Rose-Colored Beetle

That sounds fascinating. My amateur sense is that, despite rhetorical flourish, Deleuze has some fairly straightforward and interesting theses about logical priority.

@Ikari Gendo Oh, you underestimate the morbid imagination of analytics (yes, I know, #NotAllAnalytics, etc., etc.). For example: "Are the Magi Really That Wise? Rethinking the Superintelligent Leviathan" "Who Counts as Human? On Evas and Dummy Plugs" "Shinji's Final Vision: Possible World or Wishful Thinking?" "Asuka's Epistemic Arrogance: Virtue or Vice?" Or, to salute @711fanatic's intuition: Is Rei Really Rei? Gappy Existence and Kripkean Names Examples could be multiplied ad nauseam/infinitum. (Yes, I'm being overly salty because it's fun.) As for the analytic/continental synthesis, it has a name: Paul Ricoeur. *ducks*

Cool! I'm working on medieval/phil religion at Fordham, but I like conty phil sometimes, so I was just curious. One of my undergrad colleagues does ancient at Michigan, so you'll probably meet him in the fall. Congrats again!

Here's my story, if it helps, from Spring 2018. Brandeis: Notification of waitlist from Kate Moran on March 28. Acceptance on April 9, with $10k possible extra need-based funding, plus TAship, plus $10k extra because they were "especially impressed" with my application. (I have no idea what that means; it could just be standard.) Western Michigan: Notification of acceptance from Dan Dolson on March 7, but waitlisted for funding. Pinged Dolson on April 13 and gave him the offers I was considering. Got a funded offer on April 14. UW—Milwaukee: Notification of waitlist from Waylon Jennings Smith on March 16. Rejection on April 17. Georgia State: Notification of rejection from Tim O'Keefe on March 1. Everything is so dependent on who does what when, so I imagine the timeline can be pretty much anywhere for a given person.

@hamnet in tights @Ikari Gendo Anybody wanna help me pitch Evangelion and Philosophy to Blackwell?... (only 3/4 kidding...)

@platonetsocrate, can I ask what your AOS is? It looks like you applied to a standard Continental slate, but then there's Michigan! (Congrats on that, of course!)

Hi Karl, I'm a second-year at Fordham. We have people who work in standard continental figures like Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, as well as some thinkers outside the mainstream. Feel free to message me if you have any questions!

I have a friend who transferred to Notre Dame from a program roughly similar to yours. Just so you know it can happen.

Steven Crowell argues that phenomenology should be understood as essentially neither analytic nor continental. If we take phenomenology to be "a systematic study of consciousness that can trace its geneology to Husserl," we can point to an American analytic strand of people, begun by Harvard students in the 60s (Hubert Dreyfus, Dagfinn Føllesdal) who saw Husserl as having more in common, as Crowell says, with Quine and the early Wittgenstein than Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty. The shorter answer is that Searle uses the word "intentionality."

Hey @CatholicHobbit! For what it's worth, I would not rely too heavily on first impressions. I say this because it's easier to misjudge social fit in the short term, and it's easier to adapt academic fit in the long term. Here's what I mean. Of course there are exceptions to my point about academic fit; if there are no professors doing anything like what you're interested in, it's an easy nope, but I assume you've screened off those schools already. Another safe assumption: as grad students, our research interests will change over time. That change might be (1) stable, deeper specialization in the well-defined AOI we entered grad school with, but it could also be (2) realization that AOI lines are a bit artificial anyway, and it could even be (3) embrace/incorporation of a totally different AOI. For instance, one of my colleagues who entered with interests in social/political/Marxism, is now doing a project on Aristotle's Politics. (For another more controversial instance, does John Searle do philosophy of mind or phenomenology?...) I imagine this would be a point in favor of School A; if you really connected with the people there, maybe you're more likely to find an academic niche that's near enough to where you are now. Even if you end up in situation (1) above, professors who write in a particular niche are likely to have a broader knowledge base in the field, and would probably be able to support you in a modestly divergent research project. (Of course, asking a specialist in feminist epistemology to help you write on the Gettier problem is not the same as asking her to help you write on medieval logic.) When it comes to my point about social fit, I'm assuming that you're judging based on a visit day or weekend. Of course, it's possible you got more representative exposure than I did when I was a prospective, and it's also possible (or rather, pretty likely) that you're less socially naive than I am. I do wonder what you mean by connected; Granted, I know that's a throwaway philosophical buck-passing question, and I know that the unique feeling of "fit" is hard to verbalize. Have your intuitions about social fit have tended to hold up in the past? I know that for myself, the answer is no; but again, I'm socially naive. It might also be helpful to know what your interests are, as well as the institutions you're interested in, but it does make sense if you don't want to talk about that publicly. Sorry for being so aporetic/destructive... Also, please take my $0.02 with several grains of salt, since I'm an extrovert who loves social adventures. But I do have a large, hand-drawn map of Middle-Earth in my living room, so that has to give me some credibility!

