Pythian

I doubt it will affect your chances. They will understand that if you are accepted at Brown, then it is in you will want to visit them over a waitlist opportunity. In your position, I would probably call them about the visit and tell them you want to come but cannot. Then either try to organize another time to visit, or come to the conclusion that you cannot visit and ask them if this will affect your chances of being pulled from the waitlist. I think a phone call will show you are interested an proactive, and at the end you get some some useful information or a new time to visit.

Rejected at U Mass Amherst and waitlisted at Ohio State this week. I think I may have been on a hidden waitlist at Ohio State, since I believe the waitlist decisions went out a long time ago. I still haven't heard by from 7 programs. I would solicit decisions, but does anyone ever get good news from that? I think I am going to wait and see if I get moved onto any official waitlists in April.

Going to be declining offers from NIU and Texas A&M this week. I was told I was high on the list for assistantships at NIU, so I hope this helps someone out. I will also be removing myself from the waitlists at Indiana, U Miami, and U Texas - Austin this week. I was high enough on the waitlist at Indiana to be offered to visit, so hopefully someone else gets that opportunity!

I am currently talking with my mentor about this very thing. I will probably be declining offers and taking myself off waitlists in the coming week. Hopefully this will lead to someone getting good news in the near future. Exactly which programs I am declining, I am not sure yet.

Thank you! I thought I was going to be in waitlist purgatory until April.

Just got accepted at UNC! Woo! Currently dancing in my room.

I applied for the MA program at TAMU, but the discontinued that and accepted me into the PhD. But, I don't think I am interested in the PhD given other offers. I would prefer NIU given either the tuition waiver or assistantship - I have also been told I am relatively high on the list. I would love to get off any of the waitlists, but I don't know how likely that is. I talked to USC over the phone, and I couldn't pin them down on anything. A waitlist seems similar to a deferred decision, so I put them in the same category as the schools I haven't heard back from.

I have this same feeling, even with my official waitlists. I seem to be amassing quite a number of them at places high up on my list. They all say, "we are very impressed by your application. I am sure you have many other offers - please keep in touch about your decision," and here I am sitting with only 1 acceptance with funding. You have 3 acceptances from good programs. You should feel proud! Getting an acceptance in the first round is impressive, and means you have a very competitive application. I am thinking the same thing. Really wanted the Rutgers waitlist (an acceptance would be miraculous) but doesn't look like its going to happen. I see you are in at NIU as well - if I get funding, there's a good chance I'll be seeing you there! Good news is, Rutgers has a lot of students who are graduates of NIU, so there's a second chance!

That's too bad. A 90 person hidden waitlist though? That's absurd. Shows how many qualified applicants there are though. I noticed you are presuming a Rutgers rejections. Is that based on any admissions data, or just an gut feeling? EDIT: Just checked the admissions doc - turns out Rutgers acceptances and waitlists have already gone out. I should've checked before I posted.

I see a lot of people with Notre Dame waitlists, and some new Notre Dame rejections. I still haven't received any information from them. Anyone got a inkling for why this might be the case? A hidden waitlist perhaps? I also haven't heard from Cornell yet. Not sure what to make of this either. Good news is, I got waitlisted at U Texas Austin!

Waitlisted at Indiana with an invitation to visit. Is inviting people high on the waitlist to visit a common practice?

I am not you, so I can't speak to your experience, but if having a job in academia is the only possible way for you to feel you are doing fulfilling work, then I would find that a little worrying if I were you. If anything, it seems to indicate a strong dependence on an institution that is impersonal and unreliable. Based on the wording of your statement, it is ambiguous as to whether you have actually been outside of the academy. Just like getting into a cool pool, the water is a lot warmer once you get used to it (and after you've been swimming around for a while, getting out of the pool seems like the cold part!) It might take a lot of work to find a meaningful job, but probably not as much work as graduate school. Not everyone reports their acceptances publicly. Perhaps there were a few more that are undisclosed, and the rest are going out tomorrow?

Hi @cjm720 ! I am a recent graduate of MSU's philosophy department. I can't say anything about how difficult it would be to get into the MA or PhD program, but I can answer any questions you have about faculty or the department in general. Seeing that you are going to law school, I am guessing that you want to practice law. If this is the case, I wouldn't worry too much about school reputation as it probably won't play that big of a role in your career. What matters is getting a good education, and MSU can provide that. Feel free to DM me if you any specific questions!

