bridgephil

Oh so you meant that you don't like stuff that comes out of the Derrida/Lacan tradition specifically? Normally I've heard the term 'continental' apply to Foucault, various marxists, phenomenology, existentialism, as well as postmodernism/posthumanism (whatever they're calling it these days) and all that stuff in the general Derrida/Lacan tradition. I mean, I'm not going to lie, I'm not a huge fan of some of it, either. One of the things I love about analytic philosophy is how clear they are, and one of the things I hate most about continental stuff is how unclear and hand-wavy they can be. But I do think it's a bit unfair to just say that it's all uninteresting or that it's not really philosophy. Also, I thought that posthumanists were interested in *kind of* rejecting at least Derrida. But I could be wrong. It's not really my AOI.

Me too! Lol I was on the waitlist at MIT too, which was also my top choice xD

You would have to be exceedingly knowledgeable about 'continental' philosophy if this claim of yours is going to carry any authority. I'm going to be a good Bayesian and say that my prior that never in your life have you read and actively tried to understand and engage with more than two or three continental papers is...88%. Also, super weird considering your AOI? Maybe I didn't understand you.

Yeah, I know that funding varies a lot by field. I have already emailed the admissions director and asked her to put me in touch with grad students who have the same/similar funding package as me. Regardless of whether or not the average stipend for philosophy (not psychology) phd programs is $18,000 or $23,000, what I'm really trying to figure out is whether below $15,000 (actually, to be honest, below $14,000 prior to fees, and closer to $10,000 than $15,000 after fees) is normal. It's sounding kind of like it's not, which makes me wonder if the department basically just admitted me with partial funding and decided not to be explicit about it.

One of the phd programs I've been accepted to is offering me a TA stipend that's well below $15,000 a year, and that's before fees (which sound like they will be in the neighborhood of $1500 or so). The TAship would be normal, involving like 20 hrs a week. The letter didn't mention anything about additional opportunities for financial aid. Federal minimum wage (assuming full time work) is about $15,000 a year, and the school is in a high cost of living area. There's no way anybody could live on this stipend alone - they would have to get a part time job, take out loans, or apply for a heck of a lot of scholarships or grants (and hope that you manage to get them every year!). A part time job might not be so bad if you didn't have to spend 20 hrs a week on teaching assistant stuff in addition to classes, but I feel like there's no way anyone could put in the research, work, and sheer energy required to essentially work a full time job (I feel like a TAship + a part time job on the side would amount to that much), take classes, and churn out a dissertation all at the same time. Normally, I think of funding offers as being, on average, somewhere around $23,000 (plus or minus like a couple thousand). But I've heard of funding offers getting as low as like, 15-16,000 for cash-strapped departments (I think typically these schools are lower ranked, too), and as high as the lower to mid thirty thousands. The weirdest thing is, this school is a top 20 PGR program, so you'd think they'd be able to pay their students enough to live on, or at least pay them at or above annual federal minimum wage. Does anyone else think this is weird, or gotten offers like this themselves?

Just out of curiosity, what's the appeal of UCLA, Oxford, and MIT if you've got offers from Rutgers and USC? Given your AOI, it seems like eliminating those others would be a no-brainer.

Just declined an offer from Syracuse.

Has anyone else been accepted to UT Austin without a fellowship? If so, what does your stipend look like? (You can pm me if you don't want to post it)

I've heard back from Amherst now. But I was also offered a Puryear fellowship, and the email was pretty unofficial. So chances are they still haven't sent out the rest of their acceptances.

I just declined an offer of admission to Maryland. Hope that helps someone out!

There might be? I think the big worry is sort of like that it's intellectually incestuous or something. Presumably if someone did their undergrad in like, physics or something, then got an MA somewhere else, that worry probably wouldn't be founded. And I have the same thing! I thought it was weird, too.

I've actually asked a couple professors at this (I'm not at UW, but I am currently finishing undergrad at a PGR ranked school), and they said that even if they like you, they'll often reject you for your own good. Apparently it looks really bad in academia (esp. philosophy) to get your phd from the same school you did your undergrad in and it can hurt your chances significantly in the job market. I think it might also make the school look bad? I totally get where you're coming from though - I really like the school I'm at now, so I wanted to apply here, but my professors said they wouldn't accept someone who did their undergrad here.

At least we have each other.

Has anyone who applied to UW Madison not heard back at all?

Just got waitlisted at Brown. For those of you cool kids who've been accepted to Brown (congratulations by the way), I and I'm sure everyone else on the waitlist would of course really appreciate if you could let them know as soon as you know if you get a better offer somewhere. ESPECIALLY if your interests are lemm-y. *sigh* Also, best of luck to those above me still hoping to hear from Brown. It looks like they sent out their rejections, so if you still haven't heard back there is definitely still hope for wait listing.

I applied to 13 schools. Application fees ranged from $50 to $120, on average it was like $75 per school. It cost me $10 per school to send electronic transcripts, and one school I had to send in paper transcripts, which was $30. And it was $27 per school to send them your GRE scores. So on average, it was like $110, $115 maybe per school. It came out to like $1500 in total. If you count how much it cost to take the GRE ($160 I think?) and the test prep book ($30), we're talking closer to $1700 in total. Would probably be more than that if you took a GRE prep course or something fancy like that.

