PhilCoffee

FYI for those rejected from MIT:
Alex Byrne mentioned they had more applicants than usual with +300 for only 4 slots this year.

He's the graduate admissions coordinator at MIT at the moment and we'd had a very brief chat about some of my documents back in January. I e-mailed him right after the rejections to thank the department for the fast turn around on the rejections (sometimes we wait a long time to hear about rejections officially or not at all), and he was forthcoming about the number of applicants and slots.
EDIT: No info about waitlists, but I didn't ask. Don't forget that the information we can glean from posts on GradCafe and Facebook are quite limited.

Accepted to both UW-Madison and WashU., St. Louis (PNP track). Both fully funded.

Accepted to WashU-PNP via email.

Admissions committee member here. I agree that there is no point to these sorts of posts or responses to them. Every admin committee makes decisions differently. In my dept there is no "threshold" you have to pass, though, and I doubt there is in most departments. We read every application. (Really.) We don't read all of every application, but we would definitely read your transcripts, cv, personal statement, letters, and at least skim the first five pages or so of your writing sample before putting anyone in a "no" pile. We don't do a "first pass" where we toss a bunch of people out on the basis of grades or anything like that. I personally don't care about grades at all unless they are bad in philosophy courses or there is some unexplained downwards trajectory. (Though fwiw I hate to say this, but a 3.87 is not a great GPA for an MA, and places that do care about grades will not be super impressed by it. It's not bad, but it is not particularly impressive since the grading scale in grad programs is much different than in undergrad courses. It is far less impressive than a 3.87 undergrad GPA is, imo.) Skimming your writing sample could lead me to examine it more closely even if your grades are terrible and your letters aren't great. If you're a terrible fit for my department, I'm less likely to spend tons of time on your app. If you are a great fit for my department, I'm more likely to spend more time on your app. If you have an unusual background (e.g. community college, long breaks in your education, etc.) I'll likely completely ignore grades regardless of how bad they are from early on in your education.
Some people care about grades a lot. Even within admin committees there will be disagreement about this. It could be, for example, that the "first pass" works by the committee dividing the apps among them and each coming back to the first meeting with a list of 10-15-20 names they want to consider more closely. In those kinds of cases probably each member of the committee is using a totally different set of criteria to make that list. It will just be luck how they divided up the alphabet, or whatever.
I do think that the only real close-to-universal thing there is to say here is that your writing sample matters above all else. I think that is true in nearly every department. Perhaps some departments will throw you in a "no" pile without taking even a glance at it, but my guess is they only do that if at least a couple of the following conditions are met: you don' thave a really strong background in philosophy, your letters are lukewarm, your grades are bad, your personal statement is weird or bad, etc. (The applications I spend the least amount of time on are people who just obviously have no philosophical background or very little. Apply to MA programs if you are in that position.)

Same problem, but nobody reached out to me. In my case, the portal still shows that a letter is missing, but the overall status shows a "complete" (it showed incomplete days ago). Just contacted Diana, who responed quickly and said nothing is missing. Weird.

Since we have a number of new folks on the forum and there have been a number of questions about what the spreadsheet is and what the FB group is, seems best to make a brief post with links to connect folks with the resources!
Here's the spreadsheet: Philosophy Admissions 2020 Spreadsheet 
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 the # of clicks).
For the last three years I've used the spreadsheet to track A/W/R after folks applied. As things are released, and as we receive credible information about what all has been sent out, I'll update the spreadsheet with that information. The first two tabs are dedicated to tracking releases and predictions of when things will come out. The middle two tabs are the application requirements for PhD and MA schools with deadlines and other information. 

Aside: Part 2 is a survey of how many schools folks applied to/barriers they encountered so feel free to fill that out if you have time/bandwidth. More info on that can be found here.
_________
The Facebook group is Philosophy Graduate Applicants. Folks can join by clicking the link (but be sure to take heed of the questions folks are asked to answer when they click join or you may not get added). The FB groups is a rad space to find other folks who are applying and ask questions. As with the forum just don't be a jerk/be charitable as we're all in this together!
 
-L

This is pedantic and unnecessary. I said what I said, and I wasn't "trying" to say anything else. If 300 applicants apply for 5 slots at a single school, that's about a 2% chance of getting into a given PhD program -- but OP is applying to 20. Of course, that percentage doesn't factor in applicants who have bad grades, or an underdeveloped sample, or not the best letters. Since OP is a strong candidate, I think they have a very good chance of getting in somewhere. This is merely one opinion among many in this thread. 

But my original comment did not imply that OP will certainly get in somewhere, so I don't see what point there is in beating a dead horse. It's common knowledge that PhD admissions in our field is very difficult, and nobody can be certain they will get in. That doesn't mean OP should feel demoralized, especially since they are clearly a strong applicant.

The top students with the strongest writing sample usually get into top PhD programs, so it may be helpful to compare your materials, especially the writing sample, to your classmates'. But given your description, you'll be fine.

Thanks for the info. I just checked the gradcafe results following your post, and there were no admitted international applicants for the last five years. I also checked the UCB philosophy website, and it turns out that only 4 out of 47 grad students can be considered as "international applicants (without US degree.)" I guess what you're assuming can be true for this cycle too. 

