philosophaurus_rex

There are some major problems with this list. U. Penn is "strongly recommended" for studying continental philosophy? Western Michigan, Houston, and Rutgers are "recommended"? These are good programs, but are strongly analytic in orientation. Why are Houston and West Mich listed under the "recommended" PhD program list and then also under the MA program list? These departments only offer the MA, not the PhD, and are fully analytic programs.
There are other issues as well. Why is Washington State Pullman listed? They have no grad program in philosophy at all. American U. is listed as a "strongly recommended" MA program, but Georgia State is merely "recommended". American doesn't even have a standalone philosophy department per se; it has a Religion & Philosophy department. A cursory look suggest that the department has maybe four TT phil faculty. Everyone else does religion or is a lecturer of some kind. Furthermore, there's no placement page, and the program doesn't appear to offer funding. GSU, on the other hand, has notable Nietzsche and Hegel scholars, and is fully funded with a strong placement history of getting students into continental PhD programs to boot. LSU and Cal State LA are not mentioned in the MA list at all, despite having TT continental scholars. UW Milwaukee isn't either, though they have someone who works on Hegel and Nietzsche.

Indeed it is! Lol (to some extent, and toward some certification in higher ed)

For the last two years I've used the spreadsheet to track acceptances, waitlists, and rejections after folks applied. This year I want it to be useful as folks apply rather than after all the applications are in.
 
Here's the new spreadsheet: Philosophy Admissions 2020 Spreadsheet 
 
It has a list of schools (100ish PhDs and 30ish MAs) along with their respective deadlines, application fees (and fee waiver information), transcript type required (official/unofficial), GREs (yes/no/sometimes), and other info. You can also sort it by using a personal filter to look at only the schools you care about.
 
If folks want to share the spreadsheet, feel free to do so using bit.ly/PhilAdm (this is so I can see how many folks access it but I just see a #).
 
-L

 

A lot of this is going to depend on what you mean by "analytic" but I would say that the majority of PhD granting programs are analytic in some sense or another. There's a world of difference between David Lewis style metaphysics, naturalistic approaches to philosophy of mind, or Rawlsian political philosophy even though those could all be understood as "analytic." A lot of people will claim that the Philosophical Gourmet Report (here) is representative of analytic philosophy. I'm not sure that's quite right, but it's at least  a good starting place, especially if you take a look at the specialty rankings. (A lot of people will complain about the PGR on here and there are certainly some legitimate concerns which you can easily find by looking around these boards, but I don't think they entirely negate it's value.)

Congrats on your acceptances! I don't have personal experience with either program, so I can't speak to how well faculty work with students. However, a few thoughts:
1. I don't know if there's a difference in funding between the two for you, but even if SFSU is giving you more funding, cost-of-living in LA is going to be lower than SF (I'm assuming that you have funded offers from both. Is that the case?). LA is expensive, of course, but housing costs in SF are obscene. University-subsidized grad student housing can help, but is often not great in terms of quality of life.
2. SFSU is no longer listed on the the PGR's list of top MA's, though CSULA is (See link here). That's something to keep in mind in terms of assessing the comparative overall strength of the two programs.
3. With respect to placement, it's a bit hard to determine. SFSU only has 2019 placements listed. CSULA lists every student's placement by year, so it's a bit more transparent, but they haven't updated the website in several years. I'd email SFSU and ask for complete placement listed by year, and ask CSULA for the last few years' placements. That should give you a better idea of how their placements compare, which might help you make a decision.
4. Reach out to current students at both programs. SFSU has a grad student listing. Pick a few students, and email them. See what they think of the program/whether faculty are approachable/etc. In my experience, most people will be happy to help. It would be especially good if you could talk to some advisees of the faculty you hope to work with. Not all advisors are created equal. I didn't see a CSULA grad student directory, so you might have to email the department and ask for the emails of current students.
Hope this helps!

The writing sample is many orders of magnitude greater in importance than the GRE. Your quant score is perfectly fine. For verbal, I'd say anything over 160ish is probably fine (for optics reasons). Would it be better if it were a few points higher? Probably, but I wouldn't spend time studying to retake it, unless you have a lot of free time and the extra $$ lying around for the retake. Spend that time working on your sample.

Unfortunately the answer is a cold hard no. If you back out now a call will be put out for your detainment by the Inter-university Police. You will be found and held, forced to finish the terms of your accepted offer. At the conclusion of these terms, you will be placed in a black list among all degree granting institutions barring your employment there on grounds of disrespect to the high authority of the Ivory Tower.
 
You ought to think these things through beforehand...

The advice above me is really good.
However:
You're a little late to start as soon as you'd like. Applications for funded MAs in philosophy are already long past (the last one was like February or so -- most are due in Dec-January). I don't know of any funded MA program that admits students (with funding) mid-way in the year.
So, you're looking for starting either a non-funded MA Fall '19 or Spring '20, or starting Fall 2020. Prep this Summer and start putting in applications Nov/December.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Start establishing good habits of self care. Get yourself in a strong routine of exercising, sleeping well, and eating right. It will be easy to slip into bad habits with this sort of thing once you're under way, and then it becomes a lot harder to bring yourself back into good habits. Get that stuff drilled down now and your mental health will thank you later.

As of this morning I was officially made an offer and accepted at Fordham!

Can the person who just posted a UMass acceptance please claim it here? I'm going there too and I want to be friends! 

Admitted off the waitlist to Rutgers. I've accepted the offer. 

Searle's research interest is being a perv.

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

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

Accepted my offer from UC-Davis. I’m glad to be done with this application season, and excited for this coming fall. ?

@VentralStream You can infer that--but yeah, you're right.

Talking with many people in different app processes, I have found that
often people don't look in depth beyond faculty specialties (and special faculty), PGR ranking, and the fact that there is funding people rank schools loosely; rarely do they create an ordinal list where there are few or no ties -- doing so requires further investigation of every program, like comparing faculty for your intended diss topic, precise funding package as it relates to estimated cost of living, actual placement records, etc. There is some economy to not researching each place well, since you'll be turned down by many schools you would be investigating. You need a low resolution until a viable option is actually offered. It requires a higher resolution to make an ordinal list where you can actually say "I have my 4th school, I'll turn down 6, 7, 8, 9, 10..."

Declined at NIU. I was offered funding, so hopefully this will help someone who is waitlisted for funding, too.