ianfaircloud

Well, when I say "investment," I don't mean "up-front investment." I mean that I couldn't afford any of my education and had to rely on federal loans to pay tuition and the costs of living. The debt I incurred and the two years of lost professional salary were the financial investment. But those are investments that many of us can make, thanks to the availability of federal loans. I have to say, when I read your comment, I wondered how familiar you are with the federal educational loan regime. Because my family income is very low, I was able to take loans from the government to pay for my schooling. So I'm not among the elite. In fact, it's my non-elite status that enabled me to access those loans! Have you heard of "expected family income (EFC)"? I mean that with all sincerity. Maybe you have never filled out federal loan paperwork and just don't know how this works. Your comment suggests that MA students who don't get generous funding must be among the elite. Actually, that sentiment is exactly the one that so many people decried in the Leiter post. I don't think *you* could have meant that, because I've read many intelligent posts by you on this forum. You probably meant something else by your comment, but maybe you can explain it to us. In any case, I took a great risk. Now I'm stuck with more debt. That was a calculation that anyone can make, though certainly some of us will be more burdened by a bad outcome. Now I'm going to law school, and I hope my income will help me to pay this debt. I hear that I'm among the bottom 10% (in terms of wealth) in American law schools. No joke! So you can see why I would want to correct any notion that I'm among the elite. Edit: In the spirit of comments I've laid elsewhere, I'll bring back the point of this topic. As I have said almost every time that I've mentioned placement records, I think placement is one of many factors in the decision to attend a program. Everyone weights the factors differently, because there is no one right way to weight the factors.

Yeah, what I said above was too strong. What I mean is that people ought to keep fairness in mind when booking travel through departments. If you can with modest effort distribute the burden more evenly, then I think there's an obligation to do that. I think another rule is that your travel plans should never require a department to pay more than it would have paid had you simply taken a round-trip from your point of origin to the location of the department. So, e.g., if you're a New Yorker visiting University of Texas Austin and you decide that you want to visit a department in San Francisco on the same trip, it is not appropriate to ask UT Austin to pay for the leg between San Francisco and Austin, unless by doing so UT Austin spends the same or less as it would had it paid for a round-trip NY to Austin. Another rule is that your travel reimbursements ought not to exceed your actual travel expenses.

To be clear, you mean that you were rejected by Michigan State University for the MA?

Yes, it would! I have a little list of things that I wish we could do from season to season. One ambitious project is to track changing application deadlines from season to season. I hope someone will find time to do this.

Helpful response from Philstudent1991. In my own experience at a T7 master's program, there was a lot of diversity among the students. I think most of the students majored in philosophy. Some did not major in philosophy but came to the program to get a philosophy degree on the resume and (more importantly) to do the things one has to do to be admitted to a good PhD program in philosophy (connect with philosophers, write a good sample). For what it's worth, over the last two years, out of the MA program, at least one or two of our most successful PhD applicants did not major in philosophy but did have very strong academic backgrounds and pedigrees. In my own experience, people came to the MA program because they wanted to pursue the PhD but (at that stage) weren't able to get into strong enough PhD programs. Most people come in thinking that they want the PhD. There weren't a lot of people who were on the fence about pursuing philosophy, though after a year or so in the MA program, several decided against pursuing philosophy. Some of those who decided against philosophy ended up doing very well for themselves in another field. Some others are still searching. The most harmful suggestion by the philosopher in the original post is that MA students must be evaluated differently than those without the MA. That person's suggestion was that MA students are heavily coached and that their writing samples don't represent their own abilities. There was even some suggestion that people who pursue the MA come from wealth. So a lot of us found the person's comments to be shockingly ignorant of the realities of MA programs. (And since the person is reading applications at a T20 department, some of us were deeply disappointed at the idea that his or her views have influence.)

I agree that the timing suggests a false report. One tricky thing about notifications is that people sometimes post the next day and don't bother to change the notification date (which defaults to the day of the post). I hope we get some information soon. I'll emphasize that Harvard typically does not release a lot of notifications at once. Even when notifications roll out, don't count yourself out completely until a few days or more have passed.

Also, a follow-up to this report from Friday: I'm not sure what happened here. Things do change at the last-minute, and professors get busy, tired, or whatever, and put off notifications. I did hear from someone at Pitt, so that's about the best we can do. Maybe we will hear from Pitt tomorrow.

