Acceptance Thread

[MattDest]

Accepted to Boston's Phd program! To say I'm happy is understatement. :)

 

Congratulations! 

[logos0516]

CUNY acceptances/funding wait lists are NOT all international. A friend of mine was accepted via email yesterday and seems to have gotten the same message as all reported acceptances. Said friend is a US citizen from a US school.

Another friend of mine applied to cuny a few years back and was accepted -- if I remember correctly, they accept people and then sort out funding within the next week or so. I'm not sure that anyone gets a better package than anyone else. Funding just get a bit more...chaotic there since it's a public, rather than private, school.

Edited to add that additionally, from memory of earlier accepted friend's experience, CUNY doesn't send out all acceptances/wait lists at once in a neat little BCC'd email, or anything like it. If this year's process resembles past years', not yet having heard from CUNY does *not* mean you're out there.

I guess the game is almost up with CUNY, then. If the acceptances are not all international, but domestic too. I would figure that about 5 people reported on acceptances the other day, so imagine two-three more got acceptances but don't go on TGC, so that's almost half of the number they would accept. Maybe they don't send out all their acceptances at once, but the list is definitely getting smaller, and the odds are getting longer....

[TheVineyard]

I guess the game is almost up with CUNY, then. If the acceptances are not all international, but domestic too. I would figure that about 5 people reported on acceptances the other day, so imagine two-three more got acceptances but don't go on TGC, so that's almost half of the number they would accept. Maybe they don't send out all their acceptances at once, but the list is definitely getting smaller, and the odds are getting longer....

 

Chillax man.

Last year they gave out acceptances until March 7th and waitlists until March 22. You're bringing down the mood for no reason...(and this is coming from someone who regularly brings down the mood!)

[philosophia14]

Thanks, Matt Dest and dgswain! Relieved to join the company of the accepted and  funded. No word from ND yet, waiting it out till the very last day. 

[logos0516]

Chillax man.

Last year they gave out acceptances until March 7th and waitlists until March 22. You're bringing down the mood for no reason...(and this is coming from someone who regularly brings down the mood!)

I'm sorry to bring down the mood, everybody. You should know i am a pessimist by nature so it's nothing particular to the CUNY situation that was making me feel down, just my pessimism.

[roast beef]

Accepted to Boston's Phd program! To say I'm happy is understatement. :)

 

You mean Boston College, not BU, right? (Assuming because of the recent post on TGC.)

[humean_skeptic]

NYU on Monday, then, I guess?

[PhD applicant]

I'm sorry to bring down the mood, everybody. You should know i am a pessimist by nature so it's nothing particular to the CUNY situation that was making me feel down, just my pessimism.

It's odd. We seem to be a very arrogant, and yet extremely pessimistic people. I wonder that we don't combust.

[philosophia14]

You mean Boston College, not BU, right? (Assuming because of the recent post on TGC.)

Yep, BC, not BU. 

[dgswaim]

It's odd. We seem to be a very arrogant, and yet extremely pessimistic people. I wonder that we don't combust.

Philosophers aren't arrogant. We're just smarter than everyone else.

[Establishment]

Philosophers aren't arrogant. We're just smarter than everyone else.

 

We even have the GRE scores to prove it.

[greencoloredpencil]

Do you think UCLA acceptances are all out? I looked back at last year's results and gained some hope seeing that some acceptances seemed to be posted later than the first few...I'm not sure if I should make anything of this though.

[TheVineyard]

Do you think UCLA acceptances are all out? I looked back at last year's results and gained some hope seeing that some acceptances seemed to be posted later than the first few...I'm not sure if I should make anything of this though.

 

UCLA waitlists aren't out, so you have hope regardless.

[ungerdrag]

I sent good, restrained e-mails. I think they understand that it's a stressful time. I just asked them in a calm, measured tone if the acceptances had all gone out, since I had heard nothing. 

 

Glad to hear it! That should be fine, then.

