Rejected from everywhere

Graduate School
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<p>My niece Cat attends an excellent flagship state U and will be graduating this year with a degree in philosophy (concentrating on something called "philosophy of mind"--kinda over my head, lol). </p>

<p>To her and the family's great distress, she has been rejected from all 19 masters programs to which she applied. Apparently based on her stellar academic record, neither Cat nor her advisor thought that she needed any safeties; she applied at THE top 19 schools in this discipline. All said no.</p>

<p>Cat is graduating with a 3.9, had good (though not great in math) GRE scores, made Phi Beta Kappa senior year, was a TA, successfully defended her thesis, had fantastic letters of rec--and is still in shock. She took a GRE course and has been working in a store part-time. Cat is thinking she'll take a year off, work on her thesis and bring her GRE scores up. One Big 19 school adcom person did tell her that her GRE scores were a little low for them. </p>

<p>I think she should lower her sites and try to get into a less-competitive masters program at some place other than Oxford or Harvard. She could then go for a PhD at the Big 19. Obviously, that's not my call.</p>

<p>She doesn't want any masters program but this one, esoteric though it is. She doesn't want to reframe and, say, apply to law school. From the first, she wanted no advice regarding the practicality of this degree, and she now has no interest in discussing its narrow job possibilities (she wants to teach it at college level). Everyone deferred to the fact that Cat had found her passion. Never mind that those few possible jobs nearly always go to the people who get into and excel at the Big 19. </p>

<p>She had tremendous support, and did achieve wonderful results. And now the rejections. </p>

<p>Her mother has called schools across the country to see what other options exist; Cat has also done some calling, but she's still wrapping up school, working and in a state of embarrassed denial. </p>

<p>Any ideas? Thanks to all who slogged through this long post.</p>

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<p>It’s against College Confidential’s Terms of Service to include the URL of a non-academic or non-news site, so I’ll do it this way. Have your niece Google “splintered mind phd philosophy” to find a blog written by a professor of philosophy about graduate admissions in the field. In fact, your niece should probably do a comprehensive search to figure out what she needs to get into one of these programs.</p>

<p>Good luck to her!</p>

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<p>Oh, heck. Even as a super moderator, I feel the blog (written by a UC Riverside professor) is important enough to post the URL. No need to Google the above.</p>

<p>[The</a> Splintered Mind: Underblog: Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Philosophy: Full Text](<a href=“http://schwitzsplintersunderblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/applying-to-phd-programs-in-philosophy.html]The”>The Splintered Mind: Underblog: Applying to Ph.D. Programs in Philosophy: Full Text)</p>

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<p>Thanks, Momof. I was just over there, and although he says he doesn’t know much about masters programs (he seems at first look to focus on PhD programs), I can see it’s a rich resource. </p>

<p>BTW, UC R’side, where he teaches, was one of The Rejectors. But I bet he’d answer a post.</p>

<p>Thanks again.</p>

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<p>Wow, I take it back. A little digging in the block reveals a bunch of good info about grad schools.</p>

<p>You really ARE a super mod!</p>

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<p>can you recommend something similar for prospective science phd applicants?</p>

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<p>Gahh, blog, not block. </p>

<p>Time for coffee.</p>

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<p>Wow. 19 applications. Why 19 applications? It’s a bit extreme, even for a MA program.</p>

<p>It sounds like part of the issue is FIT. Yes, MA programs are designed to help a student focus on his or her research but the student needs to come in with some idea of what to do with the subject and find supporting faculty members. </p>

<p>(By the way… the mother shouldn’t have called. From here on, if your niece is serious about grad school, she should be the one handling all the communications with her programs, not her parents. She needs to show that she’s independent and is willing to solve her own problems as an adult.)</p>

<p>My friend was a philosophy major as well. She had German under her belt. She wrote a honors thesis. All that stuff. But she decided to take year off on her own so she worked while studying for the LSATs. She thought that maybe she’ll do one of those PhD/JD joint degree programs (like at Penn) so she can study law and philosophy at the same time. Because of her need to take two standardized exams, she had to plan to take quite some time off from school. When I visited her in her new city last year, she was talking about public policy! I said, “Whatever happened to philosophy?” She said, “There are no jobs. What can you do with a PhD in philosophy?” She still reads philosophy for fun and loves to analyze public policy from a philosopher’s perspective and I think it’s done her very well in helping her find a niche in the Real World with her passion for philosophy.</p>

<p>Your niece also needs to realize that part of the problem is the economy. Everyone’s applying to graduate school in order to “ride out” the recession. Schools’ endowments have gone down and programs have had to cut back. Even MA programs need to cut back because of resources (including funding). Unfortunately, I think that graduate programs in humanities have changed semi-permanently so even if times improve over the next 5 years. Programs are going to use this opportunity to help “re-balance” the job market. Right now the humanities job market is very saturated and there are far too many PhD-holders than jobs available. I also understand that if you’ve been looking for an academic job for more than 3 years, you’re basically screwed.</p>

<p>Remember she is only 22 and she may be mature but there is still a lot of exploring and growing-up to do over the next few years. I have gone through two rounds of PhD programs. The first round was in my senior year and I applied to a combination of MA and PhD programs but I owe most of the failure being that my LAC professors weren’t in touch with the current admissions situation, that it was truly more competitive than they thought. This round, while I had a stellar application, I was rejected from 3 PhD programs and waitlisted at 2 top programs. My advisor owe it to that my writing sample was “shiny” enough (it was polished but not truly polished) and the fact that her former MA student was also applying for the same spot in our sub-field. And of course, my selection of schools being too narrow even though all of those were very good fits. </p>

<p>She handed me a new list of PhD programs to apply for Fall 2011. I looked at it and took a very, very big swallow of pride. If I really, really want to do the PhD, I would have to listen to what she said and apply to all of these places even if a number of them were outside of top 20 but all within top 100. I realized that her point was that connections and fit matter and people in the sub-field know each other and respect each other… and many of them had come out from same elite PhD programs, and this is just how they all ended up years after they received their PhDs. She kept saying to me, “let’s see where did our Michigan (history PhD) graduates go that you could apply to…?” These Michigan graduates had been trained by one of the top historians in my field and I have met one of them and I could see the influence in his line of thinking and approach.</p>

<p>Completely sucks but that’s the reality for the future. The whole trickle-down effect. So your niece need to think about that as well.</p>

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<p>Thank you, ticklemepink. Your words are true and helpful; we’ll see if she decides to change her strategy.</p>

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<p>Well, I see why someone I know with Emory psychology major went to 103th rank psychology department for his PhD. I didn’t know psychology PhD spots are this competetive way more than medical school according to the link momwaitingfornew provided. Thanks for the info.</p>

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<p>Just to be clear: Her link is to a philosophy prof’s blog, not psychology.</p>

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<p>I wish I had a link for similar information in the sciences. I had bookmarked one for neuroscience to send to my daughter (who applied this past application cycle), but in cleaning out my bookmarks about a month ago, I deleted it.</p>