My guess is that the Harvard post is legitimate. Harvard has released this early before. Harvard's posts do not go up in one day; they're usually scattered over the course of a few days. Also there aren't a lot of false reports on Grad Cafe, so unless a report looks crazy, I'm inclined to believe it's legitimate. Expect Harvard to contact people by phone or email. A few people will be wait-listed, and as far as I know, Harvard keeps this wait-list for good reason.

I have heard through the grapevine that Pitt will indeed release today. If that's true, then we should see something any minute now.

Just a quick thought. In my experience, people underestimate how much the department administrators / administrative assistants are involved in this sort of thing. This is going to sound elitist, and I regret that. But the truth is that, though it's very important to "impress" everyone and to treat everyone with respect, it's most important to have a good relationship with the professors and your peers. I say this as someone who has tremendous respect for department administrators, who we all know put up with a lot of shit from profs. I say all of this only to encourage you not to be worried about how the request may come off. You're working with other humans who have human needs, too. I think your request is very human. Finally, I think as a general rule, it's best to make sure that the cost of your travel is divided evenly among the departments that you visit. So it's not fair to have one department pay for two of the three legs of your flights. The fact that you care about fairness says a lot about you.

I live in Center City, but I spend most of my working time in University City (i.e. I spend most of my time in University City).

Well, the placements I cited above are (unless stated otherwise) only from last year. So the Brandeis and UW Milwaukee placements that I mentioned are from last year *only*. That's crucial, because I could have mentioned quite a few more amazing placements for Brandeis and UWM. E.g. UWM has had several Harvard placements, if I'm not mistaken. So the reason I left out those GSU placements is that, if I'm not mistaken, they're taken from past records. As you point out, when one considers all of the placement records for the history of each of these programs, GSU does check in lower than Tufts, Brandeis, and UWM. I do think you have called attention to something important. One element of the analysis is whether a program has ever, in its history, sent someone to a Pitt or a Rutgers. GSU, like these other schools, has done that -- and in its recent history. If we're talking about placement only, then GSU is #4. But only by a small margin. I think a strong showing this year, e.g., would change everything, in my view. These things *do* change from year to year, because faculty changes from year to year (and because programs change from year to year). As I've said elsewhere, placement is only one of several factors to be considered. You mention financial resources. On that measure, Brandeis and Tufts do not fare as well. (Though I have pointed out that each of these programs involves sacrifice of financial resources, in the sense that one could make more money doing something else for those two years. It's better to think of "amount invested" than "amount sacrificed." I *invested* a lot in my particular MA program. But investments are not evaluated in terms of how much is invested. They are evaluated in terms of how much reward is received for the investment.) I just want to say, because text doesn't always communicate feelings very clearly, that I'm pretty generally in agreement with Philstudent1991 on this issue. And he's right to direct our attention to GSU's impressive accomplishments and the fact that, for many people, GSU is the best MA program, all things considered. I, myself, almost went to GSU. It was a coin-flip in favor of another program.

Congrats! I'm in Philly. I wonder how many people on this forum are living in Philly right now! It's a great place, I think.

Assuming that your goal is to be a professional, academic philosopher: For PhD programs, see above. Emphasis on "what percentage of people who go on the market get jobs." (Isostheneia's comment, above) For MA programs, consider the number of people who leave philosophy, the number admitted somewhere in philosophy, the number admitted somewhere particularly good in philosophy, and -- crucially -- the number who actually applied. Percent who place at a good PhD program. If 20 people apply and six are admitted to good PhD programs, that's a fine record. But if only seven apply and six of those seven are admitted to good PhD programs, that's much, much better. Percent who stay in philosophy. Again, say ten of 20 people stay in philosophy. That's a nice stat. But if eight of 10 stay in philosophy, that's pretty great. You're throwing yourself into an environment, and you want the environment to be serious about philosophy. I'm not sure how many MA programs to which you applied, but there are a few programs that (in my experience on this site and in conversations with others) have established strong reputations. Faculty reputation is extremely important, probably at least as important as placement, because if you get to work with someone who is a real name in the field, that person's letter of recommendation could make a real difference. One reason that some MA programs do well, in terms of placement, is that those programs have pretty strong faculty who are well-connected. Tufts, Brandeis, UW Milwaukee, and Georgia State have the best placement records, from what I've seen. Tufts for years has held the best placement record, with the exception of last year's season, when I think (if I remember correctly) Tufts's record was relatively weak. Brandeis had placements at Michigan, UNC, WUSTL, Cornell, and Riverside, which is pretty solid; only two other students applied, one of which ended up at UCLA's politics program. Last year, UW Milwaukee exploded in terms of placement: UNC, Brown, Pitt, etc. UW Milwaukee's program is underrated. Milwaukee is underrated, for that matter. Georgia State placed people at Stanford, Columbia, and Indiana, among other places. In my opinion, Georgia State's record (now and in recent years) is not as strong as those of Tufts, Brandeis, and UW Milwaukee. But it's still a very good place to be, particularly depending on what one wants to do in philosophy. For instance, Georgia State sends people to WUSTL almost every year, because WUSTL (and WUSTL Medicine) is known for its strength in cognitive science. Also, of course, Georgia State's funding is very good. The reason I say that Georgia State's placement record is not as strong is that Georgia State has a cohort size of 20. To place three of your 20 at top schools is awesome, but it's not as great as placing three of your 10. (I'm setting aside the question of how many people bothered applying. But the bottom line is that a greater share of students enrolling at a Tufts or UW Milwuakee, where the cohorts have been roughly 10 in recent years, will end up in top programs.) As time goes by, I forget the details. But I think UW Milwaukee's cohort size is 10. I think UW Milwaukee offers pretty generous financial aid/tuition remission/TA positions. Its placement record is strong (some good years, some bad years, but strong overall), though not as strong (over the years) as those of Tufts and Brandeis. But all things considered, and based on what I know about the programs, and based on how I weight the factors, I think UW Milwaukee is a very solid choice today and arguably tied for second-best place to get the MA.

