MtnDuck

Yep, not HPS.

Checking the old inbox for acceptances after another week:

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).

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).

I would just email the director of admissions directly and tell them that you have a different offer that you will definitely accept. (There is probably a way to do this online in some of the systems, but I would say even if you do that still email the director of admissions, since they might not notice that you've done it in the system, etc.--at least in our system we still have access to withdrawn applications and they look just like regular ones.)
In addition to the reasons given above, this helps admissions committees A LOT! If you withdraw your application, then we can offer the spot we might have offered to you directly to the person who would be first on the waitlist, instead of waitlisting them. (Or, if we were on the fence about you, we can stop worrying about you altogether and just move on.)

I was a "finalist" for Penn State's program, but I declined the offer to interview because I had been admitted to Vanderbilt which is a better fit for my AOI. I hope that ended up helping somebody but somewhat doubt it did.

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).

To echo what MtnDuck said: the effect cascades. By your decision impacts hundreds of people indirectly, and at least one person directly. Your decline opens up a spot which enables someone to decline their lesser offers. If most shifting happens in April, there just isn't enough time for adcoms to go down the waitlist. If there is on average 3 day per offer turnaround, the adcomms can't get through 10 people on their waitlist in 3 days -- when the declines really happen.
Objections:
But they are willing to fly me out! This is a great opportunity to visit schools and network with professors I am interested in.
This is really an unfair tease. If you know you aren't taking their offer, then you're going on false pretenses, wasting their department's money, and making people wait for minimal gains. Is it really a good idea to use people to sight-see? It isn't like you're going to get a letter of recommendation. Just add them on PhilPeople for pete's sake. But if I decline that doesn't impact you. So what?
For some people, if they were given an offer before the 15th, they would accept your school's offer. You are literally impacting someone's ability to get into a school or get into a better school. It doesn't have to be about impacting anyone you know. The sooner the impact, the sooner others can impact others down stream. I am under no obligation to make any decision before April 15. If I wait, that's my prerogative.
True. Nothing is forcing you to make a decision, and definitely not to rush you. But if nothing will change your mind about the decision, then why take the time? If you are still unsure, that's one thing, but if you already have an obviously better offer, then this shows a character defect when you know this impacts other people's futures. Comparative harm account: you're harming people. You have a right to harm people, but that doesn't mean harming is right. Whatever my choice and whenever I decide to notify them, such course of action would be statistically normal. You cannot expect me to act otherwise.
Okay, I won't argue that it is obligatory, but clearly you don't see supererogatory actions as worthy of aspiration. I hope you're not working in ethics. It seems like it could be in my interest to hold onto the offer. I can use it as leverage.
Sure, if you think they are really comparable. But I'd argue it might even be in your interest to decline. The school might come back with a counter-offer that would not have been available if you didn't give them ample time to put together a more lucrative package.

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).

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).

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).

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).

It's that time in the application season--time to create a thread for declining offers/withdrawing applications. If you're declining an offer/withdrawing an app, post about it here.

Accepted to Ohio State with full funding! 

Somehow I was hoping this thread was about C. S. Peirce.
(My intuition is that you needn't worry too much!)

@MtnDuck I won't get my hopes up then! Thanks for the info!

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. 

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. 

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. 

Yeah dude, you sound *exactly* like someone I’d wanna have in my grad school cohort and work with for 6 years

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. 

Hey, I remember you from last year's cycle when we were on the MIT waitlist together! Congrats on a fantastic acceptance!
 
Congrats, well-deserved!
 
Congrats! Another great option for you.
 
Congratulations! That's a number of big ones today.
 
+1 (alas, I have run out of reactions today)

Oh no I do know that. That wasn't the issue.