Shut Out Discussion Thread

[Scoots]

Great advice on this thread. I applied with a writing sample on an unusual topic that didn’t align particularly closely with my stated interests on my statement of purpose. I also had pretty wide-ranging interests expressed on my statement of purpose. Reading this thread, it appears I committed all the cardinal sins of applications!

I’ll try again next year, but I’m taking up a place in law school in the meantime. If I’m successful next year, I’ll try to combine the two; if not, at least I’ll have a career in something I’m almost as interested in as philosophy...

[prettyhorse]

Just wanted to put it out there that a student from my undergrad's Masters program got a total shutout from PhD's the first year they applied (though they came from an Ivy league undergrad) and got into Rutgers the second year they applied. Just goes to show this process can be a total shot in the dark. 

[ThePeon]

One big frustration I've had with the application process is the flakiness of my advisers and letter writers. They expressed a great deal of enthusiasm in helping me apply to graduate school when I initially asked, but then dragged their feet in actually giving me real feedback on my writing sample, to the point that I largely revised it alone. I don't know if this is a common experience, a function of my shyness and lack of assertiveness (and concomitant less close relationships with my professors), or a sign that they didn't really believe in me. Other people I knew had professors who were much more involved. Another applicant I know went through four or five drafts of their writing sample with multiple professors. I only managed to get feedback on my initial draft from a single professor after much prodding. I suspect this harmed me a great deal.

Edited March 12, 2018 by ThePeon

[Kantattheairport]

On 3/9/2018 at 5:11 PM, machineghost said:

If you get shut out, you should definitely reapply. Getting that close at several top places is a good sign of things to come if you hang in there. But it’s really bizarre that you were that close to admittance at the best place to do philosophy (NYU) but not admitted at GSU. That must be frustrating. 

Thanks for the encouragement! It's kind of hard to see things very optimistically from this end of a rejection-barrage, so it's always nice to hear things like this.

I did send GSU an e-mail the other day asking about their more generous assistantships (if they're all gone or not) and just how fixed their finances are, so perhaps there's still a chance there - if I do end up getting in, of course, haha. And I suppose it's no crime to dream about last-minute news from NYU or MIT (or UNC, who I'm still waiting to hear from!).

[RequiredDisplayName]

As someone who will most likely be shut-out, I am wondering what everyone's plans are moving forward. For me, if I get no offers of admissions this cycle, I will spend the year working, adjusting my writing sample, and trying to improve my CV so I can try again next cycle. As you can tell from the list of schools I applied to (and results), I made some severe miscalculations this cycle, but learned a lot about the whole process as well.  For those who plan on re-applying, what adjustments are you looking to make? For those not re-applying, what plans do you have going forward?

[Neither Here Nor There]

On 3/13/2018 at 4:29 AM, ThePeon said:

One big frustration I've had with the application process is the flakiness of my advisers and letter writers. They expressed a great deal of enthusiasm in helping me apply to graduate school when I initially asked, but then dragged their feet in actually giving me real feedback on my writing sample, to the point that I largely revised it alone. I don't know if this is a common experience, a function of my shyness and lack of assertiveness (and concomitant less close relationships with my professors), or a sign that they didn't really believe in me. Other people I knew had professors who were much more involved. Another applicant I know went through four or five drafts of their writing sample with multiple professors. I only managed to get feedback on my initial draft from a single professor after much prodding. I suspect this harmed me a great deal.

I got very little feedback too. I find it frustrating that professors help too much. It makes it such that everyone needs help to get the fair advantage and not all professors have time.

The reason I didnt' get too much feed back is in December they were too busy.

[ThePeon]

37 minutes ago, RequiredDisplayName said:

As someone who will most likely be shut-out, I am wondering what everyone's plans are moving forward. For me, if I get no offers of admissions this cycle, I will spend the year working, adjusting my writing sample, and trying to improve my CV so I can try again next cycle. As you can tell from the list of schools I applied to (and results), I made some severe miscalculations this cycle, but learned a lot about the whole process as well.  For those who plan on re-applying, what adjustments are you looking to make? For those not re-applying, what plans do you have going forward?

I'm not completely sure at this juncture, but I'm leaning toward not reapplying next year and instead fully committing to exploring non-academic employment for a year or two, and then reevaluating whether or not I want to apply again. There are other career paths open to me that I think I could be happy pursuing, and they would have much better pay and better long-term job prospects than graduate school in philosophy. When I was an undergraduate, I had a hard time imagining being satisfied with anything other than a pure life of the mind. Now that I have been out of college for six months, and have participated in multiple internships and become familiar with my various career options, I can imagine myself being satisfied doing other things. Perhaps as I gain experience I'll realize that I won't actually be satisfied over the long-term in non-academic employment, but I don't have much evidence of that at this point.

In addition, I think the application process has made me much more viscerally aware of just how competitive academic philosophy is in 2018. It seems you need a near-publishable writing sample to just to be accepted into a graduate program, and from what I've read the expectations only get higher from there in graduate school and on the job market. While going into this process I understood that level of competitiveness intellectually, I don't think I really had internalized it at a gut level. Now I have. I love philosophy,  and I think I have the potential to be successful in academic philosophy, but I really wonder if I love it enough to actually do what it would take to succeed in graduate school and the academic job market. 

I do intend to keep reading philosophy, and perhaps doing some amateur philosophical writing myself, regardless of what I do. 

[dogman1212]

On 3/14/2018 at 12:57 PM, ThePeon said:

I'm not completely sure at this juncture, but I'm leaning toward not reapplying next year and instead fully committing to exploring non-academic employment for a year or two, and then reevaluating whether or not I want to apply again. There are other career paths open to me that I think I could be happy pursuing, and they would have much better pay and better long-term job prospects than graduate school in philosophy. When I was an undergraduate, I had a hard time imagining being satisfied with anything other than a pure life of the mind. Now that I have been out of college for six months, and have participated in multiple internships and become familiar with my various career options, I can imagine myself being satisfied doing other things. Perhaps as I gain experience I'll realize that I won't actually be satisfied over the long-term in non-academic employment, but I don't have much evidence of that at this point.

In addition, I think the application process has made me much more viscerally aware of just how competitive academic philosophy is in 2018. It seems you need a near-publishable writing sample to just to be accepted into a graduate program, and from what I've read the expectations only get higher from there in graduate school and on the job market. While going into this process I understood that level of competitiveness intellectually, I don't think I really had internalized it at a gut level. Now I have. I love philosophy,  and I think I have the potential to be successful in academic philosophy, but I really wonder if I love it enough to actually do what it would take to succeed in graduate school and the academic job market. 

I do intend to keep reading philosophy, and perhaps doing some amateur philosophical writing myself, regardless of what I do. 

1

My experience this application cycle is very similar to that of ThePeon's, especially regarding the openness towards other career paths, awareness of the high level of competition in academic philosophy, and interest in reading philosophy while working.

I recently read this APA interview with Bill Miller, the person who donated $75 million to JHU's philosophy department. I find his response to the question "Do you ever wish you had stayed in academia" to be funny, as he claims that he saved the world from having one more mediocre philosopher.

Edited March 15, 2018 by dogman1212