Re: Thoughts on a rejection list for schools

This is very interesting indeed for a couple of reasons. Firstly, what happened last year was that once people had got into their top programs they would tell the message board when they had turned down subsequent offers; this was by and large a popular thing to do, especially considering the tact with which it was done, by and large.

Secondly, I think that it is fascinating that you suggest that we centrally co-ordinate something. Just as our efforts to professionalise are to some extent efforts to preempt the requirements of graduate school, as if to say "I'm ready for this because I have already undertaken some of its steps" or "My committment is shown in my willingness to do this (conferences, article submissions, whatever it might be) even without the assurance of doctoral candidacy behind me”, so too I think our efforts to be exemplary at the admissions procedure, in everything from statements and samples to this board, we’re demonstrating competence (if only to ourselves) as far as we can, and possibly even in excess of what’s required.

I’ve been thinking about the hurdles and hoop-jumping of the admissions process, and I think that it is in a way a self-selecting series of inconveniences, as though by making it that much harder to apply correctly, departments try to get only the most committed applicants. And so we are trying to show ourselves to be at the very top of that bracket. There was some chitchat about this on last year’s board, about pre-professionalisation (and what one ex-applicant refers to as prepreprofessionalisation), and what I think is especially interesting is that applicants are using the internet to apply ever more cannily: whilst departments are (we can only imagine) at most, just beginning to think that boards like this might be worth looking at, and if only in a voyeuristic way, for some of us the suggestions, support and information we share here are actually kind of important (and will only get more so as things get going in February).

I’m sorry for this rather boring screed. (Screed is my new favourite word.) In its own way, your idea of unionising on school priorities (which would in itself be fascinating – a kind of demand-side set of rankings – we could classify by area of interest and argue about criteria – it’d be great) is a great idea. But it needs to happen outside of this message board, somewhere both collective and private. I like that it would represent a collective movement; it think it would say something about how we feel about admissions boards, that we’re ourselves unionised against and need to compensate for that.