Philosophy Admissions are NOT random!

[Loric]

Seriously, why persist in the delusion that a failure to gain acceptance into a Philosophy program is in no way a reflection of yourself and your ability to put out a good application?

 

Admissions are not random. They do not flip coins. They judge people and their applications based on whatever criteria they feel like, and yes, to an extent you cannot control that criteria, but being prepared and having a "good" application is a far cry from sitting around saying it's all "random" and that you'd statistically not be accepted (hello, they chose SOME people who weren't you, so obviously it's possible.)

 

I'm not one to think not getting in makes you a bad person or anything, but I certainly believe that blaming everyone and everything else - at this point, the flip of a coin and fate - as being the reason for not getting in is just absurd and reflects perhaps the plethora of reasons you weren't accepted or wont be accepted in the first place.

 

And perhaps if you, philosophy hopeful, accepted that a bad application will mean rejection much moreso than a good application (which while still possible, is significantly less statistically so) then MAYBE you can take the steps needed to solidify your having of a GOOD application and then stand a decent chance at garnering the admission you so crave.

 

But no, instead sit around saying it's all random, there's no hope, and there's nothing you can do. Let me know how far that gets you. You may have done your best, and perhaps your best was not good enough. Welcome to the real world. There are no A's for effort here. Do better, be better, and you'll be seen as better. Want to get in? Have a better application. Make your best better than it is. That's the difference between in and out.

Edited January 29, 2014 by Loric

[Cottagecheeseman]

I think this is a similar degree of stupidity like some ex-porn star lecturing me on how vaccines are evil.

[philosophe]

You so clearly missed the point of the other thread that you went and started a new one. Interesting.

[fuzzylogician]

Everyone, people are allowed to post opinions that you disagree with, even strongly. You do NOT need to reply to it all. Just ignore it. Nothing good can come of this thread if it continues in this way.

[TheVineyard]

Its time to either feed a troll or enlighten a mind:

Okay, here is what people mean when they say random.

1: They do not mean it is an inherently indeterministic system, they do not mean that everyone has an equal chance.

2: What is meant is that there is no 100% agreed upon criteria for judging applicants. With a solid application, you can be sure that you aren't cut out early (decent GRE, solid GPA, at least somewhat noteworthy school and writers, etc.) However, when it comes time to cut down all of the "well-qualified" applicants, that is the part that is almost completely unpredictable. Maybe you catch the eye of a person that happens to be on the committee. Maybe that person alone really likes you and gets you an acceptance when the rest of the adcom didn't see it. On the other hand, perhaps that person was sick today, and didn't actually read your writing sample. Instead someone read it who thinks the position you took was silly. Although it might have been very well argued and valid, because it comes to a conclusion the reader doesn't like, they subconsciously judge this applicant to be naive.

Here is why we KNOW this sort of thing is true: Applicants are NOT consistently accepted/denied in rank order of school quality or by fit! For example, Jon Lawhead who does the Philosoraptor blog applied to 12 schools. His first notification was a rejection to the #44 school. Then a rejection to #35, then #18, then #12, then #15 (approximately). Then, finally, he hears back from the final school: Columbia, one of the best programs in Philosophy. He is accepted with full-funding. WHAT? Had he just not decided to apply to Columbia, he would have gotten shut out. He got denied at many many inferior programs, and many of those inferior programs were superb fits for him, with many faculty overlapping his interests. How could Columbia offer him full funding straight away, but University of Washington or something reject him flat out? The process is not straightforward. He caught someone's eye at Columbia, the right person read the right application at the right time.

So, Loric, you have failed the first task of a philosopher (and I actually doubt that you are a philosophy student). You failed to be a sympathetic reader. You failed to understand the argument or the rationality behind the complaints of the philosophy students here. We all are well aware that solid statistics, solid writing sample, the right letter writers, etc, matters a whole bunch. In fact, in the end it will be ALL THAT MATTERS. However, being an extremely well-qualified student only gets you so far. It gets you to the table, it gets you to one of the final cuts, where they remove all of the flawed applicants. At that point, people describe the process as "random" not because you have a Truly Random chance at admission, but because the process of choosing between well qualified, good-fitting candidates is unknowable (unknowable in the weak sense...Laplace's Demon would know, but an applicant sitting 1000 miles away will never be able to know what influenced some admissions person to stand up for this one particular candidate). There is no way to "rejection-proof" your application. There is no way to "entice a faculty member to support you" with certainty.

TL;DR -

 

1: Learn to be a sympathetic reader/analyst of argumentation/reasons if you intend to converse with deep thinking people.

 

2: The claim that the process of admissions is "random" is true in the sense that there is no way to secure yourself an acceptance. There are ways to make your application great, make it more likely to be admitted, and ESPECIALLY ways to make it less likely to be rejected in the first rounds. However, once you get down to those well-qualified and good-fitting applicants, the process is unknown, unknowable to an applicant, and in that sense it causes us to cross our fingers and hope.

