Forum quieter this year?

[hector549]

I wasn't applying last year, but I have looked at a lot of old threads, and it seems that this year there is significantly less activity on this forum compared to the past. Any ideas about why this might be the case? Is it perhaps a quieter application season in general?

[Kilos]

I was wondering the same thing. I didn't register this account until very recently, but I'm a loooongtime lurker. I remember a few of my most-lurked threads from last year were four times the size of their current counterparts. Not entirely sure what to make of it.

[goldenstardust11]

Yup, I've noticed it too (also a long-time lurker). Idk why there's less activity, but it seems like a trend. 2 years ago also felt more active than this year, if memory serves :/

[maxhgns]

20 minutes ago, jkm871 said:

Is it perhaps a quieter application season in general?

I doubt it. Web-based discussion of grad school in philosophy has been slowing down for years now, and several good former sites are now completely dead. My impression is that TGC in general has been getting quieter and quieter. Anecdotally, however, the number of applicants doesn't seem substantially lower.

I don't know why that is. There were never really dozens or hundreds of philosophy applicants using these sites, so I'd imagine that they always relied on people stumbling across them in their research into grad schools. Perhaps fewer people stumble onto them now because good information about the process of applying to grad school in philosophy is now more readily available, and applicants have fewer reasons to trawl through pages of Google search results. That, and there doesn't seem to be much word-of-mouth among prospectives in this field (not entirely surprising, since few graduates in any graduating class will go on to the PhD).

 

EDIT: I should add that there's a parallel trend at the other end of the process. There used to be *a lot* of web-based discussion among job applicants, but most of those sites have died and the discussion now proceeds at a snail's pace. There, too, I think that access to more and better information is largely responsible.

Edited January 5, 2017 by maxhgns

[Duns Eith]

I was here two years ago, and there was a lot more traffic. I would credit a lot of that to Ian Faircloud, who would post in every single thread that existed. Though, I will say I thought there was far more traffic as people were anxious, waiting, and expecting replies as well. Expect an uptick around late January.

There's also Facebook. I think the group on Facebook is substantially larger this year, and thus traffic and comments are there rather than here.  [If I were a mod or owner of this site, I'd consider taking a hard line stance on not advertising to Facebook or banding together to make a Facebook group. It kills the forum.]

[hector549]

@maxhgns you raise some good points, but isn't part of the utility people get from a forum like this some sense of shared experience, not just information about applying to graduate school? I wonder where applicants are finding that? This is one of the reasons I signed up instead of just lurking, in any case.

@Turretin you could be right about the facebook group having some effect, but honestly, I don't see a lot of activity happening there either.

Edited January 5, 2017 by jkm871

[maxhgns]

37 minutes ago, jkm871 said:

@maxhgns you raise some good points, but isn't part of the utility people get from a forum like this some sense of shared experience, not just information about applying to graduate school? I wonder where applicants are finding that? This is one of the reasons I signed up instead of just lurking, in any case.

Totally, and that's why places like this get started. It doesn't guarantee a sustainable population, though. Since most posters stop posting once they get in somewhere, there's high turnover and a total reliance on new prospectives. All that seems to weigh against sustainability. Shrug. 

[Dialectica]

Regardless of the actual explanation for this, I'm simply telling myself that it means the applicant pool is smaller this year. I'm taking any solace I can. 

 

I'm, of course, mostly joking. But it does seem a striking difference in posts than this time last year. And, as @Turretin pointed out, there will certainly be an uptick—and likely more than just an uptick—in posts when results start coming in. I would think the number of posts at that time might be a better indicator of how "quiet" this season is. 

[dgswaim]

There's definitely less traffic this year compared to last, and last year there was less traffic than when I applied to MA programs in the 2014 cycle. 

[Duns Eith]

9 minutes ago, dgswaim said:

There's definitely less traffic this year compared to last, and last year there was less traffic than when I applied to MA programs in the 2014 cycle. 

Exactly my experience as well.

Edited January 5, 2017 by Turretin

[goldenstardust11]

Well then, we shall all attempt to combat this trend! I enjoy these forums- it actually helps allay my anxiety knowing that others are out there going through the same things :). And it's kinda nice to have a safe space to obsess... 

[SteveZissou]

If you guys haven't already, I recommend also joining the Facebook group. It has been fairly active, and might be the reason why the forum hasn't had as much traffic. It's called 'Philosophy Graduate Applicants 2017'. There was a thread about it here a while ago that I'm sure someone can dig up!

