Moose#@1%$
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Posts posted by Moose#@1%$
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11 hours ago, Kantattheairport said:
If we're doing music for trying times, you guys might enjoy this bit of existential wobble from the Kit Fine Ensemble, featuring some serious disciplinary shade:
Phi-lo-so-ophy
It's not for me!
I don't have what it takes,
I'm not one of the greats...
So I'll practice law,
Make money galore!
Make money, make money,
And thi-i-ink no more. ?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNWeKL0was
And which ends with the heartwarming message of 'be yourself!'
Which I think is good to keep in mind during application season when everyone's a little worried about how they're presenting themselves.
I’ve been seeing your congratulatory messages to many ppl on here. That’s nice of you. Hope you get into your top choice!
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On 2/6/2019 at 4:03 PM, nonbeingandsomethingness said:
This is me right now!
I am considering getting off of grad cafe because i think this might just make me more anxious than without. Thoughts?
Yea or just check it much less... I only check it like once every other day or so.. but having a group of people in the same place mentally helps hah
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On 2/6/2019 at 2:15 PM, jc177 said:
Hmm, how many acceptances have you seen? I've seen two, but there's probably more that I haven't seen - just hoping to get my rejection notice as soon as possible at this point.
I've only seen two also, but they released their acceptances the exact same day as last year. And last year they didn't have any accpetances that were given out (other than waitlisted ones) after their initial date. So, I'm just deducing haha not any objective evidence.
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3 hours ago, BetweenBars said:
Curious as to who got the WUSTL acceptance.
Me too.. Seems oddly early for them. From what I've seen from a previous years.
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On 1/31/2019 at 2:01 PM, akraticfanatic said:
UNC and Northwestern within about 20 minutes. Brutal. Waiting on Berkeley for the triple threat.
As am I ... but from what I've seen all their acceptances have gone out. So, if we haven't heard anything, then... whomp whomp whomp.. lol.
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I haven't been rejected by any schools yet but the few to which I applied to have released their acceptances ... haha soo... not sure how to take this. False hope? yeup.. going with that.
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12 minutes ago, Cogitodoncrien said:
It definitely seems to be a messy sort of situation, and from the anecdotal evidence that you and others have provided it surely is the case that at least some professors engage in yield protection calculations. I wonder what effect, if any, there would be on the process if there were no PGR to begin with.
Agreed, this entire process is just a giant mess. There are just too many moving parts and perpetually changing variables. I tried my best to only apply to schools where I believe I was the best fit, instead of trying to "break the admission code," it's just too much and I wanted to stay sane and keep my head full of hair haha. Truth be told I did just stay away from Top schools.. Like Yale, Harvard, MIT etc., but primarily because my GRE scores weren't that great and I was warned by a few people that schools like that are likely to have cut off points. Mainly because of the number of applicants they receive. but good luck to you, hoepefully you get in where you want.
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15 hours ago, Cogitodoncrien said:
Firstly, this smacks of a problem requiring empirical research being dealt with by purely a priori speculation (this goes for my reasoning below, too). So, what's your evidence that this happens?. Secondly, I don't have the intuition that this sort of situation is realistic; what seems realistic is that confirmation bias can affect applicants who applied to high-ranked and low-ranked programs and were accepted by the former but rejected by the latter, and then talk to others about their experience ("I was just too good for Mizzou, bro, and they knew it! Duke was always the place for me!"). Thirdly, the problem that bluwe points out is the crux of your argument, viz. that the admissions committees somehow know that some applicants will "almost certainly" accept a different (possible?) offer. So, it doesn't address the problem bluwe points out and instead just assumes it to be true. Lastly, how are admissions committees supposed to "reach for some students who will likely go elsewhere but might go to that school" while simultaneously passing "over some students who will almost certainly go elsewhere"? Do admissions committees ask tentatively admitted applicants to which schools they've been admitted before giving the OK to officially send the acceptances? Are "almost certainly" and "likely" different? Are they different simply by degree? If so, by how much? If they are different by degree but not by much, then how are admissions committees supposed to distinguish (i) those students who have a high chance of going elsewhere and won't accept their offer from (ii) those students who have a high chance of going elsewhere but won't definitely not accept their offer? One way I can see to distinguish between (i) and (ii) is to say that (ii) are those students who are a good fit for the department and (i) are those students who are not a good fit for the department. But, if this were the case, we'd have our answer to the question whether yield protection affects philosophy admissions committees' decisions.
I just can't see admissions committees not admitting or waitlisting applicants who pass the first cuts and who are impressive to the committees in all the other ways they can be besides passing the first cuts. Of course, this debate could be put to bed if we had some real evidence that admissions committees from some schools (which schools?) engaged in this practice.
