Schopenhauerfanboy

My AOI is History of German Philosophy (mostly Kant, Nietzsche, and Schopenhauer).

I hope the committees will share your sentiment, but I'm afraid that at least one of the departments I emailed said "we find that the quantitative score does have some predictive value," but the professor in question has a second PhD in mathematics and may therefore have a "quantitative-bias" for lack of a better term

I'm sure some of you have already investigated this on other blogs, but this thread is worth re-posting here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/are-some-schools-using-undisclosed-gre-cut-offs-in-admissions-decisions.html In the comments section, profs from admissions committees weigh-in on the value they assign to the GRE. Seems like it's never a disqualifying factor in the first round of review unless other parts of the app are also bad (sub-optimal letters, lower grades, usually low GRE = booted in the first round, ceteris paribus). Suggests that within a certain threshold, low-GRE is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for having your application eliminated in the first round of reviews, although you could imagine a candidate with a perfect GRE score and terrible grades who might get rejected first round, but bracketing those kinds of cases I think the preceding statement holds..

Professional Conference would by a synonym here then! And, thanks, I'm hoping that they will count for something in the eyes of admissions committees !

I've been using the MaGoosh software, and my practice tests are coming out: 165 Verbal, 148 Quant. I'm not sure if that's an "artifact" of the software, or actual improvement from studying longer. In either case, I doubt that scoring a 5.5/165/148 vs., a 5.5/161/144 would be significant enough improvement to win over a committee. At this point, I might just hope that the particular committee members reviewing my application don't lend too much credence to the quant score, and hope that the rest of my application is good enough to win them over. And if the GRE sinks my app, then there's always the three Canadian schools. I should mention that I'm already in a Canadian PhD program ranked in a couple of areas in PGR, so I would be transferring programs with a 4.0 GPA from the first semester of my PhD studies. Not sure if that counts for anything.

A conference for which there was a blind, peer-review admission process (i.e. tenured profs reviewed the papers etc). The International Association for Philosophy and Literature's annual congress, meetings of the Canadian Philosophical Association, etc. Perhaps there's another term available (?), but I'm not familiar with it.

The University of Calgary offers an exceptional M.A. program and has placed recent graduates at NYU, Harvard, UPenn, Ohio State, U-Bloomington, Toronto, etc. The PhD program also doesn't "eclipse" the MA program: students in the latter still get ample attention from faculty, are fully integrated, receive ample funding, including SSHRC work-shops,etc The program is, however, geared towards students in Philosophy of Science, Logic, and the History of Analytic Philosophy, as the PGR rankings suggest. Nevertheless, there's a number of very reputable faculty members working in ethics, applied ethics, and related areas (e.g. action theory, ethics of belief, etc).

A fellow applicant for Fall 2017: Applying to the following programs: Syracuse, Western Ontario, McGill, Toronto, Baylor, Purdue, St. Louis, Boston U, Johns Hopkins, British Columbia, UT Knoxville, and New Mexico. B.A. GPA 3.9, M.A. GPA 3.9, 8 peer-reviewed conferences, two publications, good letters from full profs at top-5 Canadian MA program. Unimpressive GRE though, and quant score is bad(!) GREs 5.5 AW, 161 Verbal, 144 Quant. Hoping that my quantitative score won't sink my academic ship.

Thanks for the response. Western Ontario and UBC don't consider GRE at all, and McGill makes reporting your scores optional, although they "strongly encourage" it. I'm re-writing the GRE at the end of December, but my results won't be available before the deadlines of five of the american schools to which I applied. Here's to hoping.

I'm applying to a variety of American programs in the lower range of PGR top 50 (and some unranked schools): Syracuse, Boston, Baylor, New Mexico, St. Louis, etc, plus all the top Canadian programs. My stats are: Undergraduate GPA: 3.92, M.A. GPA: 3.9. I have 8 peer-reviewed conference presentations from across Canada, the USA, and Singapore, and two peer-reviewed publications. I won a SSHRC CGS M.A. Award (top Canadian federal award), and I can read German. I'm told that my sample and letters are really strong (coming from full professors at a top-5 Canadian M.A. program). But I haven't been able to score well on the GRE. I got 5.5. AW (98th percentile), 161 (88th Percentile Verbal), and a terrible 144 (18th Percentile) quantitative score. Will my quantitative score sink my application? What will happen to me!?