maxhgns

I think the thread's going off the rails a little bit. They key points to remember are: 1.) You passed. That means you can go on. And nobody outside your program will ever know about this letter in your "file" unless your references mention it because you haven't demonstrated any improvement by the time you graduate. 2.) You got your priorities wrong, juggled ineffectively, and were insufficiently prepared. The lesson here is a simple one, and shouldn't be hard to take on board. Publications are very important, but so are some much harder and earlier deadlines and progression requirements. You need to learn to balance competing priorities, all of which are important. But that's okay. Everybody needs to learn that. Just buckle down and move on. As fuzzy said upthread, you passed. That's a vote of confidence, even if it came with a warning.

I can only second everything TakerUK said: practice is very important, and it shows. You can immediately spot a talk that's been practised, and one that hasn't. My own rule of thumb is 8-10 dry runs for a 20-30 minute conference talk. For 45+, I'd do exactly as TakerUK recommends. The only thing I'll add is that where slides are concerned, less is more. Your slides should be uncluttered, and just raise a single point (or two) which you'll then address in more detail. Think of them as cue cards. I'd also aim for far fewer slides than one per minute, although your disciplinary norms might make that less feasible (e.g. if you're presenting a lot of data).

I'm not aware of any schools with a reputation for not taking students with a prior Master's degree. But it is worth noting that the BA-MA-PhD trajectory is quite new to philosophy in the US (it started ramping up in the years following the 2008 recession), and plenty of programs are still adjusting to that shift (along with some other, more significant shifts in the profession). I wouldn't read a whole lot into a particular school not having a student with an MA from another school currently on its books. Conversely, if your MA program has a track record of placing into a particular program, or a particular cluster of programs, then I'd tend to think that's all to the better. Now for the more discouraging part of my comment. There's a rule you absolutely must understand about how academic jobs work: they roll downhill. If you get a job at all, let alone a research job, then you're virtually guaranteed to get a job at an institution that ranks in a tier well below that of your PhD-granting institution. This means that applicants from NYU, Oxford, and Princeton are competitive for all the research jobs (in addition to all the teaching jobs; they're also better placed to get jobs at fancy SLACs). Applicants from UCSB or St. Louis, however, are practically guaranteed not to get research jobs, and have to fight it out with everyone else for the low-prestige, teaching-heavy positions. Now, to be fair, the situation in philosophy isn't quite so dire. There's some upward mobility (Western Ontario is a great case in point), and the tiers are actually broader than I've made them out to be. But as a general rule, it still holds. So, unfortunately, that's a pretty important element to consider when you're making your decision. Attending a low-ranked program with a consistent placement record (and a good ratio of graduates-to-placements) is a pretty good bet so long as the end goal is any kind of job anywhere. I wouldn't say it makes you more competitive for them, but it is proof positive that the program is doing a lot of things right where its students are concerned. Remember that for every search committee member at a low-prestige institution who immediately throws out applications from fancy PhDs, there's another member who throws out every application except for those from fancy PhDs. (FWIW, I say all this as someone who's trying to work his way up the professional ladder.)

As you suspect, it differs a little by discipline. In the humanities, though, it's pretty standard to list books (including edited volumes; occasionally separated out if there are lots of one kind or another), articles, book chapters, then conference proceedings. As you accumulate publications, the separation will matter more. For examples, just check the CVs of other people in your field. Has it been accepted? If it has, then yes. If it hasn't, then no: it's still in progress. For most purposes, you should leave this off your CV until the paper has been accepted. If you have an "in progress" section, then it can go there. Note, however, that putting a section for works in progress on your CV is often considered padding, especially if you don't have many actual publications yet (although some granting agencies do ask you to list them when you apply for the grant). It can be listed as in progress on your website, though. Depends on the discipline, and on how common that kind of engagement is. You could list it under a heading like "popular" or "outreach" or something. Just make sure that if it's on your CV, it's clear you don't think of it as a publication on a par with journal articles.