Edited January 29, 2014 by TheVineyard

[MattDest]

Necessary background music for reading posts by Loric. 

[Loric]

It is not unknowable, but as long as you persist in thinking that and behaving that way the answer will continue to elude you.

 

And because you decided to reassign the meaning of the word "random" does not mean your definition is somehow valid and should be accepted at will by anyone else with any respect for the English language.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

It is not unknowable, but as long as you persist in thinking that and behaving that way the answer will continue to elude you.

 

And because you decided to reassign the meaning of the word "random" does not mean your definition is somehow valid and should be accepted at will by anyone else with any respect for the English language.

 

Loric, most of the programs to which philosophy applicants have applied will admit ~5% of their applicants. The number of students these programs can accept is limited not by applicant quality, but internal university politics and funding.

[Loric]

They make a quality judgement to choose the final admitted students.

 

It is not unknowable or random. Just because you can't understand the complexity of the system doesn't mean it's not at work.

 

I suppose evolution doesn't happen because it's too complicated?

[Loric]

Loric, most of the programs to which philosophy applicants have applied will admit ~5% of their applicants. The number of students these programs can accept is limited not by applicant quality, but internal university politics and funding.

 

and i never said that just "Good" applicants were going to get in or that just being good was good enough.. it's not. You have to be whatever it is they perceive as the best.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

They make a quality judgement to choose the final admitted students.

 

It is not unknowable or random. Just because you can't understand the complexity of the system doesn't mean it's not at work.

 

I suppose evolution doesn't happen because it's too complicated?

 

Of course it's not random. It is, largely, "unknowable," because the criteria are largely subjective and vary from school to school, and committee member to committee member. You should know this part better than most, given your predicament with certain committee members questioning your application. What these students face, however, that you do not, is the probability of acceptance independent of applicant or application quality. From what I've gathered about your program - based on what you yourself have posted - is that it is new and it is highly specialized. They will take all qualifying candidates. This is not true of programs like philosophy.

[TheVineyard]

They make a quality judgement to choose the final admitted students.

 

It is not unknowable or random. Just because you can't understand the complexity of the system doesn't mean it's not at work.

 

I suppose evolution doesn't happen because it's too complicated?

 

Again, you must have failed to read.

I said it is unknowable in the weak sense, in that it is so complicated and contingent on factors that applicants are not allowed to know (who is on the committee, who reads what writing samples, how they feel that day, how many Philosophy of Language people they want to take that day, etc...)

I guess I have to repeat myself: None of us think that the process is Truly Random. So we agree with you in that sense. However, just because a system is knowable in principle, doesn't make it practically random. The simplest example suffices: There is nothing "Truly Random" about a coin flip. Coin flips are entirely deterministic, and if we knew the positions, weight, strength and angle and height of flip, etc etc, it would be predictable. Now I'm not trying to say that admissions are equivalent to coin flips, but both coin flips and the final choice of applicants are both procedures that applicants cannot know about. Again, as I said, we DO know about what makes an application good enough to get to the final rounds. Good GPA, GRE, Writers, Institution, Sample, etc.

Each school can only take in about 5 people per year out of 200-300 applicants.

Edited January 29, 2014 by TheVineyard

[Loric]

Of course it's not random. It is, largely, "unknowable," because the criteria are largely subjective and vary from school to school, and committee member to committee member. You should know this part better than most, given your predicament with certain committee members questioning your application. What these students face, however, that you do not, is the probability of acceptance independent of applicant or application quality. From what I've gathered about your program - based on what you yourself have posted - is that it is new and it is highly specialized. They will take all qualifying candidates. This is not true of programs like philosophy.

 

It is not unknowable. That mindset alone is enough to determine who is the best and who is not.

[Loric]

There's a coin toss.

 

Person who calls it gets in.

 

Guy who determines the weight, strength, angle, etc.. picks heads. Other guy picks tails, cuz, reasons.

 

It lands on heads. Who deserves to get in and who is the "best" candidate? The guy who picked heads.

[Griswald]

Lots of non-random systems produce outcomes that we can't predict with certainty (i.e. are "unknowable"). Your coin flip example is one such system. It's possible, in principle, to calculate whether a fair coin will land heads or tails. It's just messy because there are a lot of variables. Instead of doing the calculation, it's reasonable to be 50% confident in heads, given what we've observed about fair coin frequencies. Admissions are kind of like this. It's a pretty boring point, Loric.

[DHumeDominates]

And I thought dfindley was bad. At least he knew that he contributed nothing to the discussion.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

There's a coin toss.

 

Person who calls it gets in.

 

Guy who determines the weight, strength, angle, etc.. picks heads. Other guy picks tails, cuz, reasons.

 

It lands on heads. Who deserves to get in and who is the "best" candidate? The guy who picked heads.

 

Unfortunately for philosophers, the coin toss isn't determined by how well they manage to draw skeletons.

