maxhgns

I think there's no doubt that there are too many. There are too many in Canada too, and probably also in the UK. I don't have any firm opinions on what, if anything, should be done about it, however. There shouldn't be any programs that don't fully fund their PhD students. Those programs are part of the "too many". There also shouldn't be any for whom the graduate students are ornaments. Unfortunately, there are a few of those and, contrary to what you might think, they're not all or even primarily low-ranking departments. Those, too, strike me as excess.

Right, those are historical figures. Who writes the articles about them that you read?

I can't offhand, although two faculty members in my department have taught on Geertz and been involved with anthropologists in some other respects. We also had one student completing a dual PhD in philosophy and anthropology. Who are the main people whose work you read/are interested in? Finding their home departments is one way to start looking.

I don't have much to offer you, but it's worth asking whether you've tried to build a social network and life outside of the department (e.g. with other members of your religious community, people who share your hobbies, people from other departments, or even with people from other schools [through, e.g., conferencing]). I know of a number of graduate students who are unhappy with their departmental climate, but who've made things work for them by building networks outside the department itself.

Going over by a little bit is OK. Going over by a lot or by a noticeable amount is not. Screwing with the size and margins counts as 'noticeable'. When it says 'one page' and you have one sentence on a second page, that's noticeable too. When it's 500 words, you're better off cutting down to that much.

There's nothing wrong at all with deciding that the PhD isn't for you after all. In fact, it's an important realization, and it's better that it come earlier than later. I know a number of people who left their programs after completing the coursework, and their departments did confer them with an MA. It's worth looking into, and it's probably worth toughing it out a little longer to get the extra credential (at worst, you'll have delayed your real-world market entry for a year but will have been funded for that year, and will have a credential to show for it, along with some new and different experiences). I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you, however, that almost everyone goes through periods of serious doubt, especially at the start of graduate studies. For some of us, that doubt eases after a little while (although it can come back periodically). It might be worth giving yourself just a little longer to be sure, especially if that little longer gives you a better sense of what it's like to teach and research, or to do something altogether different. Alternately, you could look into taking a semester's leave, and then decide after that break whether you care to continue or not.

That's exactly right. Competition for admission is fierce all along the PGR rankings, and it's not necessarily any harder at one end of the PGR than it is at another. You can't assume anything like a stepwise progression up or down. It's also not true that one's chances of a "healthy career" plummet as you down the PGR. There's good evidence that one's chances at employment in a PhD-granting department plummet if one does not attend one of three PhD programs, but after those three the jobs don't really track rank. And that's only for jobs at PhD-granting institutions, and not at all adjusted for factors like the country of the institution. Since these kinds of jobs are just a minority of the jobs that are available, however, it's not safe to draw too many conclusions from them. The point is just that placement doesn't map neatly on to PGR rank at all.

As a matter of personal opinion, I don't think Pippins's work is particularly central to aesthetics as a contemporary subfield. I'll confess that I've not read them, but from what I can tell his books on cinema aren't really 'about' philosophical issues in cinematic practice. They take particular films as case studies for popular/public philosophy-style questions: the Western book is about the view of law and politics promoted in those films, and the film noir one is about those particular films and questions they raise about intention and self-control and stuff. His stuff on Proust and Coetzee similarly looks like it's about close critical readings of Proust and Coetzee. To me, that kind of stuff just isn't really philosophical aesthetics. It's related, perhaps, but it's not really of a kind with the work that I see going on at conferences, or in the main journals. I mean, all right. I don't mean to be policing boundaries, and maybe I've let my own biases get the better of me. I probably have, since it's increasingly sounding like I'm policing boundaries.

