HomoLudens

If your transcripts reflect any major issue that you had during your studies, you should bring it up. Even better, have your letter writers say something about your history and how you remain a strong candidate despite your setbacks.
You bring up an interesting point that I have been considering for a while: How much should your SOP reflect the prevailing culture of identity politics?
My answer is Not at all! I have an unusual background as well (high school drop-out, 1st gen college student/grad student, working class background, etc. etc.). I don't mention any of this in my SOP, nor do any of the other MA students in my program who I have done workshops with. I think it will do more harm than good if you try to use identity as a crutch. All ad-coms care about (or at least all they should care about) is your ability as a philosopher. IMHO background/identity doesn't make you better at logic or critical reasoning (I am not interested in debating this point here). I think many philosophers on committees  won't care about your background as long as your writing sample, LORs, and transcripts are high quality.
Say what you need to say about your background only insofar as it materially impinges upon the rest of your application. 

It is officially application season for 2021! The first application due dates have arrived, and with it the months of waiting and dread. I think we should get a thread going where we can discuss where we are applying, ask questions regarding specific apps, and voice concerns.

Thanks for starting this thread! To kick things off, I saw a poster on another thread refer to "programs worth attending". Would anyone be willing to offer a set of criteria at which a graduate philosophy program becomes not worth attending? Perhaps if it falls beneath a certain level on the PGR? Or if it's placement statistics fall beneath a certain threshold?

Since I think it was me that used that phrase: the criterion I was referring to was funding. If a Ph.D. program does not provide tuition remission and a *livable* stiped, then it's not worth attending. This is both because a graduate degree in the humanities is a poor financial investment (a tenure-track job in philosophy is hard to come by and that's probably getting worse; a Ph.D. in philosophy doesn't adequately prepare you for other lines of work; and even if you do get a job as a philosophy professor, it probably won't pay enough to make paying off years worth of student loans an easy feat) and because having to find other ways to support yourself is almost certainly going to get in the way of doing good philosophy and making adequate progress towards your degree.
I think other criteria are important, but are less clear as thresholds. Placement is definitely important and is imperfectly correlated to rankings. The overwhelming majority of professors hired by top ~20 PGR programs got their Ph.D. at a top ~20 program (cf. https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2019/11/where-untenured-tenure-track-faculty-at-the-us-top-20-programs-got-their-phds-2019-20.html). Elite liberal arts colleges tend to have similar hiring practices. Non-R1 universities are sometimes less prestige focused, so it would be a mistake to assume that people outside of the top-20 don't get jobs and there are other hiring trends once when gets outside of elite schools/R1s. (Some programs do very well at placing students in jobs at colleges in the same geographic region; Catholic universities have a strong tendency towards hiring PhDs from Catholic universities). Looking at placement rates is important, especially for lower-ranked, unranked programs (some such programs are very good at placement, while some highly ranked programs are not). If a program doesn't provide comprehensive placement data, that's a red flag. If a program isn't placing students on a regular basis (pre-pandemic), don't assume you will be the exception (especially post-pandemic). Advisors are important too. It might be the case that a certain professor does a very good job of placing their students, even if the program as a whole does not. Conversely, if all of the students getting jobs from a given program have the same advisor, don't assume you will be so lucky attending that program and writing a dissertation under a different advisor.

I'm curious as to how you all are approaching the personal history/diversity statements required by some schools. For me, a cis-het white man from a privileged background, most of the barriers that I've faced have been of my own making. 
 
I have had, however, an unusual college path, and had to drop out of my first institution and go to treatment. I'm now in recovery, have been sober for some time, etc. I am torn about whether or not to bring this up in personal history statements (for those places that require them). I worry that, by doing so, I could be oversharing, seen as privileged white guy trying to sound disadvantaged, or seen as a liability. I also worry that, in not bringing it up, I am missing a good opportunity to explain my weird transcripts, and that if my statement is bland and standard, it could be a mark against me if there's  an admissions committee member who cares a lot about these.
 
I am probably overthinking but wanted some advice. Right now it looks like only two of the programs to which I am applying require these, Berkeley and Michigan.

Personally, I think that you should tell your story. Clearly, you overcome challenges. That is significant. We all have problems. Some of them have to do with race, class, etc., and others do not. Your challenges and your achievements in overcoming them are no less significant simply because they do not belong to the former category.
For me, I'm a heterosexual dude who had a relatively comfortable middle-class upbringing. My skin is brown, but I don't feel that it has held me back in any tangible way, so I didn't mention it. I had problems early on in undergrad leading to poor grades, but they mostly had to do with laziness and a lack of direction. I chose not to mention this anywhere. They'll see that my grades significantly improved over time. I decided not to write a diversity statement.
In my personal statement, I mainly focused on my academic trajectory placing me here and now, applying to phil PhD programs. I studied a few other things for 7 years before I ended up in phil, so that gave me enough to write about.

