gughok

I'm not in philosophy OR linguistics but I've applied for a number of faculty and postdoc positions where I was required to submit ALL transcripts, both undergraduate and graduate, as part of my application.

I think this is a good question.
At the same time, I have at best an apathy toward conventions of social productivity (this does not endear me to most).
Therefore, my answer is really incredibly (perhaps unsatisfactorily) simple: I'm doing what I like.
If that isn't good enough for someone, at this point IDGAF. I don't feel obligated to greater society when a niche already exists for what I want to do, and when that niche itself contains plenty of people I can help by mere cooperation. If I ever defend the "productivity" of what I do it will be in a selfish interest of maintaining the position itself; it will be because I'm at risk of losing my niche, i.e. because philosophy is at risk of losing its position in academia. And even so, I wouldn't be ambivalent toward using sophistry to maintain philosophy. If it's easier to make up some bullshit about why philosophy is useful, then I'll do that and get back to doing the philosophy I like (of course, there are plenty of good and easy arguments for philosophy's utility, to be deployed as needed, but sometimes a little bit of convincing nonsense can save a lot of dull time and effort).
Now, this isn't to say that I have no interest in demonstrating the practicality of philosophy to "society" (which is just a big circle-jerk enveloping this little one - I prefer this to the larger). But, whenever I endeavour to make any such demonstration, it won't be because I care about advancing civilization qua civilization - it'll be because I want to get people to help me and my fellows do philosophy, and what better way to do that than to show them how it's relevant to them? Everybody wins!
So, broadly speaking, if I'm to comment on "the role of students play in culture or society more generally", I would describe my role (not speaking for anyone else) as this: I'm trying to be happy, and in the doing so I hope to make others happy insofar as happiness can be shared among people who fall into our little corner of the world; but I won't go out of my way to advance humanity to some arbitrary apotheosis. After all, "productivity" tends not to extend far beyond one's immediate circle. An office job, with its office culture and its office goals and office collaboration and so on, is no more inherently productive than five years at grad school, with its grad culture and grad goals and grad collaboration. You can touch at least as many lives as a grad student as you can working in an office cubicle (sorry, don't mean to be picking on this one example, it's just what came to mind). The criticisms you describe simply demonstrate the prejudice of people who've subscribed to some illusory convention that only certain forms of productivity are genuinely productive. Because, let's be honest: unless you're literally growing potatoes or building houses, what you do for money is in response to some biologically unnecessary request that someone else has, and to engage in chauvinism there is just dogmatic.
Anyway I hope that wasn't too dreadful a ramble; the sun is heating this room to uncomfortable levels and the words have just been spilling forth from my brow.

MFW most of philosophy is acknowledging suffering. Furthermore, Metaphysics > curing cancer. That's a brute fact in the metalanguage. 
 