May I ask what your AOI is?

I just mean that this is the philosophy page! I'm sure that our programs have some similarities, but you might have better luck in the psychology forum. The menu of GradCafe disciplines can be found here.

Hey @carolinaji, as fascinating as forensic and legal psychology sounds, I think you are in the wrong forum... Also, a 90-person cohort? That sounds insane!

Why?

I agree, and any worry you should have about GPA can be mitigated if your major GPA is higher.

Our former chair at Fordham had a strong aversion to the PGR, and (at least according to my memory of a conversation I had with one faculty member) we have in the past, for that reason, not consented to be ranked. Caveat, I haven't run this down to apodictic certainty. One treads lightly in such things...

I don't have a percentage, but given that schools want to admit a balance of people, I wouldn't be surprised if you're behind many of the same people in your own AOI at many of the schools. I asked my friend, and he said more or less that if you're WL'd at the top school in your AOI (or even the top 1-3), your odds aren't good, but it would make sense that if you're also WL'd at a couple top ones that aren't #1-3 in your AOI, then the people you're behind there will decline and accept spots in #1-3. It also will depend on how broad your AOI is (i.e., if it's broader, this effect might be less extreme). In any case, good luck! What's your AOI?

A friend of mine (not on TGC) reports 0 acceptances and 7 waitlists at PGR top-50 schools, including Michigan.

Yikes... necessary and sufficient conditions and everything. I always thought that analytics were the happiest philosophers because they kept philosophical method out of their personal lives, but this... I'm shook

No, but I was last year. I ate with Dr. Berker at the NYC-China Epistemology Conference which Fordham hosted last year.

I posted this in another thread, but Selim Berker told me in person that (roughly) they're considering shaving cohort size down. I think the numbers he referenced were higher than 2, though.

Oh, and as for the analytic/continental distinction, here's my take: analytics are philosophers who deny that there's an analytic/continental distinction. Continentals are those who affirm it.

Hey @Theoryboi, I'm friends with one of the faculty at LMU. Do you want me to put you in touch? Specific to my situation, we have people at Fordham who you could easily work with: faculty who work on Derrida and Nietzsche, and come fall we'll probably have hired a Foucauldian. One of my colleagues is really into Deleuze and Guattari, etc. On top of that, we have ethicists who are used to working in a pluralist department, one of whom has shown active interest in Nietzsche. I also think it's possible to overstate the background knowledge required to succeed in grad school. I'm constantly surprised at the gaps I find in my colleagues' knowledge, and we all get on fine. (I don't mean this arrogantly; I have equally glaring gaps in my knowledge, but by definition I don't find them surprising.) Point is, if you're a sharp person who's eager to learn, I wouldn't worry about it. Here's one more thought to take or leave: it wouldn't hurt to apply to PhDs. Maybe you'll get in. If you remain set on stopping at the MA, you can just drop out after your second year and take the MA. But if you like it, and you have guaranteed funding... well, you'd be getting paid to research, which isn't a bad gig unless you're worried about delaying your target career by a few years. Plus you'll have a PhD. Just my ruminations.

I spoke to Selim Berker at a conference, and he told me that even they (Harvard) are thinking of downsizing their next PhD cohort. It will be interesting to see how the future plays out; I wouldn't be surprised if the more sustainable programs turn out to be those where PhD students can be used as cheap ethics teachers for schools that are big on business or healthcare.

What does everyone think about the content of rejection letters? Do you feel good when schools try to soften the blow ("despite your excellent qualifications!!1!!!1!"), or does that rhetoric ring hollow for you? Would you rather they shoot straight? Maybe something like "In the scope of all the applications we received, yours was downright mediocre." Abstractly, I don't care much for "fake happy" (Hayley Williams et al., 2017). The rejection letters I appreciated most were those with concrete information, like "We received an unusually high number of applications this year." I guess it's nice that they try to let us down easy.