gughok

Oh please oh please D=

Somebody just posted a morale-boosting acceptance to MIT from last year? Or was that a mistake and it's for this year? MIT...

Oh, sorry! It has been a while since I've studied Dutch, it would seem.

In English I would pronounce it "free". In Dutch, it's got the uvular fricative (think German r) after the f. Also, would someone like to claim the admission to a Philosophy PhD at Philosophy that was just posted?

Same So, MIT said they might finish up today, and nobody's posted an acceptance since then... so either the person(s) remaining didn't know about gradcafe, or I still have a chance...

Obstinacy under the guise of philosophical caution is a really frustrating thing to observe. First, nobody "exploded" at you. One person said she agreed with you, save your use of the masculine generic. You asked why, we explained in moderated terms, and you resisted with complete denial. Second, we're not here to reinvent the wheel, so I'm not going to type up an essay. Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_neutrality_in_English#Rationale https://www.academia.edu/1597246/The_extinction_of_masculine_generics https://www.pomona.edu/sites/default/files/elliechestnutthesis.pdf http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148068580921132 http://web.stanford.edu/class/linguist156/Gastil_1990.pdf http://www.bustle.com/articles/96831-supposedly-generic-uses-of-man-are-not-actually-generic-says-survey-so-here-are-6-words This is what I could find in ten minutes. That's all it took: ten minutes and google. I don't think this is at all an exhaustive list.

I'll be back with more comprehensive thoughts once the season's over. As for your questions specifically, I'm going to just answer what I did, and let you judge by how that went (is going) for me.

It's very apropros that there's someone watching with stifled laughter, making no attempt to help their fallen fellows: enter the admissions committees.

THANK YOU @Nat_Foot MIT PLS I WOULD MAKE SO MANY COOKIES who am i kidding I would symmetrically make cookies in grief

I've said this before as a personal commitment; now I will make it a request: if you get a call offering admission, I humbly ask that you find a moment to enquire of the person on the line whether acceptances are still going out. This information would, I hope, not be difficult to get, but it would be incredibly appreciated by those of us who are waiting anxiously. Congratulations @Incregible!

Please, Nat, preserve hope. A presumed rejection would really dull the satisfaction of my earlier admission.

I was looking at Princeton's table of grad students by year a while ago and I noticed that they seemed to have particularly large classes the past few years. From this, I thought it possible that they'd be particularly selective this year to cut down on their class size.

Congratulations! How long did the call take? Did they give details or was it just "hey MIT wants you yeah that's right come to Boston right now"?

Sure, explore the idea. Consider both sides. Give it a fair treatment. And if one side falls apart as dreadfully damaging and discriminatory to half the population, make no further attempt to defend it. An idea which has been demonstrated a failure robustly deserves no defense.

Some ideas don't warrant defending.

Thank you! Thank you! and thank you! They are indeed sending out letters - the website was just an offer of admission, with details having been posted. I'll be checking my mailbox for those pretty fervently now. Congratulations! You've been having a pretty awesome week, eh?

Harvard said yes omg

"Princeton will release this week. Probably tomorrow (which is today)" posted on the survey results what pls specify source

I'm getting a bit out of my depth here, I am not well-read on feminist theory (one of you experts pls halp). If anything, I might look at it as affirmative action in speech. From another perspective (and this relates to my comment on the asymmetry above), men aren't going to feel nearly as excluded, if at all, by female pronouns, because it hasn't been a cultural norm for them to be repressed. The converse does not apply. So using male pronouns definitely hurts, female pronouns not so much. But I agree that even the binary terms can be exclusive, especially when used in conjunction like that.

Out of upvotes, +1. My reaction to every "surprise" of this sort: suck it, prescriptivist grammarians. You should never have left the 18th century. As a linguist, your existence vexes me.

@philosophe's observation is sort of a case in point for the term's obsolescence: by using exclusively male pronouns, you've alienated female readers and implicitly (or, some would argue, pretty explicitly) denied them membership among "outstanding applicants". This can be demeaning, insulting, and even offensive. You may reply that the female pronoun is no better, but the fact is that there is an asymmetry in that women have historically experienced discrimination, derogation, and disadvantage by the will of men, while the opposite is not (generally) the case. As a result, women are conditioned be cognizant to the prejudice they face, while men are usually oblivious to it unless they're educated to see it. In a different context, many women I've spoken to have expressed that reading or listening to recitations of the bible is a very ostracizing experience, since the devout are often referred to in translations with the male pronoun. It can be disheartening to hear the ideal worshipper described exclusively as male, even if this isn't an explicit statement. Similarly, one might write of the post of President and describe presidential duties using the only he/him/his, and this would be discouraging, either subconsciously or quite overtly, to women who read the description. And so on, in every situation imaginable. Thus it's best to refrain from using the male pronoun indiscriminately. And it would not come off as contrived to use "they". The claim that it is an unnatural term to use is propagated by prescriptivist grammarians who don't adhere to the principles of descriptive linguistics. Historically that pronoun has long been employed precisely as a generic referent, and it would be fighting an uphill battle to remove it from use. So either they/them/their or she/her/hers, but not he/him/his. I prefer the female pronouns in extended prose because I think it reads better, but that's just me. Note: I am not a woman. If you are a woman and I've misrepresented things, please do correct me. Likewise if you're a man/other who knows better than I.

The masculine third person for a generic subject is archaic and discouraged due to the misogyny it has often facilitated. Gender-neutral "they" or female "she" are preferred.

At least from my perspective, it's both an emotional safety measure and an offering of information to others. In the former capacity, it keeps me from wondering whether I'm really going to get in someplace when I can focus my attention elsewhere. I'd much rather think "well, it's probably bad news with Yale" than "oh god oh god Yale please oh please", at least in the long term. In the latter capacity, if someone sees such a signature they can derive the information that somebody has heard from Yale. So it's also a utility I try to offer others.

My vent for today... Proportion of PhD programs listed on the official prediction page that have sent their acceptances out: ~75% Proportion of PhD programs to which I applied that have sent their acceptances out: ~30% (and UCLA is probably not done) My frustration correlated with the difference between these two numbers.

Well I guess that's a lot better than anything else we've got. Tomorrow it is, then.