Cromulent Flurp

Absolutely!

The Facebook group for applicants turned out to be very supportive, friendly, and entertaining, so we've decided to keep it going, but changed the name to Philosophy Graduate Entrants 2016. The idea is that as we go through the no doubt challenging years of our PhDs we'll have a group of friends at different departments going through the same things, and it's great to have a friendly network of students at just about every department you can think of. Feel free to join! https://www.facebook.com/groups/503589463155698/

I'm leaning very strongly towards WashU, gughok. The person I'd like to work with there, who's the person I'd most like to work with in the world, was on the committee and is very enthusiastic about me going there. She's planning on staying there too. I won't decide till I visit there and Boulder, though. I'm glad you're feeling more positive about the possibility of going to Harvard. Something to keep in mind with things not turning out ideally is that that's what a career in philosophy tends to consist of much of the time. You'll have to face publications being rejected by everywhere regularly, or not getting into the journals you'd like them to, and applying for jobs usually means getting rejected from dozens of places and having to accept whatever you get as well. I think using the opportunity to build one's acceptance and determination is a good idea.

I started a thread on this, called "Choosing between offers". It didn't take off though, so I'm happy for a new one to start.

Thanks very much, Brush. I've been looking at Denver actually, and see a lot of things there that would remove St Louis's advantage over Boulder, but I don't drive (I cycle) and it's a remarkable hour and a half by bus. On the other hand, I am so into outdoor activities that Boulder would be amazing.

I expect I'm not the only one who already has a difficult choice to make between offers. Mine is between Boulder and WashU, and I specialize in ethics and metaethics. I'm really into the outdoors, but am an international student and more interested in living in heartland America than somewhere mostly white and rich, and I would like to keep working with underprivileged kids, which St Louis would be good for. (I also really like the great things for kids there, like the museums, zoo, and amusement parks; that's the kind of thing I do for fun in a city). Significantly, the WashU offer is for six years, rather than five, and the funding per year is much higher than at Boulder. Boulder has more people doing ethics, but Julia Driver at WashU would be one of the best people anywhere for me to work with. Any thoughts, and what's your dilemma?

It's certainly possible, as I did it twice. (Leading journals in the relevant areas, that is.) I didn't publish them *when* an undergraduate, I published them during my Master's, but they were written before my Master's. One was an essay, the other a section of an essay. I wrote them during my Honours year, which in the non-US country I'm in counts as graduate, but I'm told by American faculty is equivalent to the fourth year of a US BA. (BAs here are three years.)

You’d think that publications would be really impressive for committees. I worked out that only 3% of students at top programmes had publications before or during the first year of their PhD, and of course many of those were in obscure journals. But in fact it (and the quality of your writing sample) matters much less than things like what institution you come from, I think. I published two of my undergraduate essays, one, which I used for my writing sample, in one of the top three or four ethics journals, and the other in a leading applied ethics journal. I worked out that less than 1% of students at top programmes had publications in journals as highly ranked as those I published in before starting their PhD. I used the same writing sample last year, when it was at the R&R stage, and got in nowhere. This year so far I’m 1a/4r, the acceptance being from my safety school, and am waiting on 5 programmes that are as or more prestigious than the ones I’ve been rejected from. I have the feeling that at prestigious programmes writing samples only count in deciding between people coming from other top institutions. Having said that, I might not have even had that one acceptance without my publications, so they may still help; but I don’t think a top programme will consider a published writing sample as being a big deal compared to a writing sample that isn’t of publishable quality, unless you’re coming from another top programme. Of course, this is guessing. And yes, I am a little bitter at the moment. My safety school is good though, so I'm only intermittently bitter.

No, I only know last year's date was 15 December. Also, Princeton's last year was 31 December or early January, and this year was 15 December, so its notifications might be earlier than usual.

Thanks so much for doing this. Does the date for Duke take into account that their submission date was two weeks later than last time?

I've had something similar happen on my Michigan application, with the PDF showing incorrect details that I'd changed (and saved) on the form. I haven't been able to find a way to change the details that show on the PDF, or get help from Michigan. They said they can't change anything once the form is submitted, but I didn't submit it (they don't seem to realize how their system works). I'm still trying to get clear from them whether the error only appears on my copy and not theirs.

The applications I've done have almost all been specific in their requests: to use my own university's GPA system, to convert it, or to leave it blank if outside the US. Where it hasn't specified, I've converted my GPA to the US scale.

It's working fine for me. Have you tried using a different browser?

I've just created a Facebook group for philosophy applicants for fall 2016 admissions, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/503589463155698/ Please consider joining, and please let other people know if you think they might be interested.

I've created the group, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/503589463155698/ As there are only three of us, it would be really helpful if you could let other applicants you know about the group so we can build up some numbers. I'll make a new post on Grad Cafe to announce that the group exists, too.

Well, Malcolm Tucker at the Gooding Inquiry, I'll see if there's any more interest.

Oh I see, sorry, I missed your point.

Yes, that's what I assumed.

I asked a couple of UC universities about this. My answer from Berkeley: "The answer is that an international student is much more expensive for a department since non resident tuition fees have to be paid by the department. As a consequence, departments have to be conservative about the number of international graduate students they admit but that does not mean we do not admit international graduate students. And when we do we pay for their fees." From UCSD: "It is the case that international students are more expensive than US students from the point of view of the department's funds. However we DO accept international students and have probably six or seven in the program now. This is pretty much a normal amount of non US for us. What it means is that it is very competitive for non US students." Although the costs for each department seem to be the same ($15,000 for an international student in their first year) Berkeley admits way more international students than UCSD, judging by their lists of graduate students.

I'd be happy to run a Facebook group for 2016 graduate philosophy applicants (a Closed Group of course), which might work out to be more lively than this forum. Would people be interested?

I asked Duke about that last year, as they had a limit of 15 pages and my sample was much longer. The DGS replied, "That's fine. Just add a cover note saying which 15 pages people should read if they are only going to read 15 pages." My note said something like "My writing sample is longer than the suggested 15 pages. I would be grateful if the committee, if unable to read the entire sample, would read pages y-z." I'm sure that something like that wouldn't count against you at all, especially if the sections you asked to be read are contiguous (you wouldn't want to make them have to read a couple of pages here, a couple there, etc.). This year my writing sample is really long, 12,000 words, but as it was published in a good journal I'm just going to send them the published version, hoping that it being published will mean that the length doesn't matter so much. My other published paper is only 4000 words, a much better length for most applications, but it isn't anywhere near as good and is only a response piece.

Hi, I've just started a PhD at a New Zealand university and am applying to US PhD programmes this round. I applied to ten programmes last year while doing my MA, and wasn't accepted anywhere. I was waitlisted at a PGR top-10 school and at a PGR top-25 school, which said it expected to make me an offer, which didn't eventuate. I'm hoping that my chances will be better now that I have my Master's and a couple of publications, one in a top-40 journal that's the leading journal in the field, and another in a specialist ethics journal that's again the leading journal in its area. I'm using one of the publications as a writing sample. I study ethics in general, especially metaethics. I'm applying to (in no particular order) USC, UC Boulder, Princeton, Michigan, Cornell, UC San Diego, NYU, Brown, Yale, Berkeley, WashU, and Duke. If I don't get in anywhere this round I'll work on going to Oxford, where a good professor said he'd be happy to supervise me.