CMU is mine, and it's real. Definitely felt very early to me! The professor who emailed me said they just met today to decide (I would assume that emails to the other 7 may not all have gone out on a friday night? I'd think it quite possible). I included the numbers since I know at some point I will be rejected, and I will be grateful for someone else posting that I'm in good, numerous company. 
 
I just wanted to say -- after I submitted my application, I discovered this site, and couldn't help but compare myself to the people posting. I had applied for the master's, and decided to check the PhD box on a whim, because wouldn't that be amazing? I have little background in philosophy itself, no research, no published papers, no fancy grad seminars. My SOP was more a frolic through things that delight me than a coherent research statement. 
 
When I read here, I was SO impressed by everyone's accomplishments and focus. It seemed beyond belief that undergrads could be so put-together. I thought, wow, they're going to think I'm such an idiot, just for daring to submit my application amongst such quality, dedicated candidates. Away I went, thinking I've got no chance. Well, at least I tried, at least I had fun writing my silly essay! 
 
I was SHOCKED to get the email. Still am. (only reason I don't think it's a fluke is that it's very personalized). Have I mentioned - no philosophy since high school, no grad classes, no papers published, no "research agenda". My application was essentially a list of things I've done that've made me happy, and things that I hope will make me happy in the future.
 
I just wanted to write this in case someone sees it in the future, to realize that there is hope and there is a chance, that they should go for it and not be afraid by the grandiose things they read! If I hadn't decided to apply before looking here, I might very well not have. 
 
So, in the middle of all this stress for many, best of luck to all of you! It seems to me now that there really is a chance for everyone, which warms my heart immensely. (and I know that sadly, many qualified people lose in this lottery, which i expect to do on my other application lol. only I won't even be qualified!)

Same problem, but nobody reached out to me. In my case, the portal still shows that a letter is missing, but the overall status shows a "complete" (it showed incomplete days ago). Just contacted Diana, who responed quickly and said nothing is missing. Weird.

Yeah, I mean I didn't just rely on the assumption that they would reach out. I actually reached out and got no response, and that's the frustrating part.

Hey, thank you guys. The sense of frustratedness comes mainly from the fact that I contacted 2 staffs on the philosophy department and get no response. Maybe I reached out to the wrong guy, but I thought if that was the case I would get redirected.

Same problem, but nobody reached out to me. In my case, the portal still shows that a letter is missing, but the overall status shows a "complete" (it showed incomplete days ago). Just contacted Diana, who responed quickly and said nothing is missing. Weird.

I don't know if this is helpful or not, but I had a similar issue with Pitt where my letters status were submitted on the application portal, but on the application status portal, it showed them as missing. An admin reached out to me and asked me to have my letter writers send their letters directly to them, and they would upload them for me (which worked).

Posted on the results page already, but in at Toronto HPS.
 
They're apparently taking 2 domestic students this year so flagging that for reduced admissions.

Don't wait any longer. Send an e-mail to the admissions coordinator at Pitt and find out what's up--it's entirely possible that the messages you're sending are going to a portal inbox for someone who no longer checks it (i.e. a past coordinator who now has no reason to log into the portal).

Yeah, I mean I didn't just rely on the assumption that they would reach out. I actually reached out and got no response, and that's the frustrating part.

@Outer Heaven Yeah. And he says "no". So I don't know what's going on. Probably I should wait, maybe they'll find the letter, or they'll reach out otherwise.

UO Philosophy is accepting folks! Not sure where wkthomas got his information, but I confirmed that with two faculty members (including the DGS) pre-submission deadline.

Well, this is partially true from my perspective. I applied to 15 PhD programs most of which are in the top 10-20 PGR with good fit for my interests. However, I did apply to a few lower-ranked programs and even one unranked program that fit my interests especially well. If it weren't for the current circumstances I might not have applied to these places. Since I already have an offer from one of my top 2 choices in terms of overall fit I will likely be withdrawing my applications from these lower ranked programs. 
On a tangentially related note, I'm increasingly of the mind that we should put far less emphasis on overall rankings as a discipline. The only rankings we should be paying attention to are perhaps specialty breakdowns. Unfortunately, I don't think the emphasis on rankings is going anywhere, unless we as a discipline find some practical means of filtering out prestige bias in hiring practices.

Yeah. I think we just have different predictions about those strongest applicant's selection of prograns. I was just assuming that they would apply for programs that they usually apply for plus a couple of schools like Tufts or NIU, or some top 30 programs. And I actually agree that these applicants will end up getting in the places that they usually would get in.

For the interested here is when they've released historically:


(data source: admissions spreadsheets of years past)
Unless they go super early this year, I would expect to hear back between 2/5 (a Friday) and 2/9 (a Tuesday) with a slight favor towards the 9th.

Just chiming in to say that (based on personal experience) this is largely correct. LPS is in the school of social sciences which requires interviews before sending out actual offers. In the past, LPS has treated this 'interview' as essentially a formality and a chance to sell their program (mostly by taking people to the beach ?). The philosophy department at UCI is in the school of humanities, so they are going to do things a bit differently.
I would not take UCI LPS as indicative of anything regarding other programs.