GuanilosIsland

I hope that isn't getting you too down. The fact you got on their waitlist is freaking insane, and I'm sure you'll have great success next cycle.

I'd like to consider myself pretty knowledgeable about continental philosophy –I regularly read Deleuze, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Husserl, Foucault – as well as more modern, self-styled "continental" philosophy. But today it seems like anyone who rejects Derrida and Lacan is deemed a continental heretic, so oh well.

I'd argue that there isn't a meaningful distinction between continental and analytic philosophy. iunoionnis keeps lamenting the fact that "continental programs" aren't ranked, but the issue is that this category of philosophy does not even exist. As a category or "type" of philosophy it's a complete fiction; as a certain political grouping of philosophers, however, it is very real. And often these sorts of philosophers use their political grouping as cover to try and explain away why bad, uninteresting philosophizing isn't legitimized in academia in the US.

The director of grad admissions at Riverside is Michael Nelson – I'd email him. Also thanks so much! Yeah, I'm super excited about the program. I was definitely getting a little nervous, haha...

I emailed a week ago and got a response telling me I was rejected.

I'll be seeing you in Georgia next fall!

What topic was your writing sample on? That's a very impressive list.

What do you even mean by "continental" programs? You claim that these schools have a sort of sovereignty or ownership of an entire branch of philosophy, but this is just obviously not true. Just because psychoanalysis and Derridan(?) obscurantism have fallen out of favor doesn't mean that schools like Chicago and Columbia don't engage/partake in "continental philosophy" (again, whatever this means).

That last point you made is just not true. The programs ranked highly for "continental philosophy" have some of the most significant contemporary scholars working on the major figures in that era. What Leiter takes issue with, rightly in this case (in my mind), is the methodological/scholarly decline of work that now more commonly appears in comparative literature departments thn it does in actual philosophy departments.

To be fair, he never says that students should base their decision just on the PGR rankings.

Got off Georgia State's waitlist!

Has anyone else heard from Georgia State about their waitlist? I wish they could give some indication of where one is on it. (But alas I understand why they can't.)

I have a friend that went through the program that said it was amazing, and said that it specifically tries to groom you into a good PhD candidate. For reference, he got into Brown's political theory PhD program from it, although that is just anecdotal.

Got into Chicago's 1 year MA with 8k funding. That's nice I guess.

I'm mostly into German idealism, post-Kantian German philosophy, and political philosophy, so hopefully our interests won't make it so that we're competing for the same spots haha.