So, I think you have really good points and I've always wondered about the truth to such speculations. However, I have heard directly from selection comittee at my MA that they do such calculations. Now, how reliable or what methodology they use, I have no idea. But, when asked by me and couple of other Grad students the exact words were (more or less), "it's hard to really know. We had some excellent applicants some from top schools (I think that year we had applicants from Oxford, Washington, UCLA etc.), sample paper, and great recommendations but you know.. its hard to decide whether we should offer them admission. Because the fact that they're application is this good made us wonder whether they would end up choosing somewhere else and we'd end up using up a spot when we could have offered to someone else. But then again you don't want to pass them up because you think they might choose somewhere else. On the other hand we also want to offer admissions to people who we think might be more likely to choose us." and more of the same back and forth for about 10 mins..
So, I agree with you but I also think there is definitely truth to this theory or speculation.
Overall, I really don't think there are any "safe schools." It is all about your fit. You might get rejected from a "safe" school because of bad fit and get accepted at a top school because of a good fit. Now, ofcourse some of these top schools are charged for having cut off measures (Idk how true that is) but I think your fit is the most important.
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19 hours ago, Prose said:
accepted to Berkeley!!!
(not the one who posted on results, that was @senyirauxa)
so far: no rejection from Brown, but no interview request from Chicago
Congratulations man! That's awesome.
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3 hours ago, anonymous052709 said:
Is there a place on Grad Cafe that we can ask current students what it is like to work with potential supervisors? This is crucial to decision-making for me. Is there a good venue to ask these questions, if we don't know anyone in the departments?
If you don't find anything on here, I'd suggest emailing grad students doing similar work at the school and ask them. They'd probably be helpful.
however, from what I've heard most people end up doing something very different from their initial AOIs. So, I wouldn't worry about it too much at this point.
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4 hours ago, mithrandir8 said:
Can anyone claim the Berkeley acceptance?
I would like to know too.. lol.
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5 hours ago, mithrandir8 said:
Unless I'm missing something, if the amount of money is constant, wouldn't you want a 9 month stipend instead of a 12 month stipend?
I would think so. But, maybe they mean that 12 months stipend is usually more than the 9 months. I
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48 minutes ago, hector549 said:
Yes. There are exceptions, however, such as Canadian programs, which offer four years of guaranteed funding.
Also, ask how much the fees are. I and most in my MA program were surprised to learn how high the fees were. 1500 a semester with a stipend of 14,000 k. So, make sure you know what exactly will you be paying for and how much will you be making.
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1 hour ago, Prose said:
"nothing more than a popularity contest" >>> good luck defending this
in spirit of the above, I SHALL REVISE my diction >>> largely useless
"we as a community" >>> legit no one cares what we think
Okay, well maybe not completely a popularity contest but PGR has been criticized for being just that by many other people, popular faculty included.
I also think people will care what we think, if future and current grad students start to visit PGR website less or use it less. It is us grad students who use it primarily and then Bryan starts attacking other grad students for criticizing him. Besides we can't as philosophers just live with a complacent attitude and we should address problems when a senior member of the field is petty enough to go after grad students and bad mouth them. He knows that it could hurt their job prospects (given the popularity of his blog). I don't know I'm just a bit cynical of arbitrary ranking systems and then when the person behind them turns out to be thin-skinned bully.
But it seems I'm in the minority here haha. So, maybe I'm wrong about PGR and Bryan Lieter.
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18 hours ago, Prose said:
PGR is useful. not perfect, not terrible, useful.
Leiter-related gossip is useless.
I'm not even sure how useful it is.. honestly. It seems nothing more than a popularity contest by people who are already "popular." But, I also don't think Leiter related problems or gossip is useless. He's a well known person in the field and if he's bullying people and other professors who disagree with him, then that's a problem. He has a popular blog where he can easily go and bad mouth people and if that's true then that needs some sort of repercussions. Also, if true, then we as a community shouldn't pay this much attention to him.
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12 minutes ago, practically_mi said:
I really appreciate the PGR and have found it immensely useful but Leiter himself is a massive bully. He seems to enjoy harassing grad students and junior scholars both on Twitter and on his blog... regardless of the substantive disagreements someone with his amount of power really should refrain from behaving like that
I don't even know about his ranking system. I think it's biased and many schools are not ranked because they aren't even part of the choice. It is helpful but I'm not sure how accurate or helpful for the field it is.
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1 hour ago, bluwe said:
I've heard the same from others, but I personally have not heard back. I'm trying to figure out the logic of releasing waitlists before acceptances and rejections. How do you know the applicants that are waitlisted if you don't already have a list of acceptances, minimally?
