VentralStream

@brookspn I was literally about to write the same thing! The main point is clear: given TA duties and seminars if you are only reading/writing for 30 hours a week, that's definitely on the low side. This is why when choosing a program you should seriously consider fellowships versus TA duties (and the different kinds of TA assistantships) and not *merely* ranking.

Where are you leaning towards btw?

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I thought about this, but I personally think, unless invited, it seems presumptuous; especially if the waitlist is long and unranked. But that's just my opinion.

@MidasDetritus Yes. Just fixed it.

just wait listed at Notre Dame. Was that email also sent to those who were previously accepted? I ask, because the last third paragraph seems to be addressed to those already accepted. Can those that have already been accepted confirm please. I am asking because the email list is already quite long (21 people), such that if that list already includes those that have been accepted, then it's more reasonable.

I have declined the offer from Ohio State. Hope that helps someone!

I concur with the shout out to @MtnDuck! Thanks for all your work! I regularly looked at the spreadsheet and appreciated the weekly briefing notes. I will give it a couple more weeks before I feel confident in my advice for future applicants.

Rejected at UCSD.

@laxdog28 do you mind me asking what is your AOI?

Also "extremely high" on UVA waitlist.

@Marcus_AureliusThat's what I was thinking, which is strange since the main factor will be temporal (declining now versus later; not that they declined).

So I emailed ND this morning to find out if I was still being considered for admission and I am having difficulty interpreting his reply. Here was professor Franks' response: "Yes, we just sent out our first few admissions offers last night. (The first round of rejections were last week.) I will create an initial wait-list after the initial admissions are finalized. Depending on how many people reject our offer right away (which varies wildly year to year) you might yet get an initial admissions offer in time to visit during the recruitment week. Otherwise, I would expect you to be on the wait-list, which will be announced probably Monday or Tuesday" I don't know if I am being blinded by my optimism that I am unable to read plain English, but it sounds like I am either going to get accepted or wait listed; but then, in what sense was there only a 'first round of rejections'; that is, there must be at least a second round, no?

@Stencil @hector549 I will definitely consider that! thanks for your input!

Where did you hear that? I can't help but think that such a claim cannot be confirmed by anyone except someone in Harvard's admission committee.

@Moose#@1%$ Hopefully!

@Prose This is not related to the post, but if you don't mind me asking, when did you get your acceptance from Notre Dame? Was it a fellowship? I haven't seen any acceptances on the results page or forum. Thanks!

@Jespersen Do you mind if I ask you what is your AOI?

I agree with everything you have said but you did leave out one reason why one might hold onto an offer which might be common. I am seriously considering accepting Rice's offer (as per my post) and to that end I am flying for the preview day which I had to confirm by today (it cost them $1,000 for flight (I am flying from Canada) plus $200 for lodging at the Marriot at the Texas medical center). However, If I get into Notre Dame next week (I have made the first cut), then I will probably choose it over Rice. However, by then, I can't reject Rice's offer after how much they have spent. I should at least give them a chance to persuade me otherwise; and unfortunately, the preview day is not till late March!

@hector549 You are absolutely right that I would be screwed If I changed my AOI. But I have already done two years of graduate work during my MA, so I am fairly certain about my AOI!

Thank you for taking the time to write such a long response! I think you are right in what you have written here. I think you are right that those coming out top ten, especially top 5, get hired because of their "promise" and not necessarily because of their publishing record at the time. I am not sure this applies to Rice vs. Ohio for example. I totally agree with this. I forgot to mention that although Rice hardly makes you TA, you actually get training (because Rice greatly emphasizes undergrad education) to teach your own course in the latter year(s). Totally agree about the shotgun approach of some schools that have misleading placement rates (number versus percentages). This is specially true of Toronto. I hadn't thought about my supervisor introducing me to "research networks". Interesting!