Yeah so I know there are some really dumb incentives to value the GRE, like fellowships and all that. And I know that most philosophers don't care too much about GRE scores. I suppose my big gripe is that there are a sizable minority of (mostly analytic) philosophers who do care about the GRE scores. In certain cases, I've heard of people who regularly work on admissions committees taking poor GRE Q or VR scores to basically discredit a good writing sample (the idea being that the student might have gotten help on the writing sample, whereas their GRE scores somehow reveal their true, raw potential), which personally I think is a load of crap. Anyway, on kretschmar's point about the scores showing that someone is dedicated to being a good applicant, I can see what you mean, but I don't really think it makes valuing the GRE scores - in particular the quant - any less arbitrary. Most of us philosophy people probably have decently large working vocabularies and can spare a couple hours to study vocab or practice writing under a time limit. But for a lot of us, myself included, doing well on the Q section would have basically meant spending 3-5 hours a week studying math tricks for an entire semester, which seems like it *shouldn't* be necessary, even though it currently kind of is. I agree with everyone's points about the system being screwed up. I spent $30 on a test prep book, $200 (?) to take the GRE, and then $27 to send the scores to each school. And then there were the application fees. Applying to grad school really adds up. Also, the schools I applied to are mostly analytic, and I'm looking to study some very lemmy type stuff, so my Q scores might be more important for me getting admitted than people who applied to continental programs, but it is always nice to hear success stories from people with Q scores like mine! God, this week has been so slow.

For all their flaws (the fact that they are timed, the fact that the verbal reasoning section is at least 50% a vocabulary test, etc.), the verbal reasoning and analytic writing sections test for skills that you actually do need to be a good philosopher. Vocabulary aside, the verbal reasoning test does test your ability to analyze complicated prose, identify faulty reasoning, discern author intent, etc. Verbal reasoning/logic stuff, basically. The analytic writing section also tests your ability to do those things (although less so than verbal reasoning), and on top of that it tests your ability to explain and synthesize information and make structured, organized arguments. It seems to me like the analytic writing section should be the most relevant of the GRE scores for evaluating philosophy candidates, which is strange because most departments basically don't care about AW at all since they have your writing sample. Basically this is all just me leading up to complaining about the quant section. Why is it relevant at all? (Gah, angst) I think the idea is that hey, math is kind of like logic (esp. formal logic), so your quant score might give us a rough indicator of how good you are at logic. Admittedly, it does seem pretty similar to formal logic, so I could see reasonable people using the quant score when evaluating philosophy applicants who want to specialize in formal logic or mathematical logic or something similar. But most philosophers don't use formal logic in their papers, and even when they do, they make their reasoning explicit verbally (or at least, most of them do). You don't necessarily need to be good at formal logic to be good at philosophy - you just need to be decent at discerning the informal logic implicit or explicit in people's arguments, which are usually written in such a way that even people who are bad with symbols can understand them, and you need to be good enough at logic in general to make coherent, logical arguments. So just use the quant score to evaluate applicants who want to study formal logic (or something like it), and ignore it for the rest of us. But wait! People who like the quant section will argue that the quantitative reasoning test measures some sort of general logical ability, an ability that is relevant to being a good philosophy person in general regardless of whether you do formal logic or not. But this 'general' logical ability, if it is indeed relevant to doing most philosophy at all, starts sounding an awful lot like verbal reasoning and analytic writing. I seriously can't imagine how being good at math could be related to doing philosophy in general (except maybe formal logic and closely related subjects) without basically telling myself that it measures some sort of very general logical ability that ends up looking a lot more similar to the other portions of the GRE. If this ability looks more like verbal reasoning or analytic writing insofar as it is related to most philosophy, then why not just focus on VR and AW scores? Why the hang up on Q? Also, it strikes me that all the same arguments for why AW are not important should also apply to Q and VR. Either your GRE scores reflect some of your inherent ability or potential to be good at philosophy, or they don't. If they don't, then obviously we should trash them and stop making applicants pay a ridiculous amount of money to take the GRE, prep, and send in their scores. If, on the other hand, your GRE scores DO reflect some of your inherent ability/potential as a philosopher, then presumably it's because they measure your ability or potential to engage with the literature on complicated philosophical topics, interpret arguments, analyze arguments, and construct arguments (I'm taking it as a given that being good at this stuff is basically what makes one a good philosopher). So either this ability is reflected in your writing sample, or it's not. If it is not, then writing samples shouldn't matter. If it is, then all the arguments for basically completely dismissing analytic writing scores apply, and admissions committees should dismiss Q and VR scores just as much as they dismiss AW scores. I think if anything they should be even more dismissive of quant scores because philosophy majors are way more likely to be in practice with analytic writing (since they actually have to write on a regular basis, which means that they can't just let their analytic writing skills atrophy) than they are at Q. The Q section measures something totally irrelevant to doing well in philosophy (except, perhaps, formal logic) and it seems completely ridiculous to suggest, as most admissions committees seem to, that it is more important than analytic writing. Anyway, you can probably tell from this that my quant score is abysmal (alas, 43rd percentile). *sigh* Apparently when I'm stressed out about the admissions process (have only heard back from one school, and it was a rejection) I just angrily analyze the idea that the weakest part of my application should be given any weight at all.