<p>looks like UCSD is moving on to their MS apps. Does it mean I'm done for if I still haven't heard back from them about phd app?</p>
<p>University of Cambridge (MPhil European Literature) (no financial aid)- accepted
University of Reading (UK) (MPhil Philosophy) (no financial aid) - accepted
U.Southern California (PhD Philosophy) - rejected
Cornell (PhD Philosophy) - rejected
MIT (PhD Philosophy) - rejected
WU-St Louis (PhD Philosophy) - rejected
CUNY (PhD Philosophy) - waiting
Johns Hopkins (PhD Philosophy) - rejected
NYU (PhD Philosophy) - waiting
Columbia (PhD Philosophy) - waiting
Georgia State (MA Philosophy) - waiting
If there is logic in all of it, I will probably be rejected by the other schools.
What should I do now? Suicide?
I am ashamed enough not to tell my spouse about these results...
I am devastated...I did not know I was so worthless...</p>
<p>Whoah... slow down there. First of all, you're not out of the running yet, so no need to beat yourself up. Humanities Ph.D.s are notoriously small and thus extremely hard programs to get into, especially in noncommercial fields like literature or philosophy. You can't really compare a humanities scoreboard to a science or engineering one. Plus you mentioned that you have an age criteria working against you.</p>
<p>But really, you shouldn't give up until all the cards are flipped. Even if things don't go well this time, you can always try again. I don't know how this would work for humanities, but many engineer/science people I know who didn't get in to any programs go do labwork in a university lab for a year or two, get great recs, and go to the top programs. Something you may want to look into.</p>
<p>Joaoa,</p>
<p>Philosophy PhD programs are insanely hard to get into. Alot of them have admit rates of 4 or 5 percent As Merper said, humanities PhD's aren't like Public Administrion masters where your chances of getting in are fairly good from the get go. Philosophy, as a graduate field, is brutally hard to get into.</p>
<p>sigil11, I heard about my MS decision on Feb 2nd, so almost 2 months ago</p>
<p>I'm actually applying EE, so things may be a little different. But I just recently heard that 2 of my friends are accepted into the ms program. Are phds usually considerred before ms?</p>
<p>sigil11, most schools like to admit PhDs first and then handle master's students</p>
<p>Btw, what area are you in?</p>
<p>Good Luck!</p>
<p>I'm doing communications, so SD is probably the best choice for me. This wait is literally driving me crazy...</p>
<p>To merper68 and jmleadpipe:
Thank you a lot for the kind and encouraging words!
However, I do feel that the effort to recover my competitiveness in philosophy is not greater than that it would take to change career, even in my age...Anyway, I appreciate your messages!!! And have the best of luck!!</p>
<p>Joao Abreu,</p>
<p>I can't really give you any advice other than the obvious to boost your acceptance chances, i.e., improve your GRE scores, get stronger letters of recommendation, and establish a solid record of scholarly publications/research. Having said that, I think you should really try to hold on to the Cambridge MPhil offer, with the possibility, assuming your performance is satisfactory, of continuing on to a PhD degree later. </p>
<p>The problem seems to be the lack of financial aid. For an international student, a Cambridge degree (including tuition, college fees, and living expenses) means a substantial financial committment (something like 20,000 pounds or 40,000 dollars/year). Have you tried CAPES/CNPq ? I know those agencies usually don't provide funding for master's students, but perhaps you can convince them that there's a high likelihood of being accepted into the PhD program following the MPhil. You should also contact the British Council to inquire about alternative sources of funding in the UK, even if it's a long shot.</p>
<p>bruno123:
I appreciate your encouraging message, especially because this is not your first attempt to help me. </p>
<p>I have made contact with many possible sources of financial aid (including the Brazilian ones that you mentioned), but there is always at least one requirement I cannot satisfy - age, program subject, duration of course, kind of course, etc. I have been more than one year since I first tried to get funds. Cambridge had already accepted me for 2006/7. After I eventually declared the lack of funds, they gently accepted to defer my offer for 2007/8. </p>
<p>Actually, Cambridge accepted me for what they call the MPhil "in the first instance", i.e., if I excel in my performance along the first year there, my route to the PhD itself will be kind of easier, without having to do a complete reapplication.</p>
<p>Anyway, being accepted to this MPhil "IFI" intead of the simple MPhil has not made any difference in my favor so far...</p>
<p>Thank you a lot again!!!</p>
<p>update:
mit - cs - phd - rejected
berk - cs - masters/phd - rejected
*uiuc - cs - phd - rejected
ucla - cs - masters - accepted (no funding)
columbia - cs - phd - rejected
duke - cs - phd - rejected
brown - cs - phd - rejected
*dartmouth - cs - phd - rejected
bu - cs - phd - waiting
nyu - cs - phd - waiting
northeastern - cs - masters - waiting</p>
<p>stats:
3.95 major gpa/3.85 overall; double-major in math; 2.5 yrs of research (1 for nasa, 1 for government, 1 for prof); TA for an important class, 2 awesome internships, co-author on a pending patent, no papers, gre = 760M/470V/5.5W.</p>
<p>p.s., if i get rejected from my bottom 3 schools, maybe i should send an email to them saying '<bleep> you. you were my backup, anyway.' :-)</bleep></p>
<p>Civil Engineering, Master's
Accepted: University of Illinois - Urbana/Champaign, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, Buffalo
Waiting: Polytechnic (Brooklyn, NY), Steven's Institute of Technology</p>
<p>UCLA - EE PhD - Accepted
Columbia - EE MS - Accepted
UCSB - EE MS/PhD - Accepted
UMich A.A. - EE MS - Accepted
*CMU - ECE MS - Accepted
*CMU - INI MSIN - Accepted
UIUC - EE PhD - waiting
Cornell - EE PhD - waiting
Stanford - EE MS/PhD - Rejected</p>
<p>ct9999: When I see someone with so great a background as yours being rejected, I start thinking that I have no rights to be disappointed at being rejected with my much poorer figures...
Anyway, I wish you the best of luck in the three remaining schools!</p>
<p>yeah I think we're missing something. </p>
<p>Are you also a serial killer, CT?</p>
<p>lol, nah. i figured i just wasnt good enough. i'm pretty sure my most important LOR'er wrote a not-good letter for me... nobody likes him and he never seemed happy w/ my research. he gave me temporary "incomplete" grades... when he felt i did enough work and had decent results, he'd replace those grades with A's. i felt obligated to have him write a letter or else schools would wonder... i dunno.. maybe he wrote a decent letter...</p>
<p>my gre scores weren't that great, and i didn't take the cs gre. also, i went to florida tech--not well known. eitherway, i worked my ass off as hard as i could for 4.5 yrs. i saw sunrise many times. so, it sucks to feel so much rejection still. i tried my hardest and can't get into any top 60 program... thank you ucla for believing in me :-)</p>
<p>at least you got into google man!! you should be proud of that</p>
<p>I think that my LORs also counted against me, not olny because one of my recommenders died some days after sending his letter to the depts I had applied to...
But I strongly believe that my real problem was my age and the time I spent after graduation...
Now, I am doing my best to get funds for the MPhil at Cambridge.</p>
<p>ct9999:Are you going to accept the offer from UCLA even with no financial aid?</p>
<p>Question: why would your recommender dying count against you?</p>