Olórin

I’d say go for it. They might be able to tell you if x number of admits have accepted their initial offers, or they might give you an anticipated time that you might receive an update. More likely they’ll just tell you that they can’t tell you anything, but it’s worth a try.

The unresponsive grad director is one of my least favorite archetypes. I think all this tells you is that this particular person is unresponsive over email. I wish people realized how hard and confusing this is for applicants.

If it were me, I would go to the place with the lowest assistantship demands, highest pay, and best late-stage program benefits (like extra fellowship years). So, I think that’s most likely Emory.

FWIW, there's different versions of this scenario in every department. In my department, one intended advisor left, and a second intended advisor retired. We have new hires, but they're too green to direct a dissertation and having non-tenured faculty on a dissertation committee is risky. Departments usually look different at dissertation stage than they did at admissions stage, and you'll probably be different by then too.

Echoing this, my situation and results were very similar to PhilgoreTrout. Where I did my MA, it is very rare for a student not to get accepted into a PhD.

Grad school admissions is organized sadism (in the words of an old friend). Everything about it is horrible, I hate what it does to people.

I’m also here for this advice, which has helped me keep a better mindset in the grad school marathon.

I’m here for this. I actually think you should only do a PhD in philosophy if you plan to work outside academia afterward, because otherwise you’re just getting a degree in financial instability on the adjunct circuit. If an academic job happens to pan out and you want it, great. If not, you didn’t plan on it anyway, so nothing lost.

Eh, historically they send out rejections quite late, and I probably wouldn't count on them since they sent out interviews on 1/29 (according to the results page). I would say "never say never," but since you already have an acceptance and a waitlist, maybe never is the right attitude for them haha.

Hmm I think their interviews and acceptances went out a while ago.

Email their office of graduate studies too. They can also confirm whether your app was counted as complete or not.

I once knew someone who first got rejected from a program, then got accepted to that program two months later. My hunch is that if an adcom that interviews needed more people later in the season, they would still schedule an interview before sending an acceptance or wait list notification. So, it’s possible. But since it’s usually their goal to interview all potential candidates in the same week, it’s unlikely to happen unless they really messed up.

Uhh, piping up to say that what a PhD guarantees is years of financial instability and hardship. Even good stipends stop during the summer, and having to come up with new ways to make ends meet every summer is one of worst parts of a PhD. It’s kind of wild to me that this is the standard.

Honestly, they're all competitive. I've heard Texas A&M is sometimes suggested as a back up for continental leaning applicants, but I don't know to what extent that's true. All I know about Texas A&M is that they're hosting SPEP 2022.

You know, I have found the task of longer papers doesn’t get easier the more you do it. You just get used to the level of difficulty. My usual strategy is to follow my instinct and pay attention to what happens to stick out to me, and trust that’s the reasons will become clear as I write my way through things. Sometimes it produces great papers, sometimes it produces duds. That’s just how it is, sigh. After I have a draft, then I make an outline based on what is written to see how things fit together. I’ve never managed to write an outline before having a full length draft.