maxhgns

Unfortunately, it's not all going away (yet). It'll take a lot of time to fix the problem and rebuild trust, and that is time during which grad admissions should probably remain closed (although they may not). On the plus side, I'm not aware of that kind of stuff at any of the departments you've listed except for Miami. Unfortunately, I only know about a handful of departments where that stuff has happened.

The PGR doesn't grade grad programs. It's a measure of faculty reputation (qua scholar).

Actually, I should add that this case helps to show the importance of contacting students (more than one!) at a department before joining it.

One thing that I keep hearing, the longer I'm in the discipline, is that "everyone knows" or it's "common knowledge" that this person or that place is known for bad behaviour. But, to be honest, I don't really know how one gets into the "know" circles, except perhaps given lots of time and a research-active career (which hardly seems to include "everyone"). So I find it really surprising to hear things like this, from the report (although TBH, the whole thing came as surprise): "The reputation of the CU Boulder Philosophy Department as a place extremely unfriendly to women is well known in philosophical circles and among prospective graduate students." You're almost all prospectives. Were you aware of Boulder's problems?

Melodic death metal, of course. What else is there?

Yeah. Language too.

Queen's? Waterloo? York? Guelph? Concordia? McGill PoliSci? Their deadlines may have passed, however; Iunno.

There's no basis for saying he didn't have a gander at the posts. We know he posted, which makes it more likely that he had a look. These sites have also been plugged on Leiter's blog, which again increases the chance that some faculty members thought to have a peek. Look, I'm not saying that anybody follows things closely. Faculty have better things to do. But it seems perfectly plausible, even likely, that some occasionally drop by out of curiosity. That doesn't mean anyone should be paranoid about being tracked down--again, people have much better things to do. It does suggest, however, that it might not be in one's interests to be a giant asshole. But then, that's advice that applies to all internet presence/behaviour, not just here.

You'll be emailed. A few programs may attempt to phone you first, especially if you made it to their first batch of acceptances. Your website status is unlikely to ever get updated in a timely manner.

As I understood it, the original question was whether they check out sites like this one, not whether they lurk or spend significant amounts of time here.

As a matter of fact, they do (we know, because they occasionally post--e.g. Tim O'Keefe posted on WGI last year or the year before). But they also have better things to do.

(1) We all believe we're special, and will make it through. Partly, it's because we're young. Partly, it's because we're ignorant. And partly, it's because we're hopeful. (2) Different committees, more time to tailor her application and work on her sample, beef up her letters, etc. Perhaps Yale had a free supervision slot that second year that it didn't have the first. But probably, it came down to luck. When 200-300+ files are being reviewed, there's not that much difference between those selected and thus just under them. It's the same when you're grading, actually. Most of the grades end up being pretty arbitrary. (3) It's an excellent and well organized starting point. Many people get carried away with it, true, but it's still a very good place to start. (IMO it's a bad place to end, however!)

You collect as much info as you can about the programs (from the internet, current students, etc.), visit if you can, and decline offers and waitlists when it becomes clear to you that there's no way you'd attend a given program. It's perfectly fine to hold on to a few offers and waitlists 'til the deadline, but try to make timely decisions (and try not to hold on to too many for too long). It's also ok to accept an offer for the 15th and hold on to a waitlist at your top school, just in case. But don't go overboard.

TBH, I found a number of things in your post, derewigestudent (the one I'm quoting from) to be problematic, but I don't think it would be productive to tackle them all one by one. Instead, I just want to say something quick in response to this, because it's an argument I see often (and which I used to make myself, to my great shame): Yes, there are traditional male roles and fields. And yes, men are sometimes at a disadvantage thanks to these norms. The difference is that we're not oppressed by them, because they're not part of a network of systematically disadvantaging factors. And that's a big, big difference. Ah, what the hell. One more small thing: the fact that one does not perceive problematic behaviour does not entail that it's not there (absence of evidence and all that). Unfortunately, it doesn't even mean that it's not going on right in front of one's eyes. EDIT: Typo.

I can name 63 offhand, plus 16 in Canada. The APA guide has 308, although some of those are terminal MA programs, and a handful are Canadian programs.

For your peace of mind, that's not such a big mistake!

Their intarwebz may also be down as a result. Try phoning them. If you can't get through, send an email.

I'm a bit late to the party, but one thing worth mentioning in addition to what's been said is that this is one of the ways in which "fit" gets determined. Profs within a PhD cycle of retiring don't usually take on new students, and that can cause fit problems if their replacements aren't already hired. It's the same problem if particular supervisors are overloaded with students. If, e.g., you were applying to a school for phil. of art/aesthetics and that school had one or two amazing faculty in the subfield (you almost never get more than 2 in a NA department) and one or both were near retirement, those would be good reasons for the admissions committee to decline your application. It doesn't mean you weren't good enough or whatever, just that there was no room for you this cycle. So there's no harm in displaying interest in those profs. But be aware that they may no longer be taking students (or may die and so on). If you put all your eggs in that one basket, you may be asking for trouble. What you want is to be the kind of student that can adapt to that kind of roadblock: you want to be in a department that will be able to help you (and still advise you) if that kind of stuff happens.

