markovka

Rejected from Baylor via email. 
It's an honor to be the first rejected person in this thread. I'm sure you'll hear from me again soon.

 

I think this is the reason for letter-writers to fill out short surveys like "what percentile is this student's performance?" that way they can compare apples to apples a little bit better.

In at University of Houston. Wait-listed for funding.

To echo what MtnDuck said: the effect cascades. By your decision impacts hundreds of people indirectly, and at least one person directly. Your decline opens up a spot which enables someone to decline their lesser offers. If most shifting happens in April, there just isn't enough time for adcoms to go down the waitlist. If there is on average 3 day per offer turnaround, the adcomms can't get through 10 people on their waitlist in 3 days -- when the declines really happen.
Objections:
But they are willing to fly me out! This is a great opportunity to visit schools and network with professors I am interested in.
This is really an unfair tease. If you know you aren't taking their offer, then you're going on false pretenses, wasting their department's money, and making people wait for minimal gains. Is it really a good idea to use people to sight-see? It isn't like you're going to get a letter of recommendation. Just add them on PhilPeople for pete's sake. But if I decline that doesn't impact you. So what?
For some people, if they were given an offer before the 15th, they would accept your school's offer. You are literally impacting someone's ability to get into a school or get into a better school. It doesn't have to be about impacting anyone you know. The sooner the impact, the sooner others can impact others down stream. I am under no obligation to make any decision before April 15. If I wait, that's my prerogative.
True. Nothing is forcing you to make a decision, and definitely not to rush you. But if nothing will change your mind about the decision, then why take the time? If you are still unsure, that's one thing, but if you already have an obviously better offer, then this shows a character defect when you know this impacts other people's futures. Comparative harm account: you're harming people. You have a right to harm people, but that doesn't mean harming is right. Whatever my choice and whenever I decide to notify them, such course of action would be statistically normal. You cannot expect me to act otherwise.
Okay, I won't argue that it is obligatory, but clearly you don't see supererogatory actions as worthy of aspiration. I hope you're not working in ethics. It seems like it could be in my interest to hold onto the offer. I can use it as leverage.
Sure, if you think they are really comparable. But I'd argue it might even be in your interest to decline. The school might come back with a counter-offer that would not have been available if you didn't give them ample time to put together a more lucrative package.

Congrats bro

Fyi I'm just representing one (ranked) program but we generally don't look at grades until after we've holistically evaluated the person's writing sample, statement, letters, etc. Occasionally then when we look at grades and there is a big problem (e.g. nothing above a B+ in any philosophy course, a poor grade in logic or math for someone who wants to do formal work, a really really low overall GPA) someone just gets immediately counted out. But normally once we've looked at everything else unless there is a huge red flag in your grades you're already basically in the yes, no, or the maybe pile. That being said, without looking at grades at first, it is rare that someone with a GPA below, say, 3.3-3.4 (unless they were e.g. taking a lot of very hard math/science courses) ends up in the yes or maybe pile. But it does happen. A 3.7 would certainly not even raise an eyebrow in my department at all unless the philosophy grades were bad. Even then it is the sample and the letters that matter more. We also don't look at GREs though our university requires that we ask for them.

I applied to a lot of programs, and sort of regret it as I foresee a large number of rejections to roll in soon, and can probably guess what schools (so why did I even apply to those?). I think fit matters so much that if you have interests more specific than broad fields of study, you're probably better off applying to just the ones you're a fit for since the rest will just reject you on the basis that no one at their program has that particular interest. That said, if you're willing to put in the work to make your interests seem of broad interest to a large number of diverse faculty then maybe you should apply to a high number, since you won't be rejected based on your interests in lieu of any other reason to reject you.

I was just admitted to the Classics track of Yale's Ancient Philosophy joint program. Not sure about the Philosophy end, except that I was told they're offering admission to someone for the Philosophy track of the joint program. I also heard Yale is aiming for a Philosophy cohort of 5 people, if that helps.

