The Department of Philosophy at the University of Southern California (USC), like many departments, sends out offers of admission to its PhD program to more students than it actually expects to admit. The idea is that some accepted students will end up choosing to enroll at other universities, leaving the entering class close to the target number.
There is usually wiggle room in the budget in case more than the target number choose to enroll.
But not this year.
Last week, USC declared a hiring freeze and assorted cutbacks, and the Graduate School at USC told the Department of Philosophy that it could not take in more than the target number of students.
The chair of Philosophy at USC, Ralph Wedgwood, shared with me an email he sent last Friday to the admitted students letting them know about the development: “as soon as we reach the target number of acceptances, the remaining offers will be rescinded.”
He also announced that those whose offers were rescinded would automatically get “offers for a deferred place for next year.”
He added that “Our department has tried to find some other solution to the problem, but I am afraid that we have not succeeded in identifying one that seemed satisfactory.”
The letter continued with this message:
So, I need to warn you that, if you delay too long, there is a risk—not a huge risk but a significant risk nonetheless—that your offer will be rescinded and replaced with an offer of a deferred place for next year.
I am extremely sorry to be putting this pressure on you—especially after conveying to some of you that there was no risk in delaying your decision. I sincerely believed that that was the case, but now the university’s decisions have proved me wrong.
It is still true of each of you that we hope that you accept. But I guess I now also hope that not all of you accept unless enough of you are happy with deferring for a year.
By the next day, enough students had accepted the offers of admission that the target number was reached. In another email, Professor Wedgwood informed the relevant applicants of this, and reaffirmed that any of those whose offers had been rescinded would have offers for the following year, should they want them.
One person who wrote to me about this turn of events stated that USC’s decision violated the convention that universities give graduate students until April 15th to respond to offers of admission. If so, it seems worth noting that responsibility for the decision seems to have rested outside of the Department of Philosophy.
This is the first I’ve heard of rescinded offers from philosophy programs this cycle. Has anyone heard about any others? And of course, I feel for all those who had their offers rescinded. Applying to grad programs is always exhausting but this cycle has been extra terrible for obvious reasons.
I haven’t heard about it for other philosophy departments, but my partner is in chemistry, and through some social events with chemists I have heard of similar things going on at several chemistry departments. (Separate from the departments that didn’t make any admissions offers this year.)
I fully understand that the USC admin put the USC philosophy department in a tough situation, and it’s good that at least they’re giving the students whose acceptances they rescinded a spot next year.
Still, this is really horrible. It’s highly likely that some of the people whose offers were rescinded had already turned down offers from other places, or withdrawn from waitlists, based on the offer in hand from USC. And some of those people might not be in a easy position to sit out a year before starting graduate school.
The CGS resolution to which USC is a signatory states, “If a student accepts an offer before April 15 and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit a written resignation of the appointment at any time through April 15.” Normally, I think that accepting an offer and then going back on it isn’t a good thing to do. If you’re not sure that you really want to accept an offer, you can hold off doing so because of the common April 15 deadline. But given that USC pressured people to accept early, and then rescinded the offers of other people who didn’t accept as quickly, offhand I don’t see anything wrong with applicants sticking to the April 15 CGS resolution terms, staying on the waitlists of other schools, and then rescinding their acceptance of USC’s offer if they get an offer they like better by April 15.
That’s probably the rational thing to do from a self-centered perspective but it might be good to know whether or not that would result in the philosophy department simply losing the slot (as opposed to offering one of the people it deferred admission to the slot) if one withdrew. (So one could take all the consequences into consideration–not saying people shouldn’t still do this, but that seems like relevant information one might want to have.)
