was 'strongly encouraged' to reapply to their PhD program - so if I don't get good news on Monday, I'll be pretty pissed. Well, it's not like anyone can be that pissed about not getting into NYU, but still. Congrats again. Go celebrate!

Congrats! Question: did your online application status change to 'accepted' today? I didn't get a call, but am wondering whether there's any reason to still hold out hope, as my status hasn't changed yet.

Thanks for your kind words. I'm not wedded to the implicature that salient people believe one can't get into top programs from an undergraduate institution that isn't PGR-ranked. Nor would I claim that my background lacks prestige: my undergraduate institution is ranked around the 50 range in the US News rankings, my recommenders are fairly well-connected, and I have - not to boast - a record that includes multiple awards, TAships and fellowships as an undergraduate. However, my intention in writing my post was not to offer my own case as evidence to disconfirm the claim that nobody can get into a top PGR program from a PGR-unranked undergraduate program. My intentions are not epistemic. Rather, my intention was to give hope to and soothe the anxieties of other applicants who lack confidence just in virtue of knowing that they're coming from an unranked undergraduate program. In order to achieve that, there's no need to cite rigorous large-n studies and develop methods for ranking the relative prestige of schools relevant to PhD applications in philosophy. I should note, however, that my understanding is that the prestige of one's undergraduate institution is relevant only inasmuch as having gone to a presitigious, PGR-ranked department gives one the opportunity to take graduate-level courses with well-known professors in well-known programs. Swarthmore, e.g., for all its prestige, does not afford anyone that opportunity, so I'd suspect that its prestige is not highly relevant to PhD applications. On the other hand, an undergraduate who went to NYU, e.g., but did not take any graduate-level courses, would probably not fare much better than any applicant from Swarthmore.

NYU is really taking their sweet time this year.

Thanks! Or just an idiot who got lucky...

Ha - hopefully that's exactly what they do! It just goes to show: you can get into PGR top 3 schools from an unranked undergrad.

In at Rutgers! Received a phone call from Martin Lin. 30,000 + 10,000 research fellowship for five years.

Definitely bizarre. I'd just thank them and wait, but I can understand why you'd want to probe further. If you do, I highly doubt it would hurt your chances, though.

Hm, I'm not sure. This is a weird situation. I think of a waitlist as a ranked list of applicants who are not accepted but who become eligible for acceptance when accepted students decline offers, but this sounds somewhat different: this sounds like a pool of students that may be reconsidered for acceptance regardless of whether or not everyone in the already-accepted pool accepts their offers. So, they may have interviewed 8 students, but are deciding whether or not to admit a class of 12, rather than just 8. Who knows, though.

I would take this at face value. I don't see any reason that they would claim to be considering a second round of applicants in which you would be included when they don't intend to do any such thing. If they didn't intend to do this, I can't see why they wouldn't reject you explicitly - adcoms are not known for beating around the bush when it comes to rejections. What did your inquiry sound like? Oh, and by the way: was this WUSTL, if you don't mind my asking?

Just rejected from CUNY. It's a painful one, because it's my first rejection in this process, but I guess we all know that PGR top 5 programs are more or less crapshoots. Here's hoping I luck out with my last two!

Have you checked the website? Mine was updated when I got my offer.

Anyone volunteer to email NYU and ask them what's up with decisions?

Exactly! Namely, me: I've got to get in. Seriously, I've got to get in...

Has anyone heard anything from NYU? If past years are any indication, they should start notifying those accepted tomorrow.

I don't think there's anyone in the world who can be confident about this one. That said, academia.edu just sent me an email saying I have a profile view from New York City. Good sign?

Anyone else waiting on NYU? Friday can't come soon enough.