Waiting-list confirmed. For those of you accepted to NIU, as usual, please decline the offer if you know you won't be attending. Thanks ?

I reached out.

Waiting-list confirmed. For those of you accepted to NIU, as usual, please decline the offer if you know you won't be attending. Thanks ?

I don't think there's really a unifying hashtag, so the thing to do would be to follow philosophers on Twitter! Some of the popular accounts are here.

Hi. I can tell you from experience on multiple different admissions committees that schools definitely engage in this practice. And, in my case, admissions committees in the same department, but made up of different faculty, make different decisions about whether to engage in this practice. (So, at least in my department, there is no policy about it, the admissions committee is made up of a rotating cast of 3-5 people, and whether we use the strategy "admit the best people and hope for the best" or "try to guess at who we have a decent chance of actually getting and admit them" is basically dependent on what those 3-5 people think.) As a practical matter, this is part of where good fit with the research interests of the faculty can help you if your file is strong (perhaps weirdly, it is also why being a less good fit can help you if your file is weaker). If you have a fantastic file and aren't a great fit for the department, you're likely going to get rejected because we don't want to take the chance on you given that you are going to get into places that are better fits for you. If you have a fantastic file and are a great fit, you're more likely to get accepted even with the worry that you'll go elsewhere, because we have more to offer you and there is more of a chance you will come (if, say, you got into our program and a higher ranked one that was a worse fit for you).

The concept of the safety school does not apply in the case of PhD admissions since in my experience if you think you are not ready to do it, then it is better to take a year off to do whatever is necessary to get in you in a good shape. PhD should be something that you are doing for itself rather than collecting course credits because this is what you'll get in whatever a school you land in. The question is why, if you think it will not be as challenging and rewarding as it could be? Having said that, I recognize the value of getting course credits as a pathway towards PhD, though not a "safety school."

maybe

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My impression was that the rejections so far were from a preliminary stage and that their acceptances will take much longer. (But I'm right there with you.)
EDIT: I see that Brown released acceptances in early February in the past, though, so I have no idea, maybe they are coming soon. Here's hoping...

While this isn't likely to have all the usual means correct for each school, I have some of that info on a spreadsheet (http://bit.ly/PhilAdm) under the "2019 Predictions" tab. 

BTW, I haven't seen this posted here but somebody made a pretty convenient way to search through GC's historical survey data. Nice way to anxiously kill time looking at decision dates and numbers while I wait. 
 
https://fretpwner.shinyapps.io/GradCafeStatistics/

Not expecting to start hearing back for another couple months, but getting on this train nonetheless.

all aboard the phd train chugga chugga ACCEPT US

This seems rather ironic to me hahah

I don't know much about Plato, but I don't think there's anything wrong with having a narrow set of interests, provided that you can articulate them to a broader philosophical community. However, if that is the case, you should be able to demonstrate a good knowledge of the current state of scholarship and the problems people are working on. What readings are the most recent, and of those, which are standard and which are controversial? What universities have the strongest faculty working on topics you're interested in, and how do you feel about the work of various specific faculty? How has the field developed over the last 10-20 years, and where do you see this going in the future? What do you find to be the most  important books and essays on your topic published within the last couple of years? Which people in your area do you think are doing great work, and what work do you think is not so good? Those are the kinds of questions you should want to have an answer to, if you don't already. 

With regards to research interests, my sense is that Plato (if not also the Timaeus) is too narrow in one sense, but also too broad in another. Rather than honing in on an entire philosopher (or even just one work), it's often more compelling to develop an arc where you show how a small part of a person's text (e.g. a reading of term X) informs a common reading Y of their theory, and how a Z reading might avoid the problems of Y, but that Z also has its own problems, etc. That's for the writing sample. The statement of purpose will be less specific, but should nonetheless exhibit a similar kind of movement: e.g. maybe you're interested in how a specific aspect of Plato's work informs something else, or you'd like to explore how other textual tensions work to address a certain philosophical problem. Maybe there are other problems you find interesting as well. My guess is that there are enough departments with people studying Plato, that you shouldn't be worried being about ostracized because of that alone (I did run into that problem with my WS on another philosopher)—but you do need to focus on how to articulate those interests in a way that shows what kind of scholar you might develop into. 

