AnotherKantFan

Well...Stanford's admission people assured me hard-copy transcripts can be late! All this stress for nothing

How about: a combination of refreshing emails AND logging into the various admissions accounts?

Oh, sorry to hear this Well, if it makes you feel better, my first predicted result is TOMORROW! But since it's still v. early in California right now, I'll start getting nervous around 8pm my time

Arrrghhh noo I missed an opportunity to make this perfect Kant joke! (It's my favourite.) Awesome. Glad I'm not the only one who loves it.

CANNOT wait to get my first reply...

Publishing! Especially academic publishing. For example, [The-University-I-Didn't-Get-Into] Press.

We all hope for that, don't we.

I'd guess the change in Princeton's submission date was very deliberate, especially because it happened during the admission process and rather unexpectedly (I remember checking the website in October/early Nov and back then the admission date was still 31 Dec '15. So maybe they, indeed, thought that candidates should know earlier to have more time to plan campus visits, and therefore decided to change the admission deadline to be able to send acceptances ~2 wks earlier?

Thanks! I've heard this too, but I thought "abysmally low" for them would be anything below, say, a total of 320. So the real question is this, I think.

Hey Thatsjustsemantics, how do you know that the cut-off scores are somewhere around 300 for most schools? This would be great news. I'm also worried about my GRE (they're substantially above 300, but not stellar at all).

Thank you Gughok and Haltheincandescent, that's really helpful! I've applied to Harvard, Brown, and Princeton, so very glad to hear about these possibilities. If I understand correctly, no extra tuition fee needs to be paid to an additional masters/minor program?

Hi guys! While waiting out the results and becoming increasingly impatient, I started coming up with new ideas for my graduate life. Some background first: my bachelor degree is in philosophy and modern languages (double major), and I've always been interested in various different topics across the humanities, some of which are rather interdisciplinary. Apart from "pure" philosophy, I'm particularly into philosophy of literature/literary theory and into topics on the border of philosophy, political theory, and legal studies. So I thought that if I got into one of my dream PhD programs, I'd really appreciate the opportunity to take on an additional course: what some American universities call a "PhD minor", others a "joint PhD" (selected after having gotten it), and yet others an additional MA. What are your thoughts on this, were you thinking about this yourselves? And do you have any idea which of the American philosophy PhD programs (out of, say, TGR top-30) allow for such a thing? So far, I've been aware of the joint philosophy & social thought PhD at UChicago (!!) and the brand-new literature/philosophy PhD minor at Stanford. And if a program has no policy about this, do you guys think I could just ask to do a second masters sort of "alongside" my main PhD program?

Fair point. I was asking about the number of profs out of curiosity, but you're right that actually it doesn't matter that much in abstraction from other facts, such as # of undergrads, # of grads, profs' involvement in teaching and so on. Although, still, the overall atmosphere or feel may be affected by the very size of the department.

I heard Toronto is one of the biggest in North America?

Hi! I know I'm particularly late to this discussion, but maybe I'll be able to revive it a bit! I'm graduating from Oxford this spring and I'm applying to 8 North American PhDs and a few masters in Europe. As for the American/Canadian programs, it's going to be, in order of preference: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UC Berkeley, UChicago, Brown, Toronto, Cornell. I'm mainly interested in Kant (his theoretical philosophy and ethics) and epistemology; also in political philosophy and aesthetics/philosophy of literature.

I've scored rather badly in my GRE and decided not to retake it due to lack of time to actually study for it more. My score was affected by a very upsetting personal situation - I simply couldn't focus on the test immediately before it or during it. I've emailed some departments asking about the importance of it, and most of them replied that the GRE isn't a cut-off mark or that important in general, and that it's only the case that an exceptionally good GRE score may positively affect your application, not the other way around. Brown was the only US department that suggested I retake the test upon learning about my scores (oh well...).

I'd definitely prefer a rather small department, but one that isn't too narrow-minded in terms of the faculty's approach toward different areas of philosophy and 'ways' of doing philosophy. On this note, which US departments stand out as particularly small or big?

Hi guys! I was wondering what you think is a good way to present one's academic interests in one's PoS for American/Canadian PhD programs. As many people here, probably, I ended up worrying that if I sound too specific and narrowly focused, I will seem not flexible enough for them; if I on the contrary write about too many broad interests, I'll appear too vague and immature. I ended up discussing one particular interest and highlighting two questions within it that I'm mostly interested in, and then briefly mentioning two other areas of philosophy I'm interested in ('secondary' interests, kind of). Thoughts?

Hi all, I'm just going to add that I had the same problem with wanting to submit a writing sample which was a bit longer than the required length, and I've emailed some departments about this (Berkeley, Cambridge, and Toronto) - a Berkeley prof said he is unable to let me submit an abnormally long sample, whilst Cambridge & Toronto people suggested that I submit what I have and highlight the more important passages amounting to the right length - which I didn't do in the end, as I found this method rather odd and unhelpful. In the end and following my prof's advice, I deleted all the introductory chapters and summarised them in 2-3 pages

Hey everyone, I was wondering if you have any idea as to how successful I'll be in applying for top American/Canadian PhD programs with the following (quite a funny mixture): mediocre transcript and GRE scores, BUT coming from a top school, a strong personal statement, very strong writing sample and reference letters, and a history of 2 serious publications as well as a serious conference presentation. Good luck for everyone applying this year!