Schwarzwald

Yeah, so I told most of my schools I'd give them their decisions on the 10th (Sunday) However, I'm going to send out some today. Sadly, I can't do too much yet, as even though Brandeis and FSU are my top choices, I have a partner I'm also trying to work around. With that said, I'll be declining my fully funded Kent State offer, fully funded University of Toledo offer, and unfunded University of Florida offer today. I will be declining Boston College (unfunded), Boston University (unfunded), and Loyola Marymount (funded) by Sunday. I still don't have all the information for Brandeis, CSULB, or Marquette, so as soon as they get back to me, I will make decisions on those as well. Hope this helps folks. And sorry to everyone waiting, as a person who was waiting, and is now sitting on a lot of offers, now that I have everything in, I will try to be as quick as I can.

In off the waitlist at Brandeis. :]

In at California State University, Long Beach, and now I've heard back from every school. Phew.

Wait...so Do we have to decided by April 15 in the sense that at 11:59AM April 14, financial offers are no longer guaranteed, or are we to decide by April 15 in the sense that on April 16th, all offers will be susceptible to retraction?

I've broken ties by faculty-student ratio, the areavibes score, and the highest overall ranked PGR school they'd placed someone at within the last 3 years.

is this not a thing? I've been asking this outright almost every email. Explains why I still haven't heard back from BC, lmfao.

In at BU and LMU. Probably going to visit BU to see if I can fall in love enough to pay. LMU is high on my list.

Last time I solicited BU was 18 days ago. Is that enough time for them to have forgotten who I am?

I'm in a similar situation with FSU and UF. FSU has the upside that seemingly you've been accepted into a PhD program since they promote from within; it has the downside that if you're trying to diversify your education you might offend the faculty.

I've worried about this, and put forth some effort to build good habits, but I have only been building these habits for a semester or so. Would you be open to telling us some of the rituals or organizational techniques that helped you stay on track?

I'm having the same problem. To try to keep ourselves motivated, me and my partner have two big calendars and we put red X's on each day we complete so we can keep the goal in view. It sort of helps.

Whoa dude, I'm sorry if I offended you. I was not trying to be intentionally annoying, I thought we were just having a conversation, and I thought my points were fair. Once again, I apologize if I annoyed you.

One of the intentions of my post is that it is very easy and defensible to misread vague statements, so yes, I did misread, multiple times. Why is (1) solid? Where is the analyticity in such a proposition? There seems to be no rule of logic that states the nature of some number of suffering events is such that some set of agents has the power to mitigate them. There especially doesn't seem to be one that points out gughok as part of such a set. So, if it's "patently the case," that (1), this sort of bruteness must be based in facts about the world. Although, it's a presupposition to state that there are a sufficient amount of such cases without pointing toward some set of facts about the world, which concerns my point in the original post about presupposing and implying moral and metaphysical circumstances that are not universal by any means and definitely not, "patently the case." What if the number of suffering events is such that some subset of suffering events is all that is immediately available to gughok to mitigate, but gughok does not have the means to mitigate them, so in a very real sense they are not available to gughok, but just proximally extant? (This is the question to which I suppose the propositions regarding the power to act and the monk conundrum, in my first post.) These means don't have to be material, it could be that gughok has not been afforded the perspective, maturity, or political inclinations to discern what a "suffering event," is, or that those very inclinations cause him to see some events as not suffering events that others do. This goes to my point concerning the ideological nature of presupposing moral frameworks. The proposition that there is a sufficient number of suffering events is also contingent upon an ideological perspective, not just some facts about the world. Suffering to the proletariat is profit to the capitalists, although this is not an exclusive dichotomy. This is what I discussed when I mentioned Zizek. So, it is not "patently the case," that (1). (1) is contingent upon a set of facts about the world that has not been effectively posited or argued but only presupposed, and an ideological perspective that has been assumed but not defended. You seem to see the looseness of (2) and (3), so I'll ignore them, although it should be obvious that the relativity discussed above also applies to both in discerning "productivity." Even stacking the deck in this argument's favor and stating that there are a finite number of suffering events and of that finite number some set are inherently mitigable, it still does not follow that gughok can or must sacrifice a career in philosophy to be a productive member of society, or that the latter concept is even coherent outside of a very particular conception of the world, which still has not been fully explicated. Maybe he ought to based on your convictions, but the leap from "ought" to "patently the case" seems large. Also, we should've been using this venting thread for debates this whole time.