A very few schools do this. UCLA sent out roughly two waves of acceptances last year, and it was one of the only schools that did this. Departments generally adopt one of the following practices: - admit and wait-list a group of people within a few days of each other; send out rejections later (e.g. UC Berkeley) - reject a group, then accept/waitlist the rest (e.g. WUSTL) - admit a group of people; keep a list of wait-listed people, but don't inform those people; admit a few people later; eventually reject everyone not admitted (e.g. UCLA) - admit a group; reject everyone else immediately (though notifications may go much later); effectively, no one is wait-listed (e.g. University of Chicago) Some people may find this page helpful.

You're cleaning up, my friend!!! So glad to hear of the success.

Oh, yes, of course I agree with this, particularly the last three sentences of your post.

Thanks for the link to http://www.newappsblog.com/2014/07/job-placement-2011-2014-comparing-placement-rank-to-pgr-rank.html. It's at least a helpful source. I want to point out that the placement record of SLU lends more support to my view that SLU deserves a stronger reputation than it has among the PGR evaluators. I'm not sure why SLU just broke into the T50. When I lived in St. Louis, I met several people in the PhD program there. They said good things about the program. I do remember that the theists were well-represented among those students. Also, the chair is Theodore Vitali, who is a theist. The program is known for strengths in medieval and religion, which are areas of philosophy that fit into what Establishment called "minor areas" of philosophy. For the sake of argument, assume that the PGR evaluators have a view similar to Establishment's. I think the reply is that there's something slanted about a survey of only people who believe that philosophy of religion (or any other subfield) is a "minor area." Maybe another way to state Establishment's point is this: some subfields of philosophy are foundational to the other fields, and it's sort of an analytic truth about something foundational that its importance is (at least in some sense of the word importance) greater than those things that are not foundational. The "minor areas" are built on foundational areas. It's impossible (particularly in our time) to be a great philosopher of religion without also being a great epistemologist. I think when Establishment said that not all areas of philosophy are equal, perhaps s/he means that, all other things equal, the department with the #1 epistemologist is stronger than the department with the #1 philosopher of religion. That's a controversial position, but it's not a ridiculous position. A great philosopher once told me that epistemology is the most important subfield in philosophy. I think he meant that it's foundational. He didn't mean to take anything away from other areas. After all, why do we care about epistemology? Presumably in part because we want to answer life's important questions, some of which are contained in, e.g., the philosophy of religion. It would be odd to call philosophy of religion foundational to philosophy (unless you mean that it's foundational historically or something)

This is a decent way of expressing my sentiment, above, that we may need to attach a caveat to any human-based ranking of departments.

Your desire to approach the issue by way of conceptual analysis suggests to me that you would at the very least appreciate the value of a philosophical education in an analytic department. You'll have to weigh the costs and benefits, but if you find a program like we've described, my guess is that you would enjoy it. I can't comment on whether it would help you meet any professional goals, unless your professional goal is to be a lawyer or professor of philosophy. It would very likely be valuable to you in other ways, though. Georgia State is an excellent choice for most people with your interests. The funding is generous, and they have several people on faculty who would work with you. There's a reason that Georgia State has a pipeline to Washington University in St. Louis (which excels in this subfield of philosophy). Georgia State also has a fair number of students who do not plan to pursue the PhD. You actually might like that about the program.