Look, it all depends on how serious the OP's interest in aesthetics is. If it's not particularly serious, and takes a back seat to historical figures, then fine. If it's dominant or not primarily tied to historical figures, then the OP would be very poorly served to attend these programs. Not because they suck, their faculty are bad, or because those faculty members have no connection to aesthetics, but because those programs do not feature a single scholar working primarily in aesthetics. Their scholars do dabble in aesthetics, but they're not especially heavy hitters, especially not beyond their narrow sphere of interest. Guyer dabbles in aesthetics purely as a function of the history of philosophy (mostly Kant's third critique and in modern philosophy), and self-describes as an outsider to the subfield. I'll grant that he's involved with the ASA, but his interest in aesthetics is still very narrow. Of all the people you mention I'm most ready to concede Guyer (since he at least has an active and coherent research program in the subfield), but the caveats where he's concerned are still significant. Nehamas has some students in aesthetics, but he barely publishes in the subfield except for the occasional work on the notion of beauty. He's had a little activity at the ASA recently, especially as an invited speaker, but it's still not much. Pippin's interest and work is almost exclusively on Hegel's aesthetics. Nussbaum likewise has indeed done some important work on moral attitudes to and in literature, but that's the extent of it. Even in the philosophy of literature, their interests are narrowly focused on specific issues; you won't see them wading into debates on the nature of fictional characters, the reference of fictional names, or the semantics of fiction, for example, and these are seriously burgeoning areas. From what I can tell, neither is particularly involved with the ASA, the BSA, the ESA, or the CSA. They may be major figures in their ordinary areas of specialization, but I regret to say that aesthetics is not among them. As for Rush and Watson... I'll confess to very little familiarity with their work. I'm not a continentalist, so there's that. But I also don't recall seeing them on programs for the meetings of the various societies, and their publication records don't indicate a strong and active research program in the subfield. Rush does better than Watson on that front, to be sure, but not by very much. I'm sorry. I'm not saying this to be mean or discouraging, or to disparage these people and their work. They're at excellent schools, and do excellent work, and I can only wish to be a fraction as successful as they are. But the fact that they occasionally publish on some topic in aesthetics just isn't enough to count them as masters of the subfield. They just aren't. Guyer comes closest, but even he is fairly narrowly focused. As I said in my first post, everything sort of hinges on how much emphasis the OP wants to place on 'aesthetics', and on what part of that subfield, as well as which methodological approach to it (viz., historical, analytic, or continental) s/he wants to adopt. But if you and I are having a separate discussion about which schools are good for 'aesthetics', then I'm sorry to say that Brown, Princeton, Chicago, Notre Dame, and DePaul just don't cut the mustard. Not even close.

Schools, not really. But there are definitely a few people who do work on meta-philosophy (although I think you'll find it's not really an AOS by itself). Yuri Cath at La Trobe comes to mind, and Richard Double at University College London. Then of course there's meta-ontology and meta-metaphysics, which are concerned with philosophical and metaphysical methodology. Jim Brown at Toronto has done a fair bit of work on that in relation to thought-experiments (a hot topic), Jennifer Nagel (also Toronto) with respect to experimental philosophy and epistemology. Kathrin Koslicki at UAlberta has done a fair bit of work on methodology in metaphysics. Amie Thomasson at Miami has probably done the most comprehensive work on meta-ontology and meta-metaphysics. There's Julian Dodd at Manchester, one of Amie's most prominent critics (and a proponent of revisionism). Probably the best thing to do is to seek out departments strong in metaphysics and epistemology, and to cobble something together that way.

When I was applying seven years ago, official transcripts were required everywhere except the UK. I expect that's mostly changed by now, but no doubt there are a few holdouts. Certainly, you'll be required to send official transcripts before you're officially accepted (i.e. after you get the acceptance letter but before you attend).

Funding is pretty rare for UK schools.There are some dedicated scholarships for latin america (e.g. Chevening) and elsewhere, and a few for students from the commonwealth, but not much even then. AFAIK, as an international student you mostly have to compete at the university-level (not the department-level) for funding. Check out jobs.ac.uk and look for PhD studentships. Oxbridge might be a little different.

I was thinking that you guys might find it useful to chat about your concerns and stuff in real time. It's fallen into disuse recently, but years ago we had a webIRC channel (#philosophy-grad). I'll spend some time there in the next few days and keep it open for y'all in case that's of interest. You can access it at http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=philosophy-grad

AFAIK there's no official prioritizing of Canadian students at Canadian universities. Canadian universities have a harder time taking on international students (yes, including Americans), however, because the international tuition rate is much higher, so they have to cobble together more in the way of funding. From what I can tell, the major PhD programs seem to take about 1-2 international students a year (except perhaps Toronto, where the incoming class size is larger). I can think of two major disadvantages facing American prospectives, however: 1.) It's the norm in Canada to enter a PhD with an MA already in hand. While some PhD programs here do still take students directly from the BA, you'll be competing against a tough crowd. 2.) As far as I can tell, a "major" at most American universities means about 30 credit hours in the subject (i.e. about ten courses). It's not uniform across Canada, but for us it's generally about 60 credit hours (honours at my UG was 66). So Canadian applicants are likely to have done twice as much philosophy as you have. So the disadvantages aren't really official. They're mostly unofficial, in the background. There are lots of international students in philosophy PhD programs in Canada, though, so it's not like it's anywhere near impossible. Apply, and see what happens.

On the job market, you don't just need an AOS, you also need AOCs. An MA in a field like political theory is a free pass to a political theory/philosophy AOC, complete with rock-hard evidence of your competence. You don't have to teach or TA some political philosophy classes to get that proof (and experience), or take a bunch of courses: you already did all that for the MA. And, as it happens, the demand for social and political philosophy is currently pretty strong. Whether it stays that way for long is anyone's guess, but there's no harm in having a "free" AOC going into things.