[hopefulpessimiste]

Do you think UCLA acceptances are all out? I looked back at last year's results and gained some hope seeing that some acceptances seemed to be posted later than the first few...I'm not sure if I should make anything of this though.

Apparently they have not all gone out yet. I emailed the department on Friday, and I received a very nice email from the department administrator saying that "they are still in the review process" and that they hope to make decisions "within the coming weeks". So it was pretty vague, but helpful nonetheless. Except since I'm dying to go there it's making me anxious!

 

I had also emailed Michigan some time ago after the initial reports appeared, and they said the same thing. Another dream department for me! 

 

People have been super nice even though they probably hate getting these emails...

[greencoloredpencil]

Apparently they have not all gone out yet. I emailed the department on Friday, and I received a very nice email from the department administrator saying that "they are still in the review process" and that they hope to make decisions "within the coming weeks". So it was pretty vague, but helpful nonetheless. Except since I'm dying to go there it's making me anxious!

 

I had also emailed Michigan some time ago after the initial reports appeared, and they said the same thing. Another dream department for me! 

 

People have been super nice even though they probably hate getting these emails...

 

Thank you very much for sharing this information! I share anxiousness in waiting for UCLA too since it's my top choice...

[TheVineyard]

Apparently they have not all gone out yet. I emailed the department on Friday, and I received a very nice email from the department administrator saying that "they are still in the review process" and that they hope to make decisions "within the coming weeks". So it was pretty vague, but helpful nonetheless. Except since I'm dying to go there it's making me anxious!

 

I had also emailed Michigan some time ago after the initial reports appeared, and they said the same thing. Another dream department for me! 

 

People have been super nice even though they probably hate getting these emails...

 

Pretty sure Michigan is a dream department for everyone who applied there

Edited March 2, 2014 by TheVineyard

[logos0516]

I got into it with my brother a little bit before. At this point I've been rejected from most of the schools I applied to, and I at minimum didn't get accepted to the school I currently attend, CUNY (even though one of my recommenders is on the admissions committee...go figure). The three schools I have left are all world-class departments, and I told him I won't get into those. He just kept saying...you don't know that....you don't know that...and I got annoyed, because while *technically* I "don't know that," in all reasonable likelihood, I won't get in. If I didn't get outright accepted from the graduate program I currently attend as a graduate student, and I didn't get in to the bottom-ranked University of Connecticut, Storrs, then I'm not getting into Princeton, Michigan, or Columbia. And I told him it is really counterproductive for him to keep saying "oh well you never know keep some hope," because at some point I have to start being realistic about my chances, and keeping up hope in the face of completely overwhelming odds is only setting myself up for more and more disappointment. 

[PhD applicant]

I don't know why you guys get so down on yourselves before the deadlines. There's nothing wrong with keeping up hope. Wait till you get rejected by every school before you start talking like this. It's not like hoping for another week or two is going to break your brains. I mean, you have all of us obnoxious morons here to keep you company. Even if holding out hope turned out to be wrong in the end, you'll have a much better time of it these next 2 weeks or so.

[dgswaim]

I don't know why you guys get so down on yourselves before the deadlines. There's nothing wrong with keeping up hope. Wait till you get rejected by every school before you start talking like this. It's not like hoping for another week or two is going to break your brains. I mean, you have all of us obnoxious morons here to keep you company. Even if holding out hope turned out to be wrong in the end, you'll have a much better time of it these next 2 weeks or so.

Agreed. I also don't understand the obsession with rankings... but I think I'm in the minority there.

[Establishment]

Agreed. I also don't understand the obsession with rankings... but I think I'm in the minority there.

 

Because the stronger ranked your program is, the easier your time on the job market. I've seen some professors who advocate a variant of the once standard advice that you just shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy (unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything else). This variant is that, you shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy at anything less than a top-20 program.

