philstudent1991

A professor at Vanderbilt told me that DePaul is the best program for continental philosophy, FWIW

There's nothing on there that's just outright crazy. Yale was pretty low. One thing is that the New School is not funded, yes? As far as I know they are the only schools in the top 50 on that list that isn't funded. Just me but I don't think unfunded PhDs really can be ranked, since that's such an enormous downside that any other strength would be negated by it. But also, and unfortunately, publications just aren't a direct proxy for program strength. The first person that comes to mind is Gettier, who wrote like one 3 page article but it is now taught in intro courses.

Inevitably some will feel excluded or some will contest the use of the PGR or some will contest the divisions. Sorry, I did the best I could. If you aren't applying out now, but planning to apply in the future, feel free to vote all the same!

Funding problems of any kind

Tough situation. I know that transferring between programs is common enough. My knowledge ends there. My intuition is that programs would be understanding and help you with LORs as needed, and that with a year of grad school under your belt you'd be a better applicant than you are now when you apply out again. If you got shut out, it wouldn't be just because you were transferring back from the US. There's just no way they'd ask for scholarship money back. Idk if maybe you heard that somewhere and have a special reason for worrying, but I can't imagine that ever happening. I'd get LORs from both schools. The two body problem is a deep philosophical quandary. Plenty of people take a year off then come back to graduate school. Maybe you could do that and apply to UK programs next year. A move to the US just to move back seems like quite a lot of squandered resources and sanity. Idk you or your relationship but generally, making promises you can't keep leads to resentment. But so does not ever making promises.

One I have found gets telling responses, directed at professors or graduate students: "What are you most proud of about the program?"

yep, very true.

Why are people downvoting grace9012? Seemed like a reasonable question with no offensive content...am I wrong?

I know there is a tremendous halo effect that benefits graduates of top programs at all levels of academia, but this just can't be right. Say the PGR top 5 put 15 candidates, 3 each, on the market in a given year? is that unreasonable? Maybe add a few from past cohorts that are lateral hires...still whatever that number is it's not gonna be 37% of all reported tenure track hires, or even close to it....right?

I agree, and I also wonder if it favors private, unfunded programs. I didn't go to one, so only someone that did could really evaluate this claim, but my guess is that if I had just spent 50,000, or whatever, pursuing an MA in philosophy, I might feel more obligated to continue down that path than if I hadn't invested so much in that career. Again, just armchair psychology. Perhaps I'm wrong.

You didn't! Thanks for contributing.

Ya this all makes sense. And believe me I remember this debate, and I am so glad that most commentors disagreed with the OPs attitude. However, the reasons given in this post and in general in the blogosphere about why people pursue an MA don't seem to make sense of the reality at T7 MAs. In my experience at a T7 MA, no one is there because of a "spotty" undergraduate record, for instance. A few had less "mainstream" training, i.e. were at more Continental programs, and a few had fewer philosophy classes than would be ideal for a strong application to PhDs. But by and large, everyone at my T7 majored in philosophy and did very well in their courses. A few even come from PGR programs, having majored in philosophy, and having done very well. The view, and I'm not sure how prevalent it really is but it seems to be common, that MA students didn't major in philosophy just doesn't square with reality.

Just so you guys know, I was rejected at 11 schools, waitlisted with no acceptance at another, accepted without funding to one, and accepted with funding at one. I went to my only option, and it has been amazing. I couldn't be happier. The moral of the story is that you only need one acceptance. I know from experience that it really sucks to get rejected over and over again. But there is light at the end of the tunnel so hang in there!! More acceptances will start rolling around soon.

That's absolutely right. It's still over two months until the final dust will settle. Hang in there!

I know this thread is about placement. I don't mean to derail that valuable discussion; I just want to push back a little bit on Ian's overall very insightful comment. If you aren't interested in this topic, MA placement and pedigree, please ignore the following. I'm not sure your analysis of GSU's placement is fair, so here's a quick supplement. I didn't see you didn't mention GSU's placements at Pitt, Cornell or Berkeley, for instance. You also have to keep in mind fit. The placement at Pitt for example, a top 10, is a crowning achievement for a program strong in cognitive science and philosophy. Also, there are a lot of people there doing Nietzsche, Heidegger, German Idealism type stuff and their placement can't really be measured in terms of the PGR. You also didn't mention the most obvious trend, that GSU sends at least one and sometimes more people to UCSD every year for the last few years. Not an elite school; just a fun fact if you look at their placement record. I ultimately agree that in terms of placement, with respect to the PGR, GSU checks in slightly lower than Tufts, Brandeis and UWM. But I just wanted to make sure GSU got a fair shake since you omitted some top placements. And like you said, while they do have bigger cohorts, some don't come in with the intention of going on to a PhD so that also distorts placement. Moreover, as is well known, Tufts and Brandeis aren't funded, so for most students they aren't really legitimate options. Finally, I don't buy the common view that Tufts is unquestionably the best program, which stems from one sentence that Leiter wrote many years ago, and the fact that Dennett is there. I think that Tufts, Brandeis, GSU, UWM and probably also NIU (Northern Illinois) are practically in a five way tie, with the best choice depending on your interests, geography, family wealth and whether you want teaching experience or not. There are other excellent MAs like Houston, UMSTL, Virginia Tech, etc.

I'd be curious to know if those that think the PGR methodology is flawed also think that the PGR is helplessly flawed and counterproductive, or if they might have suggestions for improvement that might resolve their worries. The point about the snowball sampling, for instance, is a true description of the method. Leiter picks the board and the board picks the reviewers. But to my knowledge, people aren't arguing that reviewer X is unqualified or that non-reviewer Y got snubbed. It seems like the reviewers are a field of relevant experts. Is this not so? If it is so, then the methodology produces reasonable results. If we cannot trust a field of relevant experts, who can we trust? And if we are complaining about implicit bias, how can we hope to have a human-based ranking system at all? (maybe the unconvinced think we just can't) I'm also not sure what could replace the PGR. We have seen rankings based on publication volume, for instance. Such rankings are useless. Rankings based on placement would be interesting, but always backward looking. So I'm not sure what the alternative is. The way Leiter makes it seem, the main body of dissenters is the SPEP crowd, the continental folks who are by and large completely excluded from the rankings. It's true that continental heavy programs aren't ranked, like Emory, SUNY, Vanderbilt, Fordham, DePaul, etc. But the PGR is widely regarded as a ranking of analytic departments and doesn't advertise itself as a ranking of continental departments, at least from my understanding.

Well he is haha. His bud is taking over for the next time around. And while of course the rankings shouldn't be taken as divine, I think they are worth something, and the methodology is reasonable.

So only the final semester wouldn't be available? They might be able to overlook this assuming everything else is in order but I can't speak for them. Also, at least some of the deadlines for MA programs would have passed by now if I'm not mistaken, though some use rolling admissions.

In a field of incredibly competitive admissions, Vandy is exceptionally competitive. Don't let it get you down

No I feel the same way

Congratulations. A wait list at Duke is a very promising sign for your season. I can't say much about wait lists unfortunately. Some schools, like Chicago, don't even have them. Some schools have an internal waitlist. Some schools have pretty big waitlists.

It helps that it's not in your AOS and other strong elements can overcome it. But the B in logic will be worrying to some because PhD programs almost universally have a logic requirement, and it will be harder than logic at the MA most likely. Since your applications are likely already out, however, all you can really do is take it easy and hope something pans out. The B+ I wouldn't worry about, especially if you are at a known school.

The king has returned.

Ya, but there's also an extended version of that out there somewhere that has three years back