Acceptances

[kakaz]

5 minutes ago, bluwe said:

Would have been nice to know this ahead of time so I could apply to a program that didn't prioritize "gender diversity" even more than programs already do. Stay classy, Irvine.

I am pretty sure that akraticfanatic never said that they know that Irvine WILL prioritize "gender diversity" but rather that it SOUNDED like it.

[ohtimethypyramids]

4 minutes ago, bluwe said:

Would have been nice to know this ahead of time so I could apply to a program that didn't prioritize "gender diversity" even more than programs already do. Stay classy, Irvine.

I understand it's frustrating to feel like you didn't get the heads-up in advance that your odds were even more uphill than before. FWIW, I'm a woman in phil of math/formal epistemology (even more heavily gender skewed than regular phil) and I didn't get an offer from Irvine (or an interview, so it's definitely over for me, as they interview all admitted and most waitlisted LPS kids). Try to focus on the positive--you've already got a great offer, and I'm sure more will come in!

[akraticfanatic]

30 minutes ago, kakaz said:

I am pretty sure that akraticfanatic never said that they know that Irvine WILL prioritize "gender diversity" but rather that it SOUNDED like it.

Oh no I do know that. That wasn't the issue. 

[mithrandir8]

As a side-note, UC Irvine is also very unlikely to give prior notice about any gender diversity priority because there is some degree of legal risk in doing so.

[Marcus_Aurelius]

6 hours ago, akraticfanatic said:

Can anyone claim Yale?

I was just admitted to the Classics track of Yale's Ancient Philosophy joint program. Not sure about the Philosophy end, except that I was told they're offering admission to someone for the Philosophy track of the joint program. I also heard Yale is aiming for a Philosophy cohort of 5 people, if that helps.

[bluwe]

1 hour ago, mithrandir8 said:

As a side-note, UC Irvine is also very unlikely to give prior notice about any gender diversity priority because there is some degree of legal risk in doing so.

This is partly why I'm interested because it is also probably legally iffy even if they didn't announce it ahead of time. To admit that it was a consideration is enough to tick the boxes if it is indeed against the law.

 

 

[jc177]

Can someone claim the MIT acceptance?

[crunderdunder]

11 minutes ago, jc177 said:

Can someone claim the MIT acceptance?

Yeah!! Super excited!!!

[akraticfanatic]

1 minute ago, crunderdunder said:

Yeah!! Super excited!!!

Congrats! When did you get the call?

[jc177]

 

2 minutes ago, crunderdunder said:

Yeah!! Super excited!!!

Congratz!

[crunderdunder]

1 minute ago, akraticfanatic said:

Congrats! When did you get the call?

Thanks! 7pm-ish today, eastern, having missed the first one earlier in the day.

[MtnDuck]

2 hours ago, bluwe said:

This is partly why I'm interested because it is also probably legally iffy even if they didn't announce it ahead of time. To admit that it was a consideration is enough to tick the boxes if it is indeed against the law.

 

 

Ehh, it plausibly wouldn't be legally iffy or against the law. I was on several hiring committees at an R1 and after you have HR talk at you for a few hours about affirmative action (myth vs reality)...it tends to stay with you for a while. Even more so when you also have to guide undergrads through how it works in a philosophy course. When you have two equally qualified candidates, it wouldn't be against the law to at the end of the day choose the candidate that is a person of color, a woman, a first gen, etc. AA in the US is legal in a number of contexts and it's not like they said "And we're going to take all the guy candidates and exclude them" <shoves box into trash>.

If they happened to notice that they had great candidates this year and that a number of them happened to be women, great, I'm glad we have more women in the discipline doing really well and deciding to apply to go to grad school. If this round they happen to have more women that they offer admission to--cool! Chances are they are all exceedingly well qualified and just as qualified if not more qualified than the folks that didn't get offered a slot this time around (AA may not have even come into play at all tbh).

The number of hoops that we would all have to jump through to think that they aren't qualified (not saying you're doing this, but I've been in departments where the men most certainly did and it was egregious) are, well, hoops I think our discipline would be better off consigning to the garbage pile where they belong. That and grad school admissions are already arbitrary AF and can depend on who is in the room, who reads your sample, whether the folks on the committee care about GREs that year or not, whether someone on the committee wants someone good at math (how someone I know got into Stanford), and a bunch of other random things that are totally out of our control. 