It might have something to do with that acceptances have to be approved for funding by the grad school (I think). Whereas, rejections and wait listed people don't have to be. Maybe. Just what I think.
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So, Bryan Lieter is in the philosophy talks again for being a bully. He's apparently blogging about some grad students now. So, I was wondering what do people think about his blog and his ranking?
Apparently Bryan has been accused of bullying grad students and junior faculty online. One professor, Sandra Lapointe, even said that she criticized Leiter online about something and that led Bryan calling her chair (why?) to point it out to them. Luckily for her her chair was cool didn't pay much attention to Leiter. But her point was that Leiter has been known for calling Grad students department and complaining about their "behavior." If that's true then that's pretty petty and messed up.
Anyway, I thought this could be something interesting to talk about see what others thing about Leiter and his websites etc. Also, something for us to do while we wait. lol
Disclaimer: I do not have any personal experience with Leiter, so, if some one knows something I've said is inaccurate or details about the incidences then do share.
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Is it me or Brown is only handing out rejections at the moment? I haven't seen anyone post about acceptances yet.
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5 minutes ago, The_Last_Thylacine said:
According to Grad cafe reports, the University of Colorado, Boulder almost always emails rejections. https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=boulder+philosophy&t=a&o=&p=3
hmm idk.. maybe they just didn't want to email me and my friends haha, jk. But, like i said it was my personal experience and others who that I know.
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On 1/20/2019 at 4:09 AM, Krauge said:
This is my first cycle. Do schools usually email you to tell you that a decision has been made, or do you just have to check your application on their website. Because I'm starting to look insane checking my applications every day.
University of Colorado seem to never email rejections. Just from what I've heard from a few pple and my own personal experience a few cycles ago.
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17 hours ago, Krauge said:
One of the writers on my letters of recommendations is flaking on me. They sent letters to a few of my schools, but have now suddenly dropped off the face of the Earth, and my Jan 15 deadlines are now 5 days overdue. I emailed them on the.16th and haven't heard back. Other than them, my applications and letters have been complete for a month now. Any advice on how to proceed would be hot.
Like others have said, if you're in the same town go to the department and see if you can track him/her down. If you do, politely remind them about the letter. It's possible they had something come up and are busy and have forgotten about the letters. Maybe talk to the department secretary and see if they can help you track your professor down.
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16 minutes ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:
Hi all, do most Philosophy programs interview (in person or online)? I figured not because I haven't really seen any mention of it, but I just found out that many Classics programs do, so now I'm not sure.
No I dont think so. U of Cincinnati has a "video essay" question but after talking to the department and reading on their website, they don't even look at it. It's just a Grad school thing.
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1 hour ago, Prose said:
is there funding
hahaha
Rejections
in Philosophy
Posted
So, this is is my third application cycle. I have only a simple advice, take this time to really and I MEAN TRULY search your inner self and ask yourself, is philosophy PhD really worth this much effort. Like Katherine said, there just is not sure way of getting in. My application this time around, I thought, was pretty good. Decent GRE scores, good LOR (I think lol) and good sample paper. I mean I worked on this sample paper for a VERY VERY long time but I've had little success this time around. With just 1 acceptances (no funding yet) and 5 rejections, and the rest aren't looking much better. So, I'm questioning now whether I even want to kill myself working on these applications, GRE etc. for this again? Is it actually worth it? Because if you don't get into a good top program, you'll be doing the same and feeling the same (if not worse) when applying for jobs. Where you go matter ALOT what kind of job you can get or any job.. And getting into these top programs is nearly impossible without a near perfect application (Top GPA, Top GRE, Amazing LOR from decently well knon names, and of course an amazing sample paper, even then you sill have a 2-5 % chance). Im sure some on here will disagree but I honestly believe their optimism is unwarranted. Sure there are cases that show what I said wrong but overall it its obviously true.
So, again I suggest really really ask yourself if there is anything else you could do with your life and be happy with it, then do that. Because if there is, then this is NOT worth it. It's expensive, near impossible, and selection pretty selective. Ask your self this, would you spend 1000 dollars and a year or two of your life on trying to get in somewhere or get something if you only had a 2-5 percent chance?
On the flip side, if this is truly what you want to do, then do what Katherine suggested. That's not a bad idea. and apply to at least twice as many schools as you did this time. 14 - 15. re take the GRE and make sure to get over 160 on both. Verbal and Quant. And work on your sample paper alot make it so that it can be published (theoratically) and your SOP needs to be very good. I mean very good. All this is going to be draining, expensive and difficult to do but if this is the path you wan to go then I think you have to do all those things.