[hector549]

1 hour ago, goldenstardust11 said:

Well then, we shall all attempt to combat this trend! I enjoy these forums- it actually helps allay my anxiety knowing that others are out there going through the same things :). And it's kinda nice to have a safe space to obsess... 

I agree, it's nice to know that there are others as neurotically obsessed with this as I am. Solidarity against the unknown!

When I was thinking about graduate programs, finding this site and reading posts in this group reminded me that maybe I wasn't as crazy as I thought for doing this.

Edited January 5, 2017 by jkm871

[Dialectica]

1 hour ago, SteveZissou said:

If you guys haven't already, I recommend also joining the Facebook group. It has been fairly active, and might be the reason why the forum hasn't had as much traffic. It's called 'Philosophy Graduate Applicants 2017'. There was a thread about it here a while ago that I'm sure someone can dig up!

If only such a group could preserve anonymity. 

[goldenstardust11]

12 minutes ago, Dialectica said:

If only such a group could preserve anonymity. 

I was afraid of the same thing, so I used a side account w/my first and middle name :P. Glad to see someone else shares my paranoia about such things

Edited January 6, 2017 by goldenstardust11

[The_Last_Thylacine]

I hope to see an increase in forum discussion here. Then again, we don't have any news of acceptance to share with one another yet! 

[Duns Eith]

It's crazy though, I forgot that initial decisions will be rolling out very soon. Like 3 weeks. That's NUTS. Some apps are still due, and we could hear back? Geeze.

[goldenstardust11]

Yup. Based on the predictions, one of my programs starts notifying before the month even ends - I get a little anxiety stomach ache just thinking about it (anxiety mixed with excitement though!)

[necessaryandsufficient]

It might just be that there are a lot of lurkers and people who worry about compromising their anonymity. There are already over 300 views on this thread. If say 100 of those hits are duplicate views and 200 are unique viewers, that seems about right if the application pool at most schools tends to be in the 300-400 range.

[goldenstardust11]

Yeah, there's definitely a funny amount of page views for how few people post. I was too paranoid to post for a couple years , and am definitely coaxing myself to participate more since I remember how helpful it was to lurk during 2015's season when I was first thinking about grad apps

[Dialectica]

3 hours ago, necessaryandsufficient said:

It might just be that there are a lot of lurkers and people who worry about compromising their anonymity. There are already over 300 views on this thread. If say 100 of those hits are duplicate views and 200 are unique viewers, that seems about right if the application pool at most schools tends to be in the 300-400 range.

You might be right. But we also have to consider how many lurkers are not current applicants. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate there is a large amount of current undergrads and MA students that lurk but aren't currently applying. We also have to split up folks that apply to terminal MAs almost exclusively, those that apply to MAs and PhDs, and those that are just applying to PhD programs. This all assumes, of course, that these view counts are so easily interpreted. 

[Duns Eith]

17 hours ago, Dialectica said:

You might be right. But we also have to consider how many lurkers are not current applicants. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence that seems to indicate there is a large amount of current undergrads and MA students that lurk but aren't currently applying. We also have to split up folks that apply to terminal MAs almost exclusively, those that apply to MAs and PhDs, and those that are just applying to PhD programs. This all assumes, of course, that these view counts are so easily interpreted. 

Speaking of non-applicants, don't bots and webcrawlers also show up as hits, as well?

[MentalEngineer]

Anecdotally, almost everyone in my MA cohort(s) told me that they "don't look at GradCafe because it makes [them] neurotic" and relied on the few of us who did to tell them when notifications started. I'm pretty sure that more people view the results page than any other activity here. If many applicants have learned by experience (bear in mind that about half of them are in their second-plus season for one reason or another) not to even do that, they're unlikely to show up on the forums either.

Edited January 9, 2017 by MentalEngineer

[Duns Eith]

Yet people want to announce that they were accepted, ask if they might be waitlisted, or vent their rejection ... That's pretty darn common.

[cabraloca]

Very interesting thoughts from everyone. I also think that it takes somewhat being a 'child of the internet' to actually want to hang in these type of sites. I think most people are talking to their friends from university etc about their anxiety and not everyone feels that extra need to talk to other people on the internet about it too. I do. This wait is crazy. And for me, so much right now is hanging for me to get admitted into graduate school. These days feel really crazy with extra pressure. Sending good vibes to everyone out there <3