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Posted

I can't tell whether you're joking. Do you mean that right after I posted this optimistic note of encouragement, you were rejected by WUSTL? :(

I'm not joking, yes, sadly I have been rejected by WUSTL :( And I think there was another rejection posted on the results page too. Oh well...congrats to all those accepted. 

Posted

Seeing results for UC Irvine philosophy (both acceptances and wait listings) and then realizing that I applied to LPS, not the philosophy dept...

ANXIETY

Posted (edited)

I have been lurking for a while now, and have finally decided to join in! Hello! 

 

Hey! Welcome! Do you mind sharing where you've been accepted and wait-listed?

 

Also, good luck on your other schools! 

Edited by reixis
Posted

Anyone want to claim the Indiana acceptances?  I'm mostly keen to know if it's a standard funding offer or a special fellowship offer.  I'd also like to confirm that it's an admit to the philosophy program, and not one of the HPS acceptances that went out a few days ago. 

Posted

still no news re: chicago... so anxious!

 

I just posted on the blog about this, but I've heard that Chicago decisions are finalized and awaiting approval from the administration. Meaning there will likely be no news before the weekend, but they should release next week.

Posted

Ahh still no results for UNC!

 

Sadly, I have no news on why UNC is late. They did take quite a while two years ago, so they just might not mind variability with release date. I think we can continue to expect them to release soon, but it's hard to say what's taking them so long.

Posted (edited)

Does anybody have Ian's acceptance/waitlist/rejection dates and timetable from the last several years? Can you post it?

 

When do people anticipate hearing from University of Wisconsin, Madison?

Edited by riverstyx
Posted

Does anybody have Ian's acceptance/waitlist/rejection dates and timetable from the last several years? Can you post it?

 

When do people anticipate hearing from University of Wisconsin, Madison?

 

Those are here. Wisconsin at Madison should release any time, though they took until mid February in 2013. They typically release mid-week, so I'd expect to hear from them Tuesday or Wednesday.

Posted

okay so I was accepted to Wayne state's PhD program with a Fellowship- it is a tuition waiver, a generous stipend and health insurance for the first year, and they say that in most cases that GTAs are offered for the next several years (up to 5 years). What I like is they have 4 professors with apparently a strong working knowledge of my beloved Donald Davidson, as well as vast experience with Putnam et.al (basically the philosophers I have the greatest interest in, as well as a program focused on philosophy of language and mind). I know this is not a well-known program- does anyone perhaps who is currently in an MA or PhD program know much about Wayne State? They have been incredibly kind and personal in their communications, and it does sound like a very personal and small program, but any personal knowledge would be helpful! 

Posted

Those are here. Wisconsin at Madison should release any time, though they took until mid February in 2013. They typically release mid-week, so I'd expect to hear from them Tuesday or Wednesday.

Thanks!

Posted

okay so I was accepted to Wayne state's PhD program with a Fellowship- it is a tuition waiver, a generous stipend and health insurance for the first year, and they say that in most cases that GTAs are offered for the next several years (up to 5 years). What I like is they have 4 professors with apparently a strong working knowledge of my beloved Donald Davidson, as well as vast experience with Putnam et.al (basically the philosophers I have the greatest interest in, as well as a program focused on philosophy of language and mind). I know this is not a well-known program- does anyone perhaps who is currently in an MA or PhD program know much about Wayne State? They have been incredibly kind and personal in their communications, and it does sound like a very personal and small program, but any personal knowledge would be helpful! 

I don't know anything about them, so can't be of help on that front. But I'd say the most important thing for you to figure out is their placement record.

Posted

Ahh still no results for UNC!

 

Sadly, I have no news on why UNC is late. They did take quite a while two years ago, so they just might not mind variability with release date. I think we can continue to expect them to release soon, but it's hard to say what's taking them so long.

Just FYI, though I have no knowledge of what the admissions committee is up to, UNC is currently conducting both a junior search and a senior search.  We've had candidates coming in for the last 2 weeks or so, and these visits have occupied most of the faculty's time.  The final visit is Monday, so I wouldn't be surprised if we sent out offers shortly thereafter.  Maybe in the middle of next week (but, again, I know nothing about the inner workings of the admissions committee).  

