hasbeen

My fiancée just matched to Virginia Commonwealth University for residency, so I took myself off the waitlist for University of Kentucky. This round of applications is now over for me, so I'm going to excuse myself from the message board. I wish good luck to all of you; you guys have been great.

Nope. I said this somewhere else too, but many of the programs on Leiter's list have only one or two Continental faculty members. Somehow that makes them Continental schools.

I also wonder who gets the money. The department? The graduate school? The university in general? It's definitely not going to that student assistant in the philosophy office who is making about minimum wage. The professors who are working overtime on the admissions committee aren't getting a cut.

Wow that's just stubbornly stupid.

I could imagine theater or art being difficult majors to come out of college with. I agree that a lot of employers probably don't understand what philosophy entails, but then their general reaction is still probably something like, "That sounds hard." It's a good idea to emphasize to them that yes, it is hard. You will deal with some employers that just dismiss the major and you along with it, but other ones will be thankful to see an application from someone who isn't a business major in an unrelated field. I think philosophy has a tendency to attract smart people that haven't learned how to excel outside the classroom, because they were always so good inside it.

Plus, a lot of times people don't market themselves well. Attention to detail and strong analytic skills are good, but majors like philosophy also show that you challenged yourself and worked hard through college. Employers tend to know what the easier majors are.

If you have done nothing but go to class for the last four years, then yeah. But anyone in that boat probably has more problems than which major they chose.

This reminds me of a PhD student at Duquesne from the Boston area complaining about the low stipend ($17,500), when Boston College was $20,000. Yeah, I think Pittsburgh dollars might be worth a lot more than Boston dollars... Cost of living numbers definitely assume a lot about how you want to live, though, as others have said. Sometimes, the rental market can vary significantly between otherwise similar cities. For example, Morgantown (home of West Virginia University) is pretty cheap in general and has good cost of living numbers, but the rental cost is pretty high. Most places are $400-500 minimum (and they can quickly get much higher), except for the crappiest of places, which are still $350 or so. Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are actually slightly more expensive elsewhere, but it's not difficult to get a decent place for $350 or so (Or even lower. I paid $250 my senior year of college for a great place in Cincinnati). By the way, all these rental experiences involve living with other people, just before anyone thinks, "Wow, you only paid that much for a one-bedroom apartment?!"

In terms of people with just B.A.s in Philosophy, they tend to do just well in the world outside academia or law. Philosophy majors are fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of starting salary, but they are tied with Math Majors for highest salary growth by the midpoint of their careers. In terms of education,a lot of employers are just looking for people with degrees, whether Bachelor's or Master's, and then they train on-site. What frequently happens with people who received training within their majors is that they have to be re-trained, because their previous training actually gets in the way of how the specific company runs. In the weak economy, some employers have been preferring to deal with this problem rather than fully training someone coming from an unrelated major, but other employers have not changed their preferences and the former group of employers are slowly transitioning back as the economy improves. http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-Degrees_that_Pay_you_Back-sort.html

Related to what Iamtheother said, a number of the "Continental-friendly" programs on Leiter's list have one or two Continental philosophers and that's it. Continental programs tend to be very interested in the history of philosophy too, especially the more traditional programs. Their faculty definitely make the distinction between 19th and 20th century philosophy, though the connection to sub-fields I would say is most common with 20th century philosophers and not as much with earlier philosophers covered by Continental programs.

"Don't go to law school." That's advice that about 90% of law school applicants should heed. So if you're still considering it, first ask yourself, "Am I really part of that 10% that will enjoy law school and enjoy being a lawyer?" You probably aren't the exception to the rule, even if you think you are, so really, really consider it. Two things to realize about the vast majority of law: (1) It is a lot of paper-pushing. (2) It is a business, whether for-profit or non-profit, and thus has all the normal things one might not like about the business world, plus the possibility for dishonesty and corruption present in the worst of the business world. The first reply to the OP question in this thread sums up the normal "style" of job for an associate at a midsized firm.

If it comes to it, I might do a Master's of Teaching program (One of the really good ones). I love to teach, and that's really my primary goal within philosophy, to teach it. Being involved in academia and contributing scholarly work is invigorating, but more than anything I love to teach.

Some PhD programs look on MA graduates favorably, while others have demands for those graduates that are a lot higher and sometimes hard to achieve in a two-year period (For example, I mentioned DePaul's high standards for language earlier in this thread). Undergraduate applicants are frequently less proven, but that also means they have more "potential" theoretically, whereas graduate applicanst may have been proven themselves more, but they also may have begun to show their limits. It also depends on the MA program's placement record into PhD programs. Some are really good at getting Master's graduates into solid to really good PhD programs, and I know Duquesne specifically prides themselves on that. In Duquesne's case, it probably helps them that they only take MA students who are good enough to be in the PhD program but there just weren't enough spots. Still, they are a good program in their own right, and they do prepare students well for the application process. I'm sure there are other MA programs that fit te same mold and the key is to find out whether a specific program does fit this mold of success or if it falls short. Superhamdi, it sounds like the MA in question is one of those good programs, and it definitely helps that it's fully funded. Duquesne wasn't fully funded, but like I said, it was cheap (I wouldn't have gone to Marquette's Master's program, because it would have been full price). The applicaiton process can be such a crapshoot though that passing up a PhD offer in this round is risky, so you should at least be aware of the risk you are taking if you choose the MA over the PhD. It sounds like a reasonably calculated risk, but if you choose to take it, you should be focused on doing everything you can to strengthen your resume in those two years. That way, you didn't just go to do an MA for a couple years. You excelled professionally in those two years.

Agreed, superhamdi, Duquesne is a great program . I was bummed not to get a PhD offer the first time around, but the Master's offer was definitely silver lining.

I got a funding-pending PhD offer from Catholic University, along with an unfunded Master's offer from Marquette and a partially funded Master's offer from Duquesne. Though Duquesne was a better fit, if Catholic had ever committed to some kind of funding, I would have taken the offer. Because they left the money issue unanswered for way too long, I had to commit to Duquesne, which was going to be cheap after scholarship. My advice would be to not take an unfunded PhD offer ever, but especially if a Master's program is offering you a good scholarship.