London is not far from Kingston. It's a four-hour drive away. That alone seems like a good reason to select Queen's: it'll give you a much more accurate idea of what the academic life is like. You will have exactly zero control over where you live, and you will most likely end up far (for real far, not London-to-Kingston far) from your family, and moving every year or two for the first five to ten years after your PhD. Maybe that's a deal-breaker for you, and maybe not. But if it is, then it's much better to know that now than to discover it ten years down the line. Besides, for applied ethics and political theory few programs are better than Queen's. If it turns out that academic philosophy is not for you, Queen's makes retraining in medical/bioethics, public administration, etc. possible for you, since it enjoys a stellar reputation in those fields. Western... well, not so much. There's nothing wrong with Western, of course. And its placement from the PhD program into TT jobs is surprisingly good (it's a serious outlier for its PGR rank). But what Western does best is philosophy of science and mind, not ethics and political.It might also be worth noting that both philosophy departments have had big climate problems. From what I gather Queen's's are mostly in the past, whereas Western's are ongoing. Also, FWIW: Neither MA is course-based. There are two semesters of coursework, and then you write a thesis over the summer. As for prestige... it depends with respect to what. With respect to philosophy in general, Western wins hands down. With respect to ethics and political philosophy, Queen's wins easily. With respect to non-academic employment, Queen's wins unless it's a science field.

MA programs aren't governed by (nor are they subject to) the same prestige hierarchy as PhD programs. Partly, it's because they accomplish a different set of goals. Mostly, it's because they aren't really ranked. You shouldn't have to pay for your degree. Beyond that, program choice doesn't matter a ton. Just attend a program with a respectable record of placing into the PhD programs you want to attend, which will give you the opportunity to develop your current interests, and which will challenge you to develop new ones. And one which will fund you, obviously.

Schwitzgebel looked at this more systematically seven years ago: http://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.ca/2011/10/sorry-cal-state-students-no-princeton.html He basically found that it's pretty rare to gain admission to a top program from a non-elite US UG. But it's not impossible, and in the intervening years philosophers have become more aware of this bias. MA programs have also gained in prominence in US admissions, and they work to offset some of this bias. And, FWIW, I went to an elite institution for my UG, but because it's Canadian nobody has heard of it. Except that I've discovered, over the years, that a surprising number of Americans have actually heard of it before. The moral just being that you're not best-placed to know which schools people have and haven't heard of. If your department has made consistent and recent placements into PhD programs, then the odds are pretty good that people do in fact know a little about your department.

Those seem to me like concerns worth addressing. The problem with editing down a thesis is that theses are long, and the powerful conclusions you draw depend on quite a bit of prior work. It's hard to boil them down, especially without much prior experience doing so. To my mind, your advisor's concerns don't necessarily sound like reasons not to use part of your thesis as a writing sample. They sound like concerns you should aim to address in the paper you spin out of your thesis. In fact, to me they sound like versions of the same concern: you don't want your sample to be too esoteric. So careful exegesis is not ideal, and neither is the stereotypical (for history) tactic of asking what X really meant by Y, or what happens to W's system if you tweak premise P. That seems right to me, but I also don't think it's anything to freak out over, nor do I think it means you need to write anything from scratch. Just bear it in mind as you're revising your chunk down, and work to make it broadly accessible. Don't assume that your readers will know much of anything about Kant, limit your use of specialized terms, etc. Write it so that a smart undergrad with no Kant background can read it, understand the significance of the problem, and make sense of what you're trying to do.

