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Descartes blanche

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Everything posted by Descartes blanche

  1. Descartes blanche
    I'm guessing everyone can agree that dream-denial comes in degrees, and that it's reasonable for any loss to be upsetting. It's not the consistency of your *own* grievances and losses that bothers people. It's the proportionality of it all that makes your comments seem tactless. After a large meal, I might suffer from indigestion, but I wouldn't broadcast it to the famished. But don't take it too hard. It's not the first time this field has made our obsessions with logical consistency get in the way of our moral character, or our sensibilities. In fact, it's probably why your writing sample's prose went unappreciated after all. But I hope we can collectively work to do better than this.
  2. Descartes blanche
    Has anyone heard back from Vanderbilt?
  3. Descartes blanche
    For sure...Well I hope you're on that elusive second round. I'm not taking this season too seriously. I had a last minute GRE with unimpressive results so I decided to just put a few out there and try again next season. So far I'm thinking that was a good idea.
  4. Descartes blanche
    Thanks. That's what I figured. So when people talk about two rounds of acceptances, are they just referring to these remote situations you mention or do some schools deliberately send out two rounds of acceptances?
  5. Descartes blanche
    If you see postings on the results list for both waitlists and acceptances from a particular school that you've yet to hear from, is it a conclusive sign that you've been rejected?
  6. Descartes blanche
    Has anyone heard from Oregon? I see a waitlist on the survey, but no acceptances. Do waitlists ever go out before acceptances?
  7. Descartes blanche
    Where did you end up going this cycle? Did you get off the NYU waitlist !?
  8. Descartes blanche
    Really!? Like skip this one out and try to fine-tune your sample so you can catch the big one next year? Those are exciting potential offers though. Let me know what happens.
  9. Descartes blanche
    What was the AOI of your sample over at Milwaukee if you don't mind me asking?
  10. Descartes blanche
    So what schools are you looking at now?
  11. Descartes blanche
    Not yet, unfortunately. I'm stressing out over two funded offers and a close waitlist. All three schools are good in different ways but neither is good in all the ways I want them to be. School (a) is close to where I live, has just increased my funding offer to the best M.A. funding/cost of living ratio I've seen, but it doesn't happen to have the ideal program for my AOI along with an average placement record. School (b), which is the close waitlist school, has an ideal program for my AOI and a decent funding package, but a pretty bad placement record for some reason. And lastly, school (c) is pretty well suited for my AOI, has a decent placement record, but has the lowest funding of the three, and is located in a city that I don't care too much to live in. What would you do?
  12. Descartes blanche
    I just declined my acceptance to the University of Houston yesterday and I'm about to do the same with Virginia Tech. Hopefully, this will be helpful for someone.
  13. Descartes blanche
    Same here. If anyone has a moral/political writing sample in this vein, I'd love to read it as well.
  14. Descartes blanche
    Out of curiosity, what is your background? Also, what subjects in philosophy are you currently interested in?
  15. Descartes blanche
    I noticed you're holding onto U Maryland. Are you still considering that to be a competitor with the two strong M.A. programs? Are there any waitlisted Ph.D. programs - if admitted - that you would immediately accept? (I'm not actually in the running for any of those, just curious)
  16. Descartes blanche
    Thanks MtnDuck! I'll take whatever info you have.
  17. Descartes blanche
    Just got an acceptance from Virginia Tech. I'm excited, but I'm also "high on a waitlist" for funding. I keep getting so close (the same happened with UMSL). Does anyone know if this is something to really stress about? No funding is about as useful as a rejection for me, but maybe it's like NIU, where it seems that everyone who got accepted was put on a waitlist for funding. Was anyone offered funding with their initial acceptance from NIU?
  18. Descartes blanche
    Just curious. I saw that downwardabsolute received an acceptance from Virginia tech. Has anyone else on here received an acceptance or waitlist notification from Virginia Tech?
  19. Descartes blanche
    If you're getting into other places like NIU then I'm sure your application is strong. I think there's a lot of factors at play that extend beyond merit, and it's difficult to say what plan each individual committee has. Many of them have goals they're looking to meet in terms of things like diversity, a dispersed AOI in accordance with their department, and sometimes just strange little serendipitous events can make or break the whole deal. I was reading that Jason Stanley - now preeminent in his field - was rejected to every single school he applied to coming out of undergraduate school at SUNY Binghamton. He was only accepted to MIT at the last minute because someone in the department outside of the committee happened to know about his sample and liked his ideas despite its initial rejection. Now he's a big deal, but he may have been fighting for his career had that fortunate twist of circumstances not happened - who knows? It's a finicky profession. Good luck to you!
  20. Descartes blanche
    I can't speak for Ohio because I'm not really familiar with what they have going on. Sounds like you have a good mindset on all of this though. Also, not sure if you've considered, but GSU is both a reputable program with known expertise in Kant. Have you applied?
  21. Descartes blanche
    I've been getting the impression that fit is extremely important, perhaps even more than placement to an extent. I say this because I've been keeping in close contact with a few graduate students from my undergraduate university and they've given me a lot of advice regarding this whole process. So, for example, they attended a program with a strong reputation for their AOI's ( epistemology/philosophy of science). In addition, the program had a competitive placement record and they were placing these students at PGR ranked institutions like Stanford, Michigan, UW-Madison, Northwestern, U- Miami, and Rice. However, this same program was not as well known for its strengths in areas like moral/political, and over many years, these students rarely managed to land PGR ranked positions from what I was told. Fit and field reputation seems to be saying a lot about whether you will be adequately challenged to learn more and whether or not you will be equipped with letters of recommendation from one or more professors who are actually working and publishing (hopefully quite notably) within your field. Of course, this doesn't mean that you're not naturally disciplined enough to challenge yourself and cultivate a strong sample and understanding of the relevant literature on your own, but it certainly helps to be immersed in such an environment where others can help you to facilitate this. Also, if the school that meets your fit happens to have a miserable placement record all around, that should probably hang in the balance as well. May I ask which school you're contemplating, the one with the strong fit but a lesser placement record (assuming NIU is not that school)?
  22. Descartes blanche
    No, you were right the first time lol. I was a bit nervous and a little broke going into this so I applied to a wide variety of M.A. schools exclusively listed on the gourmet report. I was nervous because although I can definitely do philosophy and I have plenty of support at my undergraduate institution, I ended up with low GRE scores (I suck at timed tests). My AOI is moral/social/political and both CSU and GSU clearly have strong faculty in this regard (however, I'm concerned about CSU's placement list - I don't know if the students smoke too much weed and end up falling in love with Colorado or if something else is going on. I really like the idea of CSU and they have a world-famous professor but their placement record is probably the lowest I've seen). Virginia Tech also has a relatively strong program for what I'm doing and they tend to place people at programs like Arizona. I'm still learning about UMSL. But yeah, as for WMU and UW-Milwaukee, I'm not sure where they would really stand among all of this when it comes to those AOI's.
  23. Descartes blanche
    Not sure. It's a strong department, and the cost of living is low, but I'm also resting on another funded acceptance from UMSL and I'm beginning to think that they might be working on material more closely related to what I'm doing (equally impressive placement record as well). Aside from that, I have three waitlists gnawing at me from UW-Milwaukee, GSU, and Colorado State (still waiting on VT). Unfortunately, I think I'll be tossing and turning until the 15th. Nevertheless, I'm grateful to have any choice at all.
  24. Descartes blanche
    Congrats! I'm still in their waitlist purgatory, but that's awesome. So does that make your decision final?
  25. Descartes blanche
    Are you wishing you had applied to Ph.D. programs at this point?
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