Edited February 15, 2019 by MtnDuck

[Kantattheairport]

9 hours ago, TorreAttack said:

Accepted to U Pitt. First acceptance of second round of applications. Applying out from UT Austin. Notified by phone. Official letter coming. Will likely accept.

Hey, I remember you from last year's cycle when we were on the MIT waitlist together! Congrats on a fantastic acceptance!

 

6 hours ago, akraticfanatic said:

it me!!! what kind of info are you looking for?

Congrats, well-deserved!

 

2 hours ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:

I was just admitted to the Classics track of Yale's Ancient Philosophy joint program. Not sure about the Philosophy end, except that I was told they're offering admission to someone for the Philosophy track of the joint program. I also heard Yale is aiming for a Philosophy cohort of 5 people, if that helps.

Congrats! Another great option for you.

 

1 hour ago, crunderdunder said:

Yeah!! Super excited!!!

Congratulations! That's a number of big ones today.

 

11 minutes ago, MtnDuck said:

The number of hoops that we would all have to jump through to think that they aren't qualified (not saying you're doing this, but I've been in departments where the men most certainly did and it was egregious) are, well, hoops I think are discipline would be better off consigning to the garbage pile where they belong.

+1 (alas, I have run out of reactions today)

Edited February 15, 2019 by Kantattheairport

[mithrandir8]

2 hours ago, bluwe said:

This is partly why I'm interested because it is also probably legally iffy even if they didn't announce it ahead of time. To admit that it was a consideration is enough to tick the boxes if it is indeed against the law.

 

 

To be clear, I don't think such a policy would likely be illegal, only that, if stated in writing, it could easily be the source of lawsuits and, especially under the current administration, possible Title IX complaints.

I also believe that affirmative action is normatively justified, but that wasn't the basis of my comment.

[bluwe]

53 minutes ago, MtnDuck said:

Ehh, it plausibly wouldn't be legally iffy or against the law. I was on several hiring committees at an R1 and after you have HR talk at you for a few hours about affirmative action (myth vs reality)...it tends to stay with you for a while. Even more so when you also have to guide undergrads through how it works in a philosophy course. When you have two equally qualified candidates, it wouldn't be against the law to at the end of the day choose the candidate that is a person of color, a woman, a first gen, etc. AA in the US is legal in a number of contexts and it's not like they said "And we're going to take all the guy candidates and exclude them" <shoves box into trash>.

If they happened to notice that they had great candidates this year and that a number of them happened to be women, great, I'm glad we have more women in the discipline doing really well and deciding to apply to go to grad school. If this round they happen to have more women that they offer admission to--cool! Chances are they are all exceedingly well qualified and just as qualified if not more qualified than the folks that didn't get offered a slot this time around (AA may not have even come into play at all tbh).

The number of hoops that we would all have to jump through to think that they aren't qualified (not saying you're doing this, but I've been in departments where the men most certainly did and it was egregious) are, well, hoops I think our discipline would be better off consigning to the garbage pile where they belong. That and grad school admissions are already arbitrary AF and can depend on who is in the room, who reads your sample, whether the folks on the committee care about GREs that year or not, whether someone on the committee wants someone good at math (how someone I know got into Stanford), and a bunch of other random things that are totally out of our control. 

Yeah, I understand the loopholes that are available to make decisions based on factors that aren't allowed usually. And I'm not saying that the female candidates aren't qualified--in fact, for various reasons they may be more qualified than their male counterparts (especially if they're a double or triple threat, which, in academia, is someone diverse in two or three respects). But this is not supposed to be an explicit consideration, and the fact that it is just means that males with equal qualifications are not being considered. Even if it is not an insidious plot and more just a consequence of human psychology, it is still problematic; since, particularly, it is legally questionable, and we're all supposed to follow the laws.

20 minutes ago, mithrandir8 said:

To be clear, I don't think such a policy would likely be illegal, only that, if stated in writing, it could easily be the source of lawsuits and, especially under the current administration, possible Title IX complaints.

I also believe that affirmative action is normatively justified, but that wasn't the basis of my comment.

I'm not sure you understand what it is for something to be illegal. If something is easily the source of lawsuits then it is probably illegal; if not there will be plausible arguments to be made for its illegality. Minimally, it is weird to hold both that you don't think it is likely to be illegal, but will also easily be a source of lawsuits.

