MattDest

I chose Arizona because DUH ITS SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVERY OTHER DEPARTMENT THAT EVER EXISTED.

I've seen that mentioned by Ian, I suppose he means those mentioned in the first category here: "After Tufts, several other terminal MA programs have very strong faculties: Arizona State University, Brandeis University (their M.A. program is relatively new, so has a limited placement ecord), Georgia State University, Northern Illinois University, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Virginia Poytechnic Institute & State University"

Congrats!

I listen to almost exclusively rap. I actually sponsored a kick-starter of this guy's rap, I think it's hilarious and awesome at the same time.

Scaredy-cat. (NSFW)

I think these remarks are due to the remarks from Platonist about DHumeDominates' acceptance at Harvard, not about your post.

I'd appreciate advice on this. To be honest, I don't know which schools are still in the process of making decisions, which already have (and would just tell me, well that's good because you've been rejected), etc. I figure that it won't make much of a difference whether I wait for results and turn them down as I get offers/waitlists, or to tell them beforehand. It seems to me that I'm in the same situation as someone who has an offer from Harvard but is sitting on offers from other schools. As long as I turn them down in a timely manner, I'm not really doing anything that asshole-ish.

I'll claim the Rice acceptance. The e-mail was really nice, and very informative.

Awesome! Congratulations!

I know I've been identified IRL a few times by friends of mine (usually co-applicants) who recognize my username. I would be interested to know if any of my letter-writers read this. If any of you do, ily <3.

Georgia State is probably one of the more difficult MA programs to get into, from what I understand. Hang in there.

Good news bud! It's a good program to be a part of.

Can people who declined wait-list spots get in on this cookie offer?

Waitlisted at Wisconsin, I'll be turning it down soon. Congrats to those on the list and good luck!

FWIW, this is the general impression that other philosophers I have talked to about this issue seem to have. You can even see this crop up in response papers (see Churchland's response to Plantinga's EAAN, for example). It seems to me that this is also the case, given how many people they accept from Biola.

Congrats!

Thanks! I mentioned this a bit, but I have other reasons for preferring to go to Arizona (family [both my wife and I's family live here], friends, weather, activities) that outweigh any academic reasons that I might have for going to a higher-ranked school if I was able to get in.

Adcoms, especially at terminal MA programs, will care most about your latest work. The Ws might matter a bit, but as long as you do well with the 30 credits you have left, I would think your chances at getting into those programs will be pretty good. SFSU will certainly be the most competitive, I don't think CSULA and/or SJSU are very competitive (although I could be wrong, I don't really know much about those programs).

I voted 'maybe', because I suspect that there are possible writing sample topics that would be giant red flags to admissions committees. I don't think your topic is 'toxic', because I don't think the position one takes is nearly as important as how well one argues for it. Of course, there are some positions which are so absurd that a philosopher might be inclined to see someone advocating for it as badly mistaken. I don't think eliminativism is that type of position. Whether or not you should change the subject of your sample seems hard to know. It depends largely on whether you could have a better paper by then on another subject, or if you think you could improve this one, etc.

Thanks so much. Yes, it is quite early, but I really enjoyed my visit, and have other reasons for preferring the location (family, friends, weather, activities) to other departments that I might possibly get into.

I accepted Arizona's offer. This means I will be turning down an offer at Syracuse, and taking myself off the waitlists of WashU, Indiana, and Missouri. Hopefully this helps some people. Very excited about this, so anyone else that ends up deciding on Arizona should definitely contact me!

Don't say the name! It will probably summon him from the depths of Troll-Hell.

I honestly have no idea how this works either. I imagine that famous philosophers' letters tend to weigh more because of name recognition. I bet that it helps even more if they know the letter writers or have experience with past applicants from that recommender.

Damn, that's a sweeping claim. I should note that I don't think the GRE is a good indicator of success, but I think the results that Schwitzgebel got were pretty interesting. At the very least, it makes it more difficult to maintain the claim that admissions committees should completely abandon them.

I think Eric Schwitzgebel's post on the verbal portion of the GRE being highly predictive of graduate success is interesting here. Granted, this is a really small sample size and the explanations he give are likely to explain why this may be the case, it is striking how predictive it is for that sample size.