maxhgns

Not really, and the PGR's brief mention of MA programs isn't great either. Frankly, there's not a whole lot to rank because the goals of an MA program--and the relationship you have to your supervisor--are pretty different, and it's not clear to me (at least) that a ranking will do much to capture those features. (Not that ranking the research prestige of PhD programs does either! But it comes closer.) The goals of an MA program are to give you breadth of knowledge in the discipline, and to introduce you to research norms and methods. It's a peek into the academic life, and a chance to see how another department works and build connections there. Quite a lot of MA programs will fit that bill, even if they're not the prestige programs like Tufts, SFU, and NIU. So... Just look for a program that will fund you, and that has a good record of placing students into the kinds of PhD programs you want to attend (if that's what you want). If you can attend one where you'll get a letter from someone active in your desired subfield, that's even better.

Well, you should re-read it, practice your presentation, and try to think of answers to potential objections. Think up questions that would be really hard for you to answer, and sketch out answers to them. As for jobs... I don't know, and can't say much without knowing what kinds of jobs you were applying for. Apply for the kinds of jobs for which you will soon be qualified, I guess.

Whatever, dude. It doesn't change the fact that your attributions of "political correctness" (which is what you characterized as "sad") commit the same sin you accuse me of committing by being politically correct. In pointing that out, I should have thought my use was obviously sarcastic. (Not that your use of "political correctness" makes much sense to me in the first place.) But I digress. I'm happy to return to the topic, if there's anything more to be said about it.

You're the one who was concerned to label something as 'sad'. It's your label, not mine. I don't accept it, I merely pointed out that it had a wider range of applicability than you seemed to notice.

Your narrow interpretation of Duns Eith's post is what was silly. S/he clearly wasn't suggesting that all people ask particular questions for exactly the same reasons. All that was being communicated was an interpretation of the behaviour in question. As for conversing in logical notation... of course it could be done. It's just not particularly expedient for most conversational aims. Of course I don't. I obviously didn't offer you a definition of convention. To the extent that I care to define conventions for the purpose of this conversation, I'd go the Millikanian route and identify them as patterns of behaviour that reproduce due largely to the weight of precedent. Generalization isn't silly, it's an important linguistic and logical tool. Especially when it's adequately signposted, such as when I began my initial response to your post by saying "Most of the time...". Notice also that I did provide a response for what I take to be the few corner cases when someone really is trying to be obnoxious by asking. If you don't want to deal with generalization at all, then there's no point asking your question on an internet forum; you should be asking each and every one of your conversational participants exactly what they meant in that particular instance. A few things here: (1) Your original post did not distinguish between honest curiosity, chitchat, and pointed put-downs. Instead, it presented all of the relevant questions--and the misunderstandings they betray--as the product of nefarious intentions.While such people exist, the vast majority of the time that's not why those questions are being asked. And, speaking frankly, in the few cases where it is the case, it's probably more productive to tell them to fuck off than it is to lecture them a long-winded humanities 101 lecture based on dubious 19th-century ideas. (2) For the record, I went on about it in a single post. The fact that others read your post in the same way I did speaks more to the way you presented your post than it does to "political correctness" or our own deeply ingrained materialistic need for tangible gratification. (3) What do you even mean by "political correctness", and how exactly is it "prevalent" "these days"? The phrase had its origins among 1930s Communists, who would use it as a playful reminder or critique of the overriding importance of the Party's goals. It was largely satirical until the 1980s, when American conservatives started using it to refer to "left-wing" ideas. As far as I can tell, that's all it means in most contexts today; it's a thinly-veiled slur lobbed by righties at anything they think is to their political left, regardless of whether it's actually a leftist idea. If you think that charitability is just "political correctness", then you're in for a rude graduate school awakening. Good job channeling the voice of your president, there. But isn't it ironic that you're doing the very same thing you're accusing the rest of us of doing? To wit, you're ascribing dastardly "politically correct" motives to me (us? someone, anyway) for daring to think that the questions in your OP were usually innocuous. you're using the phrase "politically correct" to "impugn [my] motives and suggest I said something with negative intention," presumably so that you can feel better about the way in which you overreact to those kinds of questions. So sad! Fake views! Frankly, what's sad is that this is still a field where some people are so insecure that they feel compelled to respond to any misunderstanding or perceived slight on the general public's part with rank elitism and obscurantist twaddle. The trouble is, that kind of reaction does us all a lot more harm than good. Remember: the people who are really in control don't go around telling everyone how good they are at controlling everything. Similarly, the really scary bad guys in fiction aren't the ones who go around telling everyone how evil they are.

