MtnDuck

One school has released interview invitations today and several schools have switched to using interviews in recent years (Baylor, Boston, DePaul, Penn State, Chicago, Iowa, UC Irvine, Villanova). Since last year folks wanted to talk with one another about what questions to ask and get advice, here is a thread for that! See also this post from @directingdirections(who in turn was sharing information from a previous year) with potential questions to ask.

I commented on the FB page, but I'll be linking the sheet I've been used by the end of the week. The sheet folks have in mind is https://philosophyadmissions.wordpress.com/. Interview invitations just came out for Irvine (LPS) so I want to get predictions up soon for everything else. (I haven't been checking this as often, apologies for missing the questions)

If you see any other errors feel free to make a comment on the spreadsheet! Unfortunately since things are crowdsourced errors can slip through ? I did an audit in late November and thought I double checked the deadlines, but I must have missed that one. I'll do another audit for the remaining schools today to see if any other errors didn't get fixed! Update: found one error (Feb 2 instead of Feb 1 for one school) and everything else looked on accurate for the PhD program list.

For the last two years I've used the spreadsheet to track acceptances, waitlists, and rejections after folks applied. This year I want it to be useful as folks apply rather than after all the applications are in. Here's the new spreadsheet: Philosophy Admissions 2020 Spreadsheet It has a list of schools (100ish PhDs and 30ish MAs) along with their respective deadlines, application fees (and fee waiver information), transcript type required (official/unofficial), GREs (yes/no/sometimes), and other info. You can also sort it by using a personal filter to look at only the schools you care about. If folks want to share the spreadsheet, feel free to do so using bit.ly/PhilAdm (this is so I can see how many folks access it but I just see a #). -L

Would you be able to find out what day that was by chance? It's one of the last PhD schools I don't have info for yet wrt/ the spreadsheet

"All of the students who have been accepted with full funding (our highest-ranked applicants) have been informed of the positive decision in their case. However, it is still relatively early in the process, and the deadline for acceptance of offers is not until April 15th. In the meantime, whether or not other applicants to the program will be offered admission will depend on how many outstanding offers are accepted. As I hear back from these applicants, especially those who have declined an offer from us, I will inform applicants ranked lower on the list for funding."

I'm emailing them now <muzak plays> Do note that there was a discrepancy on their website this year as to when applications were due, so that may have slowed things down.

I know that some California schools (at least Davis) supposedly ran into funding problems last year and had more restrictions on admitting folks so, if true and if applicable to UCLA then it could be that they have to admit a few fewer. But that would be the worse case scenario. My bet would be for at least 5 folks being admitted (one year it looked like 9ish?) but so far there just aren't enough reports this year to guess anything with any certainty ?

I've only seen one claimed acceptance in the group (that was via messenger). On the group there were 4 claimed WL spots (which doesn't help you gauge things I know). For past years based on reporting it looks like the average is somewhere between 5-7 people offered acceptances (not counting any later offers from the WL)

I'll DM you

I took a quick look at the admissions sheet and it looks like there was a direct claim on acceptances over in the FB chat/FB group (not everyone is on TGC and FB, so there probably is some disconnect if/when info gets shared across the platforms ? )

It has been my pleasure to edit/fix the spreadsheet for this cycle--and I'm already planning some tweaks for the future based on the feedback I've gotten over the past two years For next year's cycle, be on the lookout for a tab/spreadsheet (currently the "work in progress tab") that will have deadlines, application fees/fee waivers, info on GREs (needed or not), unofficial vs official transcript requirements, and the like for most of the universities that have been flagged for inclusion on the spreadsheet.

Hi there again (I remember responding to you last year as well)--current UW student here. I don't know info about the waitlist (and from past years it is unclear if they admit off of it based on AOI or just go down a list. Last year only one person was admitted off of it so I don't have a lot to extrapolate from). For class size, last year they were initially restricted to 4 but managed to get the number up to 5 after someone qualified for a university fellowship (or so the rumor mills goes). For this year I know two of the folks who were offered admission and I would suspect that the class size will be between 4-6 with the lower end being more likely based on financial restrictions that probably haven't changed since last year ? This is just a guess though since this isn't the type of info they tell current students either.