 

Maybe affirmative action is normatively justified, but I know philosophers more accomplished than you that think raping an unconscious woman is sometimes morally neutral. So, I'm not quite sure how we should handle normative claims in the real world.

[mithrandir8]

1 hour ago, bluwe said:

I'm not sure you understand what it is for something to be illegal.

This is interesting because I happen to be a lawyer.

Edited February 15, 2019 by mithrandir8

[markovka]

12 hours ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:

I was just admitted to the Classics track of Yale's Ancient Philosophy joint program. Not sure about the Philosophy end, except that I was told they're offering admission to someone for the Philosophy track of the joint program. I also heard Yale is aiming for a Philosophy cohort of 5 people, if that helps.

Congrats bro

[Sextus Propertius]

10 hours ago, bluwe said:

Yeah, I understand the loopholes that are available to make decisions based on factors that aren't allowed usually. And I'm not saying that the female candidates aren't qualified--in fact, for various reasons they may be more qualified than their male counterparts (especially if they're a double or triple threat, which, in academia, is someone diverse in two or three respects). But this is not supposed to be an explicit consideration, and the fact that it is just means that males with equal qualifications are not being considered. Even if it is not an insidious plot and more just a consequence of human psychology, it is still problematic; since, particularly, it is legally questionable, and we're all supposed to follow the laws.

I'm not sure you understand what it is for something to be illegal. If something is easily the source of lawsuits then it is probably illegal; if not there will be plausible arguments to be made for its illegality. Minimally, it is weird to hold both that you don't think it is likely to be illegal, but will also easily be a source of lawsuits.

 

Maybe affirmative action is normatively justified, but I know philosophers more accomplished than you that think raping an unconscious woman is sometimes morally neutral. So, I'm not quite sure how we should handle normative claims in the real world.

Yeah dude, you sound *exactly* like someone I’d wanna have in my grad school cohort and work with for 6 years

[brookspn]

10 hours ago, bluwe said:

I know philosophers more accomplished than you that think raping an unconscious woman is sometimes morally neutral.

Which "philosophers" are these, I wonder. 

[The_Last_Thylacine]

Hi. I'm a lawyer. Affirmative action is very legal. What is illegal is having quotas for admitting certain groups. See Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Moreover, state universities have a compelling interest in promoting class diversity. Favoring minorities in a way that makes an applicant's minority status just one factor of many to be considered does not amount to a quota system. See Grutter v. Bellinger (2003). 

Are the laws moral? This is a philosophical question, but I don't think it's academically credible to say that there is anything illegal about promoting diversity.

[Krauge]

This forum is supposed to be about who was acceptanced where for fall 2019. Take these arguments to another thread.

Edited February 15, 2019 by Krauge

[Cogitodoncrien]

14 minutes ago, Krauge said:

This forum is supposed to be about who was acceptanced where for fall 2019. Take these arguments to another thread.

I need some modscle over here!

Edit: sorry, I couldn't stop myself

Edited February 15, 2019 by Cogitodoncrien

[bluwe]

10 hours ago, mithrandir8 said:

This is interesting because I happen to be a lawyer.

Congrats, so you see I'm right.

 

47 minutes ago, brookspn said:

Which "philosophers" are these, I wonder. 

 

Peter Singer

 

38 minutes ago, The_Last_Thylacine said:

Hi. I'm a lawyer. Affirmative action is very legal. What is illegal is having quotas for admitting certain groups. See Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978). Moreover, state universities have a compelling interest in promoting class diversity. Favoring minorities in a way that makes an applicant's minority status just one factor of many to be considered does not amount to a quota system. See Grutter v. Bellinger (2003). 

Are the laws moral? This is a philosophical question, but I don't think it's academically credible to say that there is anything illegal about promoting diversity.

Thanks for actually providing a substantive answer rather than just appealing to the fact that you went to law school. Again, people seem to be misunderstanding me--I'm not against AA, I never claimed AA per se is against the law, all I claim is that it is legally questionable, and the fact that questions of AA have been in and out of courts for decades, as you have noted, provides enough evidence to think that.

Edited February 15, 2019 by bluwe

[Nothingtown]

32 minutes ago, Krauge said:

This forum is supposed to be about who was acceptanced where for fall 2019. Take these arguments to another thread.

Take it to DMs, guys.

[theophaniac]

Accepted at UofT!