lesage13

Where are they now?

A good start might be the Gettier problem. It plays intuitively, has a jarring but hard to deny conclusion, and is very distinctly philosophical. And the original paper is like two pages and change, so your brother really has no excuse not to read it.

2-3 articles/chapters per 3 hour class was typical where I did my MA. Assignments varied with the prof, but a 'long' paper was about 15-25 and a 'short' paper was around 10-15. You'll be expected to participate regularly in discussions, but you probably already knew that from your MA. I bet if you looked around, you could find old links to past syllabi and reading schedules on a few department pages or even a prof's personal website...

One thing that gets overlooked quite a bit is the fact that happier students will tend to be more productive and have better dissertations, and personal considerations like a preference for places with a vibrant film culture bear directly on how happy one will be. Of course, this isn't as relevant to your future job market opportunities as considerations like placement, but giving its due weight might help you tip the scales if everything else turns out to be a wash. EDIT: Full disclosure, I'm wait-listed at one of the two places you're trying to choose between.

Yeah. I'm on my phone and have fat fingers (wasn't trying to upvote myself either), lol.

I don't want to derail this thread further, but I also don't want anyone reading that and getting the wrong idea about an important subfield of philosophy. Bioethics is a form of applied ethics. It is concerned primarily with the ethical issues surrounding biomedical practice and research. Related issues include the impact and application of biomedical technologies, and the dissemination of scientific knowledge with respect to questions surrounding informed consent. If evolution enters the story at all, it will be in one of two ways: (1) Concerns about genetic research protocols; or (2) The application of genetic technologies, including genetic testing (e.g., privacy concerns, discrimination concerns, etc.). Bioethics is not concerned with the import of evolutionary theory per se for ethics or metaethics. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-bioethics/#BioMov, and http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/theory-bioethics/. This is the last comment I will make on the issue in this thread. Again, I apologise to the OP. Hopefully, others will have more helpful and relevant contributions.

Don't listen to [TheVineyard]. He has no idea what bioethics is.

Lol, just noticed that. Hopefully, it's a typo and not the adcom's idea of a cruel joke.

Not sure if this has already been said, but for those still waiting to hear from UMass, I found the following on their website today: "We are still evaluating applications for our PhD program. But if you have not heard from us by Friday, March15, then your application is no longer under consideration."

Sorry, should've made it clear that I had in mind the the test's predictive power specifically with respect to philosophy grad success, which is the focus of the discussion at the Schwitzgebel post I linked to. Anyway, thanks for the link to that summary, it's really great--and definitely worth a look for anyone interested in the issue.

This is really, really disappointing. I can understand (3), since university admins have few metrics they can understand (being non-experts) for evaluating fellowship candidates. That (1) and (2) are the case is bullshit. Standardised tests clearly disadvantage groups that everyone in the profession agrees are underrepresented (members of minority and low-income groups). The obvious point here is that low-income students are less likely to have the funds for enrolling in expensive test-prep programs and buying prep materials, both of which can have tremendous positive effects on test outcomes. But it's also true that females and non-Whites, with the exception of Asians, tend to do less well than males and Whites/Asians on the GRE (http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~oliver/sociology/GREGroups99.pdf; http://chronicle.com/article/ETS-Shares-Data-on-First-Crop/137435/). Worse yet, it's at best unclear whether it's predictive of success at the graduate level. Eric Schwitzgebel has some data pointing to the success of V-scores at predicting GPA in grad courses, but there's an issue with sample size (37) among other worries (http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.ca/2012/02/surprising-and-disappointing-predictors.html). To my knowledge, that's the closest anyone's gotten to making a positive case for the predictive power of the GRE. Given all this readily available information, reliance on the GRE scores by adcoms is mentally lazy at best. One could also probably make a good case for connecting the discipline's diversity problem to such attitudes. Trained philosophers should really know better.

This is a bit of a tangent, but I think it's in-line with the spirit of the thread. I have pretty decent GRE V and Q scores (97% and 75%, respectively), and have been moderately successful this application season (accepted by a program in the mid-40s and waitlisted by a program in the mid-20s). But my AW score was brutal--35% (3.5) and I can't help but wonder if that got my app tossed at certain places. I wonder if anyone else had a shockingly low AW score too, and if so, whether they'd be willing to share their A/W/R here. Mostly, I hoping to hear that someone with a low AW score has been successful at top programs so I can stop kicking myself for choosing not to retake the GRE.

Mostly agreed. Miller's An Introduction to Metaethics is also a great primer on the development of metaethics. I would replace Rawls's Theory of Justice with the later Political Liberalism (don't bother with the Restatement I don't really think it adds much). Though I also think that political philosophy deserves a separate list. Such a list should probably include Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Sen's Development as Freedom.

No, just saw Hypatience's post above mine after I finished writing mine. That she got a named fellowship explains why she's been to only one around here to hear from UMass so far. Also, congrats, Hypatience.

2015 applicants might find the APA Guide to Graduate Programs helpful (http://www.apaonline.org/?gradguide).