politkal

I thought the application process would be much easier this time around given my experiences last year and the fact that I have more stuff to do whilst I am waiting but it has still been quite stressful. I'm applying to UK programmes and I have only heard back from one of them so far (offered an interview which is great) but I am aware that they have started sending out rejections at one of my top choices and I am also aware that they have sent out some interview offers. It has been radio silence for me and this seems to make me think that I am probably on some sort of "hidden waitlist" and that I am not within their preferred choice of candidates. The person I know that has been offered an interview does work in a completely different field and so it is possible that my application is still undergoing review but it doesn't feel positive given that they usually interview applicants within the next two weeks. It is hard not to ruminate about the process to begin with and everyday that passes by it becomes harder to concentrate on anything else. I pray that this week I will receive an interview offer!

Someone has posted an acceptance for the PhD programme in philosophy at KCL - In the hope that this message finds them: I have an interview with them in a couple of weeks and would kindly like to ask what to expect from it?

I apologise - it is obviously a bit frustrating and like I said above, I found the whole process to be rather unfruitful because of the negative results and a lack of feedback. Not receiving a reason for rejection is a major cause of my frustration and I don't think it's arrogant to want a reason or justification, it helps you accept the result and make improvements for the future. It's bad enough that people are rejected or dropped without reason in the labour market, I think that academic institutions can and should do better than this. I don't think you will know all of the people I'm referring to because not all of them are on the programme (yet), although it is my faux pas and I wasn't thinking clearly, so I apologise for that. I would like to clarify a couple things though - I never said anywhere that these people "lacked the merit" to get onto the programme and that I was "entitled to their places", this is your incorrect abduction and not something which I claimed. I am sure that anyone who ended up on any of the aforementioned programmes is pretty talented, can do philosophy and is someone who I would love to have a beer with! I admitted in my post that "for whatever reason" my application just wasn't deemed strong enough and I accept that. I pointed towards things that I think I could improve in the future (my writing sample) and unlike a lot of the other elements that go into an application, I think that this is something that every applicant can actually focus on and tangibly improve. As you will see in the text that you've quoted I use the phrase "seemingly very poor applications", as in, from my perspective with the limited knowledge that I had at the time, I didn't take my application to be so lacking in comparison and if anything, some of the applications I viewed didn't seem to hit the university's own criteria. I should've masked my statement more but the general thrust of what I was trying to communicate stands - we ultimately don't know how we are likely to be assessed by admissions committees, the reason that I raised these examples was to demonstrate this but I apologise for doing so in a clumsy way, as I did not intend to offend anyone. My post may have come across as slightly arrogant but that's perhaps because a triumphant tone doesn't really come across well on a text-based forum! Ultimately my application experience was negative, confusing and incredibly depressing, but I didn't keep beating myself up about it despite my frustrations and I managed to move on from it and start doing philosophy again with more vigour. Going into the process, I thought I stood a better chance given the information that I had, but like I've said multiple times, that information was limited in many important respects. In this sense, I wanted to say that no matter how unfair or bad things seem to be, there is a way out of that hole emotionally speaking and this is what I was referring to - the emotional issues which can often spill out of the process. Thank you for your suggestion of seeking out more senior tutors for advice and feedback, I never did this as I did not want to bother senior members of the department with my petty application issues and worries but I can imagine that they perhaps aren't as bogged down with administrative duties etc. I thought that my personal tutor/supervisor ought to help with this but I'll think about going down a different route in the future.

