Against December 15 Deadlines for PhD Applications

Tim O'Keefe (Georgia State) writes:

Every year, I write letters of recommendation for students applying to Ph.D. programs. Most programs in the U.S. and Canada have December 31^st or January 1^st deadlines, but a substantial minority have December 15^th deadlines, so that for most applicants I need to have their letters completed by December 15^th. This is extremely annoying, because I have to finish up my letters at the same time that I’m wrapping up all of my other work for the Fall semester. This year, both my letters and my grades were due on December 15^th. Of course, I managed to do both, and I believe I managed to do both well. But writing a thoughtful letter of recommendation takes some time, and I’d greatly prefer to be able to turn to finishing my letters after the end-of-semester craziness is over.  And I suspect that by Dec. 15^th  some professors haven’t yet received all of the fall semester work from their students, and hence can’t discuss it in their letters for programs with the earlier deadlines. So I’d like to urge all philosophy Ph.D. programs that have control over their application deadlines to move them back to the end of the month. The upsides are obvious, and I don’t see any serious downside. I don’t imagine that many professors spend a lot of time between December 15^th and December 31^st carefully reviewing applications to their programs.

My guess is that, in some cases, Philosophy Departments are bound by university deadlines, but when that isn't the case, Professor O'Keefe's suggestion seems eminently reasonable.

UPDATE:  Laurie Paul (North Carolina) writes:

UNC is a department with a December 15th deadline. Brian Leiter's note about University deadlines affecting the application deadline gets it exactly right. Our graduate school fellowship deadline is set by the Graduate School, and in order for us to put our applicants up for university fellowships and supplemental grants, we need to have our work done by the third week of January at the very latest. We know that the deadline is not ideal, but it would be unfair to our applicants to make it later, since they would miss out on a wide range of fellowship opportunities. So, we do indeed spend a lot of time carefully reviewing applications during the second half of December—in fact, I am deep in the process of reviewing them right now.