Some of the questions you need to ask (many of them already mentioned above) are: Is program Y in Group 1 or 2 (preferably 1) for the specialty? What does each advisor's recent placement look like? How does X's general placement compare to Y's? How big is your subfield, and how many jobs does it generate each year? Has program Y been hiring a lot recently? How much support does each program have for your interests outside the subfield? IMO, if Y is to have any chance, it needs to really crush your intended specialty. That means that your prospective supervisor has to be one of the top people in the subfield. Believe me, your experience of a subfield (and your access to opportunities) will be very different with a fancypants supervisor than it will be with a middling one. This isn't because they're better--qua actual supervision, they may well be worse--but because of the privilege that comes attached. Relatedly, you want to see what the placement record for each prospective supervisor is like, compared to the program's own placement record. If the department places well but the supervisor doesn't, that's a problem (unless perhaps it's because they seldom have any students--but then, you need to ask why. E.g. is it because the subfield is so small/maligned?). If the supervisor's placement is better than the rest of the department, then that's a very good sign. You should also have a look on PhilJobs to see how many jobs have opened up in your subfield over the last few years. My opinion--just an opinion, mind--is that supervisor prestige matters more in subfields with a steady and relatively large number of jobs each year (say, 8+), because it helps to mark you out from the crowd. If it's a job-poor subfield, though, then I think that program prestige is more helpful because it makes you more competitive for the jobs in your other AOS(es), for open jobs, and for jobs at ranked departments. If your subfield is a low-status subfield, then the hiring committees are much less likely to know just how impressive your impressive advisor's letter is, and how impressive all your subfield connections and publications are. But they'll know that your PhD came from the T20 program. You should also consider whether program Y's ranking is static, or whether its star is rising (or declining). Are most of its faculty older, younger, or well-balanced? If older, then there will be lots of retirements soon(ish)--while you're there, or while you're on the market. That means that they need a supportive admin to replace the lines, and a coherent vision of their department's strengths to guide the allocation of those lines. If they're mostly younger, then their reputation can only grow (but they probably won't hire much for a while). Have they been hiring a lot recently? If so, then they enjoy good admin support, and their fortunes are rising. The best example of this is UBC: back in the early aughts, they had ten ageing faculty. They now have what, 23ish? And they're concentrating their hires in certain areas that are well-supported. They're also hiring every year. Last year they poached Alison Wylie, which is a huge steal. This year they're hiring a junior logician, and a senior fancypants for a Tier-1 Canada Research Chair. They're on the rise, and I would bet on them ranking in the 20s in the next report (which would still undervalue them, IMO). Finally, as others have said, you need to consider that your interests may change. In which case, you don't want to have to transfer or feel screwed. But it's also important and useful to be in a program with strengths in subfields cognate to your prospective AOS. You'll be doing a lot of work in those cognate areas, they can do a lot to inform your work, and it's really useful to have solid guidance with that. FWIW, I would probably gamble and attend Y if it was clearly on the rise and if the main person in my subfield was clearly someone at the top of the subfield. What I actually did was attend a program that was gradually declining, but with one of the very top people in my subfield. Jobs in my subfield are very scarce, though, which makes it hard to stay in the game long enough to have a shot. It's worked out pretty well for me so far, but it's still far from over. I would not have chosen my program--nor would I advise you to choose Y--had this person not been so famous in the subfield, however. A middling supervisor at a top department beats a middling supervisor at a low department every time (not in terms of their work, obviously, but in terms of the department's desirability).

Having been here and on the previous WGI site for almost a decade now, I can assure you that it happens a lot. Don't worry about it. In fact, forget about graduate admissions entirely now, except when someone is soliciting your advice about it. It's time to focus your energy and anxiety on the next professional stage.

Like Cogitodoncrien said, Merleau-Ponty is gaining in popularity in phil. of mind/cog. sci/neuroscience circles, largely with respect to embodied cognition and the extended mind thesis. As for Husserl... he's always been a sort of liminal figure. He's long been well-known to logicians and philosophers of mathematics, especially for his mathematical work (his PhD was in mathematics, after all!), his work on the philosophy of science, his correspondence with Frege, and his critique of psychologism. Continentalists, by contrast, have tended to focus on his work on intentionality and the phenomenological epoché, since that's a big part of what was transmitted to the later, thoroughly continental, major figures.

I stand corrected. It looks much improved on all these fronts. (BTW Is there anywhere we can look to see the list of evaluators for each subfield, or is that entirely gone now?)

I am, although I suspect that the problems with the ranking in my subfield will persist, despite being easily fixable. I also expect most non-American programs will continue to be undervalued, which is too bad. But I like keeping up with the PGR.

It's pretty variable. A lot (but not all!) of the universities that care will ask candidates to provide a statement of faith with their job materials, or to ensure that their cover letters speak to the role faith plays in their research/teaching. So you can weed yourself out of those pools early on. IIRC, Texas Christian University sounds like it would care, except that it doesn't. There are a fair few others like it.

