maxhgns

Check again because some of these may have changed since I checked a few years ago: None: DePaul Duquesne Kansas Loyola Chicago Memphis Oklahoma USC Villanova York (Canada) Low (although content varies, it ranges from FOL to FOL + basic set theory): Brown Chicago Cornell Emory Fordham Georgetown Hopkins McGill MIT NSSR Penn State Purdue South Carolina Stony Brook Syracuse Toronto UBC UCB UCI UCSC UCSD UIB UIC USF UWM Vanderbilt Western

Can this person speak to your work, though? Like, your actual scholarly work. If so, then it's not likely to hurt--although you should take some time to consider whether this person is better-placed to do this than people who have actually taught or supervised you. Fame isn't really what matters at this level; it's the ability to speak to your file. If the person in question is Zizek-level infamous, however, that might actually be more of a downside at programs that don't explicitly engage with this person's work. If, on the other hand, this person is Graham Harman-level infamous, then it should be fine.

The most tangible advantage--perhaps the only real one, really--is that your work will (presumably!) be much improved, and you'll be more informed and professionalized. That will be reflected in your writing sample,in the way you present yourself in the cover letter, in the things your references can say about you, and in your choice of programs. Once in a PhD program, you might also find that you've got a more developed background than other incoming students, and having a developed background helps a lot in those first few years.

I'm not sure that I'd call Boulder a pluralistic department, but perhaps we have different things in mind with that label. Also, FWIW, they're advertising for a senior hire this year, AOS and AOC open. Personally, I'd be leery of applying there for a little while yet. It can take a while--and a few generations of students--to get over the kind of damage that stuff wreaks. I'm not sure what the atmosphere there is like, but I do know that they host at least one fairly vocal (and public) dissenting voice among the grad students. That might be an indication of a divided atmosphere, or maybe not. It might be worth trying to reach out to some current grads there and asking them what they think, if they're comfortable talking to you about it.

It's not at all my area but, offhand, I can think of UBC, Calgary, and Cambridge. The Gourmet report does have a specialty ranking subsection for the philosophy of biology, however, so you should definitely start there: http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/breakdown.asp

Because faculty aren't hired based on the PGR rank of their doctoral institutions. Getting hired involves a hugely complex set of factors. Doctoral institution halo or rank is sometimes explicitly in play, but it doesn't outweigh other factors such as research productivity. Its main benefits come from mostly implicit associations. Publishing quality work in quality venues matters a lot more, as does wowing people in interviews and on campus visits, having a tenurable research agenda, being personable, having strong letters from reliable references, etc. Supervisors also have a lot more to do with placement than departments do, as a whole (in terms of introducing you to their networks, helping you with publishing and research, writing your letters, etc.). Once you start investigating placement seriously (and there's no rush!), you'll start to get a sense of which departments place well and which don't. You'll also start to see that there are different kinds of placements, and some departments do a very good job of training their graduates for specific slices of the job market, but don't have much success with others. You'll notice that some supervisors place way more students than others, that some AOSes fare better, and that some AOSes from some schools fare better than the same AOSes from other schools. Re-reading your question, however, it kind of sounds like maybe you meant to ask about why go to a lesser-ranked school, rather than ask about placement? If so, then the answer is relatively simple: for reasons of fit (with research interests, opportunities, student-supervisor ratios, etc.), money (follow it!), geography, and climate (in the department, not the geographical region; you probably want to avoid the departments that are racist, sexist, or which harbor sexual harassers), placement, and other such considerations. The trick is to make one's decision with one's eyes open--a move which, unfortunately, we're all woefully under-prepared to do until it's basically too late because we're nearly done. =)

A few things: *Your first year doesn't really matter, and you did fine anyway. One's grades are typically wonky in one's first year or two, and one actually tends to do better later on. Don't worry about it. *While one should probably try to attend the most prestigious grad school one can (other things being equal), it's not quite true that the topmost schools have the best placement, and it's certainly not true that their grads don't also struggle on the job market. *If you want to work in academia, then yeah, you basically need a PhD. But it's kind of early in your academic career to be thinking about that! Just take your time and enjoy yourself for the next couple years, then revisit the issue. There's no rush. In the meantime, just read widely (pursue your interests!), befriend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and do your best to improve your paper writing skills. (If you have boatloads of time to spare and are feeling mighty keen, you could always go back and revise your term papers.) One general word of advice, for your university career: take the time to revise your work before handing it in. I don't just mean catching your typos: play with your structure, try to clarify your argument, etc. Treat your revision sessions as rewrite sessions.

