BC Philosophy

[demondeac]

Any folks out there applying to BC's philosophy program? I just visited the program and must say I was pretty damn impressed. They did say that they started looking at applications on Friday, and there are 255 applications from which they will select around 5 folks. With a slightly under 2% acceptance rate, I'm thinking it's a long shot...

[sleepingdogmatist]

I have an application in there. It's definitely one of my "reach" schools (although I think it's a reach for pretty much anyone at a 1.9% acceptance rate). Who are you applying to study with?

[demondeac]

I want to study with Bloechl and Kearney since my interests are generally in continental philosophy of religion and philosophical/theological anthropology. Both were far and away the nicest professors I had contact with this whole interview season, responding quickly, in detail, and with a general enthusiasm for my application. I know this likely will not transmit to an admit, but if I was in the Boston area I would most certainly take a few courses with them. How about you? You have philosophy of religion interest as well, right?

[sleepingdogmatist]

Very cool--both of them sound interesting. I remember looking at things from Kearney a bit when I was investigating the department a few months ago. Though I do have a fairly heavy interest in philosophy of religion, my interests have reoriented a little bit over the past year as I've had time to think and read more. Several of my professors in undergrad were students of John Sallis at one point or another, and I got really turned on to his work on Nietzsche and tragedy (Crossings is a very cool book, if you haven't read it) through them. David Rasmussen's earlier work on myth is also really interesting to me. I'm going for a kind of philosophy of literature bent there, I suppose. Although all my recommendations are from people with some kind of BC connections (and specifically with those two faculty members, actually) and my GPA/GREs should be reasonably competitive, I don't think that I'll be a serious contender because of my lack of relevant language experience.

That's at least a good start, what with their enthusiasm. Best of luck! It'd be an amazing place to study--having the opportunity to study with so many eminent scholars would be surreal. Where else are you applying, if I can ask?

[demondeac]

I'm applying mostly to theology programs since I'm kind of a transient/vagrant in both worlds. For philosophy I'm also applying to Loyola UC, then pretty much all over for theology. The waiting is straight up killing me.

[sleepingdogmatist]

Yeah, I hear you. My interests are sort of varied, and I ended up applying to lots of phil. programs (mostly continentally-focused places) and some rhetoric/interdisciplinary programs.

[otakupaul]

Have any of you received your decision letters yet? I, too, applied to BC and after emailing them and checking the online application forms found out following:

On the online app:

BC GRAD A+S DECISION LETTER 02/25/2009

and the email:

A decision was made yesterday, and a letter was mailed to your local address. Due to university policy, I am unable to disclose the decision. You should receive your decision letter shortly.

My fear is that this is a rejection letter, but according to the email they only notify people by post. Is this true? Will they send acceptances and wait lists by snail mail or do they email/phone those people? My GRE's weren't that great but i felt that my other interests matched the department well. Hopefully I can get some feedback if I am rejected.

Any news from the rest of you BC applicants?

[sleepingdogmatist]

Revised: there's a BC acceptance posted for someone on the results board. He or she received a phone call from Patrick Byrne, according to the post.

I don't see anything about a decision letter on my Agora status, but then my last name is also in the latter part of the alphabet, too, so that could be it. I've heard nothing either way thus far, but am not optimistic.

[otakupaul]

I saw the posted result but if it is true it contradicts the message I got from BC wasnt true because it means 1) they notify applicants by means other than snail mail, and 2) decisions were not made the day they said they were. Unless of course it was just that my application received its decision on the day they said they were, but I would imagine that they made decisions all at the same time. That is assuming the result on the board is not made up... I'm more inclined to think that it is.

I don't have access to Agora as I am a Furrener, but I saw the update on my web application status check.

[rwsc]

I'm at BC. Send me a PM if you're interested in what it's like.

[deweyfemme]

I'm a BC grad (from the Philosophy MA). The department does notify its initial PhD acceptances via phone, and they've already done so this year. The line about official university policy is just that--a policy of the university, not the department, and a way to save people in the admissions office the trouble of talking with applicants about the status of their applications.

That said, there's always the possibility of a wait-list acceptance. But that, too, would likely happen by phone.

Letters from BC are generally either offers of admission to the MA program, or outright rejections. Good luck!

[Red]

I posted the acceptance--sorry, but it's true. As stated, I received a phone call from Patrick Byrne that Saturday morning with details of the offer. The funding package included tuition, insurance, and a 15-16K stipend for 4-5 years depending on my prior coursework. Any specific questions?

[otakupaul]

Congratulations on the acceptance! Sadly it did turn out to be a rejection letter. It would have been preferable to have been told "sorry we don't have the time to reply to queries" rather than "we only send letters" which is false. I guess that means a lot of the results for these programs are correct then, just seemed like some of them notified earlier than I had initially expected. I hope it works out for you at BC.

[jferreir]

I need some clarification. I applied for the MA program at UBC and received the following in an email last night:

"We have placed you on a shortlist for admission. We will inform as soon as possible if we are able to offer you admission into our program."

What, exactly, does this mean? Is the shortlist the "second round", so to speak, where offers of admission are conditional upon previous offers being turned down? Or does this simply mean that they have narrowed down the list of applicants and are now investigating the top prospects? Someone posted that they received email notification of acceptance into the MA program, but I thought the policy was post-mail only. The comments above now have me wondering...

I just want to know whether or not I should get my hopes up. Without funding, UBC is nothing more than a distant dream. Damn, this is torture!

UPDATE:

Apparently, UBC equates "shortlist" with "waiting list". Weird.

[tshaunprice]

For anyone interested I got an acceptance letter in the mail for the MA in philosophy program on Friday

[jferreir]

For anyone interested I got an acceptance letter in the mail for the MA in philosophy program on Friday

Congratulations! Are you planning to accept the offer? Also, if you don't mind me asking, how much was the funding package? You can pm me if you like.

[tshaunprice]

The letter did not come with any mention of funding. I emailed the dept. secretary to see if there were any assistantships available through the philosophy department for MA students, and I am also going to look around for any other assistantships. I haven't decided if I will accept it yet; as the current price is $1,148 per credit hour it does depend a lot on funding. Also, I don't think their MA program is the type where they bring someone in off of a waitlist if an offer is declined because the letter said to respond by May 31st. Hope that helps! Feel free to contact me if you need anything else.

[sleepingdogmatist]

Yeah, I also just got my PhD rejection from BC in the mail, and it included an unfunded offer from the MA program. I intend to decline it in the near future, if that helps anyone that might be on a waiting list or something (I don't know if it works that way at BC).

[rwsc]

At BC there's limited MA funding for students studying Lonergan. Any other funding usually comes from GA positions from the school proper, not the department. There are none (or very few) MA-student GAs.

BC's MAs are their cash cows: How much do you want to pay for letters of recommendation from BC's faculty? Will you be able to acquire them within two years? It's not a fast track into the Ph.D. program either; they very rarely take internal candidates.