I think it's more acute and long-lasting in the PhD, since it's such a long process and by the end of it you're supposed to be a world expert. The MA, by contrast, is a lot shorter and less self-directed, so you opportunities to feel like an impostor are more limited. I did feel it pretty acutely during the coursework phase, however, because I was totally blindsided and overwhelmed by what contemporary philosophy is like. I felt like I was constantly catching up (especially in classes with the PhD students) and that nobody else was. (I was wrong about that, though.)

It's not necessary, although it's nice to do so and get some first-hand experience of the department and other students. If you don't visit, then I highly recommend emailing several current students and, if they're willing, asking them lots of questions. FWIW I didn't visit (wasn't invited!), and it was fine. But I wished I had been invited. Especially in the first couple years, when impostor syndrome made it feel like everyone else had their own special club to which I didn't belong because I was a non-visiting waitlister. (I was wrong about that, btw. Nobody even knew I hadn't visited or was a lowly waitlister.)

Right. But no humanities MA or PhD (or equivalent) is. Some other MAs might be, but I doubt any PhDs are.

Only if the BPhil is funded. It's not worth doing unfunded either. Nothing is.

Like others have said, it's not worth the debt. Even if you get a job in philosophy at the end of the line--and that's a big if!--you won't exactly be making bank, and you'll probably want to spend money on starting a family, buying a car, etc.. You don't want to be saddled with that debt. NIU has an absolutely fantastic program. IMO they're easily one of the best in the US (maybe even the best).They're funding you, so stick with them. You'll get a solid and comprehensive education, and be well prepared for PhD admissions.

An MA and a PhD are different beasts, and your interests matter differently to each enterprise. They're much less important for the MA, which is an introduction to the academic world and is supposed to end with you having mastered the subject (and begun to specialize). You want to attend a program that can support your interests (e.g. through an independent study course), but don't need a program with several faculty members working in your area(s). Like machineghost said, it'll be hard to find an MA program that's strong in all of those interests (but easier to find one which will support them, which is all you need). NIU, SFU, and SFSU are all very strong programs with a very good record of placing students into PhD programs. You might also consider Toronto, Georgetown, and Georgia State University. SFU and SFSU are fantastic programs. CSU LA is a very small program that doesn't look like it will really support your interests. Its recent placements look pretty good, but the tendency has been for so-so placements.

If you have to pay anything, don't do it. The New School in particular is basically a scam. It trades on its historical reputation in continental to draw in unsuspecting students. The student-to-faculty ratio is insane (they have what, 100 students and ten full-time faculty?). And the placement outcomes are abysmal. Plus, there's the cost of living in New York. Go somewhere that will give you a free education, or don't go at all. The debt really, really isn't worth it.

All I meant was that given that the advice we're given (in my field) is as I've related it, and that I'm getting interviews at teaching-focused schools, I'm at least reasonably confident that my portfolio is normal for the field, if not more generally. Edit: That said, I might just try to pare it down a fair bit, and see if I have any more luck next year. I suppose I could offer a summary of the eval comments after the numerical summary, link to the unedited evals, and just include one or two complete, unedited sets. That could work. I'd certainly prefer a shorter document, because it's a pain in the ass to change.

On the plus side, most of them will never remember!

My full syllabi are much longer, because of all the boilerplate language, course policies and evaluation brreakdown, etc. Like yours, they tend to be 7ish pages. But I only present one of those in my teaching portfolio, and the rest are all just the course description plus schedule of readings and assignments (usually two pages, sometimes three). Gotta save space where I can! (I should say, for the record, that all of my interviews so far have been at SLACs. So I'm not likely to be a total weirdo when it comes to how I put the portfolio together!)

Oh, I didn't mean we have to send all our syllabi. But even if you send five, that's around ten pages. With the two statements, you're at twelve. Even with sample assignments, that only takes you to close to 20. Like I said, it's the unedited evals that blow it up. I'd be happy to consolidate them down to size, but that's srrongly discouraged in my field. The best I can offer is a one-page summary before the raw evals.