SelfHatingPhilosopher
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Posts posted by SelfHatingPhilosopher
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"Some people will go to programs even unfunded. Not everyone has that option. "
That's their own decision. Why do you treat MA's program differently from PhD's? Not everyone can get a funded offer from NYU, so why aren't you screaming accessibility?
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And just to look at some funding, most of which you can find in the comments section from that link:
- GSU funds $15,000 over two years.
- NIU $22,600 over two years.
- Western Michigan $23,160 over two years
- Milwaukee at Wisconsin $15,404 over two years.
- Texas A&M $21,000 over two years.
- Texas Tech $24,000 over two years.
- University of Houston $22,400 over two years.
- University of Wyoming $22,700 over two years.
- Virginia Tech is adequate
- Queen's University offers $18,000 for one year (it's a 1 year program)
- Western Ontario ~$20,000 over two years
~ British Columbia ~$30,000 over two years
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"Its also my understanding that most master's programs that can provide funding will often only fund the top students that they accept."
This is just semantic squabbling. You only attend programs that fund you. MA and PhD programs will offer funding to 4-8 students a year. That's it. The fact that this or that MA/PhD program will admit SOME students without funding is not any sort of example of "ripping off students" or "exploitation".
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marXian has it for #2.
As for #3, the PGR is not the end all be all, but it's a good guide. Someone might have a very personal reason to apply to a non-PGR university, but I suspect any unlisted program will be weaker than any listed program. Of course, if you're interested in continental philosophy, the PGR probably means little to you.
As for #1, many people believe (falsely) that they're good enough to make it. Many people also cannot imagine themselves doing anything else with their lives, either rightly or wrongly.
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"since in his experience students who end up in MA programs did not usually major in philosophy, or had gone to a lesser known school, and therefore they were not strong candidates for PhD programs in the first place."
This is true for some students, but my experience with two different MA programs have been different. Students came in with a philosophy degree (and often times more), but for whatever reason did not have as much success as they wanted at the PhD level. Therefore, they decided to go to an MA instead. Partly because they didn't want to do nothing for a year and apply again to the PhD level. But I think if we take Kukla's point, this is something that is becoming more and more necessary. Some students did come from smaller programs, like liberal arts colleges, but there has also been an equal amount coming for high Gourmet-ranked programs. I personally haven't found MA departments to be remedial programs for disadvantaged students. I think this may have been the case in the past, but not so anymore.
"I think this trend is a real shame because it's requiring students wishing to pursue philosophy to 1) have the money to pay for an MA, unless they get lucky and find one funded and 2) require students to apply twice, which seems cruel (and expensive, yet again). Meanwhile, the credits might not transfer, not to mention the extra years, all for the uncertain job market. What a fate!"
I've never found this convincing.
First, it's not fair to say: MA programs are problematic because you either have to pay your way through or get lucky at a funded program" unless you also continue on and say: "PhD programs are problematic because you either have to pay your way through or get lucky at a funded program."
Second, a lot of people get shut out anyways from PhD programs and have to apply twice, sometimes even thrice. This is something all applicants have to realize may happen to them, regardless of MA programs.
Third: "all for the uncertain job market. What a fate!" What a fate? This is the fate of those interested in being philosophers, and has nothing to do with MA programs. And: ""Meanwhile, the credits might not transfer, not to mention the extra years," doesn't sound like a disadvantage after all. I took graduate courses at my undergraduate, but they didn't transfer. I wouldn't imagine my MA courses would transfer either. Nor would I want them to. I'm getting paid 2/6 years to study philosophy, why would I not take full advantage of that by trying to graduate early?
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Well, I forgot to mention something else. The general concern is that because MA students have such an advantage, it is more and more becoming the case that admitted students to be competitive must have an MA degree. An adcom from Georgetown University writes about this: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/masters-degrees-postdocs-and-the-hyperprofessionalization-of-philosophy-kukla.html
I should also mention that:
"particularly because the terminal MA programs do not provide funding"
is not at all universally true, and generally speaking any program worth its weight will fund your study, with the exception of Tufts and Brandeis whose funding is a tad more limiting though still present to some extent.
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"MA students are likely to have perfect GPAs from their program, because the program has a stake in PhD placement, and therefore there is certainly grade inflation."
