Halcyon23

Give UConn a call. At least one spot on the waitlist opened up (I took myself off). During an email exchange with the DGS I was told that if they pull from the waitlist it's unlikely that it'd be before Wednesday (but isn't April 15th the deadline? Weird).

Ok cool. Will call them in the next few minutes. One other question: should I just call the office of the DGS or the main department office and ask for the DGS? (Amounts to the same thing I suppose but hey, I'm nervous and every possible contingency is running through my head at this point).

Just want a bit of input if possible: I currently have a pretty great offer at a school and they want me to accept/decline by 5pm (2 hours from now). I'm also on the watlist for one of my top choices. I've emailed the school I'm waitlisted at to try and see if there's any waitlist movement while mentioning that I currently have an offer elsewhere but will go with them if I am accepted off the waitlist (they've confirmed that funding is guaranteed and all that). They have not emailed me back. Question: would it be too much for me to call them and ask my status? I only ask because I'd hate to accept the offer I currently have, then at 6pm the other school comes knocking.

Just got a rejection from riverside out of nowhere. It was expected given I could not get info from them after their initial round of acceptances. Oh well.

What everyone else said, absolutely do the meeting. It's so much better than excessively formal emails. But you can turn generic questions into more thoughtful ones. I had a skype interview a while back and instead of just asking something like "what is the funding package like for a TA?" I asked about the sort of teaching opportunities available as a TA (are they only intro courses, am I just an assistant or do I teach entirely on my own, if I teach entirely on my own how much freedom do I have w/r/t to syllabus creation). Things like that. You can also just ask for clarification/more detail about the program. Asking about relations in the department (how easy it is to meet with professors, do grad students spend a lot of time together in the office, etc.) is another good thing to ask so you know what it's like in the informal settings.

This. If you have a specific interest, you should start getting a firm grip on it. However, if you're interested in a very broad overview, Analytic Philosophy: An Anthology edited by Martinich and Sosa is a great collection of primary sources for all the most relevant works from the first half of the 20th century. Not exactly contemporary but I'd say knowing the most famous works from Russell, Quine, Rawls, etc would be good. The book is divided by the various subfields and the end of each has a 'Further Reading' section that can be helpful.

Here's the basic structure of mine (given how late it is in the season you may need to modify it to reflect that aspect): "Dear Professor [Name], I'm an applicant for the philosophy phd program at [university] and I have not received information regarding my current status. At the risk of being too forward or seeming over-eager I was reaching out to you to see if I can learn about my current status. Provided that there is no information you can give out at this time, do you have an estimate on when information will be sent out? I look forward to hearing back from you. Thanks, [My real name]"

@AlanGibbardMegafan very insightful, thanks for posting! So I guess it's not an actual hidden waitlist but a modular waitlist. Making this method more well-known could be useful but I imagine it could also force people to avoid making decisions elsewhere because they're holding out on hope for a last second acceptance. Or something like that.

There are always rumors of "hidden waitlists" and such. I'm not sure how much stock to put in that though (Chapel Hill is apparently on record as stating they do it iirc. Supposedly UT at Austin does it as well). You should email the dgs to ask about your status. Emphasize that it's getting close to April 15th and you'd like to make a decision but don't want to rule them out without being fully informed about your status.

Don't have much of a choice to be honest. Fingers crossed for moving from waitlist to acceptance on 2 schools and waiting for some info to return from the void that is the handful of other schools that refuse to return my emails.

While it is a bit optimistic it doesn't seem too optimistic. I'm guessing that not every person admitted will accept the offer and that a handful of the people higher than 9 on the waitlist will accept an offer elsewhere. With that in mind, you will probably move up at least a few spaces on the list prior to April 15. So maybe it's not that they go 9 people deep, but that by the time they do pull from the waitlist, you'll have moved up to a higher position? But this is all speculation.

I'm a current NIU grad student so maybe I can shed some light there. When I was accepted (for fall 2016) I was not given a TA-ship, but I was able to apply (at the behest of the grad advisor) to apply for a tuition waiver from the graduate school. I got it and it covered ~85% of my tuition (which was also out of state tuition). Many students that weren't given a TA-ship with the philosophy department would apply for TA-ships in other departments. Some also worked in the university's writing center. All options have the same funding as far as I know. Even though I wasn't a TA in the department my first year, I applied to be one this year and got it. I wouldn't worry too much unless you have no funding offer at all AND you have no money saved up at all. You can probably ask the grad advisor what your options are right now (assuming you already haven't).

Finally heard back from UConn this morning. I'm on the waitlist but if accepted I'll receive full funding as a graduate assistant. If you plan on declining an offer from UConn, please do so ASAP . For those of you still waiting to hear back from UConn, nothing in the email mentioned whether or not they're done reviewing all applications. They just mentioned that they have finished reviewing mine and decided to put me on the waitlist.

I'm waiting on UT and UConn from your list and Riverside and UCSB in addition to it. Check your spam email for Davis though. I only learned I was waitlisted from an email sent to my spam folder. (Cody Gilmore, the DGS, did send an email out to everyone on the waitlist a week or so later that didn't end up in my spam folder. So who knows what my email is doing.)

RIP my chances at Austin. Ah well. I got waitlisted at Davis and I'm hopeful of that, plus I still need to hear back from some other schools.