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At several schools you can add a 4th letter writer, so if you think that this difficult professor's letter won't make you worse off you can always pop them on for those schools only. Congrats on an R&R! That should speak really well for your sample. Like Dreams said, you should probably reconsider the schools you're applying to if you don't think you'll accept an offer from them if you had no other. But I don't think you should spend a lot of time researching them if you're applying to 10+ - it's a good way to piss away a lot of time, better to look more seriously at them when you do have an offer. It's not much work for a prof to upload their letter to one more school, but it does cost you a fair chunk of change.

Philosophy is so broad, no one is an expert in everything. From what I've gathered it's very common to get completely lost in some areas while perfectly competent in others. People also like to talk more about what they feel confident at, so you hear less about where they struggle.

I had Austin take me off their list after I got in elsewhere because of their state politics, I would only have accepted an offer in Texas if none of my other applications came through.

Hope it works out for you!

Reach out to the departments asking about your specific application. In my experience you're far more likely to get a useful response in you know who the admissions chair is and contact them directly.

I accepted OSU today, so if you're waitlisted at UCSD, Notre Dame, UT Austin, or Wisconsin Madison your chances just went up. Best of luck to everyone!

Not a peep

Waitlist from University of Wisconsin-Madison, admitted to UCSD, rejected from Carnegie-Mellon University PhD, but admitted to their Masters with partial fellowship (counting this as a rejection) 2a/1w/6r/16p Hit me up if you're going to UCSD visiting day

It was just a 30 minute zoom call with two faculty members, one in my areas of interest, and one to answer administrative question. Didn't get the sense that there was very much structure to it. No idea if other interviews are like this - few schools do them.

Can confirm that Johns Hopkins interview was not just a formality either - I got that rejection from them right before University Of Wisconsin-Madison waitlist.

Still early, looking at the sheet there will be more results late Feb https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yb_yciijFGEp5roVKYJ40U4eiREo3ZQTeSQkEjGMSsg/htmlview#

Congrats! ?

Rhizomatic, I did hear that there were a lot fewer applicants in general this year compared to last - so even if there aren't more total slots, your chances should still be higher than they would have been last year (at least if what I heard is right)

Figured I'd get this yearly thread started since results are starting to trickle in. Last year I applied to 14 schools but didn't get in anywhere. This year I've applied to 25 schools, so we'll see how it goes. So far I got into Ohio State

Generally what matters is just what is on the transcripts, and the GPA for each institution - there's really no need to average your total cross-institution GPA