ianfaircloud

If anyone (including 'perpetualapplicant') wants to connect without the anonymity, send me a private message. We can exchange emails or Facebook. I do hope to see some of you in the future. I'll attend conferences under the name Faircloud. Hah.

I suppose I'm looking for either one. The Brandeis record is the record of offers accepted. But if we can get a record of best offers extended, that would be even better. (As you know, Tufts and Brandeis do not display on their placement records the best offers extended. Though these offers are listed next to the placement record, the record itself indicates only which programs people chose to attend.)

You seem like such a nice person. I'm glad you did so well in admissions. Good luck in Madison. Reasons to love Madison: beer selection, beautiful weather from May to December, nice people, unique downtown, low cost of living. And then there's UW Madison, which is one of the best public universities in this country.

Updated MA program placement records. Each placement indicates one student. So, e.g., "Yale, Northwestern, Duke Law, shut-out" would indicate four students' placements. Brandeis's final confirmed placement record: Michigan, UNC, Cornell, WUSTL, Riverside, UCLA Politics, and an Ivy League law school. 43% success among applicants to T20 programs! Tufts's placement record last I heard: Duke, Duke, Brown, UT Austin, Indiana Bloomington, Johns Hopkins, Western Ontario. Georgia State's record not final: Indiana University, UC Irvine, University of Pennsylvania, Boston University, Florida State University, University of Missouri, and Western Ontario. UW Milwaukee's last I heard: Pitt HPS, Wisconsin, T20 w/ wait-list at T10, Northwestern, UC Riverside, Notre Dame w/ wait-list at USC, Florida State w/ wait-list at UC Riverside, UNC, T21-30 w/ similar wait-lists, Northwestern w/ T10 waitlist, and several shut-outs. Depending on what happened with UW Milwaukee, I think Brandeis will have the top placement record this year. Three of seven were admitted to T20s. Placement records shouldn't be evaluated strictly by how many were admitted to top programs; they should be evaluated by the share of applicants who were admitted to top programs. To have nearly half admitted to T20s is excellent, on par with Tufts's records in recent years. Tufts, on the other hand, will have the third-best record, behind UW Milwaukee and Brandeis. What does this mean? I think Brandeis and UW Milwaukee have become solid top-three schools. Neither can share the status of Tufts quite yet. And probably Brandeis is solidly better than UW Milwaukee, only because Brandeis's record has been better for several years in a row. Georgia State's placement record isn't as strong as those of these top three MA programs. Having said that, I'm convinced that Georgia State is the right choice for a lot of people pursing the MA. What I'd like to do next is to break down the placement records according to areas of interest. E.g Brandeis's record is consistently better for those in metaphysics and epistemology than it is for those in, e.g., ethics or political philosophy. Who knows what to make of that!

This may have already been said: Some of the applications take much longer than I anticipated (e.g. MIT). For this reason, do every application at least one day in advance. Also, some schools (e.g. Penn) want a writing sample by mail, by the deadline. (Penn didn't tell us this on the application. I believe that we were notified only after starting the application.)

Reached my quota for up-votes. Thanks, everyone, for the kind response. I'll be on the forum, but I'll be on less often. I wish you all the very best. You all seem like great people.

87 responses as of today. I'll close the survey on May 1. I hope others will participate before then! Maybe we'll hit 100...

The MA program I attended had a graduate-only seminar that was moderately heavy in terms of readings. You read a few difficult chapters from books that are pretty new (so that few or no students have read them). Otherwise, my MA experience was only difficult because I made it difficult. A good graduate program should only be as hard as you want it to be. That is, you should be setting the pace, in my view. You want to turn out really high quality stuff, over and over? That takes a lot of time and effort. I sacrificed my body to produce good work. This is probably unnecessary.

Hey -- I just re-read my post. It sounds horribly negative!!! I hope no one takes it that way. I think you could succeed at any of these three, but I think the funding would be the deciding factor for me.

Good choice. Good luck to you.

Go with the funding. None of these programs is going to "set you up" for success any better than the others, in my view. I would not spend money to attend any one of these programs unless money isn't really much of an issue for you. Thing is, when you spend money to attend Tufts, you get the "Tufts" name -- which can help you in other career paths, if it comes to that. In my view, that's not the case with the programs you mentioned.

