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We invite you to sign this petition: https://tiny.cc/kulfees asking KU Leuven to stop the increase of the tuition fees for non European students and special programmes. Until recently, in KU Leuven (Louvain, Belgium) everyone was charged the same tuition fee: 922 EUR. Now in some faculties non European students should pay up to 6000 EUR. The reasons given are multiple, however it is evident that the real reason should either be that they want more money or they really dislike poor international students. This change of tuition fees puts the university at the risk of losing its international environment, for as many of the current international students have said: they would not have been able to come if they had increased the fees before. Moreover, some programmes have increased their fees for everyone, which introduces the risk that this university become like the ones in UK or USA. This could be probably the case of many of you, that might have had the chance to go to study in Belgium, but having to pay 6000 EUR extra takes away any possibility of doing it. If that is the case, we invite you to sign and express your disapproval. Now, I know that most here are from USA, and a very possible reaction will be to say that all that is still cheaper than in USA. However, you should understand that Europe is not the USA, Germany has completely free universities, Switzerland charges around 1300 EUR to everyone, Spain 400 EUR, etcetera. I invite you to read this document, in case you want to know with a lot of detail the context of this problem: https://www.studenten.xyz/dossier-about-the-issue-of-the-tuition-fees-in-ku-leuven-by-the-leuven-students-against-tuition-fees/ We want to invite you to sign and to express your ideas about this, not only because you are potential students, but because many of you might feel alluded by KU Leuven's authorities, who have said that they want to attract more and "better" students, and that increasing the tuition fees will do that. Supposedly some "marketing research" they did showed that the prospective student from the USA prefers an expensive university over a cheap university, and does not attend a cheap university, because he thinks that just because it is cheap it is very probably bad. We consider that this does not make any sense at all, or do you actually think like that? We consider that whoever judges the quality of a university only by its price tag is not smart enough to be considered a "better" student, and therefore they are not achieving their objective of attracting better students. Needless to say, the idea that they want "better" international students has been felt by the international students as something quite insulting: are the current ones not good enough? So, if you, probably a potential student from the USA, could express that this idea is senseless, that people don't like to give away money, that poor people exist in the USA too, that you do not feel more attracted just because now it is more expensive, and that they should not limite their concept of "international student" to "student from USA"... it would be very useful. You can sign the change.org petition here: https://tiny.cc/kulfees You can also talk and discuss with others about this issue in our facebook and twitter. Thank you very much for your attention.

It is not worth the $50000

The world does not spin around van Fraassen.

They all speak English. Strangely the world is not only in English, and most of the greatest philosophy was not made in English.

What is the bank?

You just had the experience of being admitted or rejected. According to what you see this time, would you say that the GRE was crucial to get admitted? Do you think that you were rejected somewhere only because of that low GRE? What is the minimum GRE score they want? What is your general conclusion about the damn GRE?

This is so sad.

It is very expensive.

Why did you decline? Which other university did you prefer?

You are welcome.

Or just describe the person defending the other side as an obstinate in disguise, ignore all of his arguments, send him to read, and rest assured that you are right because you did not permit any doubt about your believes. Now, seriously, your criterion to dismiss ideas is, as @brush said, against the spirit of philosophy. Let me share you this quote from Stuart Mill's essay on liberty: "[To control the expression of opinion] is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in or opposition to it. If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind". And this longer quote from the same essay: "We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate. First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions, that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied. Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but, fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience". I was not worthy of your essays, so I think I am neither worthy to write you an essay. So I give up. I only hope that these quotes inspire you to think that maybe you can be wrong 1% of the time, and that perhaps it might not be the best idea to censor languages, expressions and ideas, even if they are so dreadfully damaging and discriminatory that they mysteriously harm unwitting people if they are used in the most innocent message of hope and good desires.

Could you please explain why this was a trick and how it works?