I just woke up, having a good day, is it cool if I attack this, nothing personal? It's "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it." What set of facts fixes the the truth value of this proposition? There's a field of vagueness in your descriptions, but I assume it's somewhat reasonable to state you mean that: For every suffering event, there's an actor able to stop it. Of course, if there's always some suffering event, then there's always some actor stopping it, which means there's never an end to suffering, which from the perspective of someone outside the event, might make the event of attempting to stop the suffering event seem pointless. Furthermore, if for every suffering event there's an actor able to stop it, no one holds the burden to act, as gughok is right, there will be someone else to act.
Instead, let us say you mean, "For every suffering event, there is not an actor able to stop that event." The implicity here is that one should act then, because there is a dearth of action which is causing a proliferation of suffering. Of course, this gives the whole process away, as even if gughok attempts to stop some suffering, he effectively cannot by your standards, and neither can anyone else.
If you mean something more like, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering are such that for each case there is a correlating actor's power that could negate that case," then gughok need only worry about cases of suffering correlating to his abilities: Of which it is more patently the case to us that those abilities are philosophical than say, surgical or philanthropic. To this degree, gughok is still right, because someone else will act upon non-philosophical suffering cases.
Perhaps you want a more broad statement that shows that everyone has the power to negate each case, so you say, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate that case." Of course, this isn't true, the monk on a mission digging a well in Africa can't also be curing cancer in Cuba; but perhaps you want him to sacrifice the African's clean water to dig wells in Cuba, whilst curing cancer at night? It must be a sacrifice, remember, because you specifically reprimand gughok for thinking someone else might do the work. Perhaps the deck is stacked against you, and you want to state, "For all cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that for each case, all actors have the power to negate some cases." Of course, this would lead to the same effect as the one in which cases correlate to actor's power, as then an actor could necessarily only act upon cases to which were within their power, and if you grant that actors have multiple powers, then you must grant there is a sacrifice, and you're back in the same conundrum as with the monk. So, how is it "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it?" From my perspective, that seems like quite a complex worldview, nothing obvious about it.
Say you want to say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich all actors have the power to negate that case." But that isn't what you said. Even if you did, you'd still run into the monk problem, as would the monk have the power to do such despite his already doing something? If not, there is a sacrifice, and your presupposed hierarchy of morals is demonstrated. You also didn't say, "For some cases of suffering, the amount of cases of suffering is such that there exists a case inwhich there exists an actor with the power to negate that case." The latter still takes the burden of responsibility from gughok, as he may not be the actor specified.  Likewise, implicit within your first proposition is a denigration of philosophy. You beg the question, "But is philosophy useful?" by implying that for all subsets of some type of event set, philosophy is always morally hierarchically below these sets. You do this by presupposing some moral fabric without defending it of course, as I've seen no reasons why philosophy is logically inferior charity, at any rate. Some Zizek might show that typically when people presuppose social axioms without realizing it, they're parroting the dominant ideological postion; however, that's a critique for another time.
Your idea that it is somehow irrational to think that someone will not give charity presupposes an indeterminacy of causality, which is also undefended. If the microphysical states relate in such a fashion as to configure this branch's maximal chain to yield a set of events in which gughok does not give charity, but then someone else does, it is necessary that that person did give charity, as well as necessary that gughok didn't, because for such an orthogonal branch, the set of possibilities are limited in such a way that those are the only possibilities that could be expressed in that branch. This would be relative-state defense of gughok. Of course, there are a few other ways to show that gughok's actions could be determined, without supposing the relative state formulation, the point is you've got an undefended and presupposed metaphysic.
In conclusion, between the vagueness of the descriptors in your proposition, the fallacious implicity regarding philosophy behind it, and the undefended metaphysic that frames said proposition, I don't think it is "patently the case that there's more than enough suffering for you to contribute positively to reducing it."
Alright now, take it easy on me in the rebuttal, I am but a lone state-school student with no classes on Fridays. 
TL; DR Taco Bell is better than McDonald's given a Hegelian interpretation of growth in post-industrial America.

I think this is a good question.
At the same time, I have at best an apathy toward conventions of social productivity (this does not endear me to most).
Therefore, my answer is really incredibly (perhaps unsatisfactorily) simple: I'm doing what I like.
If that isn't good enough for someone, at this point IDGAF. I don't feel obligated to greater society when a niche already exists for what I want to do, and when that niche itself contains plenty of people I can help by mere cooperation. If I ever defend the "productivity" of what I do it will be in a selfish interest of maintaining the position itself; it will be because I'm at risk of losing my niche, i.e. because philosophy is at risk of losing its position in academia. And even so, I wouldn't be ambivalent toward using sophistry to maintain philosophy. If it's easier to make up some bullshit about why philosophy is useful, then I'll do that and get back to doing the philosophy I like (of course, there are plenty of good and easy arguments for philosophy's utility, to be deployed as needed, but sometimes a little bit of convincing nonsense can save a lot of dull time and effort).
Now, this isn't to say that I have no interest in demonstrating the practicality of philosophy to "society" (which is just a big circle-jerk enveloping this little one - I prefer this to the larger). But, whenever I endeavour to make any such demonstration, it won't be because I care about advancing civilization qua civilization - it'll be because I want to get people to help me and my fellows do philosophy, and what better way to do that than to show them how it's relevant to them? Everybody wins!
So, broadly speaking, if I'm to comment on "the role of students play in culture or society more generally", I would describe my role (not speaking for anyone else) as this: I'm trying to be happy, and in the doing so I hope to make others happy insofar as happiness can be shared among people who fall into our little corner of the world; but I won't go out of my way to advance humanity to some arbitrary apotheosis. After all, "productivity" tends not to extend far beyond one's immediate circle. An office job, with its office culture and its office goals and office collaboration and so on, is no more inherently productive than five years at grad school, with its grad culture and grad goals and grad collaboration. You can touch at least as many lives as a grad student as you can working in an office cubicle (sorry, don't mean to be picking on this one example, it's just what came to mind). The criticisms you describe simply demonstrate the prejudice of people who've subscribed to some illusory convention that only certain forms of productivity are genuinely productive. Because, let's be honest: unless you're literally growing potatoes or building houses, what you do for money is in response to some biologically unnecessary request that someone else has, and to engage in chauvinism there is just dogmatic.
Anyway I hope that wasn't too dreadful a ramble; the sun is heating this room to uncomfortable levels and the words have just been spilling forth from my brow.

This is really the winning answer right here.

"How much longer before you get a real job?"
My response: "How long before you spend some time thinking seriously and carefully about something for once in your life?"