Thank you for your response. I think you are right regarding (2); but not with respect to the programs I am referring to: does Ohio State really have much more prestige than Rice? probably not. Moreover, Brown and Cornell's prestige does not seem to be helping them very much. I think this is more so with top 10 programs. Regarding (3), I agree! hence Rice! they have according to that APA funded study on placement almost 40% placement into full time academic jobs. And you can argue that those programs that have good placement but are lowered ranked are so precisely for the reasons that I have mentioned. Take University of Virginia for example. They have excellent faculty that could easily teach at top 20 (like Rice), and offer great funding ($22,000) for living in Virginia including $4000 for summers (the same as Cornell). Same with Emory and Northwestern.

Hi all, I have managed to convince myself of choosing a program outside top 60 (overall 2.0 rating) over Top 30 and Top 20 programs. I would greatly appreciate your input and warn you that this post is much longer than I expected (sorry!), though I also think it raises some interesting questions that we all are probably thinking about. I think we often speak of philosophy programs’ placement as it were like professional schools like law school or business where the type of job one is offered is directly related to the programs’ ranking. But philosophy is not really like that: people that get tenured jobs are actually successful insofar as they have published in good journals and it is therefore directly related to their craft and expertise. So why do most people get tenured jobs at top 10 programs (especially top 5)? Most people think that it is because of the quality of the program; but I think this is only partially true. This is true only insofar as the top programs tend to have the best professors and offer fellowships. In this way students can get the best supervision and spend 100% of time and effort on research. But there are plenty of top 20 programs (and some top 30) that have professors that can easily work in top 5 programs. For example, Adam Pautz at Brown turned down an offer from Rutgers a few years ago and Karen Bennett just moved from Cornell to Rutgers. Likewise, Brown and Cornell students hardly do any TA work and have at least 3 years without any duties (this is actually way better than Toronto where students have to Ta every year, though for only 9 hours a week). So why is it that Brown and Cornell’s placement rate are rather abysmal compared to top 10 programs if students have essentially the same resources? I think it’s simply because the best students go to the top ten programs and not top 20. Can we really say that for some student that got tenured coming out of a top 10 program, that he would not have got tenured coming out of Brown or Cornell (say in philosophy of mind and metaphysics respectively)? Why? Counterfactually, had Adam Pautz accepted the Rutgers offer, this student would have studied under his supervision and had essentially the same resources as he did in his top 5 program. I am currently waiting on Notre Dame (I seemed to have made the final round) and Harvard, but if I don’t get into these, I am planning to choose Rice over Ohio State (where I have been accepted), UCSD and The University of Texas (assuming I get into these), for essentially the same reasons I outlined above with some caveats. The main Caveat is that I had some inside-information about Rice: Uriah Kriegel is headed to Rice starting this fall (he was previously a full professor at Arizona (top 15) before he went to Europe to have a research position). If your AOI is philosophy of mind, then I don’t need to tell you about Kriegel. But for those that are not familiar, he has written and edited many influential books and is currently the editor for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook to Consciousness. Rice also already has Charles Siewert and Timothy Schroeder (previously full professor at Ohio State) which are quite good at philosophy of Mind. Likewise, Rice is offering me a fellowship worth $27,000 a year (including summers) with only TA duties for four semesters 10/ hours a week (so essentially only TA duties for 2 years). Houston (where Rice is located) also has graduate housing for under $1,000 per month. By contrast, UCSD, UTexas and Ohio, you have to TA for 20 hours a week(!) and you don’t get funding for the summers. I think at UCSD you can qualify to funding for the last year, but only at $20, 000 even though San Diego is quite expensive. So as far as I can tell, I have every opportunity (and more) than I would at these programs to get a job even though they are ranked way higher than Rice. Or to put it more modestly, If I don’t get a job coming out of Rice, then I probably wouldn’t have got a job coming out of these programs.

@MtnDuck I won't get my hopes up then! Thanks for the info!

Does anybody know if Notre Dame has more than one wave of rejections? I noticed many applicants were rejected yesterday (I have not heard back from them).