ak71

Thanks! But just to be sure, I think some clarification about my case is needed. From the three people who wrote letters for me last time, only one is still among the letter writers. The other two are out of the loop, and two others have been replaced with them. The one who stays in will revise their letter accordingly, to speak to my current sample, etc. The same for the other (new) two: in fact they're writing letters only based on my new sample. So all of my current letter writers will speak to my current sample. On the other hand, the old two (who are out of the loop now) knew me perfectly well as their student and/or research assistant, so I thought their positive word on me, along with the new ones, might put me in a better position. But this then faces the issue of the old content in the old letters (i.e., talking about the old sample). My thought was to submit both samples but add a cover page on the old sample to explain that that's not my main sample, but rather to make sense of the old letters. Also, I'm doing a PhD now, and my former supervisor is my MA supervisor. (Same for the old letter writers: former instructors/supervisors.) The new letter writers aren't from my MA program but only (top) experts in the field who can very well speak to my sample. So the common advice cannot be applied to my case, unless to the extent that I can use the old letters from my MA people along with the new ones, which then gets me back to the puzzle.

I think as long as your score meets the official threshold you should be fine. In my experience TOEFL doesn't matter as much as GRE (which is not required but most departments this year, anyway), and is mostly used for administrative purposes such as official registration to the university, etc. (Some departments -- e.g., USC -- explicitly say this; some mention cases with test scores not even meeting the threshold, but the student admitted because of their fabulous sample and/or letters (maybe Rutgers?).) In any case, I wouldn't worry too much about TOEFL scores, so long as you're not explicitly discouraged to submit your application only for low TOEFL scores. PS -- If you ever decided to retake your TEOFL, take a look at Notefull's speaking sessions: they're available on YouTube and can significantly help with your scores. Good luck!

Hi all, I just realized that NYU allows to import recommendation letters from my previous application. I was wondering what you thought are on this. I already have three recommenders this year, one of them from the previous round (former supervisor), and the other two being top experts in the field who will be only reflecting on may sample and how they find it interesting, etc. I'm not sure if I should import the other two from the previous round. Here's the main problem: One of the old letters is from a former supervisor/instructor with whom I had taken a huge load of courses (all A's), and the other one from a former instructor with whom I had taken a few courses (again all A's) and had done some paid research in a prestigious project, while I was a student. I know both former writers say nice things about me and all, and the great thing about them is that they provide unique feedback on my former performance a student/research assistant; something that isn't available in the new letters. But the problem is that they -- as is costumery -- both talk about the sample of writing that I had submitted before, which is objectively garbage compared to the one that I'm submitting now. This is my initial thought, but I'd like to see what you think: since NYU also apparently allows to upload another sample besides my new one, I can upload the old one and add a cover page to it, saying something like this: "This sample is uploaded just to make sense of the previous letters in case they reflect on it; it does *not* represent my present philosophical skills and thoughts, and should be ignored for purposes other than making sense of the old letters. My main sample of writing is the other one." Would this be a good idea? Or should I just import the letters and not the old sample? Or maybe let the past go in its entirety? I'd appreciate your help!

I'm already in a grad program but will be reapplying this year. Speaking from previous experience, I can tell you that the wait is perhaps the most difficult part of grad school applications. What I did was to spend some good amount of time on voluntary activities such as writing/translating Wikipedia articles in my areas of interest -- not only it gets you distracted from the wait, you may also benefit many people. Good luck with your applications everyone!

Thank you -- I hope they think like you, and I also hope that it all works out!

Well, that's the thing: I'm afraid one of the main reasons I didn't get into a top school was this one -- my MA classmates with objectively less presentable research resume as well MA results, but with good BA grades, all ended up in much much better schools (we also shared almost the exact same letter writers). Or maybe it wasn't among the reasons, but this time I'd rather make sure I'm doing every bit of this right! (Caution: I'm not doing this to prove that I'm better than them or anything -- that's just an observation that later on made me think my BSc GPA did contribute to that.)

No, I'm afraid there's no really good excuse for that! As for the sample of writing, I assume it's good: it's on a very new, emerging trend, and all of my letter writers seem to have loved it, one of them being a prof from my top-choice school who is a main figure working on that stuff, and who happens to be my top-choice person on the planet to work with.

Hey all, I'm currently a PhD student and going to re-apply to some top programs in the US and UK, this season. My BSc was in math and I have so many awful grades (more like a pattern than rare incidents) but my MA and PhD grades are all A (and they constitute so many courses together). I think it's fair to expect the Bachelor's GPA to strike against my case, so I won't ask if they do. (Do they, though?!) What I want to know is where and how to address this stain in my case, if at all? Should I address them in my SOP? Should I just straight up take responsibility for the bad grades, or should I tell stories about those years? PS 1: I took some advanced graduate courses in my BSc and got A's in all of them! Maybe mentioning that helps? PS 2: if it's relevant, my recommendation letter writers are all established philosophers from top schools and I know they will write great stuff about my MA years and/or my sample of writing, etc. PS 3: Given that all of the departments that I'm applying to have dropped the GRE requirement, I'm not planning to take the test. I appreciate your help!

Hey all, I'm preparing my sample of writing for this year's applications round. As it happens, I have so many long footnotes, each of which is going to address some of the advantages of my view over others', or address some caveats or questions in the vicinity. In case it matters, the paper heavily technical logicy stuff, and the majority of the footnotes are very technical as well. I wonder if anyone would actually go through them all in detail, or if this might count as an overall negative factor for my sample. What are your thoughts on this? Any help would be much appreciated.

Hey guys, just a basic question about the paper format: are we talking double-spaced when we're talking about page length (especially for those programs that don't specify this -- some do)? I have received confusing remarks on this: some say that double-spaced is assumed by default; some say otherwise. Any thoughts on this? That would make a whole lot of difference for me, at least.

Thank you so much -- this is very helpful! Honestly I don't have a burning desire to do my PhD at ACU (or in general anywhere else than in the US/UK) either, and what you said makes a lot of sense to me. It's just that right now I'm a second year PhD student in a very bad program and I'm being tortured in various ways, so the first thing in my mind was to just 'run away' and get to any program which is better than here, the first chance I get. ACU, at least as far as the names in there are concerned, sounded more promising than here, and I might have a chance to get admitted. That said, and in the spirit of what you said, I think it still makes sense to perhaps wait a few more months and shoot for some top schools in the US/UK.

Hey guys, Sorry in advance if there's an unnecessary complexity in my question. I might need to make a decision some time soon, so I thought to put it all out at once. (I'm underlining what I think are the crucial parameters.) ACU just hired a number of world-class philosophers, and, according to PGR, it may be ranked between 5 to 10 in the next year's ranking in certain fields (metaphysics, language, metaethics, epistemology). They announced the graduate program a month ago (the deadline for applying is in 2 days or so), and my research work lines up perfectly well with one of the faculty members', who is young a and very active in his field. I have applied to the PhD program and I'm wondering what I should do if I get admitted: one the one hand, the names of the hires in my field are looking good; and on the other hand ACU is an obscure school in its entity, and I could in principle wait and see if I can get admitted to some top, well-known US/UK programs, in the next couple of months (which may or may not happen). Would it be worth graduating from ACU, given that it has *just* started off, even if I will have some big names from there behind me, in the future? What are your general thoughts om the program? Thanks! PS: has anyone else applied to the program?