Posted

Is it just me or are our predictions for 2015 way off? 

 

They haven't been great, but I don't think they've been terrible either. There have been a fair amount of schools predicting on or near their predicted dates (4 on the exact predicted date and another 4 within half a week), but some that have been surprises (Northwestern a week off, WUSTL two weeks off, and Miami three weeks off, in addition to the schools I predicted to release last week that still haven't).

 

This ratio seems pretty similar to Ian's success last year (see his post on the accuracy of the predictions here), with a little over half the schools coming within half a week of their predicted dates, and roughly a quarter being pretty far away from their predicted dates. I'd expect the rest of the schools to follow a pretty similar ratio (and perhaps doing a bit better, since some of the surprises were schools releasing far earlier than predicted).

Posted (edited)

They might not seem great currently, but I think the predictions can probably only be assessed in retrospect (esp. since the bulk of notifications go out later this month and into next month). 

Also, none of us (Sid and Ian included, I think) take these predictions too seriously, since we know there are serious problems with the methodology, particularly due to the bad data sets (neither Sid nor Ian, to my knowledge, have claimed that the methodology was sound). Or at least I hope! I've been using them to sort of informally get a sense of when I'd hear back (late February? Early March? etc), and that's probably what they're best used for. 

Edited by overoverover
Posted

They might not seem great currently, but I think the predictions can probably only be assessed in retrospect (esp. since the bulk of notifications go out later this month and into next month). 

Also, none of (Sid and Ian included, I think) take these predictions too seriously, since we know we there serious problems with the methodology, particularly due to the bad data sets. (neither Sid nor Ian, to my knowledge, have claimed that the methodology was sound). Or at least I hope! I've been using them to sort of informally get a sense of when I'd hear back (late February? Early March? etc), and that's probably what they're best used for. 

 

They're indeed only intended to be a rough approximation, and their accuracy and reliability are different based on how specifically you analyze the predictions. So, for instance, I think one can be quite confident that Stanford (Feb 14) will release before Princeton (Mar 5), but not very confident that Stanford will release on the 14th or that Princeton will release on the 5th. So you're right to point out that they're mainly useful for getting a rough sense of when schools typically release results.

 

You're also right to point out that there are serious issues with the data. Not only is there bad data mixed in with the good, reliable data; it's incredibly hard to determine which data are reliable and which aren't. The methodology is roughly this: average the release dates from the past three years, with recent years weighted slightly more, and further adjust the prediction if schools have historically displayed a preference for releasing on certain days of the week (and also taking into account changes in application deadlines where applicable). That said, if anyone has suggestions for more reliable ways of predicting release dates, I'd welcome them, especially so we can improve the prediction methodology for next year!

Posted

They might not seem great currently, but I think the predictions can probably only be assessed in retrospect (esp. since the bulk of notifications go out later this month and into next month). 

Also, none of us (Sid and Ian included, I think) take these predictions too seriously, since we know there are serious problems with the methodology, particularly due to the bad data sets (neither Sid nor Ian, to my knowledge, have claimed that the methodology was sound). Or at least I hope! I've been using them to sort of informally get a sense of when I'd hear back (late February? Early March? etc), and that's probably what they're best used for. 

 

Well, it's not so much a matter of problems with the methodology as it is just not meant to be more than what it is.  It's a prediction based on a three-year trend.  That's all it is, and that's all it claims to be.  And as I noted last year, this kind of prediction is surprisingly predictive. But yes, thanks overoverover for pointing out that the main purpose is to give people a sense of when they might hear from programs.

 

But just to be clear, 52% of my predictions last year fell within three days of the actual releases. That's not terrible. This year, Sid has another year's worth of data. Possibly things will work out even better.

Posted

While we wait, it's interesting to see what other disciplines are doing with the results board:

"brewdata: Extracting Usable Data from the Grad Cafe Results Search" (Math/Stats)

Using the data (linked in the above thread)

http://minimallysufficient.github.io/2015/02/08/gradcafe.html

I wish I was better with that kind of stuff. I have dreams of teaching myself more math/stats someday.

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