There have been a few explicit UVA acceptances claimed over on FB, so it doesn't look like they only have the WL out.

There was one report of a ND acceptance earlier this evening on the FB chat. That was the only one I've seen reported so far

Just to double check: you're claiming Indiana (and it's regular not HPS)?

I would say that it sounds like you are waitlisted for funding. In general, it is not recommended to pay for a MA in philosophy (there are other people on here who have spoken at length about that, so I'd recommend finding their posts!). At my previous MA institution, I don't believe any unfunded student finished while I was there. To be honest, I'm not quite tracking the relevancy of mentioning the TA? Would it have an impact on you in some sense? (This is meant as a legitimate question, not a sarcastic one. Also, since I don't want to clutter this feed I'm PMing you some info about that situation since there are a lot of distorted narratives going around and we as a discipline need to be mindful of such things)

It has been confirmed in the FB message group.

I would also like to add-- if you know you're not going to attend an institution, please don't wait until April 15th to tell the department that you are going elsewhere. This also goes for waitlists--if you can take yourself off of them the department can go to the next person if a spot opens up and not wait to hear back from you first! I know this may seem (very) obvious, but I've had a few previous colleagues wait until the 15th deadline to tell all/most of the schools they would be going elsewhere including the ones that they had already ruled out as live possibilities. Sometimes folks will have very little time when they receive a last minute offer to decide on whether or not to say yes or no and to figure out how it compares to any other offers they already have. The earlier the waitlists get moving, the better off everyone is (and sometimes previously rejected folks can receive an offer--e.g. UVA last year).

In past years there have been two main waves of rejections. One usually goes out mid-late February and then another goes out in March if the past 3 years are anything to go by.

Ehh, it plausibly wouldn't be legally iffy or against the law. I was on several hiring committees at an R1 and after you have HR talk at you for a few hours about affirmative action (myth vs reality)...it tends to stay with you for a while. Even more so when you also have to guide undergrads through how it works in a philosophy course. When you have two equally qualified candidates, it wouldn't be against the law to at the end of the day choose the candidate that is a person of color, a woman, a first gen, etc. AA in the US is legal in a number of contexts and it's not like they said "And we're going to take all the guy candidates and exclude them" <shoves box into trash>. If they happened to notice that they had great candidates this year and that a number of them happened to be women, great, I'm glad we have more women in the discipline doing really well and deciding to apply to go to grad school. If this round they happen to have more women that they offer admission to--cool! Chances are they are all exceedingly well qualified and just as qualified if not more qualified than the folks that didn't get offered a slot this time around (AA may not have even come into play at all tbh). The number of hoops that we would all have to jump through to think that they aren't qualified (not saying you're doing this, but I've been in departments where the men most certainly did and it was egregious) are, well, hoops I think our discipline would be better off consigning to the garbage pile where they belong. That and grad school admissions are already arbitrary AF and can depend on who is in the room, who reads your sample, whether the folks on the committee care about GREs that year or not, whether someone on the committee wants someone good at math (how someone I know got into Stanford), and a bunch of other random things that are totally out of our control.

Just to make sure I update the spreadsheet correctly, is this Univ of South Florida?

Did they let you know of their own accord or did you reach out to them?

The FB group and chat has had folks claim both Oregon acceptances and waitlist. As for BC, they've done snail mail every year that I've looked at. So far there haven't been any claimed and confirmed reports for the PhD other than the one that I wouldn't put a lot of faith in unless it gets claimed. It has taken up to Feb 22nd if not until March for things to roll in at least some of the time though. Here are the past few years (2016-2018) but the results page has more: February 8 M February 7 T February 1?/22 R

Someone in the FB group/FB chat says they got an email (acceptance). Not sure about the phone call submission on the results page since they historically don't call folks