I whole-heartedly agree with this advice. I am U.K based and came into philosophy through an untraditional route but completed a conversion MA at a PGR school here, achieving a distinction in the process which is equivalent to GPA of 4.0. I applied to four schools (UCL/KCL/Oxford/LSE) but I was only accepted onto LSE's MSc and rejected from the other MPhil/BPhil programmes. Emotionally I was distraught after the flurry of rejections as I had hoped to get into one of the former research degrees. I personally knew many others who had gotten onto the programme at UCL, some of whom didn't even meet the minimum entry criteria and others who had seemingly very poor applications (one international student's personal statement demonstrated an incredibly low literacy level) and this made the whole experience even more frustrating and objectionable. Overall, the process was pretty negative for me but it did inspire some new work on procedural fairness, work which I will now be presenting at conferences across Europe this summer. In this sense I managed to eventually galvanise myself but I think it's right that people talk about how to handle the process and rejections emotionally, as I was in a pretty dark place for a while and because I think that it is something that we can actually shine a light on effectively. My advice here would be to try to expect to receive a rejection from each programme you apply to, and somehow balance this negative expectation with the positivity that is required for completing good applications. Even though it's a top school for Political Philosophy, the LSE programme was my safety option because it wasn't a research degree and as such, I put my application together in about 10 minutes by just regurgitating what I had used for my other applications - weirdly this was the one that worked whereas the hours that I spent agonising over my Ox application turned out to be worthless. For sure, there is a lot of luck involved in the process, not just because you have no idea concerning how you are to be assessed by each institution but also because you may not have very helpful tutors, or because other applicants have some "insider knowledge" regarding your chosen programme. In my case, my tutors were incredibly unhelpful - lazy in producing statements (leaving them close to the deadline and unwilling to correspond much with me on them), unwilling to take a look at personal statements or writing samples etc. - unfortunately there is nothing much I could have done about that. Ultimately, most of us have no idea why we were rejected, references are submitted anonymously and feedback or a reason for rejection is rarely ever provided. Before applying I felt like I had done so much research online and prepared as well as I could have done given the circumstances but for whatever reason, it just wasn't enough. Despite this, if there is anything I could advise, it would be to echo what others have said - make sure your writing sample is as good as it can be. I used a slightly refined excerpt from my dissertation and I totally regret it. At the time I thought it was wise as it was a piece of work that scored a high mark on my MA and I had received some particularly positive feedback on it. I was worried about rewriting it or coming up with a new piece of work because I thought, at least with this sample, I knew where it stood academically. In hindsight I should have developed a totally new piece bespoke to the programme I was applying to, one that fitted the desired word length perfectly and perhaps also aligned with interests of the tutors at the school (in a more obvious way). I decided to take up my place at LSE in the end as I figured it can only help my chances moving forwards and because there are a lot of great tutors there that I am actually pretty excited to work with given my areas of interest. I will be applying to PhD programmes at the end of this year with the hope of moving on directly from my second Masters. I just hope that this time I manage to navigate the process more successfully! I also hope that the conferences I am doing this summer will bolster my academic C.V and help me to further refine the paper I am working on which will probably end up being my dissertation at LSE. I think I will apply for PhD/DPhil's at Cambridge/Oxford/LSE later this year, I know most of the people here are based in the U.S but if anyone else is looking at these programmes/has applied to them previously then give me a shout.

I just saw this on the results as well, I wasn't expecting it to start this early. I'm absolutely bricking it. Congrats to everyone who has just received acceptances from Oxford or elsewhere!

Thank you for getting in touch, I hope you're enjoying your second year - how have you found the workload at UCL? I will be sure to chase them up if I don't hear anything in the coming weeks, a friend of mine who graduated from the same university is currently doing her first year at UCL and I think she heard back in March. Also I would love to know whether you submitted a research proposal when you applied and what your background was? I got in touch with the graduate admissions office and they told me that it wasn't necessary to liaise with a potential supervisor or submit a proposal for entry onto the course. I did submit a proposal in the end as I do have a clear set of problems that I would like to pursue but I avoided getting in touch with any potential supervisors, as I didn't want to preclude myself from working with any other tutors (my proposal would probably be suited to more than one tutor at UCL). I was actually rejected from KCL on the grounds that I did not contact any tutors in the department regarding supervision (a mistake which was made as a result of the assumption that King's would operate more similarly to UCL, even though I know the courses are quite different) and so I am worried that somehow the grad admissions at UCL might also have made a mistake and that I might have been led astray? Any light you could shed on this would be great! Thank you, LSE is a great school and I am happy to have received an offer, especially given my areas of research interest (political philosophy, social epistemology). Despite this, I am really hoping for an offer from either UCL or Oxford. I think that both the MPhil stud and BPhil provide much better value for money when you consider the quite frankly ridiculous fees that LSE charge (one year of tuition comes scarily close to two years at Oxford). In addition to this, I think that both of the aforementioned courses provide a more rigorous training for doctoral study and offer students the opportunity to really deepen their knowledge on a range of philosophical fields. Another sticking point with LSE is that all the modules that you take are graded by examination (67%) and short essays of 2000 words (33%) - it kind of comes across as quite lazy, as in the tutors can't be bothered to read long student papers and also as an ineffective way to develop more advanced student philosophers. May I also ask what your profile is like and where else you have applied?

I'm a little bit late to the proverbial party and also from the U.K but I would love to hear from anyone else who has applied to either UCL or Oxford! I'm currently waiting to hear back from both universities and from the data provided on this website, it seems as though I can expect to receive a decision within the next two weeks. I finished my applications back in October and the wait has been absolutely agonising. I am not very confident of gaining entry into either school even though I definitely have the grades. I'm not quite sure whether stumbling across this website has helped or worsened my anxiety but it has softened the experience and the blow of my only rejection so far. I suppose it's comforting to know that you aren't alone!

Is there anyone else here applying for postgraduate programmes in philosophy based in the U.K? I'm still awaiting a decision from the Ox and UCL, the wait is so long and it is tearing me up inside...