Yep, that's right. I was shut out of philosophy admissions. I'm hearing (from a moderately reliable source) that people who wrote samples in the areas of evolutionary psychology and metaethics (Sharon Street type stuff) were at a disadvantage this year because of the sheer volume of work on the topic. I'm sure I'll analyze this for years to come. In the meantime, I hope people will benefit from my story. I received a note from a student interested in my MA program, and one line of the note read: "it sounds like if you work hard in any subject, you will be able to place well." This person means well. But the fact is, this is exactly the kind of view that hurts people. Philosophy admissions are highly subjective. No doubt the people who land top spots tend to be really, really amazing people. But for every one amazing person admitted, five amazing people are rejected to the same place. For me, the answer is to have a back-up plan, one that will not feel like a major sacrifice. I'm happy to report that I've been admitted to several good law schools, including Penn and Cornell. I was given almost a full scholarship to attend UCLA law. I am waiting to hear from Chicago, NYU, and Stanford. For personal reasons, I may choose Penn over any of these. Penn offers strengths in philosophy of law and criminal law, and I have the option of taking graduate courses with the philosophy department. I hear that Penn doesn't close the door to academia. People who are interested in law may want to do what I did. Law admissions are the opposite of philosophy admissions. Law admissions are highly predictable, based mostly on numbers. I used http://www.hourumd.com/ and http://www.lawschoolpredictor.com/wp-content/uploads/Law-School-Predictor-Full-Time-Programs.htm. These sites turned out to be accurate for me. I recommend that you treat the LSAT as far more important than anything else you do to prep for law admissions. I recommend that you apply to schools by no later than January 1. Applying in mid- to late-January absolutely reduces one's chances of admission. Also, remember that your goal is not merely admission but admission with good funding. Anyone else shut out of philosophy admissions? Best of luck to everyone.

Wow, this was the most confusing post ever. Maybe it was just confusing to me. You see, UW Milwaukee is an important school, very large, etc., so your mention of "UWM" threw me wayyyy off. Perhaps that's my fault, but for a minute there, I thought you were weighing MA programs!! UT is also a bit vague. Now that I've read your signature, I understand that you're torn between UW Madison and University of Texas. I'm doing a little psychoanalysis here. It's tough to turn down a great option like UW Madison, but it sounds like you really just need permission to do so. You may feel worse off having to turn down University of Texas. Keep in mind, you have to turn down one of these two! Based on what I'm hearing from you, I would say University of Texas is the better choice. On the "softs"... I disagree with the post about the weather. Madison's weather sucks from January to April, but from May to December, it's arguably much better than Austin's weather. Austin is brutally hot from May to September. The Wisconsin cold doesn't really have its full effect until January. HOWEVER, Austin is a great city, much better than Madison. You may want to consider highly practical things, like funding, connections with friends or family, ease of your move, etc. I have heard wonderful things about both of these programs, but I've heard more (quantity) about Texas. Texas is a huge, huge department, so that may be something you would like. (Or maybe not!) Hey, one thing about funding. You may get better funding at UW Madison. Based on the information I have, most of the time you will receive better than the $13k that you mentioned above. My letter from Madison suggested that I would receive closer to $16k usually. Anyway, my advice is to go with University of Texas. You can't go wrong there, my friend!

This is an awesome poll, even if just for kicks. Also, I voted for Oklahoma!!

I voted for Tufts, but I admit that Tufts is not "all roses and no thorns." I happen to know that there are reasons against Tufts (beyond the financial), and if someone wants a program of a particular kind, Tufts may not be that kind of program. I don't want to say more here, but as with every single MA program, there are going to be problems at Tufts.

I'm encouraging my department chair to clean up the placement record on our site. He wants to change it. It's just that no one is really designated to maintain our site. Anyway, I think Georgia State has a great model, provided that the program's students are allowed to opt-out of the placement page.

I ranked them. But as I've said elsewhere, overall rankings are highly subjective, because they depend on what different individuals happen to believe makes the best programs. My ranking is based on placement. Even that is a bit subjective. Who's to say that CUNY is better overall than Washington University in St. Louis? Yet many of our rankings based on placement would place WUSTL much lower than CUNY. Overall though, I like polls.

Same Maybe so. Worst case, he ignores it.

GSU is a nice place. Good luck to you.

Follow-up on UCLA: I heard from someone in the department who tells me that Normore is working hard to finish the applications. Normore, this person tells me, understands that he's falling behind. So in other words, they know they fucked up. I don't know why they did. Perhaps it was outside of their control. Anyway, a few of us could get offers this weekend, I presume.

I just want to draw attention to this post. Good point, Dialectica. The "one year requirement" at Brandeis is ignored by the students. When the program started several years ago, the first cohort had quite a few finish in one year. Since that time, no student has finished in fewer than three semesters. People should think of the typical cost of Brandeis as roughly equivalent to the typical cost of Tufts, where the typical case is the case of the person who receives the median scholarship. There are some (very few, but some) students who go to Brandeis and Tufts at little or no cost. Tufts and Brandeis still dominate in placement, though UW Milwaukee may eclipse (or nearly eclipse) both of these this year. Rumors abound, but I think UW Milwaukee and Brandeis will have similar records this year (tied for first place). Tufts will be third place.

We have 80 responses to the survey. I hope that a lot of people will fill it out after the season ends (in a week or so). Then I hope some of you will help me analyze the data and draw out some conclusions. Of course I'll publish the data, but I will be very interested to hear what people conclude (if anything) from it. Maybe we'll get 100 responses. For some reason, that seems like the 'magic number'.

Regarding UCLA: I contacted the department, and I was redirected to another person. That person hasn't replied to my email, which I sent five days ago. I'll be blunt. The evidence is stacking up in favor of the view that UCLA totally fucked up this year, in terms of philosophy admissions.

Ahh, geez. I see that this thread was hijacked... Please take the Talbot discussion to another thread, not only because it will improve that discussion (which could be a good one), but also because it will help us stay on topic on this thread.

Take the survey, here: http://faircloudblog...issions-survey/