Ibycus

Congratulations!

Thanks, I appreciate the info!

If UT Austin really doesn't have an official waitlist, I expect people will likely get in off of the secret one. There was a story of someone getting into UT Austin on April 16th one year on the FB group; not sure whether the person had been contacted before that.

You know they are somewhat infamous for never informing some students of rejections, right?

Colorado offered me $500 for travel expenses (of which I will use like $200), and I get to keep whatever of the $500 I don't use. So it's like a vacation to Boulder that pays better than my normal job

It's a good thing UVA rejected me because I forgot my username and password on their application site big time

I didn't major in philosophy and this is my fourth year after undergrad, so I'm going in rather blind on my visit next week. I have done some light preparation for the prof who has agreed to talk with me, and I will do more for others if they agree as well. (I read the prof's website and a few of his papers.) Not quite sure what to expect, so it would be nice to hear from people with experience visiting.

haha, UVA totally camoflages the "apply" button. I have spent like an hour of my life on various days not being able to find it. I also find UCSD's system really confusing. UNC had the best webpage of places I applied IIRC. It's also surprising how different the different apps are.

To be fair, a 154/144 is still well over 200. I suppose you meant 300?

Rejected from the MAPH at Chicago; feeling more and more lucky each day that I got into Colorado :-O

Oh, sorry, that wasn't clear: I meant "officially waitlist people" as opposed to just having them on a secret list. I live in Austin and it's my first choice, so I hope they don't make me suffer in uncertainty for another month....

Austin is driving me crazy. Why did they reject that one person a week ago? Are they going to waitlist more people? Secret waitlist? Someone mentioned on the FB group a past Austin admission on April 16th, lol.

One of my friends is a first-year in the Tulane PhD program working primarily with Ronna Burger and Richard Velkley. I'm a big fan of Ronna's Bible lectures on Youtube!

Yeah, my problem was sort of that I can't narrow my interests down much further than "normative and applied ethics" at this point. I could say I'm some sort of consequentialist, but I didn't even really want to play that card in the statement of purpose either. So while I listed some problems in ethics that happen to interest me, it was hard to select programs that fit much better than others. This is why in some sense I should have just applied to like 30 of the top 50 PGR places, but ain't nobody got time for that...

Good advice. I ended up regretting "only" applying to eight schools (and spending $1000 dollars in this process), though I did luck out with Colorado.

ack I hope you get that last-chance acceptance!

And the UCSD rejection comes as well! Hey, at least I'm getting out of app limbo here

Oh, uh, I am pretty certain that means they have 7 spots to fill, and I believe every department accepts more students than they will ultimately take. Chicago is kinda close -- IIRC they accept 10 and try to land about 7. But most places cast a slightly wider net, is my sense -- maybe they accept about 15-20 and get about 6 new attendees per year.

Oh, 7 and 2 were the number of admitted students, not the ultimate number of attendees desired? Wow, that's harsh!

Rejected from UVA with the ole 1 AM email, RIP.

I will detail the weaknesses in my apps as well; my case may be instructive for others. I went to a Great Books college for undergrad, and my degree is in "Liberal Arts," not philosophy. Of my letter writers, one has an MA but no PhD, one has a PhD in Political Theory, and one has a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought from Chicago, so technically no philosophy PhDs. I would have chosen philosophy PhD folks ideally, but I thought it better to go with the people who knew my work best and who could write me the best recs, and they had other advanced degrees. I assume my letters were a weakness, especially since my undergrad institution is kinda hermetically sealed from academia. My writing sample was a fresh essay I wrote this year (three years out of undergrad) on the Repugnant Conclusion. (I intentionally wrote on recent analytic philosophy to show that I care about stuff besides the Great Books.) I got a little feedback from my letter writers but did it basically solo. I was worried I would come off as a raving lunatic, but Colorado said they liked it, so I guess it could have been worse. My SOP was minimalist and non-committal. I did not tailor it to individual programs besides a basic university name drop for each one at the end. I'll say sample and SOP were probably kinda neutral for me. My GPA was 3.92 (3.94 in the last two years), and I aced the GRE. I assume these were my strengths. Colorado accepted me, Chicago rejected me, and the other six places I applied have accepted others, but have told me nothing. It looks quite possible that I will go 1/8, but there is still a sliver of hope at UT Austin for example. A friend from undergrad who went to Stanford Law told me that a prof there said their philosophy PHD program will basically never accept a student with just a non-philosophy BA, so shooting for some top 20s may have been too ambitious on my part.

I'd guess the biggest issues are grades and Quant GRE. It would be troubling to me as an ad com member that your philosophy GPA is significantly lower than your overall GPA, and, as you mentioned, that might make them think you'd be better off studying languages or religion. The GRE might be an opportunity to offset that somewhat, but a low Quant GRE score tells the same story. I'm not sure how much continental programs care about math stuff, but if they care at all, I think that could kill your application on its own given how competitive the process is. I don't know anything about Gadamer, but as you point out, maybe your SOP was a bit obscure. If you can write on something you're sure ad com members care a lot about, I think it's to your advantage. Good luck with religion if you choose to go that route! I considered it for a while as well. P.S. Just finished rereading The Trial, and I'm feeling like the admissions committees have me seated before the Law at this point....

Sorry about the possible shutout. For what it's worth though, I don't think you need to be ultra-specific about your projected dissertation in your statement of purpose. What you put down sounds reasonable to me. I've read that ad coms don't expect you to have everything figured out right off the bat.

I'm leading a book group here in Austin tomorrow on Chekhov's story "In Exile."

haha, you should tell them the chances of you submitting the transcript are "halfway decent," but might improve with some more positive news (-;