Queen's (Canada). Will Kymlicka has been working on pretty much only that stuff for years now.

I have no clue at all about continental epistemology and metaphysics (I'm afraid I'm an analytic person these days!), but on aesthetics you might find the ASA's graduate guide a useful place to start your search (keep in mind that it's based on self-reports, so some departments are just BSing. Most of the continental-oriented departments there do quite a bit of other continental-y stuff, and some are fairly pluralistic).

I think it would sink you, for the most part. Your writing sample should really be on some sort of philosophical topic (not necessarily a historical figure). Perhaps you can convert one of your legal papers into something that fits better with philosophy of law or applied ethics? It's common to apply to about 15 on average, from what I've seen. If I were re-doing things, I'd apply to no less than 10 (I applied to 5). MIT and Hopkins do not require the GRE (or did not; maybe that's changed), but aren't really a great fit for continental philosophy. Canadian schools can't require it of Canadian applicants, but sometimes do of American applicants (McGill and Toronto definitely do; not sure about others). When you say you're into aesthetics, epistemology, and metaphysics... do you mean their continental counterparts? I ask, because they're pretty different from their analytic counterparts, and that would probably affect the schools most appropriate for you.

Western is *very* strong in the philosophy of science, not so much in continental thought. McGill is very strong in philosophy of math and continental. A good place to start your search for PhD programs would be the specialty rankings of the Philosophical Gourmet. As far as an MA is concerned, your chances of being funded are probably best in Canada, since (if?) you're Canadian. An MA is a very different beast from a PhD. Its goal is to begin to professionalize you, and to ensure that you come out of it with a fairly broad knowledge base in philosophy. As such, it doesn't matter so much whether your MA school has multiple (well-known) faculty in your area of interest, provided it has someone who can supervise your work in that area. In Canada, the MA programs to look at, given your interests, are probably Toronto, UBC, Western, Victoria, Waterloo, Alberta, and Simon Fraser.

In my department, applications are reviewed, in part, by the faculty working in the proposed AOI. So that's one way in which it can matter. But our department also tries to balance the distribution of students across AOSes. So if the phil. of math faculty have tons of students but the German Idealists hardly have any, for example, students applying with an AOI in phil. of math are going to have a harder time making the cut that year because they're a lower-priority AOI. If a student was pretty excited by Kant on math, however, they might have a much better chance, since they fit on both counts.

A small update now that I've counted the international T20 and 22 Canadian programs (including the major French ones). For the international T20, the % of faculty members from T5 institutions looks like this: % T5 in the T5: 44.44% % T5 in the T10: 35.17% % T5 in the T15: 35.10% % T5 in the T20: 32.47% The top placers in the T20 are: Oxford - 64 - 11.87% (27 at Oxford) Princeton - 64 - 11.87% (5 at Princeton) Harvard - 46 - 8.53% (3 at Harvard) MIT - 36 - 6.68% (2 at MIT) Pittsburgh - 26 - 4.82% (2 at Pittsburgh) Yale and Berkeley are just behind with 25 and 23 T20 placements, and then it drops a bit more. That means that those 5 programs produced 44% of all T20 faculty (53% if you include Yale and Berkeley). 73 schools have placed in the T20. 31 (43%) of these have just a single such placement. A further 13 have two. 17 schools have 10 or more T20 placements, and these 17 schools account for 80% of all T20 placements. In Canada, the five biggest placers so far are (and at this point I've got pretty much every PhD program): Toronto - 51 - 13.67% (7 at Toronto) Oxford - 26 - 6.97% Western Ontario - 19 - 5.09% (1 at Western) (10 of these--nearly 63%--are at schools in Ontario) Pittsburgh - 15 - 4.02% Sorbonne - 14 - 3.75% (6, or nearly 43%, at French schools in Québec) Princeton is right behind that with 13. That's nearly 33% of placements in Canada are taken by these five schools. 104 schools have placed in these 20 Canadian universities, but 47 of them--45%--have only one placement. A further 16 have two. This is awfully close to what I reported for the T20 schools above. Weird. Just 6 schools have 10 or more Canadian placements, and together they account for 36% of Canadian placements. If we look at schools with 5 or more instead, then that number rises to 24 schools with 65% of Canadian placements. More to come when I've progressed significantly.