Aside from that, I would try to solicit as much feedback as possible from faculty and grad students working on ancient philosophy. Going to conferences can be a good way to do this if you don't already have connections, and is often a good way to meet people and get a sense of how the field is progressing. 



  

 

Right. So you want to apply to programs that are strong in whatever your area of interest is. Areas of interest match up with what the professionals call areas of specialization. If it's Plato you're interested in, then your prospective AOI is Ancient. So you tell them you're mainly interested in Ancient, and then you can specify Plato in particular (as long as you realize that Ancient means you'll have to know something about the pre-Socratics and Aristotle, too).
So the first step is identifying which departments are strong in Ancient. The next step is identifying faculty members with whom you'd like to work. And that means familiarizing yourself with their work, so that you can say something about why you want to work with them. Then, you should spend some time on the department's web page, and on the pages of cognate departments to see if you could take advantage of any resources elsewhere in the university--e.g. a certificate program in Classics, or maybe a co-supervisor from Classics, or whatever. You'll also want to identify some ancillary interests you'd like to develop a bit more (roughly: areas of competence), and perform the same kind of process for them. Play to the department's strengths.
Not really. Mind is a high-status subfield, but it's been low on jobs for several years now (the big boom was in the mid-to-late-aughts). Most reputable departments are strong in the history of philosophy along with what I guess you could call "analytic" subfields, though that's really a mischaracterization. There are just more subfields that get grouped under the heading "analytic" than there are that get grouped under "continental", and the "continental" subfields are often seen as luxury subfields--which is just to say that most Anglophone PhD-granting departments don't think of covering those subfields as being core to their research missions.
 
Right. Three is not an impressive number of courses, and what qualifies you to write about X for the rest of your life is a PhD with a research emphasis on X. What you're doing in your applications is petitioning a department to take the time to train you to become a qualified writer on X. So you have to convince them that you're a worthwhile investment.
 
That's good, because identifying gaps is often the hardest part of cultivating a research agenda.
Departments are looking for the skills that will allow you to become an author of articles, yes. But they're assuming that follows naturally from earning the PhD. So what they're looking for at this stage is (1) the ability to complete a PhD, and (2) promise. Think of it like scouting for sports teams (scouts in philosophy are about as good at identifying talent as in sports--which is to say, not very). Completing the PhD will take solid writing skills, determination, the ability to motivate yourself and work on your own, the ability to develop new ideas and churn out short papers to present at conferences, (ideally) good public speaking and presentation skills, the ability to pass whatever progression requirements there are (e.g. logic, languages), etc. That's what they're looking for.

Outsider's opinion here: it seems to me that the problem in your application is in seeing the broader picture. First off, just because you've only studied Plato so far and you think that's all you'll want to do in the future, that's a bit narrow minded. You don't know that this is true, and it's important to at least allow for the possibility that your interests will develop over time in grad school and beyond. More crucially, as scholars, we need to be able to communicate our research to others, within and outside our (sub)field; a critical part of that involves telling others why they should care about our research. In this case: why is it important/interesting to study Plato? What do we learn from doing so? How does it fit into the broader scheme -- does it influence our theories, or how we should think about anything else? If all you can say is that it's interesting to study for its own sake but you can't see any broader implication or interface with any other area of thought or life, that's indeed a very hard sell. It probably also means you haven't given your proposed area of study enough thought, because it can't possibly be true. 
I'd suggest that communicating this broader understanding is what matters most in your application. The fact that your actual current publication or classes were about Topic X aren't all that important, given that we understand that you've had limited exposure and a limited amount of time to study your subject. What matters more is how you digest it, as an indication of the kind of scholar you'll become, if and when you go to grad school.