[Loric]

Lots of non-random systems produce outcomes that we can't predict with certainty (i.e. are "unknowable"). Your coin flip example is one such system. It's possible, in principle, to calculate whether a fair coin will land heads or tails. It's just messy because there are a lot of variables. Instead of doing the calculation, it's reasonable to be 50% confident in heads, given what we've observed about fair coin frequencies. Admissions are kind of like this. It's a pretty boring point, Loric.

 

But admissions are not a fair coin and it's nowhere near 50%.

[Griswald]

But admissions are not a fair coin and it's nowhere near 50%.

Very good. Feel free to replace the numbers as you see fit. I had hoped that you'd just be able to see the analogy as I made it. 

[Loric]

Unfortunately for philosophers, the coin toss isn't determined by how well they manage to draw skeletons.

 

And i'd not be surprised in the least to learn that someone else drew a better skeleton and got in while I didn't.

 

The mentality that everyone is good and everyone is equal and everyone is "the best" is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with what the criteria are, it has everything to do with bothering to acknowledge that they exist and that some people exceed while others fail.

[TheVineyard]

There's a coin toss.

 

Person who calls it gets in.

 

Guy who determines the weight, strength, angle, etc.. picks heads. Other guy picks tails, cuz, reasons.

 

It lands on heads. Who deserves to get in and who is the "best" candidate? The guy who picked heads.

 

So you are now saying that it is knowable! So tell me, who will be on the application committee to the Pittsburgh History and Philosophy of Science department. Also, tell me who exactly will be assigned to read my application so I can cater it. Then, please tell me exactly what that faculty member wants in an applicant. Do they want to be mentioned in the statement of purpose, or do they consider that to be too desperate? How many Philosophy of Mind students do they want? If they don't want any then obviously I shouldn't include that...but do they want 3 so I can accentuate my focus in Mind?

Please answer Loric so I can be accepted thx.

 

 

And i'd not be surprised in the least to learn that someone else drew a better skeleton and got in while I didn't.

 

The mentality that everyone is good and everyone is equal and everyone is "the best" is complete nonsense. It has nothing to do with what the criteria are, it has everything to do with bothering to acknowledge that they exist and that some people exceed while others fail.

Did you not read the first part of my first post? Nobody thinks every applicant is good. Nobody thinks every applicant is equal. Nobody thinks every applicant is the best. We are all aware there are criteria that make a qualified applicant. However, there is no consistent way of determining who should be accepted among the qualified applicant (re-read the part about Jon Lawhead who was only accepted to one of 12 schools, and that school happened to be one of the best and hardest to get in to).

Edited January 29, 2014 by TheVineyard

[Loric]

I never said it was consistent among schools. That goes back to "fit" that the entire Philosophy forum has declared a word to not be uttered.

 

If you're at all resourceful you can figure out who is going to be a committee.

 

Fun thought: Did any of you even ASK?

Edited January 29, 2014 by Loric

[DHumeDominates]

So you are now saying that it is knowable! So tell me, who will be on the application committee to the Pittsburgh History and Philosophy of Science department. Also, tell me who exactly will be assigned to read my application so I can cater it. Then, please tell me exactly what that faculty member wants in an applicant. Do they want to be mentioned in the statement of purpose, or do they consider that to be too desperate? How many Philosophy of Mind students do they want? If they don't want any then obviously I shouldn't include that...but do they want 3 so I can accentuate my focus in Mind?

Please answer Loric so I can be accepted thx.

 

 

Did you not read the first part of my first post? Nobody thinks every applicant is good. Nobody thinks every applicant is equal. Nobody thinks every applicant is the best. We are all aware there are criteria that make a qualified applicant. However, there is no consistent way of determining who should be accepted among the qualified applicant (re-read the part about Jon Lawhead who was only accepted to one of 12 schools, and that school happened to be one of the best and hardest to get in to).

 

The Vineyard, which schools do you infer have rejected you, if you don't mind my asking? And what's the basis for the inference? (I apologize if you already commented on this in another thread.)

[TheVineyard]

I never said it was consistent among schools. That goes back to "fit" that the entire Philosophy forum has declared a word to not be uttered.

 

If you're at all resourceful you can figure out who is going to be a committee.

 

Fun thought: Did any of you even ASK?

 

I mentioned fit at least 3 times in this thread now. He was a better fit at other schools. Also, who will be reading which application is information that is denied to applicants.

 

The Vineyard, which schools do you infer have rejected you, if you don't mind my asking? And what's the basis for the inference? (I apologize if you already commented on this in another thread.)

 

Duke and UNC. I guess it's quick to say I'm rejected, but I know I am not a first-round acceptance.

[Griswald]

 

Duke and UNC. I guess it's quick to say I'm rejected, but I know I am not a first-round acceptance.

This might be too optimistic, but I wonder if inferring that you're on some kind of a wait list, until you get an official rejection, is equally justified.