2021 Rejection Thread

[Outer Heaven]

First rejection: Emory 

[PhilBlast]

4 minutes ago, Outer Heaven said:

First rejection: Emory 

Same boat. Hope you're taking it alright.

[Outer Heaven]

(Assuming) Rejection: MIT 

[somethingwitty]

Rejection from Emory via email yesterday. V sad, as this was my top choice. C'est la vie. Also assuming rejections from Penn State and Toronto. 

[Outer Heaven]

Rejected from BC I think? 

[Absurd'sTheWord]

Rejected from Boston College. 

[coreaffect]

Also rejected from Emory earlier. Not awfully surprising, however.

[ObamaIsGuiltyOfWarCrimes]

A few people reported Cincinnati acceptance and waitlist on Facebook. I'm still waiting for this "safety" option, but assuming a rejection (I was wrong about this with Minnesota).

[Mischief]

FYI for those rejected from MIT:
Alex Byrne mentioned they had more applicants than usual with +300 for only 4 slots this year.

[TodoRico]

Rejections from JHU (2/8/21) and MIT (today). JHU didn't proofread their rejection letter and MIT's rejection email wasn't even attached to a faculty member. Brutal.

Still waiting on many more decisions. Chins up everyone!

[RoPhilos]

On 2/13/2021 at 5:08 AM, Mischief said:

FYI for those rejected from MIT:
Alex Byrne mentioned they had more applicants than usual with +300 for only 4 slots this year.

Thanks for the info but how did you know that? Do you also know if they gave out waitlists for this cycle? It seems that there is no WL post either on the gradcafe or the Facebook group.

[Mischief]

1 hour ago, RoPhilos said:

Thanks for the info but how did you know that? Do you also know if they gave out waitlists for this cycle? It seems that there is no WL post either on the gradcafe or the Facebook group.

He's the graduate admissions coordinator at MIT at the moment and we'd had a very brief chat about some of my documents back in January. I e-mailed him right after the rejections to thank the department for the fast turn around on the rejections (sometimes we wait a long time to hear about rejections officially or not at all), and he was forthcoming about the number of applicants and slots.

EDIT: No info about waitlists, but I didn't ask. Don't forget that the information we can glean from posts on GradCafe and Facebook are quite limited.

Edited February 15, 2021 by Mischief
Forgot to respond to a question.

[arbitrary]

6 hours ago, RoPhilos said:

Do you also know if they gave out waitlists for this cycle? It seems that there is no WL post either on the gradcafe or the Facebook group.

Hi RoPhilos, I can tell you that MIT waitlists were sent out at the end of last week.

[PhilBlast]

Another here, just got one from Penn State.

[Outer Heaven]

Rejected from MIT

[Outer Heaven]

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

[HolmesiswheretheHartis]

24 minutes ago, Outer Heaven said:

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

It was the same way last year too, presumably every year. There is significant overlap on who admission committees consider to be candidates for elite programs. 

[Outer Heaven]

It is demoralizing to say the least

[HomoLudens]

1 hour ago, Outer Heaven said:

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

Yeah, it really sucks to see the same people being offered multiple spots. It makes me wonder whether I am any good at this shit called philosophy.

[aristotleonchipotle]

1 hour ago, Outer Heaven said:

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

The same fucking people. They are the only ones who are actually worthy of doing philosophy and rest of us are just pieces of shit? I wonder if philosophy will ever be able to get rid of its elitism

Edited February 16, 2021 by aristotleonchipotle

[Outer Heaven]

Just now, aristotleonchipotle said:

The same fucking people. They are the only ones who are actually worthy of doing philosophy and rest of us is just pieces of shit? I wonder if philosophy will ever be able to get rid of its elitism

I doubt it would be able move past elitism. We live in a society that values all out merit rather than overcoming adversity.  

Edited February 16, 2021 by Outer Heaven
spelling

[CleoOfSicily]

I got rejected from Exeter, Penn State, and Emory - I think I will soon receive a rejection from DePaul as well...

 

 

[CleoOfSicily]

1 hour ago, Outer Heaven said:

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

On Twitter there is a lot of these threads. One of them, last semester, decided to wait until the very end to make a decision just because they could...I just hope these very lucky people make a choice soon enough for the ones on waitlists.

[PolPhil]

49 minutes ago, aristotleonchipotle said:

The same fucking people. They are the only ones who are actually worthy of doing philosophy and rest of us are just pieces of shit? I wonder if philosophy will ever be able to get rid of its elitism

How is it elitist to accept the same people? These people have obviously worked hard and have put together superior writing samples and application packages more generally. I get it, you're disappointed. But you can't go around blaming others.

Edit: It's also not like any programs know which applicants the other programs will be accepting. As far as they know, they're accepting the strongest candidates for their department.

Edited February 16, 2021 by PolPhil

[sokratis]

2 hours ago, Outer Heaven said:

Rejected: UCLA, the same fucking people keep on getting accepted school after school. 

Is this an implied rejection (based on the fact that UCLA seem to have sent out all of their acceptances), or did you actually receive an official rejection from them?