I've known good MA students who have gotten B's before from other MA programs. My experience is that most students have perfect GPA's not because of grad inflation but because of hard work. Most undergraduates have perfect GPA's within their philosophy major in any case, so it's not like there's a GPA difference between BA and MA applicants.
"Basically I'm wondering what the advantages/disadvantages are for students applying straight from their BA, vs. applying having received an MA."
I can't answer how departments see an MA applicant vs a BA applicant. What I can answer, is that an established MA program gives many students strong chances at attending a top-20 program. MA students will naturally have an advantage over their BA counterparts just because of the nature of an MA program. The the best way to express it, is that whereas undergraduates study philosophy, graduate students practice it. A graduate student more closely mirrors the activities of a professor than an undergraduate. Yes, you still formally take courses every semester (which is another advantage MA applicants have: two years of pure graduate level philosophy study, without the distractions of unrelated course requirements that undergraduates must meet), but the expectation is that you'll be doing your own research off on the side on a daily basis whereas with an undergraduate, those that go above and beyond the call may spend some time reading philosophy outside of the classroom but generally won't produce anything.
Naturally, an MA student's writing sample should reflect a greater maturity than an undergraduate's.
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I don't think they were really related, I think they just chose philosophers names randomly. Season 1 of lost was great but I think it really went off the tracks after that
Season 1, Episode 4, "Walkabout". Gives me chills to watch it everytime. One of the greatest episodes of television history.
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I've heard that it sometimes happens that a department will call admitted applicants (especially those admitted relatively early on). I find this very off-putting. It's almost like an invasion of privacy. I don't want to talk to anyone on the phone about this! (Of course, I'll be rejected everywhere, so I won't have to face this problem, but still ...)
I'd let John McDowell invade my privacy, if you know what I mean. (I mean, I would be vigorously ethusiastic to receive a personal phone call from John McDowell telling me that I'm good enough to be his student)
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case in point.
I'm not at all familiar with the particulars of Ancient Greek philosophy, but I believe there are concrete translation concerns over the fact that Greek does not have definite/indefinite articles, and that there are actual issues on specifics lines in Aristotle and Parmenidies (I'm more familiar with Parmenides since my school focused on the pre-socratics), where the interpretatation depends on whether or not an article should be there or not. This isn't something you'll be able to determine, or even be aware of as an issue, if you're reading a translation. I should also say I don't understand your dismisal of Rollontheground's example.
You need to be familiar with Greek, and not just on a surface level, but know the various ways in which a Greek person might try to articulate the definite/indefinite distinction without having specific terms for it.
Which is another point. If you're reading something in translation, you might not even be aware of there being an issue, because the translation glides over some nuance, mistranslates, or just doesn't translate something.
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Probably Harvard.
I haven't heard anything about Harvard, but I do know MIT is often flouted as an example.
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I loved the ending to both Battlestar Galactica and Lost.
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Congrats! I'm looking forward to hearing even more good reports from you and everyone else over the next couple of months!
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proflorax makes a good point about how the payment may actually work, via reimbursement.
My understanding is that the higher ranked the program, the more likely it is that you'll be flown out there. If I remember correctly Columbia, Brown, UCR do... as well as others that I don't remember of off hand. Oddly enough though, one of my PhD acceptances which was borderline low ranked/unranked on the PGR offered a funded visit.
Generally speaking for philosophy, I think it's something one should expect.
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for example I'm are you can sound smart as gel comparing Plato with Lao Tzu but in he end.... ya you're comparing Plato with Lao Tzu. ... so.
Is your second edition going to be self-published as well?
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Location means nothing for me, though I wish it could mean everything. If it did, I suppose I'd like to go to New York City. Or if we really mean that location means everything... shit, I'd go to graduate school in Singapore or something.
But as far as NYC is concerned, it just has such a great intellectual history and the east coast ethos sort of appeals to me.
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This is why you don't apply last minute. Ever.
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Philosophers in the past were able to read and write Greek, Latin, German, and then some without any complaints about how they could have better spent their time.
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Plot twist: you then roll up your sleeve and reveal a tattoo that reads "1. The world is all that is the case. 1.1 The world is the totality of facts not things ..."
