Concordia

We'll know soon-- I start in a few weeks. Unlike most posters here, however, I'll be well into my 50s when/if I'm done, so many of the bugs of the British system are actually features to me. It should be noted that the UK DPhils do require a previous master's degree, so it's not a straight comparison of 3 years vs. the US. I had to figure out a proposal to apply, but it was based on some suspicions I developed while working my last dissertation. It will be curious to see if there's a good reason nobody has written on this topic before. [Imposter alert!] Also, Oxbridge terms are really very short (6-11 weeks, depending on who's counting), so one can spend at least half the year in the US doing research, attending conferences, or other useful things even if otherwise in residence for the full term. And, technically, you don't have to be in residence that many terms if all you want is the degree, although if you want to slide into a teaching role you'll obviously be best-positioned if you can stick around.

Depends on the program, of course, but do you want to be the least-academically-strong entrant into a field that may push you further along away from high earnings even if you are successful (especially given that you seem to have no money right now)? If you have a compelling reason for having done badly-- mental illness, family catastrophe-- and can prove that you'll do well, that is another thing. But it would have to be a remarkable display of potential to get your 1.9 past the gatekeepers.

Makes you wonder why more committees don't specify word limits. MS Word will happily keep you on track to achieve that. Back to OP: 11-point is pretty normal, but if even that takes you 10 pages over, find a discrete section you can cut-- and maybe summarize in one paragraph with a note if it's crucial to your main argument. My requirements were for 2x 2,000 words or a single 4-5,000-word essay. I split the difference by snipping two bits from a dissertation and leading each one with a brief explanatory paragraph. The whole thing was less than 5,000 words, but if anyone bothered to look, they'd have got verification of what topic I studied, that I understood a little theory, respected the limits of my conclusions (and some other poor bastard's)...

What would you do afterwards (i.e., what will the MA prepare you for)? More school? A gig in the outside world? And-- where is your edge-- either in interest level or some talent that nobody else has?

Once you pass your exams, do you get an MA? Perhaps, after that, a year's (medical) leave might help you get some perspective on what to do next. You might not be in the right environment to get your stuff together.

It sounds as though they are going to recommend admittance based on last year's invitation, no? How much more will they need to see?

Low-ish return, zero cost (not counting the time and opportunities lost). You could almost toss a coin.

At what cost (time/$$)?

Is there a file of your work (or evaluations of that work) you can give to #2, along with your CV? If she can speak credibly about your accomplishments as well as say you're likely to keep doing well what you've been doing, that might help.

With 170 verbal, chances are you can learn to write pretty well. If I were an admissions officer, that is all I'd want to know.

You're aiming at DC, but can the scholarship cover London? King's and UCL have programs that may or may not be competitive.

A few words in support of @maxhgns, if a bit less focused: I'm not a philosopher and was a lot less organized than OP after my freshman year. But... it seems that we're talking about two models of achievement. One is being better than everyone at a standard list of things (what in economics might be called a low-cost strategy-- crushing competitors in a commodity market), and the other is doing well at something a little different from what everyone else does (a product differentiation strategy). Put another way, we can think of comparing a single-score IQ vs a package of multiple intelligences. Now, a lot of the people who squirt through the filter will tell you that they really are better than everyone at everything that matters, and that "merit" is the source of their success. We're good, they're less good. Up to a point that is true, and I don't mean to diminish their ability. But unless you're ready to go right into the gladiator pit to fight those people at their game, you should first figure out what you can do better than everyone else. A riddle from an investment practitioner -- Q: How do you beat Bobby Fischer? A: Play him in tennis. That doesn't mean relaxing your standards, but at the moment it may mean discovering what you really love to do. At the end of the day, that may take you away from particular schools, or even away from philosophy as a discipline. But better to do that than find yourself struggling to get 96% when every other hotshot at Harvard (or wherever) gets 97% as a matter of course. If you have trained yourself to be good enough at the essentials, and also bring something unique to the party, you may find yourself filling an interesting niche.

Circumstances will vary a lot, so don't take too much advice here. My own adventure starts in the UK, where I will be a 7-hour flight from home at least half of the year. (Something like 8x3 weeks, with serious vacations.) I got along well with my supervisor during a part-time (modular) master's, and pretty much everything else I like to do will be close at hand, in quantity. And a lot of the "bugs" that would bother some younger students about not being in a US program are actually features for me right now. Luckily, my younger one is 18, and while needing a fair bit of support, is in a decent school/home environment to get it. Parents are aging, but not in any need of assistance that can't be given on my terms, at the moment. Others will have very different requirements, and YMMV. So do what will work for you, and assume that very few mistakes are irreparable if made thoughtfully.

The second MA proved to you what you don't want to do full-time. (Unless there's some cross-section between disciplines that only you can understand right now. If so-- then sell that!)

A professor (actually a "Professor") at LSE once explained the British system by way of furniture. When you arrive on the faculty, they give you nothing, so you have to stand up and lecture. As time goes on, you might get a desk, so you can become a reader. It is only after some decades that you'll get a chair so that you can sit down and call yourself a professor. Complicating this, I see that Oxford is now assigning roles like "assistant professor" to some of their junior faculty, even while addressing them as "Dr" and giving them more conventional titles on the directory. Presumably this is so that conversations with American colleagues can become less complicated. Oxbridge does have some other strange quirks. Even if you have a PhD from elsewhere, they'll give you an MA by incorporation so that you can be deemed worthy of teaching their students. Another tale from a teacher who'd been at Oxford as a junior-year student: he was told to look at 20 books before the next tutorial and develop an essay on them. He crawled in after a week admitting defeat, saying that he'd been able to read only through part of the second on the list. The Don looked down at him and said "I didn't tell you to read them-- I told you to look at them." I'm guessing that some variant of this confusion will work its way into some of the above discussions from time to time.

Is there some mix of law and philosophy that might be useful in academia? You may find less competition for those slots.

Just consider whether your scores will keep you out of a good program. If no, then by all means hurry up and use them. If yes, then why cut corners elsewhere in your application? Do what you need to do.

Are "serviceable" scores good enough to get you into the other programs? Noidea, but perhaps you shouldn't let them force you out too quickly.

This may not hold for your situation, but I used two coherent snippets from my master's dissertation-- plus explanatory paragraphs to establish context-- to keep under the 5,000-word maximum. I chose those passages largely because they showed off the best aspects of my research and writing, at least the ones that my examiners liked and therefore might have been mentioned in my recommendations. My doctoral proposal was tangentially related to previous work, but this was the closest I could get in a writing sample. I have no idea if any of the admissions committee members gave a damn one way or the other. One school I applied to actually didn't ask for samples. Their philosophy was that if your referees couldn't be bothered to sell your writing, they wouldn't waste time trying to see what nobody else noticed.

Depending on the school, you might also be able to do an MBA with a lot of education electives. I had classmates wanting to do real estate and planning; there wasn't a real estate concentration, so they took classes in architecture, law, and other related subjects elsewhere in the university. If you plan it right, you can get the best of both.

Also, make sure you are admitted to a new program before withdrawing from the first. If necessary, you could probably negotiate a leave of absence that will keep your options open.

As the philosopher said of the bran muffin.

Well, now you know.

I'm hoping to be too busy to try to be normal. If nothing else, I can remind myself that Gary Hart was about 10 years older than I am when he started his DPhil. Of course, he was a US Senator who might have slept with Donna Rice, so the situations aren't totally comparable.

Moving on to the verbal part of your applications, make sure your spell-check scrubs the "h" out of "Worcester."