 

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/philosophy-job-placement-data-redux.html

 

There was another Leiter post, or some study, or some discussion which had to do with the placement trend differences in the PhD departments. The trend was that students from top-10 programs got jobs without any sort of publication history, but those from lower programs found it more required of them to publish in order to succeed on the job market.

 

Now sure, many people misunderstand what these (or any) rankings mean, and misuse them. But that's not to say that rankings are without any sort of foundation, or don't serve a useful function.

 

But I don't think there's anything too wrong just with a general fetishization of rankings. Humans love rankings for all sorts of psychological reasons, and we have a lot of fun with them even if deep down we know we sometimes are just playing things up.

Edited March 2, 2014 by Establishment

[dgswaim]

Because the stronger ranked your program is, the easier your time on the job market. I've seen some professors who advocate a variant of the once standard advice that you just shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy (unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything else). This variant is that, you shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy at anything less than a top-20 program.

 

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/philosophy-job-placement-data-redux.html

 

There was another Leiter post, or some study, or some discussion which had to do with the placement trend differences in the PhD departments. The trend was that students from top-10 programs got jobs without any sort of publication history, but those from lower programs found it more required of them to publish in order to succeed on the job market.

 

Now sure, many people misunderstand what these (or any) rankings mean, and misuse them. But that's not to say that rankings are without any sort of foundation, or don't serve a useful function.

 

But I don't think there's anything too wrong just with a general fetishization of rankings. Humans love rankings for all sorts of psychological reasons, and we have a lot of fun with them even if deep down we know we sometimes are just playing things up.

Sure. I never claimed that rankings (or the Leiter rankings) are useless tout court. That would be a difficult position to defend in any case. I just find it's a limited way to think about graduate education in philosophy. Many non-Leiter schools do well in job placement. I think we just differ somewhat in opinion, and that's fine. 

[dgswaim]

Can anyone claim Urbana-Champaign? Odd time of day...

[perpetuavix]

Because the stronger ranked your program is, the easier your time on the job market. I've seen some professors who advocate a variant of the once standard advice that you just shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy (unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything else). This variant is that, you shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy at anything less than a top-20 program.

 

 

I was actually just working on this last night. It's a little more complicated than that. Three of the schools with the best placement record (ie. highest percentage of students securing TT jobs) included UCSD and UMass, programs outside of the top 20. NYU has 57% of its students receiving tenure track jobs; UCSD has 78%. The number I used to calculate this stuff came from the APA report on grad schools (although a few schools I had to use their website including UMass). When you plot ranking versus TT placement rate, the plot is pretty scattered. Doing a linear regression, the Rsquared value is about .09, which is a weak correlation between ranking and placement. 

I'm hoping to put something up blog-like with some of this information today or tomorrow, if anyone would want to check it out for themselves. 

[Griswald]

Because the stronger ranked your program is, the easier your time on the job market. I've seen some professors who advocate a variant of the once standard advice that you just shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy (unless you can't imagine yourself doing anything else). This variant is that, you shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy at anything less than a top-20 program.

 

http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/10/philosophy-job-placement-data-redux.html

 

There was another Leiter post, or some study, or some discussion which had to do with the placement trend differences in the PhD departments. The trend was that students from top-10 programs got jobs without any sort of publication history, but those from lower programs found it more required of them to publish in order to succeed on the job market.

 

Now sure, many people misunderstand what these (or any) rankings mean, and misuse them. But that's not to say that rankings are without any sort of foundation, or don't serve a useful function.

 

But I don't think there's anything too wrong just with a general fetishization of rankings. Humans love rankings for all sorts of psychological reasons, and we have a lot of fun with them even if deep down we know we sometimes are just playing things up.

If you read the post you linked to carefully, you'll see that it points to several major methodological flaws with that study. When the study came out, a few months back, it was heavily criticized (correctly, in my view) in the philosophy blogosphere. It's false that it supports the claim that "you shouldn't go to graduate school in philosophy at anything less that a top-20 program."