MarcelPr

Peking University (Google it :D) Philosophy education in China truly has its flaws, as its whole system of higher education. The main reason is that the system was basically inherited from the Soviet Union, meaning that its main purpose is to train technical specialists, so the whole curriculum is pretty much fixed from the moment you enter college. And it's a disaster when you want to educate philosophers in this way.. But it's getting better.

Agreed. And they are really supportive, plus my POI even emailed me personally to say hi and shared a manuscript of his.

Quite reliable, and the applicant's qualifications are astonishingly strong.. But I don't know if the rejection was a formal one.

A friend of mine told me someone had already been rejected by Princeton.

Haha no offense taken, and thanks! I received both my BA and MA in China. Actually it's not rare at all nowadays that young Chinese students speak and write good English since we typically start learning English very early (English used to be one of the three major subjects in China's College Entrance Exam), especially in big cosmopolitan cities like Beijing and Shanghai.

Yep. If we are looking at the PGR ranking, which is based on people's perceptions of a particular program, significant changes would be very difficult and would happen very slowly. But a counterexample is Yale, which rose from initial 16 (2006) to 5 or 6 (2018) (I'm just writing off my memory but this is more or less the case). This happened through a series of employment of famous scholars, like David Charles (and Brad Inwood last year). So if JHU should use the money and hire some of the most promising scholars very soon, in 5 or 10 years it is possible that it would slowly climb to top 20 or 15. Top10 or 5 is a little bit of an overestimation, as top 5 programs have not even changed over the last 10 years..

True. But the amount of the donation is indeed very considerable, which would definitely attract some of the best young scholars, especially considering the shrinking job market. As PGR ranking relies heavily on the size and reputation of the faculty, we might indeed witness a significant leap in the ranking. Though you are definitely right that self-predictions tend to be over-optimistic. The results would come out within two weeks, fingers crossed!

My POI at JHU told me I have good chances there and with the recent 75,000,000 (whew!) USD donation JHU is very likely to become one of the top programs within the next few years as they would at least double the size of faculty and provide better support for graduate students etc. Anybody has any thoughts about the news? Is JHU really going to become a top10 or even top5 program?

Accepted at UCLA via personalized email (fully funded doctoral program). Edit: "Recommended for admission" rather than "admitted." There seems to be left a formality issue on the side of the Graduate School.

Thanks!!

Haha true. Especially with the time zone difference. I think the professor is already being pretty considerate to call me at 9pm in Beijing (where I'm living). Is it 6am in Michigan? Best of luck to you!

OMG I just got a phone call from Michigan saying that I was admitted!! But I was in a basement... in China (I am Chinese), and my voice couldn't get through and the professor hanged up the phone lol I wrote an email to him and tried to dial back, but his line was busy. Now I'm just freaking out thinking about whether they would just rescind the offer.

I didn't receive it, but it looks like a good sign. Nevertheless it reminds me of Michigan's ambiguous requirement of the personal statement that is should be about the "nature of your study in philosophy." Anyway, best of luck!

Thanks a lot! It's also my impression that UCLA kind of sucks at admissions service. I tried twice to contact the admission office because I forgot to remove my names in the writing sample (btw is anonymous review really necessary though? I've barely seen any others schools that make such requests), but I received no reply. And I didn't receive my UCLA ID until three weeks after I had submitted my application. Also my POI there did not reply my email

Oh I tried to contact the admission office twice because I forgot to remove the identifying information in my writing sample and received no reply... So I didn't bother to send them a third email about the TOEFL score. Thanks for the information!