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I applied out to doctoral programs in philosophy twice: once with little success, and a second time which, thankfully, worked out in my favor. Although I am over the moon that I will be enrolled in a philosophy Ph.D. program this fall, there is still part of me that would like to know what I could have done to improve my application for the many programs that ultimately rejected me. I imagine that for those who applied out and were not as lucky as I was to receive an offer, this desire to know what more they could have done during this application cycle is especially pronounced. Some programs offer rejected students feedback on their applications, but many do not. In this post, I want to offer reasons to think that philosophy departments should provide some sort of feedback on rejected applications to those applicants who want feedback.
I want to begin by acknowledging that every policy, no matter how just, is subject to costs and benefits. It may turn out that for particular programs in particular circumstances, providing feedback of a certain kind to rejected applicants will impose unduly high costs on members of application committees. In these cases, it is acceptable for programs to forego providing feedback to rejected applicants. All I argue for here is that those programs in a position to accommodate the interest that prospective philosophy graduate students have in knowing how they fell short on their applications, do so as far as is reasonable. I also do not want to leave the reader with the impression that I am privy to every university’s policies and have completely overlooked how these policies might stand in tension with my proposal. There may very well be practical considerations that make it difficult to affect the proposal I have in mind. Still, it is worth discussing how things ought to be even if, at the moment, they cannot be that way.
Rejected applicants who seek feedback on their applications should be provided with feedback for four different sets of reasons: reciprocity, respect, easy rescue, and transparency. Let us begin with the argument from reciprocity. In my own case, I worked on the manuscript that would later become my writing sample for eleven months. Of course, some weeks I spent hours upon hours working on it and some weeks I barely looked at it. Still, I put a lot of effort into that paper. Additionally, I had to save up money to pay the hefty application fees that many programs require. I know that I am not alone in having invested this much time, energy, and money into my graduate applications; others who have applied out have similar stories. All of this is to say that prospective graduate students do a lot to show that they take the programs they are applying to seriously. When a program offers a rejected applicant nothing more than a rejection, I am inclined to think that the program fails to reciprocate to that student something they ought to.
Consider the following case. I notice that there is an elderly man in my neighborhood whose garden is infiltrated by deer frequently. The deer eat all of my neighbor’s favorite flowers. My neighbor complains to others in the neighborhood that he needs to enclose the garden with netting to prevent the deer from eating his flowers, but he has neither the money nor energy to do so. While my neighbor is visiting his family one weekend, I build a structure around his garden that secures it from hungry deer. I do this for him as a gift in part because he is kind and deserves to be able to enjoy his garden. A large portion of my motivation to give him this gift, though, is to do yard work (which I love doing!) and to see my neighbor smile.
Obviously, my neighbor is not obligated to compensate me for my gift, but it is not unreasonable to think he should reciprocate my act of kindness with some level of kindness himself so as to recognize the hard work I put into doing something aimed at benefiting him. Even if I failed at building exactly the structure he wanted, it’s, as the cliché goes, “the thought that counts.” Perhaps he will thank me in person and give me a hug, or write me a thank you card, or invite me over to dinner to express gratitude for what I did. What would be at best extremely rude and at worst minorly vicious for him to do is to report to me that I have done him a favor, and then to go on about his life without ever acknowledging that it was a nice thing to do.
When graduate school applicants apply out, they primarily want for themselves the opportunity to study philosophy. They are also, however, doing a service for the graduate program. They give the program money, they help make the program’s rate of acceptance more impressive, they offer the program choices in students that it otherwise would not have had, and so on. If programs had nothing to gain by considering applicants, they would consider none. To recognize the amount of time and effort that is put into these applications, graduate programs ought to do more than simply report to students that they have been rejected. This is especially the case because graduate school applicants are paying to be evaluated by the programs they apply to. It seems that constructive feedback of the right kind is the best available means by which philosophy departments could do more to recognize the hard work that is put into crafting a graduate application.