I don't think it would hurt your chances. It might help later on with establishing your job market profile, especially if you switch to another subfield. And the experience would likely help you through the PhD process. Shrug.

Maybe, maybe not. How many credits can transfer--and which kinds--varies from department to department. Odds are, however, that most won't transfer over. I'd expect to have to take one or two classes less, nothing more. But the MA that students earn along the way to the PhD isn't at all the same as actually doing a standalone MA. It's a courtesy the program does them once they've completed the requirements to be ABD, nothing more. You won't be 'repeating' the MA by any means. You'll be undertaking to get the requirements for the PhD done. One component is coursework, and you might get a small reduction there. The prospectus, logic and language requirements, candidacy paper, comps., etc. (depending on what your PhD institution's requirements are) are a whole new set of hurdles distinct from those you encountered in your MA. It's not like they'll have you write a second MA thesis or anything.

I would think that the switch back is entirely feasible just about everywhere. Finish up the MA, and apply for PhDs.

I applied to 5. I got into 3/5, but if I had to do it again I'd apply to around 10. But I had an MA going in and knew what my AOS was going to be, and it's a very, very small AOS: there's a handful of decent PhD-granting departments in North America, and maybe a double handful in the UK. Honestly, I'd say apply to as many as you can afford to apply to, so long as you're a good fit for the department and are genuinely interested in going there. You're going to be living and learning there for a long time, so it matters--especially since you probably won't find a job afterwards. You don't want to be regretting your time in grad school. The norm for internet-aware applicants not that long ago was about 15 departments. I think things have settled back down to the 10ish range now. Remember that a lot of applicants just pick the Leiter 20 or so and apply to them all, regardless of fit. My anecdote isn't data, but I'll say this: I was a good fit for three out of the five programs I applied to (I was a nebulous fit for one, and a terrible fit for the other). Guess which ones accepted me?

As I said, people from more obscure programs do get jobs--they just almost never get to supervise and teach graduate students. As far as I know, mine was the most comprehensive attempt to figure out where people employed as philosophers got their degrees from, and I only looked at a hundred or so PhD and MA-granting departments. I still haven't finished with all of the SPEP schools, and it's just not feasible for me to count primarily undergraduate universities and community colleges too. I can only speculate about those, but my impression is that the range of PhDs that's employed when you get to that level is much, much larger.

There are no jobs, and nobody gets them (because there are none). Sadly, that's not much of an overstatement. Philjobs has about 125 TT jobs across the US, Canada, UK, and Australasia this year. 125. You can expect a few hundred fresh new philosophy PhDs to graduate this year. And, alas, the jobs are not equally available; they're divided up by AOS/AOC combinations. So if your AOS has no jobs in a given year, tough luck. You might get an "open" job, but you're competing against everyone for those--literally, a thousand or more applicants. The jobs in general actually go to people from a fairly wide mix of programs. The high-status jobs (those attached to a PhD program--any PhD program), however, go almost exclusively to graduates from Oxford, Princeton, and Harvard. Almost a third of them, in fact, go to graduates of these three programs. A non-negligible chunk of the rest of the high-status jobs go to graduates of Pittsburgh, MIT, Berkeley, Cambridge, Stanford, Rutgers, and Yale. The rest is negligible. A smattering come from UCLA, Michigan, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, and Toronto. And the smallest trickle comes from elsewhere. The key to remember is that one typically moves down the rankings from one's graduate institution. Far, far down. Status and haloes matter a lot in this profession, and in academia more generally. They matter because we're only starting to really become aware of our systematic biases. They also matter because of the professional opportunities they net you, the access to grants and conferences and networks. There have been a few scandals recently where certain high-profile journals were shown to publish work almost exclusively from a handful of schools, or people affiliated with those schools. Status matters to the administrators who have the final call on hires, or who open hiring lines or decide to fund/cut departments. If your PhD comes from a recognizable university, you're better off than the next person down. If your PhD comes from a recognizable university that's deemed to be very good internationally, you're better off. If your PhD comes from an internationally-recognized top university that's tops in philosophy, you're even better off. And so on. That said, your advisors actually matter a lot more (as does what you actually do while in your program). If you've got a big-shot advisor at a recognizable university (in the US, that generally means a top public or a private; elsewhere, it's generally one of the tops in that country), you do have a chance. Inasmuch as anybody--even the Oxford/Princeton/Harvard grads--has a chance. Which isn't much of one, really. I guess the short answer is this: research jobs are really, really hard to get if you're not from Oxford/Princeton/Harvard, and they're exponentially harder to get as you go down my list. If you are, they're just hard to get. Teaching jobs are also hard to get, but at a glance they appear to be much better distributed (although again, there's a status hierarchy of teaching jobs!). Any one grad's chances of getting any kind of full-time employment, however, are vanishingly small.