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.

Admitted to University of Florida. Three more to go folks, and then I can begin my journey toward freedom from this process (for 2 years...).

Thank you kind friends!

Who's trying to decline Brandeis? C'mon now, I know yall not trying to pay that money. Just send an email saying "Thanks but no thanks," and then mention in passing that you couldn't possibly take a spot away from the great and magnificent Schwarzwald, and that they'd be mistaken not to extend an offer to him.

Got admitted to Toledo. I'm feeling the love from these smaller schools.

If placing people at Duke, Emory, Georgetown, and Boston University is a "tough year," I think we'll all be fine. My two cents, at least on the FB 2016 applicant group, it seemed to me that people with MAs/BPhils (from Toronto, Brandeis, Oxford, etc) were doing well for themselves. I'm open to more information though. There is a rumor that MAs are looked down upon by the more prestigious institutions; perhaps, with MAs becoming a more standard course of action, those institutions are drawing a line in the sand to maintain their prejudice. I think that's unlikely though, especially given some of the success stories in the Acceptance thread. For me it seems the MAs are doing their intended purpose: allowing applicants to strengthen their resumes and get into high-ranking institutions. I honestly think any dip in results should be attributed to the misinformation that an MA is not required to get into a top PhD program. I think we're in the last or close to the last years in which an MA strengthens your application. I think people are waiting for institutions or the entire community to state that MAs are a preferred route before they hastily say that an MA is required; however, by the time a consensus like that is reached in the community, the MA won't be an advantage whatsoever. It seems to me it's not much of an advantage now, as it was in previous years, and so perhaps people have expectations that have not caught up with the fact that the MA is the standard course of action for many competitive students, and thus the advantage of having one is significantly limited, as opposed to say 10-15 years ago when many great MA programs were formed and the advantage was high (I'm thinking Brandeis, GSU, Tufts, etc).

I've got a few questions, and I couldn't find a listing for current MA grads on the website. Anyone down to answer a few of my questions?

In at Marquette.

I'd actually prefer the 10th. Have you seen philosophers? Not necessarily the most prompt bunch.

I'm just here to scream into a virtual pillow: I hate these unfunded master's offers. I recently got an email that stated there was very little chance for even university funding on my behalf because they treated master's students like "paying customers." This was from a highly ranked and very prestigious program. I'm a poor guy from a indigent family, and it just feels like I'm being exploited. One of my primary motivators -- freedom from poverty, is being dangled in front of my face with the catch that I must endure greater poverty to achieve it. Something that just wouldn't be the case were I from a higher class. If I was from a higher background, the headline for me would be "Boy gets into great school and loves it" not "Poor douche bag gets poorer trying to claw his way out of the grave." It just sucks. However, one of the main parts that sucks is that if I was truly a great student, I'd have more funded offers from better or equivalently good places, and so ultimately it's my own stupidity I have to blame. Which also sucks, especially since I know I slacked off at times (like all the times) mostly because I didn't understand how competitive I was suppose to be until the end of my undergraduate career, and I didn't appropriately study for the GRE. I feel like I'm so close to something yet so far away, and my dreams are being used to extort money from me, which seems egregious since I'm already at the bottom of the totem pole. (Why can't they pick on people their own size? Lol). Couple this with the fact that even if I had the money, I'd have to deal with trying to impress the faculty for attention when they have better qualified and funded PhD students in front of them jut makes the situation harsh and unpleasant. I do have a funded offer elsewhere, and am wait listed for funding at some places, to which I am very grateful and happy. However, the place that sent the message is quite a bit more prestigious and has a better placement record, to which they know, and which is why they can be charging these exorbitant prices in the first place. Anyway, everyone carry on now, just had to ragesadblog a bit.

What are you guys talking about? I'm in this to make them Badiou bucks.