Here's my (personal) answer: Graduate students aren't students. With the exception of a few rich bastards on fellowship, we have a job, and it's not to go to class and write papers. At the least, we TA, and most of us will teach our own courses within a couple of years. That's our utility to the university, that's why we get paid, and it's plenty damn productive. The fact that we like the subject we teach enough to do coursework and research on it is almost incidental.

Something I've been thinking about during this application process is the role of students play in culture or society more generally. What I mean is, I am wondering if students, qua students, serve a productive role in society. The reason I've been wondering about this is because of the reaction I get from acquaintances or relatives when they hear I am applying for further schooling: "Oh...you're still in school?", "How much longer before you get a real job?", etc.
The comment that sparked my thought on the issue was when someone asked, "What do you do?" and I said, "I'm a philosophy student." "That sounds interesting," they replied,  "what are you going to do after that?" "Well," I told them, "I've been in the process of applying to PhD programs, so hopefully I will start that in the fall." What they said next offended me initially (though, they didn't mean it to come off as offensive): "No, I mean, what are you going to do in order to be productive." At first, I thought, "well, I am already being productive. Academic work is real work." But then I started really wondering about the extent to which students are—despite my belief that academic work is real work and not just homework, busy work, mere training, etc.—playing a productive role in society. I've been a little stuck not only on how to answer this question, but even on how to approach it. 
The application process is stressful enough, and now I've been stressing over the role, or nature, of what it is I am even applying myself towards. The question is not really what philosophy does for society, or philosophy's real application(s); rather, its about being a student more generally. I'm curious if any of you have thought about this question. We have all decided to take our lives as students very seriously, so I'm guessing I'm not alone in wondering about this question. I'm also curious to hear from those of you with MA(s), since you've spent more time in school without reaching your "real job", and have probably had to put up with comments like these for a while longer. So: are students, as students, productive? Is the life of the student just a preparation for real productive work?

Admitted to Rochester - I missed a call earlier today and just got an official email confirming all the details.

just accepted off the UConn waitlist! 

The philosophy MA program at University of Houston seems to be doing well this year.

Hi folks.  I know it's really frustrating, but please understand that part of the problem here is with programs' visiting days and not with the individual students with offers.  I have several offers, and I do not feel I can make a decision until after visiting the schools, and schools strongly encourage visiting on the official days.  But many programs have intentionally scheduled their visiting days pretty close to the deadline.  

Hm. I definitely agree with you that certain opportunities will pass, and that this presents a strong dilemma. Nonetheless, I think I see reason to be more optimistic than this about potential non-academic job prospects after leaving professional philosophy.
Here are just a few well-paying industries which (to my knowledge) permit entry at any (well, below 50-60) age that someone with the intellectual talent required for philosophy should be able to enter depending on their personality, listed in descending order of my confidence in the preceding claim: law, IT, tech (e.g. software dev), engineering of all kinds, business (entrepreneurial, managerial, etc.), marketing, finance, numerous others I don't know about. There are plenty of jobs that a bright 30 year-old with a BA and PhD could enter with a little bit of training, especially as autodidactism grows increasingly respected in a number of fields (see particularly tech and IT).
As for your more modest claim: these aren't opportunities that "will be passing you by". They're opportunities waiting for you to take them. You're no less able to "earn and save money, travel, buy a house, and establish yourself" after leaving professional philosophy. You're just late to the party. Sure, you can't "get ahead" anymore, but does that really matter? I don't think life is a competition for being the youngest CEO in history or any such thing.
I won't claim that your own career will be easy to return to because I don't know what it is. I will simply claim that if someone finds that philosophy isn't for them, they'll have hardly any more difficulty finding profitable positions at 32 than they would have had at 22, save certain niche occupations that are very age dependent. There are many late bloomers, after all, who bloom no weaker for the fact: Alan Rickman and J. K. Rowling come to mind as immediate examples.

So who are you Hogwarts admits? I just got into Durmstrang and I'm here to let you know that it's going down in the next Triwizard.

Phone or email the housing people, they're the only ones who know the answer. This forum can't answer your question because housing policies differ from university to university.

In at Marquette.

Just got off the phone with Martin Lin from Rutgers. He said, among other (very helpful and nice) things, that the waitlist is "unordered and short", but that "there's a chance" they may not get into it this season. The last comment was made in conjunction with the statement "I don't want to mislead you about your chances." If anyone else is on the waitlist, that's the information I have. Bit vague, since presumably there's always a chance a department won't reach into the waitlist. I'm gonna keep hope since Rutgers is one of two departments (the other being NYU) for which I'd seriously consider saying no to Harvard.