When you say "aesthetics" and "philosophy of music", and "philosophy of literature", do you mean those in general, or do you have a particular stream (analytic vs. continental/historical) in mind? I ask simply because those are pretty different beasts, and there aren't many aesthetics faculty in North America. You,re lucky to have one in a department, let alone two, so the stream you're interested in can really make a difference. Generally speaking, philosophers of art are quite friendly and conversant across that divide, but it's worth being aware that you're likely to miss out on in-depth training on one side or the other of that equation. At a glance and without further information, I'd say your best options for that combination in North America are going to be Columbia, Texas Austin, McGill, and NYU. All four have top-notch faculty in both 19th c. Germany and aesthetics. If your aesthetics interests are more historical/continental, Columbia and Texas Austin are definitely the best of those (Goehr is really fantastic, and as much a historian of philosophy as a philosopher of art; Higgins is at home in the 19th c., and both analytic and historical aesthetics); if they're more analytic, then McGill and NYU are the way to go (Davies and Hopkins are the aesthetics superstars there; McGill is pluralistic overall, but its aesthetics is analytic). CUNY is much stronger on the aesthetics side than it is on the 19th c. side, and it leans more analytic than continental-historical (although Carroll is something of a jack-of-all-trades). Brown, Princeton, Notre Dame, Chicago, and DePaul don't really have anything going for them on the aesthetics side at all, although I'd say that DePaul might well have the best continental department around. I don't say that to discourage you from applying to these by any means; I just want you to know what you're gunning for. You might also have a look at Illinois-Chicago, Northwestern, and SUNY Buffalo. All three of those are pretty good on the the 19th c./aesthetics axis, although nowhere near as good as the four I mentioned above. Finally, there's Toronto. It's quite weak on the aesthetics side, but Diana Raffman is a prominent proponent o a rather notorious position in the philosophy of music. 19th c.-wise, however, it's quite good. In the UK, have a look at Warwick. It's probably the most pluralistic department in the UK, and it's got some very good faculty on the 19th c. and aesthetics/phil. lit. fronts (although the aesthetics/phil. lit. there is of the more analytic variety). Further afield, there's Auckland, whose aesthetics side is very, very strong. Oh, and incidentally: there are no jobs in aesthetics. None. Check philjobs for this year: not a single TT job. Nor are there likely to be any in ten years' time. The sad fact is that it's a very low-status subfield.

FWIW, I do know a few people who got into PhD programs despite majoring and minoring in other fields. One did his UG degree in history, another in mathematics and physics, and the other in political theory. There's no harm in trying, especially if you've got a strong writing sample in philosophy.

I did make a couple mistakes when I was compiling the list originally (it's a list of the logic requirements at more than 100 grad programs), and it's certainly possible I'm wrong about one or two of these. And programs definitely change their requirements (we did. It used to be near the top of the curve, and is now quite low.). But I'm glad it was of some use to you! I should add, however, that most programs with strong logic requirements do have a significant support structure in place to help their students through it. So even if you're not especially comfortable with logic, you shouldn't let that worry you too much. Hell, I'm not especially great at logic myself (I took intro twice as an undergrad; did great the second time 'round, but only because I tanked the first time), but I managed our requirement before it was lowered. Don't get me wrong: it was really hard, but it was also totally feasible. There's less to learn, really, to prove the incompleteness theorems than there is when you first take logic. Or, at least, it feels that way. Certainly, you benefit from already having a sense of how to prove theorems, and already knowing some tricks to do so. A lot of the rest is mostly conceptual. I don't think many programs treat the requirement as a gatekeeper any more.

What do you mean by "no background"? If you've really got none, then you've got virtually no chance. If you've taken some courses, the chances get better, and if your work in German bordered closely on philosophy, then they're better too. FWIW, it's not the 'international' part that's the problem, it's the question of background (and that may not be as hopeless as you think). You'll definitely want a writing sample that's in philosophy, and you'll want your references to be able to speak to your suitability and self-study (if that's what it was). You should also think about getting an MA in philosophy before trying to apply to PhD programs. For one thing, it's important to get some kind of background in the subject to make sure you're a competitive applicant, and so that you don't find yourself having to learn all the basics as you start your PhD. But for another, your experience of academic philosophy may not match up to your experience of it as an independent study, and an MA at least introduces you to some of those aspects.