I am also inclined to think that philosophy departments, to a certain extent, disrespect rejected applicants by failing to give feedback on their applications when asked to do so. If other applicants are anything like me, they have chosen to study philosophy despite the constant reminders from their mentors that the job market is abysmal and that time might be better spent not pursuing a career as an academic philosopher. Indeed, many Ph.D. applicants choose to apply out because studying philosophy is not only something about which they are passionate, but something they are so passionate about that they are willing to risk grim job prospects after dedicating upwards of five years of their life to get a degree. Studying philosophy is, for many Ph.D. applicants, a central life project. By declining to help a rejected applicant understand how their application can improve for the next cycle, philosophy departments arguably communicate that they do not take seriously how important it often is for applicants to be able to do what they love most in life. Obviously, philosophy departments are not obligated to do the most they could possibly do to show that they care about the projects of rejected applicants. However, they should do something to show this.
In particular, philosophy departments should provide feedback on rejected applications to the extent that doing so comes at little cost to them, for a great benefit to the applicant who was rejected from the program. This is the easy rescue principle: If someone is drowning in a shallow pond and it will cost you the condition of your shoes to save her life, then you are under an obligation to jump in and save her. Similarly, if a rejected Ph.D. applicant is faced with an overwhelming, soul-crushing rejection and it will cost you a few moments to give them tools to overcome it, then you are obligated to give up those few moments. If someone was rejected because their GPA was comparatively low, it comes at little cost for the program to tell them this. The benefit to the reject will be immense because she will not continue to send applications to that program or programs like it, enabling her to save money during future application cycles and make better choices about where to apply.
I recognize that for many programs, the top thirty applicants are the hardest to narrow down. In these cases, it may not be easy to point to one thing that precipitated their rejection, as the narrowing down process at this point is, to some extent, arbitrary. Still, it may be worth it to allow these students to speak with someone who read their applications for about twenty minutes to get feedback about, at the very least, things they did well and should do again moving forward. Insofar as it’s possible to divide labor so that the costs associated with making these calls and having these conversations do not disproportionately burden any one faculty member in a philosophy department, it is reasonable, I think, to expect departments to offer these opportunities to exceptional students whose Ph.D. applications were rejected.
The fourth and final reason I believe that philosophy departments are obligated to offer feedback on rejected graduate applications has to do with transparency. It is no secret that philosophy, as a discipline, has a diversity problem. It may be that this lack of diversity––be it on the basis of gender, race, sexual orientation, ability, class, or viewpoint––is exacerbated by the fact that explanations do not need to be given for why certain applications are rejected by the department and others are not. By adopting policies which require that feedback be given on rejected applications to applicants who desire that feedback, philosophy departments can be transparent about what it is they expect of students in their programs. Moreover, it will be an opportunity for those departments to show that they are committed to diversity in the ways that matter, by assuring a rejected applicant that they were not rejected from their program because they did not, for example, attend an Ivy League school as an undergraduate student.
I was fortunate enough to be admitted to a Ph.D. program this year. Others, however, were not so fortunate. This may have been their second, or third, or fourth time applying out. And they may apply out a second, third, or fourth time after this. Each time, the application cycle will take the toll on them that it does on anyone: It makes competent adults feel deeply inadequate and, at times, hopeless. This is already bad enough when life is otherwise great, not to mention when a graduate school applicant is navigating unemployment, a loss in the family, or the hardships begotten by a global pandemic. From where I am sitting, it seems that philosophy departments can adopt policies that would make an immense difference in the lives of graduate school applicants without needing to ask faculty application readers to write an 8,000-word critical review for each application they recommend for rejection. To the extent that it is possible to do this without unduly burdening faculty members at graduate programs, I submit that philosophy graduate programs should provide rejected applicants with feedback on their applications.
Connor K. Kianpour
Connor K. Kianpour is a philosophy graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He primarily reads, writes, and thinks about liberalism, animal ethics, and the philosophy of humor. If you are interested in following Connor’s work or getting in touch with him, you may visit his professional website: www.connorkianpour.com.
