MattDest

RE: the travel stuff - good to hear that some people are still doing it! In a perfect world everyone would, but some places are hit harder by budget cuts I suppose. Glad to hear Arizona was able to help people out; I hear it's a nice place (one of our newest professors, Daniel Silvermint, did his PhD there and speaks glowingly about it).
 
There are a lot of great things about UConn: the department as a whole, the grad community, etc. Storrs isn't one of them unfortunately. It's a very small place with not much to do. There are towns nearby (e.g. Willimantic) which are better, but require using the (free) bus or a car. We also typically carpool from Willimantic to campus - I drive people to school 5 days a week myself.
 
That being said, there is some good news. Storrs is rapidly expanding (much like our department!) and starting to get stuff built. It's absurdly different from when I started here - there are a couple restaurants, couple fast food places, a nice cafe, etc. It's getting better. Also we are close enough to other places, like Boston (1.5hrs), Providence (1hr) and NYC (2.5hrs) that taking trips isn't prohibitive.
 
So TL;DR: it's not great by any means, but liveable, and getting significantly better in the past 2 years (and more to come).

I don't know if it's usual, but I know several universities still paid for prospective students to visit last cycle. It's a shame that UConn doesn't offer it, but totally understandable. My entire trip to Arizona was paid (including a few people offering to put me up/pay for meals) for, which was splendid. 
 
I've heard glowing things about UConn. Out of curiosity (I'm not a prospective applicant), how do you find living in Storrs? 

PM 64: Considering the lack of formal background in philosophy, I think applying to Tufts is a waste of time. Just my honest opinion.

^ I disagree with this. I enjoy a nice, detailed by-line. Your application, PreciselyTerrified, seems quite amazing. Best of luck. 
 
 
I would report your scores from one test, and then let the ETS report speak for itself. But I don't know how much this matters. 

Your byline is specific enough that if I were evaluating your application, I would have all the information I needed to connect the dots. So, for the same reason you ought not post pictures of yourself doing irresponsible things on Facebook, you ought to be careful posting on this forum. It's easy to get stressed about the process and complain about the system on here. You wouldn't want to say anything here that would reflect poorly on you. I don't think ad comms are searching this forum for reasons to deny someone, but there are plenty of graduate students here and things do get around.

Why, 1991? Lookin' to poison me? I prefer tea to coffee.

^ I disagree with this. I enjoy a nice, detailed by-line. Your application, PreciselyTerrified, seems quite amazing. Best of luck. 
 
 
I would report your scores from one test, and then let the ETS report speak for itself. But I don't know how much this matters. 

I'm really really surprised you hadn't read it before...

This forum to avoid working on term papers and grading. 

This forum to avoid working on term papers and grading. 

This forum to avoid working on term papers and grading. 

This forum to avoid working on term papers and grading. 

I took a long break from GradCafe over the summer and early part of this semester, but now that I'm back I thought I'd share some data I collected that I think could help other people make a decision. 
 
I used department websites to get these numbers.  The APA collects some similar data but it is self-reported and incomplete, and I haven't seen any chart like this that can be used to compare different programs.  I've got data for the entire PGR top 50, as well as a few unranked schools I was interested in.  The first column (FTF) indicates how many full-time, Tenure or TT professors are in the department (so, this doesn't count lecturers, adjuncts, visiting professors, or affiliated professors in other departments).  The second column (GS) indicates how many grad students are in the department (both M.A. and Ph.D. students, for deprtments that offer both).  The third column is simply column 2 divided by column 1. 
 
How might this be useful?  It seems to me that everyone should care about column 3, which indicates how many grad students there are for each professor.  A high number here may cause concern that students will find it difficult to get the kind of intensive, one-on-one interaction with professors that is highly beneficial for graduate studies.  I think we can expect that, on average, professors in departments with a high number in column 3 will be less available to students than professors in a department with a low number.  As can be seen, there is quite a lot of variance in the student-teacher ratio at various programs - more than I expected. 
 
It also seems useful to  know the absolute size of departments, not just the student teacher ratio.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both small and large departments.  It's probably easier to feel a sense of community in small departments , while large departments probably offer more variety in courses and choice of dissertation advisors.  I would encourage applicants to consider what kind of department they would like to spend their time in - going to a huge department like CUNY is bound to be a very different experience than going to a small department like MIT, despite the fact that they have similar student/teacher ratios. 
 