Let's not be too hasty! I've only counted placements in (not by) the top-15 departments so far (plus another 13 Canadian departments, so just 28 departments). While it looks like this pattern will probably hold steady, there's still no telling yet. There's still about 75 departments to go before I'm more or less done (done enough to satisfy my curiosity, that is). EDIT: Incidentally, since you mention Rutgers (and I did not): they've got 13 placements in the international T15, leaving them tied for 9th with Michigan with 3.13%.

I'm currently engaged in a bit of counting that might be of interest. I'm counting up PhD locations by school, starting with the PGR's worldwide rankings and proceeding with as many other schools as I can. The hope is to eventually have a fairly comprehensive list, at least for how things stand this year, prior to new hires. I'm only counting regular (T/TT, not emeritus, visiting, adjunct, etc.) faculty, and in the few cases where there's no PhD, the program granting the person's highest degree is counted. For double-PhDs, I only count philosophy; for a PhD in two locations, I make a choice. I've probably made any number of small errors, but since this is a project for my own benefit (and to get a rough idea of what the field looks like) rather than for science, it hardly matters. I'll probably make it public when it's done. So far, I've got the (reminder: international) T15, and 13 English-language Canadian departments (including all the ranked ones). Here's a quick and dirty summary of some of the results: 62 departments are represented in the T15 44.44% of the faculty in the T5 departments come from T5 departments. (Out of 171 faculty) 35.17% of the faculty in the T10 departments come from T10 departments. (Out of 290 faculty) 35.10% of the faculty in the T10 departments come from T15 departments. (Out of 416 faculty) However, if you want the departments that have the most placed candidates in the (international) T15, it looks like this: Princeton - 55 - 13.22% - 5 (9.09%) of these at Princeton Oxford - 54 - 12.98% - 27 (50%) of these at Oxford Harvard - 33 - 7.93% - 3 (9.09%) of these at Harvard MIT - 28 - 6.73% - 2 (7.14%) of these at MIT Berkeley - 21 - 5.05% - 3 (14.29%) of these at Berkeley Together, those five departments (note: only 2 of which are T5) account for about 45.91% of all placements at T15 institutions. Just 14 departments account for about 76% of all hires at T15 departments. 17 departments gives you 82%, and after that every department accounts for less than 1% of the hires. That means that 73% of departments account for 28% of hires in T15 departments. Or, if you want a slightly scarier figure, 77% of departments account for 24% of hires. In Canada, I've got 13 English-language departments so far, which means 235 faculty members coming from 80 departments. The top five placers there so far are Toronto - 36 - 15.32% - 7 (19.44%) at Toronto itself. Oxford - 22 - 9.36% Western Ontario - 12 - 5.11% - 1 (8.33%) at Western itself. Pittsburgh - 10 - 4.26% Princeton - 10 - 4.26% The next-highest placing (in Canada) Canadian departments are Queen's and York with 3 each, or 1.28% (each) of faculty members (only Toronto and Western have international T15 placements, 9 and 3 respectively). Canadian departments account for 63 hires in those departments, or 27%. But Toronto and Western have 76% of the Canadian-department hires in Canada (so far), leaving 8 departments with the remaining 24% (15 faculty).

As far as job placement goes, nowadays every full-time job is a good job. And it's become the norm to spend a few years in the wilderness before landing a full-time job (if one ever does). So don't worry if the 2013-15 graduates don't have TT jobs yet. Do start to worry if you don't see many TT jobs among 2010, 2011, and 2012 grads. But honestly, forget about the PGR rank of the hiring institutions. That kind of concern is a luxury that's going extinct. If it isn't gone already, it will be by the time you graduate.

