Will I get SHUT OUT of admissions?!

[ianfaircloud]

It's not that I think math in general can't tell us anything meaningful about our chances, it's that I think your math doesn't. I do not find this shocking, since you do not seem to know a great deal about statistics. 

 

What's with the attitude?  I find that my numbers give a rough idea.  I think you're over-thinking this, my friend.  But I can see that you don't find it helpful.  That's fine.  

By the way, do you think the strongest candidates are sitting around thinking to themselves, "I'm among the strongest candidates"?  Do you think the weakest candidates are saying, "I'm among the weakest"?  I assume not.  But you suggest that "the very strongest candidates" can "expect to survive the first cut."  Who are these folks who can expect anything, let alone expect to survive the first cut??

[MattDest]

What's with the attitude?  I find that my numbers give a rough idea.  I think you're over-thinking this, my friend.  But I can see that you don't find it helpful.  That's fine.  

By the way, do you think the strongest candidates are sitting around thinking to themselves, "I'm among the strongest candidates"?  Do you think the weakest candidates are saying, "I'm among the weakest"?  I assume not.  But you suggest that "the very strongest candidates" can "expect to survive the first cut."  Who are these folks who can expect anything, let alone expect to survive the first cut??

 

We have no idea who they are, which is sort of the point. Unless we have more information about the applicant pool, most of this is just baseless speculation. 

[Loric]

Couple of notes..

 

Most applications are BAD.

 

Absolutely awful bad bad bad BAD. There's a reason we joke about the overused and cliched SOP phrases. If you're able to express yourself halfway decently in written words you're ahead of a lot of people. Second, being marginally good at your chosen subject.. that helps too. There are a lot of applicants who are just hopeless. I'm saying this as someone from a test score and grades standpoint who - if i was anyone else - would have about zero chance.

 

Because I'm me, I'm special and I know an adcom is actually considering me seriously. I wasn't just "cut" and my last semester at my old grad school is all F's (admittedly from classes i didnt take, but didnt drop/withdraw from formally, and the adcom knows this.)

 

But everyone thinks they're special. If everyone was actually special, no one would be.

 

So it's a matter of being objective. You're not a number, not an unknown value who will be randomly sorted into slot A or B at the flip of a coin. You are a thing that will be judged, and even the person who said they were "shut out" admitted that with some polish they turned their poor application into a good one. It is not chance it is not magic it is not voodoo. You are being judged and all the alchemy of that process is in play. Yes, it may be because you like XYZ and someone on the adcom hates XYZ so you're out. You can't really account for their opinions in that manner.. but it is a judgement, not chance.

[MeonticDodals]

Since you're already in a program, out of curiosity, what brings you to these parts? 

Stockholm syndrome. Or the belief that some useful insight must have been gained from that stressful time.

[Griswald]

 But you suggest that "the very strongest candidates" can "expect to survive the first cut."  Who are these folks who can expect anything, let alone expect to survive the first cut??

Nothing in Table's argument depends on the strongest candidates being able to identify themselves as such. 

I think we all appreciate the effort you put into your analysis, ianfaircloud. But Table is clearly in the right here.

[Cottagecheeseman]

Couple of notes..

 

Most applications are BAD.

 

Absolutely awful bad bad bad BAD. There's a reason we joke about the overused and cliched SOP phrases. If you're able to express yourself halfway decently in written words you're ahead of a lot of people. Second, being marginally good at your chosen subject.. that helps too. There are a lot of applicants who are just hopeless. I'm saying this as someone from a test score and grades standpoint who - if i was anyone else - would have about zero chance.

 

Because I'm me, I'm special and I know an adcom is actually considering me seriously. I wasn't just "cut" and my last semester at my old grad school is all F's (admittedly from classes i didnt take, but didnt drop/withdraw from formally, and the adcom knows this.)

 

But everyone thinks they're special. If everyone was actually special, no one would be.

 

So it's a matter of being objective. You're not a number, not an unknown value who will be randomly sorted into slot A or B at the flip of a coin. You are a thing that will be judged, and even the person who said they were "shut out" admitted that with some polish they turned their poor application into a good one. It is not chance it is not magic it is not voodoo. You are being judged and all the alchemy of that process is in play. Yes, it may be because you like XYZ and someone on the adcom hates XYZ so you're out. You can't really account for their opinions in that manner.. but it is a judgement, not chance.