The stories I've heard about the Cult of Wittgenstein, I wouldn't be surprised if someone out there did in fact tattoo part of the Tractatus on themself...
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I share the outrage at reading well for six hours a day. But writing daily is a habit I started quickly when I entered grad school. Not much, 300 to 500 words a day. At first, I was writing a lot of stuff I never used. The habit itself, though, has proved invaluable to my productivity (3-5 conference papers a year and all of my seminar papers).
Yeah, I've seen this recommended in a few places, for instance:
http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2013/09/reader-question-about-work-habits.html
http://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/more-research-strategies.html
Set yourself a daily requirement of writing so many words or writing for so much time. It doesn't have to be a lot, especially when first starting. You want a small, focused slot of time out of which you can make a habit. This can fit into a larger picture of how to balance your work and your personal life without becoming overwhelmed. If you set a small section of time to work, you'll be motivated to actually do work during that time slot without procrastinating on the internet or other things. The sort of extreme description of what ends up happening is you go from spending 7 days a week intermittently doing research and constantly stressing, to doing 4-5 hours of research Monday through Friday. Your evenings and weekends are completely free, and yet you're vastly more productive.
I remember reading that Sellars even had to do something similar. He and his (first, I believe) wife were both academics and needed to become productive scholars. So they held each other accountable in terms of just sitting down and writing every day. It didn't matter how much of it was garbage, it was simply to get into the habit. And eventually, as we all know, Sellars became the famous philosopher that he was.
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This is where analytic philosophy wins, all I need to learn is formal logic
I was actually going to make a post about that until I decided against it... but I suppose I'll give it a shot. So, maybe I'm just ignorant of the other branches of analytic philosophy, but knowing foreign languages in logic is actually pretty useful. There is, or at least there was, a solid production of logic done in German as well as in Russian in journals which won't ever see the light of day in translation because there just isn't any large scale demand. Heck, there are even some fairly significant German articles that still haven't ever been translated.
Why would you use google translate if you'd properly learned the language yourself? Someone with a practical working knowledge of a language would be much better at translating than google translate (I know because google translate's Mandarin-English is only reliable in some situations). Google translate, while probably one of the best translators available, is still not even remotely competitive with a working knowledge of the language itself.I agree, I think language ability is something important one should learn.
But the point I'm making is that it's a requirement from a time past, when translation had to be done by hand with a dictionary. Most people won't become translators (some will, and for them, it's a really great skill). If you aren't planning on becoming a translator, then simply testing as reading competent in a language is like getting certified to do something that you won't ever really doIn this sense, the language requirement doesn't seem to have caught up to modern technology. Maybe 20 years ago, if you wanted something translated you had to do it yourself. Such is no longer the case, but we still test people like it is.I really gotta disagree. I have loads of professors who spend a good part of their time translating/reading works in foreign languages, on both sides of the analytic and continental divide. It's an important thing to be able to do and to be able to do well to such an extent that sitting at a computer using Google Translate to help you would just slow you down. I also think humanistically, it's an important skill to cultivate.
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Of course, take with a grain of salt considering imperfection with the data set.
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You seriously can't find anything more constructive to do with your application angst than randomly alienate people in an internet forum? Some people :X
That's a pretty reductive way of describing what happened. You do realize that he was literally mentally ill, oftentimes failed to even write coherent thoughts, called a fellow applicant a "bitch" in sole virtue of them being a she, was publicly warned by the moderators of this forum, and was otherwise constantly belittling and aggressive to other applicants? These are the reasons that other members such as myself and zizeksucks chose to "randomly alienate" him.
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And i still don't agree - I didn't offer it as advice or tell anyone I was right and not to be questioned.
You have fabricated this idea that people could be hurt in their applications because you only want people who agree with you and parrot what you say to play in your sandbox.
This thread was created with malice to try and exclude other posters from posting in "your" forum for entirely false reasons.
You got us pegged bro. This forum is actually a conspiracy. So if you wouldn't mind leaving...
Do admissions committees check out Grad Cafe?
in Philosophy
Posted
I think Matt means, Tim O'Keefe posting a message without looking at any particular posts probably doesn't constitute "checking the site out".