Congrats! Margolis is indeed amazing. He turned 90 last year, so don't expect him to be around too much. Their department's taken quite a few hits in the last five to ten years, with a pretty significant faculty exodus that you'll probably want to ask about.

Absolutely, I think that's often true. At least, this is true for my (minor) subfield, which is in large part a subfield of metaphysics (even if it doesn't get much love from metaphysicians!). But it's still pretty easy to distinguish between metaphysics proper and metaphysics qua my subfield. And it's once that distinction gets made that we start getting into trouble, because that's when subfields start isolating themselves/becoming more isolated from the "foundational core": specialists in my subfield have their own national and international conferences, their own journals, etc., and their work is rarely printed in "generalist" journals (partly because those journals don't have much of a history of printing work in that area, and partly because the specialist audience is to be found elsewhere). So they become more isolated from metaphysics proper (or phil. language proper, or epistemology proper, etc.), and that in turn compounds the perception that they're less important subfields.

I'm sorry to say it, but Establishment isn't really wrong on this (and I say this as someone perilously close to defending & the job market whose AOS is one of those bit players). Not every AOS commands equal professional respect, especially if the AOS in question is a subfield of a subfield--if you want a sense of how things lie, check out the subfield poll Leiter ran a while back: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/w8/~andru/cgi-perl/civs/results.pl?id=E_0176acd76a7cc5b9 That said, I do think we'd get a better ranking/PGR if the overall rankings were based on the specialty rankings (provided, of course, that the paucity of evaluators for some subfields could be rectified). You could weight them in tiers, or treat them all equally--either way, I think it would be better.

Yeah, but I meant that the phil of art rankings are wonky in a different set of ways. For one thing, almost half the evaluators (43%) work primarily in the history of philosophy (especially the German tradition), not the subfield they're evaluating. A number of the programs in the top three groups just shouldn't even be there in the first place (at least one doesn't even have any non-emeritus faculty in the area! Another has a senior faculty member who's never published an article in the subfield that wasn't a review), and some of the departments ranked in group 3 (at least two) should be in the first two groups instead--even just going by the median and mode, there are weird outliers in group 3. In order for some of them to have a rounded mean of 3.5, one of the evaluators would have had to rate the program a 0 or a 1--which would actually be patently ridiculous for those programs. (The reverse seems true of Columbia, oddly enough--it's got a rather high average given its median and mode.) These mean/median/mode problems also occurred in the last PGR: at least one of the evaluators is being screwy, and because there are just seven of them (eight last time; also, they're all dudes) and they can't rate their home/PhD departments, it seriously skews the results. And there's no real reason why there can't be more evaluators for this subfield, since it has a national association with hundreds of members.

The philosophy of art rankings are kind of wonky again. And, to be honest, I don't see why it needs to have so few evaluators. As far as the most underrated programs go, I honestly think that dubious distinction goes to the non-Toronto Canadian programs.

Most grad conferences are harder to get into than most professional conferences. For those at fancy schools especially, the competition is incredibly stiff (and the number of available slots much smaller). It definitely goes on your CV (all conference activity should). And it shows that the paper's got potential. If you can conference it regularly, that's a good sign that you can try publishing a longer version.

The only downside to tailoring is the extra work involved--and that's hardly a downside, since it basically entails doing your homework properly. When you're competing against 300 other excellent candidates, nobody is going to connect the dots for you: they want to see you've done your homework, and (especially in your case) that you aren't going to drop out or try to transfer again. Besides, writing samples are often sent to the very faculty you indicate you want to work with. While it's true that, in the scheme of things, the SOP isn't all that important, I think it would be foolish to ignore it: it's an area of your application over which you have a great deal of control, and it's not that hard to do it well. Show (rather than tell) why you would fit perfectly into that particular department--exploit their cross/Inter-disciplinary offerings, their certificate options, show your enthusiasm for their pluralism, etc. (so long as you're being genuine). That stuff really can (and does) make a difference.

Frankly, I think it's been consistently under-ranked. It's quite a strong department overall.

Sorry, I forgot a couple really important ones: Université de Montréal (note that the language of instruction is French) and Ottawa (which is bilingual).