FWIW, I work the same way that Loric suggested on the first page. I can churn out paragraphs in no time, and they're pretty decent. But they're unrecognizable (and immeasurably better) after nineteen or so sets of revision. It's a lot easier to generate quality content if you already have something to work with. When I start a new paper, my first goal is to get a draft written. I don't worry about how shitty it is, because I'll be fixing it later. What matters is having a skeleton to work with. Like Loric, I think that's probably the most effective method of going about writing. I have colleagues several years ahead of me in the PhD program who've generated far less thesis material because they're busy agonizing over every sentence, making it perfect before moving on. The thing is that they're going to have to revise their output anyway (and revise it heavily!), so the agonizing just slows them down and demoralizes them. It doesn't really matter what you write, so long as you're writing a small chunk every day.

As an undergrad, I only read about those subjects that interested me. Since I wasn't particularly well versed in contemporary philosophy, it wasn't all that much... mostly just stuff on Schopenhauer and stuff on free will. Now, I read all kinds of stuff. Since I'm no longer in coursework, it's all extra (plus there's the reading for whatever more or less random class I'm TAing). But a lot of my philosophical reading goes a little afield. Not to areas that I find totally uninteresting, but definitely to areas that aren't my AOS. I think it's important and useful to be fairly widely read, and so I make an effort to do just that.

We have both a language (1 @ advanced competency, or 2 @ medium) and a logic (formerly everything required to prove Incompleteness I and II, now just FOL + soundness and completeness) requirement. Generally speaking, I think both are extremely valuable. Unfortunately, as I progress through my PhD, I'm increasingly of the opinion that they're huge time sinks for most of us, and come without much reward. Allow me to clarify. Ours is a (genuinely) pluralist department. As such, it's faced with something of an identity crisis when training new PhDs: they want to instill the same values they have. Their ideal scholar is one who's well-versed in history, contemporary continental, and contemporary analytic. Someone with the skills to read and contribute (at least as a dissertation reader) in all three areas. Indeed, some of our best faculty are like that, and they're really, really impressive. So that strikes me as a desirable model. On the other hand, there's the fact that there's not really enough time to train someone to become like that unless they come in with strong language and logic skills. Invariably, what ends up happening is that the analytic-y students find the language requirement to be something of a waste of time (which it is, mostly), while the historians and continentalists tend to find the logic a waste of their time (which it was, mostly, before it got weakened). The former would be better served doing more (advanced) logic, and the latter by spending that time on a (or another) research language. To compound the problem, the department and university do not really offer adequate financial support to undertake the apprenticeship of a new language from scratch (the deparment of modern languages is singularly uncooperative on this front). I do think that every philosopher should have a good grasp of logic (and more than just basic FOL, IMO). And I think it's useful for a professional academic to know another language. But I'm not convinced that our current setup works, and achieves anything more than wasting everyone's time and causing undue anxiety. I'm sure other places have it figured out better than we do, however. A few departments (e.g. Madison, I think) actually require that their PhDs "minor" in another subject. That strikes me as a very interesting and useful option.

Don't worry about it. Follow the department's requirements. If they're made aware they're in conflict with university guidelines, they'll suck it up. If you're really worried, you can send the DGS an email.

March for the majority, mid-/late-February for a not-insignificant minority. I suggest you try to forget about it for as long as possible, to avoid abject misery.

He had a significant influence on early philosophy of math (leading to intuitionism), and Benjamin Constant's misunderstanding of his friend's notes on a lecture Schelling gave on Kant gave us the ideas of disinterested appreciation and art for art's sake, which have been hugely influential (if misguided!) in aesthetics/philosophy of art (Clement Greenberg was also a huge Kantian). Kant's view of the mind is still in common parlance thanks to the work of Peter Strawson and Sellars. I'm not sure exactly what the direction of your list is supposed to be (is Socrates the most influential, or Kripke?), but I'd say Lewis has been the most influential analytic philosopher of the last hundred years, and that Kripke's kind of overrated.

It's not quite the same situation. When ASU closed its program, it was ranked in the mid-40s (it scored 2.5/2.5). There have been some changes in the faculty roster (notably the loss of Stewart Cohen), but they've also hired in the interim. They have a placement history, just not much of one for the last five years (they'll have some, since they presumably grandfathered their existing students, but there will be a gap in the record for the next couple years as those who would have attended their program would have entered the market). It'll probably figure in the next edition of the Gourmet Report. So it's not at all the same situation, although your cautions do still apply. One might be loathe to attend a program that might shut its doors again. On the other hand, it seems unlikely they'd have reopened those doors unless they were confident the money was there in the mid- and long-terms. One big downside is that the graduate student community will have been destroyed, and the first few cohorts will be quite alone. So those of you who apply there would be well-served to give it a big think if you're accepted, and to make some inquiries.