Sincerely, I could say the same about you. You exploded because I did not use the language as you like. And you are not being attacked as a person, I was only trying to inspire hope for my fellows, and you degenerated my words, implying that I was fomenting misogyny with my language. I did not do that, and I am arguing trying to show you that. Indeed, it is annoying to be blamed and accused "indirectly" of being offensive against women. You may adjust your language as you like, so do I. You try to draw attention to an issue, I am trying to do that too. Strangely, when you do it you are the sacred defenders of the unquestionable truths, and when I do it, I am only an annoying intransigent person. I really doubt that what you say about the journals is true, but if it is, that does not make your "arguments" more convincing, and if you are trying to imply that as a philosopher I am forced to adopt those modifications to the language, then you are completely wrong. Philosophy and academia are different things, and the academia has a lot of problems, which I, as a philosopher, am not willing to indulge. If some specific journal rejects an article only for that reason, I would be glad to never publish there, as I would not want to be associated with a "philosophical" journal that obligates you to embrace its morality and political correctness. You are right, I would more strongly desire to possess and use liberty of expression and liberty of thought, before attempting to build "inclusivity" among a marginalised population, because I am sure that that "inclusivity" can not exist if those liberties are suppressed. The issue of the marginalization of women CAN be studied from those perspectives, and, more importantly, CAN BE QUESTIONED. I can not only doubt about the commandment of altering any "remnant" of the patriarchal society, but I can doubt about the relevance of that marginalization of women, compared to other problems of society -in example, a rich woman is more accepted and respected than a poor man-. If you consider the materialism, the marginalization of women is a consequence of capitalism, and it will not cease to exist until the capitalism stop (Karl Marx says it, literally); what you are trying to do is an ersatz egalitarian society where there is fake "inclusivity" only because the thoughts and expressions of the people are controlled in such a way that is impossible to express the contrary, yet, the poor women are as poor as the poor men, but that does not matter, as long as they both suffer the same misery of being a proletarian in the capitalism. And you may repudiate materialism, and your ideas would still have the problems signalled by George Orwell in 1984; you can't make a revolution degenerating the language, and forbidding any possible thought or doubt. You call me weird because I do not follow the order of modifying my speech and my thoughts that some small and specific group of people commanded, and you may be right, it may be something strange to do, but I would still do it, specially if I do not agree with that order, and the commanders are intransigent and closed to any discussion about it. I wrote a lengthy response trying to initiate an intellectual debate about this issue, and it was completely ignored. Again, I could say the same about you, word by word: "I mean, it just sucks when people get so personally defensive about these kinds of 'objections', especially because I don't consider this to be an objection at all". I am not insensible to the marginalization of others. You don't know me. To argue against something is not upsetting, and it definitively does not undermines the experiences of marginalization nor furthers the marginalization. To argue against something is simply the usual activity of philosophy. It is an element of the dialectical process that a philosopher makes to purify his believes (oops! I did it again!) confronting them with the believes and the criterion of another person, which may illuminate the philosopher and make him note something that he never noted meditating alone. This is the worth of the philosophical discussions, and you are demeaning it, by thinking that your prohibitionist conceptions are unquestionable and mandatory for everyone. I am not attacking nor ignoring "the feminist perspective". To not blindly acquiesce with something is not to attack it. I am only acting as a philosopher, questioning the assumptions of the people, and being amazed for the reality and what I experience everyday, always something new or astonishing. Today, you dazzled me, with your consistency: while you ignore completely what is my sex, and despite all your theoretical paraphernalia about gender issues, you called me "him", which means that you just either did exactly what I did, which is using "the male as a neutral", or that you think that such a hard to tame person must be a man, because only a man would not unquestioningly agree with your feminist positions. Although this is only a commentary, because that does not matter too much, and thinking that that dismisses your feminist theories would be a fallacy. Please realise that my attitude is just a philosophical one, and that if you want to convince me -or any rational person- about your ideas, you need to argue and discuss instead of just calling me an insensitive person.

Did they offer you a scholarship? Can you explain the details of your scholarship?

Maybe they are putting you in the waiting list. It is good to have not listened yet, when you see that the others are being rejected.