It's worth distinguishing between personal statement, and diversity statement (which as you note is only asked for by some programs. Transcipt anomalies can be accounted for in the personal statement if desired (as PolPhil mentions), but doesn't seem advisable to go into detail there.
Diversity statements are not really about representation. I didn't realize that when I was applying. But a successful diversity statement is about how one approaches research/teaching/etc., not about one's own identity. Some places, where the university requires one but the department doesn't care, may not even really read it. But it can't hurt to think deeply about your perspective toward performing the role of a PhD student in an inclusive way. So I'd mention your struggles only if you have something to say about how you view the academic world based on your experience. (Would you build syllabi in such a way that incorporte perspectives on addiction? Is there a paper you want to write related to treatment? etc.) But don't stress much about diversity statements. Set yourself apart philosophically with your writing sample (especially), plus your letters and statement of purpose, because your perceived philosophical potential is what'll get you in or not.

It is officially application season for 2021! The first application due dates have arrived, and with it the months of waiting and dread. I think we should get a thread going where we can discuss where we are applying, ask questions regarding specific apps, and voice concerns.

It is officially application season for 2021! The first application due dates have arrived, and with it the months of waiting and dread. I think we should get a thread going where we can discuss where we are applying, ask questions regarding specific apps, and voice concerns.

Yeah, your background is sort of proof that having a passion for the material (as opposed to any specific trainging) is key. Though, not everyone is as heavy duty continental as you, Sparks ?

I am at a heavy continental program. We have a number of people who went to predominantly analytic departments (Harvard, one of the UC schools, Amherst). As long as you are interested in the field, and you have a solid background, you should be fine. There are very few people that go into programs already "experts" on Husserl. Unlike, say, Kant or ancient philosophy, you probably won't need to have a strong background in Husserl to be successful.

Thanks for the advice. This is really helpful in orienting my application.

Accepted at Colorado, waitlisted at Michigan & North Carolina. Rejected by Rutgers, Arizona, UCSD & Georgetown. Applying from an unranked program. AOI - ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law.
Very happy with these results. Even if I don't have any more luck, I love the Colorado program. I know that elite programs' waitlists probably don't move much, but I'm thrilled even by the possibility.

I was hoping another Loyola waitlister would post. I heard the same thing. Mine I am focused on German Idealism and analytic philosophy in general. You?

Waited at Loyola

So happy for you! I am glad that I had someone else to make it through the brutality of this interview process. 

I have not received one yet, which is strange. I also have heard nothing about interviews. How did they contact you?

I have not received one yet, which is strange. I also have heard nothing about interviews. How did they contact you?

Hello 2019 applicants,
Like most of you, I am frantically trying to compile an application. Arguably the most important aspect is the writing sample, so I figured we could use this space to discuss topics we are submitting, strategies, and other useful information.
I am abroad right now, so I am having to study for the GRE, finish a full load of summer semester classes, and prep my thesis for next year. I currently don't feel like I have a strong sample at the moment, so I am planning on using one of my term papers this semester. My topic is on the notion of spirit and the aesthetic conception of human nature in philosophical anthropology (a topic you can only find here in Germany HA!). As you can see, it is heavy on continental theory. I am mainly using Max Scheler, Hannah Arendt, and Friedrich Schiller as my primary sources. I don't think I need to rely on too many secondary works (which might be a problem for adcoms). In fact, no scholars are writing about Scheler anymore, which I think adds to the novelty of my sample. Do you all think that that kind of originality matters for admissions, or are more esoteric topics like mine detrimental?
 

I don't know the specifics of the program but Vanderbilt is always rated very highly in continental circles.  A few classmates of mine from Stony Brook are finishing up their PhDs down there.  And regarding good continental programs in Tennessee, The University of Memphis has a good reputation.  

I'm applying. Just finished the first year of my MA. Interests are mainly in German Idealism/phil of mind. Right now, I'm hoping to apply to a lotttt of programs. I have a working list, but need to start winnowing it down.

Hi all,
I am a junior at a small LAC. I switched from history to philosophy at the end of my sophomore year. I only have one unit in philosophy on my transcript because I have been abroad this past year, and as such none of my courses at my German uni have transferred. For this reason, I feel intimidated about applying to any programs. So far I have taken numerous master level courses in German, but I still feel like I don't have a good enough foundation to actually be a competitive applicant. My GPA is around 3.8 (3.9 if you count transfer credits from my Community College) and my school is on that (in)famous list of schools with the lowest grade inflation that went around about a year ago, but I don't think that can cover my lack of foundation in the field.
I will be active (i.e. lurking more than usual) as deadlines approach. Good luck y'all.