Ahh, I see. Did he simply not update the main page until recently? I saw this (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/01/pgr-2014-15-update.html), where he said, on Jan 29, that the PGR wasn't finished. And somehow I missed the updates before then. I did find that on December 2 he posted the top-fifty on his blog (and perhaps on the PGR site). Maybe we were all too busy to see it then. Thanks for the post.

Well, it's not so much a matter of problems with the methodology as it is just not meant to be more than what it is. It's a prediction based on a three-year trend. That's all it is, and that's all it claims to be. And as I noted last year, this kind of prediction is surprisingly predictive. But yes, thanks overoverover for pointing out that the main purpose is to give people a sense of when they might hear from programs. But just to be clear, 52% of my predictions last year fell within three days of the actual releases. That's not terrible. This year, Sid has another year's worth of data. Possibly things will work out even better.

What a sensible post on the topic! Despite years of education, I've never taken a course in statistics, and I haven't studied statistics informally, either. But it would not surprise me to find out that a survey conducted by a philosopher wouldn't be exactly right. One interesting, very small problem with the PGR is that it cannot free itself from the effects of pedigree bias. As I understand it, it asks philosophers to evaluate departments based on the list of faculty in the department. The department's name is not listed; the idea is that the evaluator will think only about the quality of the faculty. I admire that goal. Now here's the "problem": A philosopher's reputation is affected, no doubt, by her department's reputation. Philosopher X looks better when she's tenured at PGR #1. What I'm saying is that the ranking of the department itself unavoidably affects our views of the members of faculty of that department. (And obviously the fact that the department's name is not listed will not change the fact that everybody knows where these philosophers work.) Now maybe the evaluators of PGR, since they're some of the best in their subfields, are immune to these effects. That's plausible. But then again, we've all heard about studies that prove a very powerful "pedigree bias" at work in faculty hiring. Crucially, a pedigree bias is at work when an otherwise better-qualified applicant is selected against only because of the applicant's academic pedigree. The pedigree bias suggests that even highly qualified evaluators may succumb to the effects of bias against people, or for people, based on institutions with which the people are, or are not, associated. (Many of us have experienced the effects of pedigree bias in our own pursuits!) Relatedly, an irony of the PGR is that it is self-fulfilling. So department X is now #10. Do we expect that department to be perceived as better? Of course. Won't this affect the ability of Department X's grads to get better jobs? I suspect that it does. Will not the improved placement record then give people even more reason to say that Department X has earned its #10 ranking? The direction of cause and effect is reversed. How we define what makes a department a good department is based in part on its ranking. These issues probably can't be overcome in any survey. So to call it a fault of PGR may not be right. Maybe it's just a caveat to attach to any rankings like these.

Jailbreak and others: If it's not too inconvenient, are you OK taking the Prof. Leiter discussion to a new topic? I ask only because (just from experience on this forum) a topic can be sort-of taken on one course, a heated debate, and I've found that these debates tend to shut down the original topic. I don't own the topic or this forum, but I did start it, and I hoped that the focus could be on the stuff I mentioned in the post. The post is really about the effect of PGR (not so much Prof. Leiter) on admissions and perhaps even the merits of PGR itself. It's not about personalities (or at least I hoped it would not be). I recall above, Jailbreak, that you mentioned that the methods of the survey are questionable. That seems like a good thing for this topic. I mean no disrespect to anyone, but just from experience I think this argument over Prof. Leiter will become the focus of this topic. Maybe I speak for no one but myself, but I didn't want that to be the focus. Again, I don't own the topic or the forum. I replied to your original post, Jailbreak, only because when I see someone's character questioned on the forum, and that person has been very nice to me, I try to offer another view. (Of course, as I said above, my own encounters do not call into question your personal experiences of him. Maybe you have personally interacted with him and seen a different side. I'm not questioning that.) Perhaps my reply only encouraged a tangent that I didn't want to encourage. Anyway, with all sincerity and respect, I wonder if we are OK taking the Prof. Leiter character discussion to a new thread.

The whole PGR was just rolled out, though Leiter has revealed pieces of it over the course of the last month. But no, PGR was not updated until very recently. As of Jan 29, it was not updated. I checked last night and noticed that it was up. Leiter planned to release it earlier, but I take it that it took more time than anticipated.