 

I'm not even going to try to engage how bad advice this is and how badly it doesn't reflect philosophy and it's graduate admissions, but it does. Seriously, this is terrible, terrible advice.

[Loric]

I'm not even going to try to engage how bad advice this is and how badly it doesn't reflect philosophy and it's graduate admissions, but it does. Seriously, this is terrible, terrible advice.

 

Your belief that it's "random" is stupid. I'm anticipating watching your rejection list grow.

[Griswald]

Your belief that it's "random" is stupid. I'm anticipating watching your rejection list grow.

Did anyone say it's random? I think you're getting confused by different ways of interpreting probability, Loric. It's pretty uncontroversial that we can make reliable inferences based on past frequencies. We can then adopt subjective probabilities (credences, levels of confidence) that correspond to what we've inferred. In doing so, we needn't believe that the events we're thinking about are chancy in the way a coin flip is chancy.

So we can all agree. The process isn't random in that it's not chancy. Still, we can (in principle--I'm not assuming we actually have the requisite data) base our levels of confidence that we'll get admitted on past admissions frequencies.

[MeonticDodals]

I would like to contrast Loric's advice with something USC DGS Mark Schroeder said on a Leiter thread awhile back (comment #56 at http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2011/03/are-some-schools-using-undisclosed-gre-cut-offs-in-admissions-decisions.html):

 

"This year at USC we had just over 130 applications. Of those, no more than five were weak enough to be "not serious candidates". For the rest, I had to spend time reading every letter carefully, reading the personal statement and comparing to the applicant's history and record, and have two colleagues do the same, before we could judge whether the total level of promise merited further review. Since we admitted 13 this year, we needed all three rounds of review just to get to the top 10% that you assume could be skimmed to with little effort. When we say that admissions are "competitive", we mean that they are competitive - i.e., not just that there are a large number of applicants, but that decisions are very difficult and there are many excellent candidates, most of whom won't get in."

 

I'll let you decide who's better informed: Loric or a T20 DGS.

[Cottagecheeseman]

Your belief that it's "random" is stupid. I'm anticipating watching your rejection list grow.

I don't hold the belief that "it's random" whatever that means. And if my reject list grows, it merely means that the schools I applied to had better candidates than, which is fairly common in philosophy because so there are far more fantastic candidates than there are spots and this is why your advice is horrible. If you do wish to continue to post here, do you think you could stop insulting people and instead focus on what they say? Thank you.  

[philstudent1991]

Your belief that it's "random" is stupid. I'm anticipating watching your rejection list grow.

Of course it's not random, you are right. But in a discipline like ours where there are so many candidates with 99% GREs and outstanding letters and GPAs, sometimes even the best don't get in, and it comes down to factors like fit and funding, rather than being purely hierarchical. This seems obvious, and I'm not sure why you seem so obsessed with crashing our forum with this argument. Go argue with your own kind.

[Loric]

Of course it's not random, you are right. But in a discipline like ours where there are so many candidates with 99% GREs and outstanding letters and GPAs, sometimes even the best don't get in, and it comes down to factors like fit and funding, rather than being purely hierarchical. This seems obvious, and I'm not sure why you seem so obsessed with crashing our forum with this argument. Go argue with your own kind.

 

The best were not the best in the eyes of the adcom, and their opinion matters.. not yours, not mine, not anyone else's but theirs. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp?

[Griswald]

It's mildly delusional to suppose that adcoms produce a strict ranking of candidates. "Best" just isn't a useful concept in this discussion. It seems that adcoms are able to identify many viable candidates--more than they can admit. 

[Loric]

It's mildly delusional to suppose that adcoms produce a strict ranking of candidates. "Best" just isn't a useful concept in this discussion. It seems that adcoms are able to identify many viable candidates--more than they can admit. 

 

But they do, because some get offered a spot and some dont.. and they go down a list ane make a cutoff, so some are better than others, making them the "best" of the group.

[objectivityofcontradiction]

From the Schroeder (professor at top of the top program) comment on Leiter that Meontic referred to. Read it Loric, and then disappear. 

