gatewayselect

It's not a joke, he literally has schizophrenia by the symptoms displayed here: a tenuous grasp on reality, incoherence, all sorts of blunders regarding conceptual relationships

It would be silly. ASU's PhD program will be unranked without a placement history. Look at Texas A&M. They had/have a very solid MA program that places people into top PhD programs. Then they introduced their own PhD program. By no means should anyone want to go to A&M for a PhD, when they can get an MA there, and end up at USC or Princeton.

I suspect your writing sample will backfire hard. That your professor from a small liberal arts college OK'd it doesn't really mean much. I've gotten bad advice from professors before, and those experiences taught me that I shouldn't listen to some professors. Those I should l listen to are those who don't hand out compliments, and who are well integrated in the field of analytic philosophy with a good track record of publication in top journals (something which many liberal arts college philosophy professors lack). Some of your programs I can't speak with any knowledge about, but for the remaining: although UConn's rank doesn't reflect it, they are a very competitive program and are building up an impressive looking faculty. UC Boulder is very appealing program with strong faculty as well. This past year they had 240 applicants for 4 slots. I cannot fathom at all an admittance with such a writing sample. I know it's too late at any rate, but I think honesty is the best policy.

To be honest, I liked it when you called me "professional student scum" before you edited it out.

Grand words coming from someone who was just trying to tell another person that they have poor interests, bad opinions, and are disingenuous in regards with their interests.

Shouldn't you be busy trying to find two other letter writers?

Shouldn't you be busy trying to get a second and third letter writer?

My undergraduate school was pluralistic, so I got an introduction to both sides. That said, I went into undergraduate already wanting to do continental philosophy. However, by the time of my graduation, I had corrected my sinful ways and chose the One True Philosophy which is analytic philosophy. The rest, as they say, is history.

To be fair, Chicago is still pretty analytic. I'm only personally familiar with their emeritus professors Tait and Wimsatt, but glancing at their current professors they've got people in solidly analytic subfields. Your point probably still stands though, because I doubt they'd be pitting continental vs analytic applicants. Instead they probably have some sort of quota they want to meet in terms of analytic/continental or in terms of individual professors who were open to taking on new students in their subfields.

I hope you realize that at no point in your statement did you mention to the university why you thought you would be a good fit for them. Regardless of everything else, your money will be wasted because you will get rejected everywhere since there aren't any professors there who are interested in the work you're doing.

This might be a good frame of reference: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXSgp755DSA&t=1m54s In short, it's a lecture from a physics professor about all the "crank" theories that they've received from random persons. There are a lot of people out there who are completely deluded. They have no formal training in a subject, but think they've solved some major problem or created some completely new theory. You actually see this associated a lot more with philosophy, because on the surface, philosophy is a lot easier to fake. Whereas if you try to fake science, you have to incorporate data and write down formulas which is harder to do. But if you watch the video, you'll see the professor describe this phenomena in the crank theories they've received regarding physics. That they've received a number of different papers that deal with a lot of data, and have a good number of formulas written down... but as he goes on to explain, these formulas don't actually represent anything significant or non-trivial. It's the same with a lot of amateur non-academic philosophy, much of it doesn't really represent anything, it's just words stringed together in a fancy way. It's the same sort of mindset/thinking processes that you see with conspiracy theorists. Actually, I don't know if this is comforting or not. I just find it a bit comforting to know that there's decidedly something going on here that may be treatable or preventable.

I'm confident that this guy is real given that he has posted his real name and the university he graduated from, not to mention the self-published book and the copy-pasted statement here are far too elaborate to be hoaxed. This thread (and this person's mental illness) is delicious. I'm a terrible person.

You've got to be good to get into a program, but there are a LOT of really smart, talented, excellent people out there applying along with you--many more, in fact, than there are funded spots at philosophy programs. To sort of emphasize the point in another way, not only are there a lot of very talented undergraduates you are competing with... but you're competing against these MA students as well, which is all the more reason to apply to MA programs. An undergraduate is going to be severely disadvantaged to a student who has had two extra years of studying philosophy, and nothing but philosophy (when you consider an undergraduate has a lot of other course subjects to be concerned with). MA programs are much more professional in nature. You're getting paid effectively to study philosophy, and the program is going to work with you over the course of a year or so in producing a writing sample. The odds are stacked against undergraduates when there are MA students out there.

Literally no one will care.