As a separate issue, though, I guess I don’t think this is quite as bad as you make it out to be (though, to be clear, I think it is bad!!)–if people withdrew from other offers, but hadn’t yet accepted USC’s, it likely means they have another offer they are debating. The only way this would result in people actually not being able to attend grad school next year would be if they were holding out on a waitlist for a separate program AND didn’t accept USC’s offer in time once they got this message and didn’t end up getting off said waitlist. Since presumably all offers and wait list decisions are out, I can’t see anyone not having already accepted who didn’t have one of those other two options, and so I think there is a good chance that no one who was offered admission at USC doesn’t end up at grad school somewhere desirable (to them) next year. It would have to be that there were people who only had waitlist options who didn’t immediately respond to Ralph’s email and accept for that to happen. (Of course, that might have happened!) And I don’t think we should feel TOO bad for those who might have had an offer from MIT and USC or NYU and USC or whatever and were deciding between them (if they had their heart set on USC, they already would have accepted the offer).
All that being said I think the big picture is VERY bad and what we ought to be focused on here–both the financial harm to universities that Trump is doing, and the way that many universities (not saying this about USC, which we know is in a somewhat special sitaution due to the $ their department has raised) seem to be especially willing to screw humanities departments over it. And, I am truly sorry to any students who end up with zero good options for next year.
I agree with Tim. And incidentally, I don’t know why you’re skeptical that there aren’t people who are on the USC waitlist in who didn’t have any offers but also didn’t respond in time (the spots filled up in one day!). If I were on that wait list, I would’ve accepted immediately, and then, if I got off the wait list of a more preferred school, I’d write back to USC and say “sorry, I now must withdraw my acceptance. I’m sure you understand that I was unexpectedly forced to make a snap decision, etc.” (If USC wants that might still be able to make offers to others that I have not received admission – assuming they’re below the “target” the University told them they must stick to). It sucks for USC, but as Tim said, students were expecting to have until April 15 to decide etc.
Just to add to this, I’m one of the 8 out of the 12 who ended up accepting the offer on time. I happen to know one of the 4 who didn’t. That person was leaning towards another offer. Additionally, that person in turn knows *another* of the four that didn’t accept, and from what they’ve told me, this second person was also leaning towards another offer.
I sincerely hope, from the bottom of my heart, that the other two people were in similar situations.
Thanks, future USC student! I have to say, it was a stressful weekend, but we are thrilled to be welcoming you to USC very soon.
I’m actually pretty confident that all 4 of the successful applicants whose offers were rescinded and replaced with offers of a deferred place for 2026 were already leaning towards other offers. So, I don’t think anyone ended up being seriously disadvantaged by this. But, of course, that was just a lucky fluke – it all could have been quite a bit worse…
I actually agree with Tim O’Keefe (see above): if you are waitlisted somewhere else, and before April 15th get offered a place at that other university, you would be entirely within your rights to withdraw from USC and accept that other university’s offer instead. (I would then try to make an offer to someone from *our* waitlist – even though I have now told all of our waitlisted candidates that they are unlikely to receive offers from us this year.)
However, I actually doubt that this situation is very likely to happen to many applicants this year. Departments everywhere are reporting a higher acceptance rate than in previous years – so probably fewer applicants will get off waitlists, at least at the most selective PhD programs. So, I’m pretty confident that we have now definitively selected our incoming class of fall 2025.
As I said, we’re thrilled to welcome you at USC very soon!
100%
As an addendum: I have no doubt that there are downsides to someone ‘accepting’ in this fashion. Of course there are!
But grad school applicants are the least powerful players in this puzzle—far less powerful than either departments or universities. And I have very little problem with least-powerful players acting in their own self interest, especially when more-powerful players are likewise acting in their own self interest.
While I agree with the sentiment, I don’t think it’s USC or their philosophy department who gets screwed by applicants accepting and then reneging. It’s other applicants.
It would be quite understandable, but it’s a lot better for the applicants as a whole if people don’t do that.
At least, I think so! Maybe everyone should try it one year and see what happens.
And, going even further: insofar as USC, a major player is doing this, it seems reasonable for applicants to speculate that other major players might do this, and insofar as applicants might reasonably speculate that other major players might do this, it seems further reasonable for them to ‘accept’ spots in order to hold them open.
It’s not my place to say much about this, but I’ll say that I know other and likely most departments are in a similar position of being over-leveraged with respect to PhD admits. Whether other places will have to rescind offers or if they will suspend admissions next cycle, etc. remains to be seen. But people should know that it is on the table at other places and further that this is a quite general problem right now.