gughok

Yeah we're probably gonna need our Acceptances and Rejections threads pretty soon.

Echoing the thanks above - I know I'll be really grateful to have a bookkeeper of sorts keeping track of everything in the coming month and a half. For posterity, and in case this might be helpful for us to post, here are my predictions for the places to which I've applied (PhD), based on looking for patterns in the past few years: UCLA: F10 NYU: F19 Yale: F19 Harvard: F21 MIT: F23 Princeton: M2 Rutgers: M3 I don't remember why I came up with each of the above figures, but I'm sure I had some reason or another. N.B. "some reason or another" might include "haha these guys look confused af with their decisions through 2012, idk man I'll just choose the third Wednesday"

Don't worry about age at all. It simply is not a problem - plenty of people start their PhDs in their thirties and an admissions committee is not going to be bothered by it. If you want to think anything of your age at all, count it in your favour: maturity is very important for the sort of commitment a PhD takes. I agree with sidebysondheim on your profile. You seem like a very strong candidate. I wouldn't be worried.

I'd be interested - what's the sort of content expected?

Well damn, thanks everyone. I just sent emails to all the remaining places that either showed my scores as absent, or didn't show their status at all. Is it a problem that I'm doing this so late, or is the GRE largely superfluous enough that they shouldn't mind terribly? Secondary query: what's the etiquette for acknowledging replies from admissions? I already got an email back from Harvard confirming that my scores have been matched. Do I thank them for this? Do I just send "Thank you.", or do I preface it with a "Dear Dr. X", or...? I'm not very good at emails.

I've got an irritating problem: my legal name, my GRE name, and the name I actually use are all subtly different. My full legal name is X Y Z where my first name is X Y and my last name is Z (yes, the two are together in my first name. I don't have a middle initial). My GRE name is X Z. The name I use is Y Z. I've applied using X Y Z, but since my GRE is under X Z (I screwed up, I know), there have been matching problems. Some places, e.g. Princeton and NYU, make pretty clear when the scores should be received and whether they actually have been, so it's straightforward enough to check. Rutgers, on the other hand, states in its FAQ that I should just be patient if my score isn't showing, and that if there's a slight mismatch of names it might take them longer. So how long should I wait to see if they can resolve this? What about applications which don't indicate whether they've matched my scores at all, i.e. Harvard, Yale, UCLA, and MIT? Should I email someone to check, or assume it's been done? Since the two names I've used aren't completely different, I figure if they care enough they can match the scores, but I don't want to assume.

Out of the places I've applied to, here's what I've noted: Harvard - you can study a "secondary PhD field", for example I would do mine in Mind, Brain, and Behavior, but I think you could choose practically any department. MIT - the Philosophy program offers minors in Linguistics, Psychology, or Mathematical Logic. You might be interested in one of the former two. Princeton - I don't know about minors or dual PhDs, but they have the Center of Human Values, which might interest you. Rutgers - they famously offer a Certificate in Cognitive Science, though I don't know how much that's your cup of tea.

I'm not quite done myself, but I've been trying to keep myself from going insane by reading Asimov (I can't get enough of the guy) and play my fair share of video games (Steam's winter sale never disappoints) while I still have the chance.

Ah, the application itself (https://apply.embark.com/grad/nyu/gsas/) is working for me now on Firefox. Still no dice on NYU's own website, with either Firefox or chrome.

It's not just you - I haven't been able to access anything NYU all day, which is disconcerting.

I can't answer any of the questions you asked explicitly, but I can relay something my advisor mentioned: CUNY sometimes gives dodgy funding, which can put you in "a fucked up situation" (advisor's wording) if you're not careful. So if you apply and if you get an offer, you'll want to be sure you actually have the funding you need.

I just want to ask Santa to finish my applications for me, this is brutal.

If you think it's low enough to raise some eyebrows, you should address and explain it as well as you can in your personal statement. Make sure you don't sound like you're making excuses - you don't want to come off as dismissing responsibility for the grades, so much as justifying them to the best of your abilities. It's far from the worst thing, since your philosophy GPA is fine, but if your CGPA will draw attention, it's best you acknowledge and maximally explain that. Otherwise it looks all the more glaring. As a side note, I think it helps that these other classes are math and CS: from all my discussions with professors, the analytically strong background this implies is positive, even if your performance in the classes themselves is not stellar. Someone who has any demonstrable experience in formal proofs, even if it amounts to a C+, in one respect is advantaged over someone who has no experience with theoretical mathematics at all (at least for admission in fields where such a skill is valued, which is often the case in philosophy).

