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There are occasionally situations where the prestige of the university itself is helpful, but I wouldn't make any decisions based on that. Similarly, QS rankings might represent something that's potentially useful, but it really shouldn't have much of an effect on your decision. In truth, for similarly-ranked programs (e.g. comparing "top-tier" programs; comparing programs that are top 25 but not "top-tier"; etc.) what matters the most is your fit with the program (so in other words, whether there are people you'd really want to work with there and whether the program's strengths map onto your interests). All else being equal, strength in a broad range of subfields is also a huge plus, since your interests may change dramatically over the course of getting a PhD. For what it's worth, I would say that someone would need to be an excellent fit for Harvard or MIT and would need to have very specific faculty in mind in order to justify choosing either over NYU, and this is an example where I think that making the decision based on the enormous prestige of the former would be a big mistake for most applicants. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would disagree with me on this though.

I'm not aware of anything like this, but I think that participating in a community like that would be a great opportunity for current grad students and I'm glad that you brought this up. Anyone else have any suggestions?

I do want to point out that while it suggests your application may have been weaker than some others, it's not fair to yourself to say that it was weak full stop. I suspect that the ratio of qualified PhD applicants to accepted PhD applicants is currently at an all-time high, and getting rejected when you're in many cases competing against literally hundreds of other applicants for a number of seats in the low single digits does not mean that you're unqualified, incompetent, or not worthy of attending a PhD program. As a current PhD student who only barely made it into a good program in what I suspect was a much less competitive year, I have no doubt that I would have been completely shut out if I had been applying this year (and yes, I was similarly much more confident about my chances than I should have been). There's often an element of luck in these things when acceptance rates are so low, and I'm pretty sure that there were many applicants just as capable as me (if not more capable than me) who were shut out that year. So don't be too hard on yourself, regardless of the final outcome. Waiting for applications to come back is awful, rejections are soul-crushing, and it's normal to feel miserable about the whole thing. And moreover, while it's important to not give up hope while you're waiting to hear back from the remaining programs, it's also important to remember that the vicissitudes of academic philosophy should not be taken as indicative of your worth as a student or as a human being.

Don't worry, you're far from the only one. If there's one thing that academic philosophy has taught me, it's that it'll break your heart over and over again.

The job market in academic philosophy is a nightmare; but then again, so is the job market in academia in general (and at least for the time being, the job market in many other fields as well). It's not strictly true that you have to be at a top 20 PhD program to get a job, but it certainly helps, and many well-respected PhD programs have shockingly bad placement rates (including several in the top 20). So without overstating it or catastrophizing, I think that "grim" is a pretty accurate descriptor for current job prospects in philosophy.

I'd say that the majority of graduate seminars where I am are focused on discussion, but there are also seminars that involve heavy lecturing and seminars that involve different students doing presentations on the course readings each week. It really varies a great deal from professor to professor. A very small percentage of courses available to graduate students are split with undergraduates, although graduate students are typically welcome to audit undergraduate courses on subjects that they're less familiar with.

Oh wow. This is not entirely unexpected, but also really unfortunate for this cycle's applicants. I hope that things turn out alright for everyone.

Current grad student here: Definitely recommend talking to graduate students about it, in my experience they tend to be fairly knowledgable about these sorts of things. With that being said though, I do think that should probably wait until you've already gotten in somewhere and are strongly considering attending.

Just a word of caution, I know someone who transferred out of the graduate program at Rice after his second year despite having a strong interest in philosophy of mind because he felt that the department wasn't well-rounded enough. Granted, he did have other AOIs, so if you're exclusively interested in working in mind, I could see that choice making sense. But realize that the department's lack of other strengths at the moment could potentially pose some issues down the road.

Started this year at a department in the PGR top 25, and no, it's not at all. Everyone here is extremely friendly and interested in discussing each other's work, classes, interests, etc. There's a strong collaborative spirit here, and I can't say that I've had a single bad experience with another graduate student so far. I've heard some bad things about a couple of departments, but such places are by far the exception and not the norm. It does seem like department culture largely dictates the way that graduate students treat one another (with some exceptions of course), which is why it's so important to talk to as many people as possible on campus visits in order to try to gauge such things.

Just thought I would follow up on this: My application status hasn't changed on their portal either. I emailed the graduate program coordinator and was told that they have contacted everyone who has been accepted or waitlisted. Strangely enough, she didn't say anything about whether they've sent out any rejections yet, although I haven't seen anyone report an official rejections so far. She told me that I am "not among those being admitted or on the wait list at this time", and that "things could still change in the next couple of weeks, but for now we cannot admit you". I am taking this as an implicit rejection, since it seems like they leave a lot of people in limbo between official waitlist and official rejection each year, and as far as I can tell they haven't issued any proper rejections this year. I just wish that they would actually tell those who weren't officially accepted or officially waitlisted that they were rejected, since it seems inconsiderate to needlessly keep people in the dark for so long.

Oh okay, I didn't realize that they sent out solicited responses at all. It didn't seem like anyone had had any luck with that, so I didn't even bother trying to contact them. If you don't mind me asking, who did you solicit the status update from? I might give that a shot if I haven't heard anything from them in a few days.

So just to clarify, nobody has successfully solicited a rejection from UT Austin yet, right? I think that I've decided to accept one of my offers, but I don't want to commit until I've heard something definite from Austin.

If this information is helpful to anyone: I've already declined MA offers from Houston and GSU, and I will be declining an offer from Brandeis and a waitlist from Milwaukee as well.

Just chiming in to agree with the last two replies. As with most things, just as it's bad to blindly accept the PGR rankings, it's also bad to blindly reject the PGR rankings (obviously, I'm not accusing anyone here of falling into either of the above camps, but people of both of those varieties are definitely out there). Regardless of how objectionable Leiter's past conduct has often been, the PGR rankings are useful and remain a fairly accurate measure of certain factors that are really important when choosing a graduate program.