Recently in Admissions Category

All of our offers are out and students with offers have visited campus. If you have not received a phone call from us indicating that you have an offer or are on the waiting list, then you will be receiving formal notification in the next few days that you have not been offered admission into the program.

This year was particularly competitive and we were only able to make offers to a very limited few of the very many excellent applications.  We thank all of you who applied and wish you great success in the future

We recognize that the graduate application process is fraught with uncertainty and anticipation. In an attempt to alleviate some of the uncertainty, we use this blog to give students who applied to the graduate program in Philosophy here at Penn State a sense of where we are in the process.

The faculty is in the process of reviewing the whole pool of excellent applications we received this year. We hope to make initial phone calls in the next few weeks to a short list of students to whom we are considering making an offer of admission.

Again this year, we had a very strong pool of applications and we will only be able to accept a small percentage (about 4%) of the many qualified students who applied. We realize that this is a difficult time of waiting, but our hope is that the waiting will be made somewhat easier by the information posted here.

Keep monitoring the blog for more on the process as it unfolds and thank you for your interest in Philosophy at Penn State.

The Philosophy Department has had a very successful recruiting year and is happy to welcome the following students into the Department beginning in the fall 2009 semester.

Ayesha Abdullah majored in Philosophy at Trinity College. Throughout her four years there, her interests have centered within the 19th and 20th Century Continental tradition and French Feminist Thought. They also include, in particular, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Critical Theory, and Philosophy of Language in terms of history, oppression, the question of individuality and structural links through language. She recently began cultivating her interests in Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis.

Axelle Karera is currently completing her B.A. in Philosophy and Psychology at York University in Toronto. Her interests include continental philosophy, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race. Axelle is also fascinated by the philosophy of the Negritude movement as well as the dialogue between 20th century French existentialists and leading thinkers of the anti-colonial and liberation movements such as Frantz Fanon and C.L. R. James.

Shaheen Moosa received her MA in Philosophy from the University of Memphis and her BA in Philosophy and Theatre from Sweet Briar College. Her areas of interest include the history of ethical thought, contemporary ethical theory, and contemporary Continental philosophy.

Lauren Nuckols is returning to the study of philosophy after spending a few years working and playing outside. She graduated in 2005 from the University of Hartford with a B.A. in Philosophy, with minors in creative writing and visual arts. She reports: "While I genuinely enjoy learning about nearly everything, my main areas of interest include American philosophy, pragmatism, environmental philosophy, social justice, feminist philosophy, embodiment, and aesthetics."

Ronke A. Oke received her BA in Political Science and Philosophy from Spelman College and her MA in Philosophy from the University of Memphis. Her philosophical interests are African Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, and Logic. She has recently adopted an interest in group formation and identity and plans to incorporate this focus in her study of African Philosophy.

Daniel Palumbo is finishing his BA in Philosophy from DePaul University.  His interests include 20th continental philosophy, French phenomenology, German Idealism and the History of Philosophy.  He is currently finishing his undergraduate studies in Paris where he is participating in a study abroad program run by the DePaul faculty. 

Ryan Pollock graduated in May 2009 with a B.A. in philosophy with a minor in Spanish from the University of Dayton. His interests are primarily in the areas of American pragmatism (especially John Dewey and C.S. Peirce). Additionally, he is interested in aspects of continental philosophy (phenomenology, Heidegger), and analytic philosophy (Wittgenstein, Quine).

Jameliah Shorter is a native of Augusta, GA. In May, she graduated summa cum laude from Paine College in Augusta, GA with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy and Religion. Jameliah is the Salutatorian of her graduating class. Jameliah's research interests include Continental and American philosophies with specific interests in Existentialism, Black American feminism, and Gender. At Paine College she was the recipient of the Presidential Scholarship, a member of the Honors Program, and an inductee into the Alpha Kappa Mu Honor Society. Her academic fellowships include the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, The Mellon-Schomburg Fellowship at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Rutgers Diversity in Philosophy Fellowship at Rutgers University. Jameliah's paper entitled, "Our Mothers' Gardens" which explores philosophical possibilities for Black feminist epistemologies has been presented at Duke University and the Ida B. Wells Philosophy Conference at the University of Memphis. Subsequently, the paper was accepted for publication in the Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Journal printed by Harvard University Press (forthcoming, Spring 2009). This summer, Jameliah will participate in the Ralph Bunche Summer Humanities Institute at the University of California Los Angeles. There, her research will concern African American gender/sexuality. In the future, Jameliah hopes to become a college professor of both Philosophy and Women's Studies. Her academic aspiration is to publish on Black feminist and gender theories.

The faculty met this week to determine the list of students to whom we will make offers and who will be placed on our short waiting list.  We are in the process of contacting those students now and will also be sending letters to everyone we were unable to accept in the next few days.

For those of you waiting to hear from us about the admissions process, I want to give you a brief update:

The deadline for the Fall 2009 applications to the graduate program in the department of philosophy here at Penn State was January 2nd, 2009.

We have had a very successful recruiting year for the graduate program here at Penn State.  Next year we will welcome eleven students into the program:

Given the excellent feedback we have received here. I think it might be a good use of the blog to continue to provide updates on the admissions process for those students on the waiting list.  

The faculty is well into the process by which we will make final admissions decisions.  We expect to be able to offer admission to a group of students during the course of the week of February 18.  

The Graduate Program in Philosophy has again received a large number of very excellent applications for admission in Fall 2008.  These applications are currently being reviewed by the entire faculty.  We continue to be impressed by the academic excellence of the students whose applications we receive.