Perhaps not even that; in my case it shows how concerned I am about the job market. I know it's practically impossible to get placement and just as a personal decision I'm not willing to spend five or six years at a graduate program if I don't have a better-than-coin-flip chance of landing an enjoyable (re: research) TT position shortly afterward. I love philosophy, but if the only departments I'm good enough to get into would have me likely not at a research position say, three years out of graduation, then I'd rather do something else and keep philosophy as a mistress on the side. It hurts to think about it that way but as a personal life decision, all things considered, I have a hard time justifying anything else. My list also indicates my willingness to take a year off: I only want to go straight into grad school if it's an exceptionally prestigious program. Otherwise I'd be more than happy to spend a year doing other things and then apply more broadly next season.

When I first took the GRE I used my free sends with department code 2804, which was listed as "Philosophy - Philosophy" I was just looking at the Pittsburgh application website, though, and they say to use 2801, "Philosophy - All Philosophy Fields". From now on I'll be using 2801 for all my sends unless otherwise specified by the university, but are my 2804 ones lost? Most website don't specify a department code, just a university code (and some, e.g. Princeton, say that no department code is required at all). Is 2804 close enough?

So would I.

I used the magoosh vocabulary builder app on my phone for a couple hours. It made the difference for me between the ~168 I might have gotten and the 170 I did.

Yes! It's still a really rough work in progress (I've only gotten one round of proper feedback and my professors have gone silent =/) but the gist is that I argue all those arguments are just more intuitions and not really arguments. I take it by your name that you do philosophy of mind?

Yes. This is what made the difference for me. You'd be surprised how well the lists correspond to what shows up on the test. This can easily put you up a few points, unless you already have a gargantuan vocabulary.

The CV is a place to list all of one's accomplishments in academia. This makes it a bit hard to put one together before having entered academia. As an undergraduate, what sorts of things should I be including in my CV/resume? (And is there a strong reason for me to do one over the other?) I've got my (expected) undergraduate education, all my research experience (I was in a lot of experimental fields before getting to philosophy, so no publications but plenty of research assistantship experience), teaching experience, languages, and... that's about it. The whole thing is maybe half a page. Is there any other general sort of information I should have on my CV?

This. Clonazepam/klonopin and benzodiazepines in general will impair your cognition and ability to be attentive to detail. This leads to more careless mistakes. I would strongly advise using breathing methods etc. during the test.

Yeah the AW is of negligible importance across programs, so long as you manage a 4 or 4.5. If you're concerned about it affecting your chances, don't be. You meet the minimum threshold, and past that your writing sample is a far more important measure of skill (who writes a publication in half an hour, eh?). And if they said they do not care about Q... they do not care about Q. You have the only part of the GRE that kinda sorta matters (because in general the GRE doesn't matter much) absolutely down with that 165 V. You're good.

I am not an expert but I agree with sidebysondheim. As long as you demonstrate research potential by presenting a good argument, you've done what you need to do. If it helps, my own writing sample is a criticism of a general line of argument that's got significant traction in my subfield. I'm applying to the university where the professor who advanced that particular line of argument is working - and he's a pretty big deal. My own professor has advised me only to tone down the exasperation in my paper (alas, writing at 1am will do that to you), but otherwise told me not to worry that I'm basically submitting a sample in opposition to a star professor at one of the departments to which I'm applying.

Sorry! I try to hang around there but maxhgns and I can't keep our eyes on it all the time on our own. In general, philosophy PhD programs tend to require at least a major's worth of coursework in philosophy from one's undergrad (something like 6-10 courses). Some programs might have this as a strict requirement, for others it's just a strong recommendation. I can say that across all of them, without an attested background in philosophy you would be disadvantaged. That's not to say all hope is lost, however - you'd need to show, in that case, a propensity for philosophy through related coursework, your letters, your sample, and/or publications. This sounds like a lot, and yes: if you don't actually have the coursework, getting into a PhD will be hard. But it's possible. There's another option, too. Have you considered an MA to equip you with coursework that will appeal to PhD programs later on?

Yeah I'm in philosophy, and to my understanding - try to avoid publishing in undergraduate journals. They're not generally professional enough to warrant much merit, hence why you don't see them appearing in CVs anywhere, and their relatively low standards mean that you risk jeopardizing your future reputation by putting something out there that will look not-so-great once you've improved at doing research. The second paragraph is great advice. Your professors will know what to do to maximize your chances. And the good thing about trying professional journals is: if they like your work enough to publish it, then your work is good enough that it probably won't embarrass you later on. If they reject it, no problem; something like eighty, ninety percent or more of articles submitted to professional journals are rejected. It's not a grand failure so much as a statistical inevitability if a journal doesn't accept your paper, and it is very unlikely the editor will remember you, let alone hold you in poor regard because you were one of the many who just happened not to get a submission accepted. The reviewers, of course, will (generally) never even know who you are. I'd say you've got practically nothing to lose and plenty to gain if you at least try for publishing in a well-regarded journal.