It doesn't matter. It's your trajectory and the quality of your current work that matter. Doesn't matter, unless it's a fake university like Liberty University. You'd be surprised how many schools academics recognize. We're usually pretty familiar with the academic world. Plus, in order to get our jobs, we (literally) applied to hundreds of universities. Hell, I'm Canadian and I'm pretty sure I can name around 200 or so schools in the US alone, most of which most people have never heard of. I can even name at least one school in most European countries. So don't worry on that front! Very few students get recommendations from big names; most don't. What matters is that the professor is familiar with your work and interests, and can speak to your ability (and perhaps, in your case, your upward trajectory). Also not a big deal. But, as hector549 said, you'll need to clearly articulate why you want to pursue philosophy at the graduate level. And that justification will have to go beyond "I want to teach philosophy"; it'll have to talk about why it's philosophy in particular that you're interested in. What areas of philosophy do you want to study? Why? Incidentally, wanting to teach philosophy generally isn't enough to get you through the PhD process. It's a grueling slog, and you need to know that there are no jobs for you at the end of it. You really need to be motivated by your research project, otherwise you'll burn out fast. You'll be competing with 600 other people for the same crappy job in a state or country far away. You'll apply to a hundred or more jobs every year, get zero to one interviews, and maybe if you're lucky after five or six years of that you'll earn 30-40k teaching five courses a semester in a tiny town somewhere you didn't especially want to live. Getting an MA is easier, but it's increasingly less sufficient for teaching at the HS or community college levels, because those markets are increasingly flooded by people with PhDs (note also that philosophy isn't usually a "teachable" for HS, so you need enough courses in other subjects to get certified). That's not meant to discourage you, just to give you an idea of what you're going into, and of the fact that the reasons you give for wanting to pursue the MA or PhD will have to look sufficient to counterbalance those factors.

Don't be silly. This isn't some regimented conversation that we have to conduct in logical notation to avoid ambiguity. That's clearly not what Duns Eith was saying. Besides which, the reality is that many of our social interactions--especially the early steps of a social interaction--are largely governed by convention, and as members of the same culture we're governed by roughly the same conventions. So there is a fairly uniform reason why grocery clerks greet you in the checkout line by asking how you're doing today, to say nothing of why the rest of us non-clerks start conversations that way. Asking a student what their post-degree plans are--and asking by saying "what are you gonna do with that?"--is just another way of initiating chit-chat. I personally think it's about as silly as asking a child what she wants to "be" when she grows up, but it doesn't take a towering intellect to see that it's a conventional move in a chit-chat context. No big deal.

Yeah, you can totally kick all the grade complaints up the chain of command to the prof in charge of the course. If the professor notices a mistake or changes the rubric, then it's up to him or her to tell both you and the students how to go about re-grading. Meet with the students when they ask to meet with you, and explain why they got the grade they did. And then if they still want more credit, tell them that you don't have the power to change their grades, that has to go through the professor (even if it's not entirely true, you won't get into trouble for being overcautious). Wash your hands of it completely. I've TAed a lot at this point, and I almost never change the grades myself, even when I have the power to do so. If I made a mistake, I'll email the prof on the student's behalf to confirm that I made a mistake, but that's it. They can talk to me about their grades, and I can advise them about how to present their cases to the prof, but I don't do the regrading myself.

