Schopenhauerfanboy

What area did you apply for?

Did anybody else apply to Tulane? I got a solicited email from the DGS that they will be releasing their results this Friday. I honestly have no idea if Tulane gets a lot of applicants or is a fringe school. I'd be really happy to go there, in either case. Plus NEW ORLEANS!

Brock is a really unique department, and does admittedly have some good people working in continental as well. But Guelph and McMaster are both significantly stronger programs for continental philosophy (all within a 90 minute radius). Brock has placed some people at Penn State, and one at Toronto's Religion PhD, but it generally performs a lot worse than McMaster and Guelph.

The University of Calgary has an excellent, highly funded M.A, program, but for your area you'd need to seek out specific faculty with whom you could work. For instance, you could do their philosophy of religion track, which would allow you to work with continental faculty who are technically in the religious studies department. In philosophy you would be interested in working with Mark Migotti (especially!), Lorraine Markotic, and Katrin Froese, so there'd be enough for a good committee there. You could also work with Morny Joy, Tinu Rupparell and others in religious studies. A lot of the course work is analytic, but you can doing a guided reading course and work with the specific faculty members I mentioned, to grow your main interest in French Philosophy. Again, your best bet is really to work with Barry Allen at McMaster - he is brilliant. He was a student of Richard Rorty's at Princeton and he has a background in analytic philosophy, but works mostly in Nietzsche, Deleuze, and Bergson now.. Can't go wrong. Your second best bet would be, as I said, to work with Mark Migotti and Lorraine Markotic at the University of Calgary. I know the University of Alberta has a good program too, but I am less familiar with their actual faculty...

Congrats on that offer - great program. I would have applied to 20 if I could, but I already spent close to 2000$ on my 12 applications (counting GRE, transcripts, etc).

I should also add that, unless you are doing Philosophy East-West type stuff, then Brock would not be the best choice. Would likely marginalize you from getting into highly regarded PhD programs too..

Boston College probably has been name recognition, but Villanova has an exceptional program for preparing their students to teach. To my understanding, the have courses on pedagogy built into the program, and give students ample opportunity to teach their own courses.

Praying for people to get offers they prefer to Boston U and Syracuse! I will likely be removing myself from the waitlists at Purdue and Baylor this week as well, and probably declining my offer from Tennessee too (depending on how my Skype chat with the DGS goes on Friday).

Simply put, I would have applied to more schools. Even the most exceptional applicants can get shut out by not applying to enough places. I would aim for at least 10 schools, but ideally closer to 20 if you can. A friend of mine, who is now a tenured professor and a graduate of UC-Riverside's PhD program, applied to 20 schools. He was shut out by 19 of them, but accepted at UC-Riverside. He was clearly good enough to have been accepted at most of the other programs as well, but his success was dependent upon him increasing the volume of his applications

Could be wrong, but I think they sent out more offers than they anticipate being accepted. So several people would have to turn down offers before they started appealing to backups. That was the impression I got from talking to them..

Did you graduate from Degrassi by chance?

I know they extended their application deadline (someone posted a screenshot of it somewhere earlier), so that probably accounts for why they are later than usual this year. What area are you applying for? I would be really happy to write my dissertation under Paul Russell.

I have a good feeling about you getting into Purdue.

Anybody heard from UBC?!?!

Yeah, I'm just using the lingo. I don't think "safe schools" (meaning schools to which you will almost certainly be accepted) exist.

He would be a really brilliant supervisor for your project, and he placed recent students of his at Stanford, Toronto, Penn State, and so on, so you'd be in good hands.

Also I wouldn't consider UNM "a safe school." They only get around 50 applicants but have 2 funded spots, so ~4% acceptance rates

If I was in your situation I'd do a funded MA program at McMaster University under Barry Allen and then apply to top PhDs

Did you decline your offer from SUNY Buffalo? Wondering why it's crossed out. Lurk mode over 9000.

yo thanks! Looks like you are cleaning up nicely - six admits! Any ideas about what offer you'll take?

Thanks! I am the "side-bitch" applicant, as it were.

Waitlisted at Boston U also! This time the only info was that I wasn't on the initial list of fellowship offers, but that I would receive an offer if enough initial finalists decline.

Indicated that it's a ranked waitlist but didn't release info about my spot. The supervisor with whom I wanted to work thought well of my sample - that was the only info I got, so hopefully that counts for something.

Did anyone else find the McGill letter particularly harsh? haha. "It will be impossible to admit you." My friend's read "We refuse to accept you." !!

Waitlisted at Syracuse! This is my top pick left (given that my MA thesis was on Fred Beiser). If you are planning to accept other offers, please let them know. Syracuse is my dream school for my dissertation -- not that the preferences of a stranger on the internet will persuade anyone anyways, but had to say it regardless!