As someone hoping for your assistantship (assuming it's that, and not the tuition fee waiver), I say go for Tuffs! But my best advice would be to stick with NIU + funding. I applied to NIU because of the frequency I saw their graduates in programs like USC and Rutgers. I haven't crunched the numbers, but based on my observations its comparable to Tuffs' placement at those schools, if not better. The assistantship also comes with a stipend, so if you are frugal your living expenses are covered too.

Coming out of undergrad, I had a similar mindset as @ kurumetarou , but now being a year out of school, and working at a job that I enjoy, I feel I can approach my goals in academic philosophy more lucidly than I could have a year ago. Many students go into college right out of high school, and apply for grad school their senior year. For many people, their senior year at college is 16 unbroken years of being in the education system. It wouldn't surprise me if students experience something similar to stockholm syndrome. It's hard to look beyond academia if it has been the central structure of one's life.

Do the 1-2 day blocks tend contain acceptances, waitlist, and rejection notifications? Or does each kind of notification come out in its own 1-2 day block, with every kind of decision being accounted for within a 2 week span? Trying to understand schools' decision making process from the outside is kind of fun and keeps my mind busy -- its like a game of sudoku. Based on your understanding, are people who have not received rejections from ND probably on the waitlist or accepted? I'm looking for confirmation to get my hopes up.

Were you able to glean any insight into Notre Dame's practices? As someone also waiting for their decision, I have only gathered that their information trickles out, rather than all at once. I am hoping that I've avoided the last round of rejections and end up on the waitlist or accepted, but I'm not sure I can be confident in that!

Good points you raised! I just want to defend my dignity as a human being--and not a monkey at a typewriter. I had just moved to a new city, and editing was my coping mechanism for my lack of social life. I think the fault lies more in America's capitalist culture, and not the academy itself. Abstaining from present pleasures in favor of working towards long term goals is rewarded and encouraged. I think the biggest shame is that it is difficult to be a respected philosopher without existing in the academy. Given the rise of the internet, I am sure we will see an exception to the rule sometime in our lifetime, but its impossible to say when or how.

As someone coming from a year off, the most useful thing I've done with my application is completely rewrite my writing sample. Without school work, all of my intellectual energy went into that single piece of writing, and the topic it was about. I was spending about 20 hours a week for about three months writing, and rewriting my paper, getting feedback, then doing it again. I think the process has paid off, because I have been waitlisted at one of my top PhD choices (USC) and accepted at one of my top MA choices (NIU). I also want to say that a year away from the academy can be spent bolstering your application with real world experience. I have been doing Americorps--it is very fun and rewarding work, it makes you eligible for application fee waivers, and looks good on an application. If you are shutout and thinking about trying again, and have a good work ethic, I would suggest looking at programs. Another option might be applying for a foundation or think tank job, if those are still available.

This is very true. I do appreciate how contextual and qualitative the process is -- but I would be lying if I said it wasn't also frustrating! What are people's thoughts about interviews in the application process? I am not sure what I think about it. Part of me would like the chance to make a good impression, another part wonders if it would help track academic ability, and a final part of me would worry about fucking up it up.

I am sure I am not the first to question the method, but if such discrepancies exist, how confident can programs be that they are in fact accepting the best applicants. It seems doubtful that the application process 'tracks truth', so to say. Something I don't see mentioned often enough is that there is value in applying to MAs in addition to PhDs merely because it could give you a second chance at the application cycle.

Acceptances: Texas A&M (PhD), Northern Illinois (MA. Still waiting on funding) Waitlist: University of Miami, USC (California) Rejection: Baylor, University of Wisconsin Madison, University of Michigan, Berkeley I wonder what percent of acceptances are given to a small minority of applicants. If there is an applicant with a very strong application, then they will be accepted to most places they apply, and if they apply broadly, then they will take up many acceptance spots. I can't wait until NYU, Princeton, and Rutgers send out their decisions to get this process moving. Fingers crossed that those given an acceptance to USC will also be accepted into another program they prefer! I am surprised by how my decisions don't correlate to schools' PGR ranking. I am waitlisted at USC (rank 8), but rejected by Baylor (unranked). It goes to show how variable (and perhaps arbitrary) the decision making process is when a school has to choose between so many qualified applicants. Anyone else have any big disparities like this?