Most of the time, people are just asking to be friendly and because they don't really understand (through no fault of their own!) what philosophy is, what the academic world is like, or how graduate school differs from other kinds of schooling. So when that happens, and as long as I'm not feeling especially snarky, I give them a genuine answer of the sort that I'd like to get, if I were the one posing the question (e.g. "I'm working to be a professor at a university"). And if they ask about real-world applicability, I point to some concrete things that came out of philosophy (the special sciences, linguistics, computers, the fuzzy (and other) logic that governs AI behaviour in video games, etc.), and then talk a little about the kinds of questions that philosophers (especially of science--note that I'm not a philosopher of science!) like to tackle. There's no real sense being adversarial or condescending when someone's just trying to make small talk. When I detect hostility or am feeling particularly snarky or antisocial, I just tell them either (1) I do logic, which (if pressed) I explain as being pure math (yes, I know it's not!--also note that I'm not actually a logician), or (2) that I'll do whatever the fuck I want to do with it, as people do. Finally, and FWIW: If someone answered me by telling me about timing and tangibility, or "usefulness" and social status, my eyes would glaze over and I'd get irritated. Hell, I have the PhD now, and my eyes still glaze over those parts of the posts and leave me with a vague sense of irritation. I imagine that it'd just be even more acute for someone who didn't have my background.

Don't be afraid to aim high too. You'll kick yourself later if you don't, and are more likely to feel resentful. You're not a very good judge of your abilities or fit, or of what will appeal to the committee. Let them do the work of rejecting you, don't do their work for them!

It's not. The trick is actually getting it published, and that's a process that can take years--even for very good papers. The typical acceptance rate is around 5%. That's not because 95% of the papers are unpublishable. Also... Let me be the first to tell you that the standards we tell our UGs we hold them to and the standards we actually hold them to are seldom the same. I was at a tippy-top university, and I don't recall ever reading an UG paper that was of publishable quality. Plenty had potential, though. Maybe their honours theses were; I never got to read one of those.

No big deal. Explain it and move on. FWIW, I had one W on mine, which I left unexplained. I just took the class again when I was ready.

Holy crap, that's early. I'm so glad I can hide from the market this year.

If it's the only place you can apply, why worry about your chances? Just chase the strongest recommendations you can get, craft a solid writing sample, and put some time into explaining (in your letter) why you think an MA in philosophy (rather than whatever your BA subject was) is right for you.

Don't overthink it. Quality matters a lot more than popularity which, as you noted, you're not even well-placed to judge if you're a BA or an MA student. Just pick your best, most representative paper and make it better. If you're writing from scratch, pick a topic that's interesting to you, and work to convey your excitement while doing your best work. I think it's best, all things considered, to submit a sample related to one of your areas of interest. But that's totally defeasible. Popularity isn't really worth anything. The point of the exercise isn't publication, after all, or getting hired.

Lots of great advice has already been given. I'll just add/reiterate a few points: Stick to the number of hours allotted in your contract. Do not work more than the number of hours for which you are paid. Talk to your union rep if you need to hold the instructor of record to account (better yet, don't be afraid to tell the instructor early on that it's taking you longer than the budgeted amount of time. They may be able to identify some problems/inefficiencies; alternately, you can revise the budget). Teach the students you have, not the students you wish you had. Never show weakness. Don't apologize (unless you really screwed up somehow), stick to the letter of the syllabus, etc. Otherwise, it'll come back to bite you in the evaluations. Don't make exceptions and meet students outside of your stated office hours Don't take your evaluations to heart. There's always an asshole or two. And if you're a woman, just remember that women tend to get harsher comments than their male colleagues. If a student gets shouty or aggressive in your office hours, stop engaging. Tell them to leave, and call security if they don't. Don't over-prepare. Prep will always take up as much time as you allow it to take up. Get yourself off-book (/off-slide). All you need to do is take some time to identify two or three crucial points that need to be conveyed, and just focus on getting those across. It'll make for a much more dynamic discussion. You don't need to prepare twenty-plus slides, or an hour's monologue. Start and end class on time. Grade with a timer. Like prep, grading will expand to suck up all available time if you allow it to do so. Don't be too detailed with your comments; almost everyone will just ignore them anyway. Keep the door open when meeting with students.