 

This year at USC we had just over 130 applications. Of those, no more than five were weak enough to be "not serious candidates". For the rest, I had to spend time reading every letter carefully, reading the personal statement and comparing to the applicant's history and record, and have two colleagues do the same, before we could judge whether the total level of promise merited further review. Since we admitted 13 this year, we needed all three rounds of review just to get to the top 10% that you assume could be skimmed to with little effort. When we say that admissions are "competitive", we mean that they are competitive - i.e., not just that there are a large number of applicants, but that decisions are very difficult and there are many excellent candidates, most of whom won't get in.

If I had an easy way of equipping prospective applicants with an algorithm to assess the promise of their application, I would be happy to do so, but all I can say are things like "our admissions process is incredibly competitive" and "we have to be very impressed by your letters and writing sample", which is what I tell every prospective applicant.

I don't think this language is opaque or misleading, or gives prospective applicants a false sense of their chances. On the contrary, I think what it clearly means is that no matter how good you are, you might not get in.

[Loric]

Wow.. so this is all stemming from an inability to read and comprehend...?

 

Cuz I just read that and it doesn't disagree at all with anything I've said.

[Griswald]

Emphasis on "no matter how good you are [i.e. even if you're amongst the best], you might not get in."

[Loric]

I can go get an actual legit editor to tell what his intent was versus his fuzzy phrasing.. but wow.. that you've built up this whole mentality on that little misunderstand alone is.. wow.. yikes.

[Loric]

Emphasis on "no matter how good you are [i.e. even if you're amongst the best], you might not get in."

 

Which is exactly what I said.. good is not best. There was someone better.

[objectivityofcontradiction]

Loric, 

 

If you did read the previous post, which I doubt you did, and you still want to argue that, 'well, in the end, the 13 USC accepted were BEST,' I suppose I can see your point. But I think what Schroeder is saying is pretty simple: philosophy applications all adhere to at least a semi-universal standard of excellence when they are looked at at first glance. Which does contradict your point that some applications are just flat out bad. Given how much it costs to apply, I think most who invest are great. I don't think they are delusional because on that logic, our letter-writers would have to be delusional as well for speaking in favor of us. So you want to say, then, that professional philosophers who speak on behalf of their students don't recognize promise even after being in the discipline for numerous years... ha, okay. 

Edited January 29, 2014 by objectivityofcontradiction

[Loric]

Every program says they have great applicants and it's "very hard to decide."

 

Dear lord, that you're buying that is again something that makes it clear why so many get rejected.

 

And everyone knows letter writers tout "meh" applicants all the time. It's an accepted thing. Jesus, just how divorced from reality are you?

[objectivityofcontradiction]

Reality and I had a rough break up. I'd rather not talk about it.  

 

Sorry to the rest for wasting the space of this thread. 

Edited January 29, 2014 by objectivityofcontradiction

[Loric]

Most who apply are not great.

 

If that's not true, prove it.

[Griswald]

Most who apply are quite good. Prove it? Well here are two good pieces of evidence: expert testimony (from adcoms), my observations of my colleagues (they're all quite good).

[Loric]

Ugh.. I have to pull out the mud pit.

 

Guy living in the hole in the ground, the mudpit, can only see mud and muck all around him and then the little slice of sky at the top. At night he sees stars. He lives his muddy little life, eats his muddy food, and strives to make mud art and does the best with the mud around him.

 

He watches the stars above, not really knowing much about them or comprehending them.. because that's well beyond what the mud allows..

 

But there's another man, in a spaceship.. looking down at the whole world and everything around the mud pit and all the stars visible beyond the atmosphere. He looks like a star to the mud man, who is oblivious to the existence of spaceships and how they can look just the same as stars moving across the night sky.

 

In the mud man's world does that mean that spaceships do not exist? That there isn't a man up in space who can see and know so much more than the mudman? No, it's just that the mudman is ignorant, and worst of all, doesn't even begin to know or consider that he is ignorant. No, he sees mud and mud is all.

 

It may not be bad, but it's not what I want. You settle. You set your limits. I'm going to live outside them and exceed them in ways you'd never imagine.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Loric