Kantattheairport

Congrats on such a great round of applications! Glad you were able to choose from amongst some of your top choices. Yay, congrats!

Good luck! If you haven't already, it may be worth telling School A that you're considering accepting another offer, but also that you'd likely accept their offer if given the relevant funding; this might help spur them to make an earlier decision.

Fwiw I was also told this and followed this strategy. When I specifically asked if my sample should be in my AOIs, I was told that it doesn't have to be, and that I should write my sample on whatever topic would produce the best-written paper.

Congrats both!

Yup! And worth noting that at least some are also happy to be flexible for international folks with unreasonable time differences (although it's not like most of us are able to sleep that night anyway! ?).

Yeah, I was told that 'the large majority' of offer-holders at UW-Madison haven't gotten back to them, though I don't know if this is unusually late by their standards. Waitlists definitely went right to the final day last year, so that's what I'm shoring myself up for!

I was going to make a comment about reasons to apply, but @mithrandir8 has pretty much covered it - great post! My adviser told me that a good reason to apply to grad school for philosophy is if you think you would like to read and write and talk about philosophy for about five years, regardless of what happens beyond that. So your interest should be for grad school in philosophy itself, not extrinsic aims - basically what mithrandir8 said in their first point! For what it's worth, I think 'access, networking, conferences and hopefully to write and collaborate with others' is therefore a pretty good reason to want to apply (as long as you aren't expecting any guaranteed rewards out of those!). Big reason I want to go to grad school is basically so that I might discuss and learn about philosophy with people who are a lot smarter than I am! I do think the warnings from Duns Eith and others are important, and to be considered by anyone thinking about applying. Apart from this side-discussion, to your original question. I agree with others who have said your age by itself shouldn't be an impediment. I think the greater hurdle as you go forward, though, might be the fact that you've been out of academia for quite a while now. That doesn't make it 'too late' for you, but it probably will mean you'll have to take some steps to show that you're still up for it. Do you plan to get letters from your undergrad professors/instructors? Probably the most important thing would be to get in touch with them as soon as possible, and let them know what your plans are. I'd suggest doing this as early as you can, since, unlike current/recent students, they'll need much more information from you to be able to write something. They might also be able to give you good advice on how to go forward. If you're planning to get letters or advice from a different set of philosophers, you should also do that early, for the same reasons. It's really good to hear about people continuing to be so interested in philosophy. Good luck, I hope it works out!

Haven't been around as often to comment, but congratulations to all who have sorted things out already! Good luck! Two, possibly three, waitlists out of six applications isn't a bad return at all considering the kind of statistics involved.

Rejected at Stanford. That's mostly all of them now, I think. It's been a somewhat morale-sapping season this time around, but I'm happy to at least be in with a chance somewhere. In case things don't work out this year either, I think I may have to make some fresh starts on a couple of fronts (writing sample, SOP, some other strategies), but I have some idea of some of the things I might do. In general, keeping my chin up - despite the clear lack of success, I don't think I'd say it's been a bad experience (although I could certainly do with it being less expensive!). Thank you to everyone that's been kind, both to me and in general.

To be clear, by this I just meant that I haven't heard anything from them, not that I've gotten a waitlist notice. Hey, nice one! :D

Yup!

Rejected at Rutgers and UPenn. Penn had the annoying email -> portal -> download a pdf letter to find out thing, but the letter itself was unusually optimistic - 'we trust that you have been admitted, or will soon be admitted, somewhere else'. Thanks for the encouragement Penn! Thank you! It was sadly one of my higher choices (fan of Akeel Bilgrami's work) but there are still a couple of others to hear back from.

Looks like a nice spate of acceptances and waitlists over the past day - congrats to all!

Got my Columbia rejection today!

That's absolutely fantastic, very well done!

Congratulations! And very good of you to be generous with the info. :)

Also just got the Arizona email!

Similar to what @lurkingfaculty said, when I had to withdraw some of my apps last year I just emailed the DoA with an explanation. One of the places also had an online thing I had to fill out for the records, but if that's the case then they'll email you anyway with a reminder; the important thing I think is to let the DoA know that you won't be attending.

I have nine to hear back from still (without presuming rejections). Sounds like we both have a lot yet to look forward to then - onwards and upwards, hopefully!

Do you have many decisions yet to come?

Just received an extremely well-formatted rejection letter from Oxford. My whole address and right-justified date and everything!

Welcome, and congratulations on your offer! Ayy, congrats!

It sounds like you have some good reasons for wanting to attend Rice over some of those other programmes; I certainly think that the particular people you want to work with should be a big factor in your decision-making. One thing I would note about placements, though, is that it's probably not just about the academic resources you're afforded at these different places, but also the networking resources. I've seen a lot of job-seeking philosophers note how, apart from your academic records, your proximity to networks, people skills, and luck, all play a part in your likelihood of getting a job. So that's something that 'prestigious' institutions might be much better-able to offer than lower-ranked ones.

Congratulations!

Just got an email -> portal -> rejection letter from Yale.