The RAship does indeed sound better. One thing to consider, however, is that there are RAships and there are RAships. I once did one that required absolutely no work on my part--it was basically just a way of giving me money. That was great. But I know plenty of people who have actually worked for their RAships, and some have worked a lot. So your other student might have been turned off by the prospect of working for a particular faculty member known to pile a lot of work onto her RAs. It's worth asking about what the expectations will be. Teaching experience is indeed very important to acquire along the way, so keep that in mind. That said, you have plenty of time to pick some up in the years to come. Plus, actually teaching counts for more than just TAing.

It's entirely normal to publish chunks of your dissertation as standalone articles, or to use it as the basis for a book (or, indeed, in some fields it's entirely normal to publish it all as a book). If all you mean is that you submitted it to the graduate school, then don't worry about it and cut and paste as appropriate. If "publishing" means you did something else with it that resulted in it finding its way into the (academic) public arena, then you're out of luck where cutting and pasting is concerned, and will have to paraphrase and cite properly. If you received external funding to conduct your research, you'll have to declare and acknowledge it when publishing either parts of your dissertation, or the whole thing. That's the only special annotation required, though.

Wrong part of the site, friend.

It depends on what you mean. It's perfectly reasonable to contact them to inquire about what their support packages typically look like. Like Sam Anscombe said, the writing sample matters most, as will strong references and your perceived "fit" (as evidenced in your letter of interest). Also bear in mind that departments in the UK (and I think this is also true for Australasia) will require you to submit a thesis proposal with your application. For any program that asks for it, this is the most important part of the application. You have to convince the relevant people that you're ready to jump right into writing your dissertation. Most of the ranked schools get hundreds of applications, and most of these are from people who were at the top of their BA and MA classes. Just about everyone had stellar grades, and the fact that you do too just means that you won't immediately stand out as less qualified than the other applicants. Good grades are more or less necessary, but not at all sufficient. Honestly, all the packages are going to suck (especially in the US and Canada; the UK mostly won't have funding packages, and I don't know about Australia/New Zealand). Stipends are usually enough for a single person to scrape by on (although students at schools in the NYC area struggle, in my experience), but not much more. And if you're relocating, your partner might not be able to work. Just keep an eye on how long the funding is guaranteed for (and remember that people usually take a little longer [a year or two] than the projected program length to finish). If you can find a school that guarantees a relatively high base stipend and treats TAing/teaching as supplementary income, then you're in a good spot (especially if they have enough TAing/teaching opportunities to go around). Remember to look into whatever the relevant external (typically governmental) funding sources are for you (e.g. SSHRC if you're Canadian, Fulbright if American, AHRC if from the UK, etc.). If you can get one of these, it helps a lot.

It's quite easy, actually. Just send a brief email introducing yourself and explaining the purpose of contacting them. So, for example, just send something along the lines of: "My name is HH and I'm finishing up my BA in philosophy at HomeU. I'm interested in applying to PhD programs to work on Topic T, and I was thinking of applying to TargetU. I was wondering whether you might have the time to answer a few questions about the program at TU." For Boston, explain that you'll be taking some summer classes there from T1-Tn, and ask whether Dr. Parks might be available sometime for a quick chat about whatever you want to chat about. Just keep it short and simple and don't deluge anyone with questions or a writing sample or anything like that in your first email. Leave it up to them to invite further contributions from you.

Thumbs up. That's an important consideration.

Some possibilities: Chicago (Boyle, J. Lear, Moati, maybe Pippin), Memorial University of Newfoundland (McGrath, Stafford), Riverside (Clark, Wrathall), Warwick (Beistegui, Houlgate, James, Poellner.

I'm sorry I corrupted you!

Depending on how serious you are about the 'aesthetics' (/phil. of art) portion, I think the single best program for those interests is UBC. Hands down. You should also consider Columbia, CUNY, McGill, and NYU.