(please forgive the wonky formatting - copy/pasting from excel doesn't work very well)
 
 
Name                          FTF      GS      GS/FTF
NYU                            27         42         1.6
Rutgers                       29         42          1.5
Princeton                     22         54         2.5
Michigan                     30          39         1.3
Harvard                       22          50         2.3
Pittsburgh                   19          47         2.5
MIT                            11           29         2.6
Yale                            25          39          1.6
Stanford                      27           58         2.1
North Carolina             25           33          1.3
Columbia                    23           71          3.1
UCLA                         17           50          2.9
USC                           23           34           1.5
CUNY                         40           95           2.4
Cornell                       19           46           2.4
Arizona                      26           30           1.2
UC Berkeley               24           49           2
Notre Dame                42           66           1.6
Brown                        16           31           1.9
Chicago                     23           57           2.5
Texas                        33           56           1.7
UC San Diego            23           38           1.7
Wisconsin                 22           43           2
Duke                        16           29           1.8
IU                             14           38           2.7
Ohio State                 20           40           2
Colorado                    25           43           1.7
Umass                      14           48           3.4
UC Irvine                   10           25           2.5
Penn                        14           40           2.9
Northwestern             19           38           2
UC Riverside             17           36           2.1
Maryland                   20           32           1.6
Miami                       14           27           1.9
WUSTL                    20           30           1.5
Georgetown              29           38           1.3
Johns Hopkins          12           34           2.8
Syracuse                  20           41           2.1
Virginia                     17           33           1.9
Carnegie-Mellon        17           35           2.1
UC Santa Barbara     11           28           2.5
Illinois @ Chicago      16           32           2
Washington              18           34           1.9
Boston                     22           47           2.1
Florida State             15           48           3.2
Rice                         12           22           1.8
UC Davis                  13           23           1.8
Minnesota                14           25           1.8
Rochester                15           21           1.4
Connecticut              19           31           1.6
Missouri                   16           29           1.8
Purdue                     20           47           2.4
Illinois @ U-C           13           30           2.3
Iowa                        13           22           1.7

I'm just starting the program, but all of the evidence I have so far indicates that the students are more than prepared for the job market. The climate here is absolutely amazing. I've been in a lot of different department atmospheres, and this is one of the most friendly places I've been. 

I'm just starting the program, but all of the evidence I have so far indicates that the students are more than prepared for the job market. The climate here is absolutely amazing. I've been in a lot of different department atmospheres, and this is one of the most friendly places I've been. 

Philosophy

I never knew whether it was more fitting to say congrats or best of luck, but those are the two phrases which come to mind! 

Ulixes, I found myself with elaborate summer plans to read/write/submit but it also turned out quite differently from what I expected. I haven't done much in the way of preparing. We bought a house in Tucson and now it's an issue of coordinating shipping our cars/stuff and flying with cats. Absolutely miserable. I've mostly taken a break from doing anything studious. In the next few weeks I'll probably go back into the grind, but it's been nice to have a bit of a vacation from it. It seems like I'll be able to better immerse myself in the work when fall comes. 

I have also slacked a lot on summer reading. My girlfriend and I moved to Avondale Estates (a suburb of Atlanta) and I've just been relaxing mostly. I read a few books, but not what I wanted to read. I'm probably going to propose in the next few weeks, so we'll see how that goes. 

Ulixes, I found myself with elaborate summer plans to read/write/submit but it also turned out quite differently from what I expected. I haven't done much in the way of preparing. We bought a house in Tucson and now it's an issue of coordinating shipping our cars/stuff and flying with cats. Absolutely miserable. I've mostly taken a break from doing anything studious. In the next few weeks I'll probably go back into the grind, but it's been nice to have a bit of a vacation from it. It seems like I'll be able to better immerse myself in the work when fall comes. 

I had an awful undergrad GPA (somewhere around 2.9ish?), and got into a Leiter-mentioned terminal MA program with funding, and managed to get into a good PhD program (Arizona). The things that I learned: (1) the first two years matter little compared to the last two years, (2) philosophy grades matter more than overall grades, (3) if your letter writers can explain the pattern, do it, and (4) work on improving every other facet of your application. 

Plato. I mean, c'mon bro - do you even science?

Why would you apply to a school that you do not want to go to? A rejection at one program doesn't necessarily mean anything about your admission chances at another program. I've been rejected at many lower-ranked programs (T20-40), but accepted into a T-20 program. I took certain rejections much harder than others, because I thought they signaled a weaker application. But it wasn't about the rank of the program, but my own perceived fit. I took the rejection from Northwestern a lot harder than UNC, for example. 

Wowza, impressive. 

I wonder this every time that somebody brings up anonymity. I'm also failing to see how giving your undergrad institution will make it immediately obvious to the world who you are. I suppose that people are worried about being identified by adcoms, but I find it hard to believe that adcoms are taking the time to link up gradcafe usernames with their applicant pool. 
 
I imagine that adcoms, if they want to get 'dirt' on their applicants, are using Google to find any relevant information about the name.