Since the first round is almost over, and I imagine a number of people now have some very difficult decisions to make, I thought it might be a good time to start this thread so people can brainstorm what might be best for them. I know some of you hate my guts at this point, but I hope you'll find the thread useful.
I'm currently trying to figure out a hypothetical choice between Harvard and Rutgers, in case I get off the latter's waitlist. Rutgers has the obviously stronger department, especially for my interests (mind, language, and cognitive science). Harvard, however, is much stronger across all its departments, which is important to me because of the interdisciplinary work I really want to do. Knowing I can walk into any building and find leaders in the field feels like a valuable advantage. Coupled with the strengths Boston has as a city over most places in New Jersey, and the easy accessibility of MIT and Tufts (I know Rutgers has the consortium but that's not quite as unrestricted to my understanding), it's really tough to decide.
What choices are you struggling with?

Oh I'm sorry! I didn't realize. How is UC Boulder vs. WUSTL going? A magnificent battle of pros and cons, I imagine.
 
I made a few posts about my presumed and official rejections which were interpreted by some as being profoundly ungrateful about Harvard, and they responded with corresponding reproach. I've taken steps to clarify myself but I would understand if I'm still held in resent by a few.
@Cecinestpasunphilosophe receiving the official admissions package helped. Now I have a folder with the Harvard seal on it. I've never been so in awe of a piece of paper. I definitely agree about the visits, they're going to make a huge difference. It's a little inconvenient, therefore, that the Harvard visit isn't until April 11-12. That's really really late, and for the sake of both my sanity and that of the people on waitlists, I'd rather have the visit sooner. What can you do, eh? Anyway, you look to have a pretty awesome record this season. Will you be visiting Princeton?

Claiming the first Toronto MA admit. Probably going to be turning it down, though.

Hm. I definitely agree with you that certain opportunities will pass, and that this presents a strong dilemma. Nonetheless, I think I see reason to be more optimistic than this about potential non-academic job prospects after leaving professional philosophy.
Here are just a few well-paying industries which (to my knowledge) permit entry at any (well, below 50-60) age that someone with the intellectual talent required for philosophy should be able to enter depending on their personality, listed in descending order of my confidence in the preceding claim: law, IT, tech (e.g. software dev), engineering of all kinds, business (entrepreneurial, managerial, etc.), marketing, finance, numerous others I don't know about. There are plenty of jobs that a bright 30 year-old with a BA and PhD could enter with a little bit of training, especially as autodidactism grows increasingly respected in a number of fields (see particularly tech and IT).
As for your more modest claim: these aren't opportunities that "will be passing you by". They're opportunities waiting for you to take them. You're no less able to "earn and save money, travel, buy a house, and establish yourself" after leaving professional philosophy. You're just late to the party. Sure, you can't "get ahead" anymore, but does that really matter? I don't think life is a competition for being the youngest CEO in history or any such thing.
I won't claim that your own career will be easy to return to because I don't know what it is. I will simply claim that if someone finds that philosophy isn't for them, they'll have hardly any more difficulty finding profitable positions at 32 than they would have had at 22, save certain niche occupations that are very age dependent. There are many late bloomers, after all, who bloom no weaker for the fact: Alan Rickman and J. K. Rowling come to mind as immediate examples.

Yeah, I get the impression that the writing section isn't taken vey seriously by most departments. Especially since you can get a perfect verbal score and a 4 writing (which happened to me). Plus, they have your writing sample. 
 
Verbal and quant matter to some extent, however, when it comes to funding from graduate schools at large. For example, I received the highest fellowship available at OSU as a (partial) result of my GRE scores. 

Thank you for your thoughts, @gughok. 

Hm. I definitely agree with you that certain opportunities will pass, and that this presents a strong dilemma. Nonetheless, I think I see reason to be more optimistic than this about potential non-academic job prospects after leaving professional philosophy.
Here are just a few well-paying industries which (to my knowledge) permit entry at any (well, below 50-60) age that someone with the intellectual talent required for philosophy should be able to enter depending on their personality, listed in descending order of my confidence in the preceding claim: law, IT, tech (e.g. software dev), engineering of all kinds, business (entrepreneurial, managerial, etc.), marketing, finance, numerous others I don't know about. There are plenty of jobs that a bright 30 year-old with a BA and PhD could enter with a little bit of training, especially as autodidactism grows increasingly respected in a number of fields (see particularly tech and IT).
As for your more modest claim: these aren't opportunities that "will be passing you by". They're opportunities waiting for you to take them. You're no less able to "earn and save money, travel, buy a house, and establish yourself" after leaving professional philosophy. You're just late to the party. Sure, you can't "get ahead" anymore, but does that really matter? I don't think life is a competition for being the youngest CEO in history or any such thing.
I won't claim that your own career will be easy to return to because I don't know what it is. I will simply claim that if someone finds that philosophy isn't for them, they'll have hardly any more difficulty finding profitable positions at 32 than they would have had at 22, save certain niche occupations that are very age dependent. There are many late bloomers, after all, who bloom no weaker for the fact: Alan Rickman and J. K. Rowling come to mind as immediate examples.