brettmullga
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Posts posted by brettmullga
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Same for me as well!
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Ian if you blogged regularly like Leiter, about graduate admissions and philosophy (issues in philosophy, sociology of philosophy, issues in higher ed, etc.) I would read your blog every day. I would have it as a favorite at the top of my browser.
Ian > Leiter
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I'm not sure how accurate your professor's information is, despite the urge to assume that in your context (which I'm ignorant of) the professor is correct. From the Cornell website: "Courses called Mathematics for Economists, Mathematics for Social Scientists, and Econometrics are not a substitute for formal mathematics."
As a Math major, I assume you've taken the Calculus sequence, a Real Analysis Sequence, a Linear Algebra sequence, a Calc-based Statistics sequence and potentially additional courses in topology and optimization. Other than applications, I'm not sure what more one will get from a Mathematical Econ course at the undergraduate level. It may be the case that Econ is necessary if one has made poor grades in some of the courses I listed above. Doing well in Math Econ will signal that one now has a better grasp of the material with relevant applications. Other than in that case, my vote is for International Trade.
Link: http://economics.cornell.edu/graduate-program/general-program-info/prerequisites
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Rejected from Carnegie Mellon's PhD program and admitted to the MS as a consolation prize. Offered the standard partial tuition waiver and funding for a visit. Looks like I struck out with Philosophy programs (this was my only one).
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The author of that article, Graham Priest, is awesome! He is one of the main proponents of dialetheism. I heartily recommend anyone, especially the staunchest proponents of the law of non-contradiction, read In Contradiction or Doubt Truth to Be a Liar. Beyond the Limits of Thought is also really fun metaphilosophy/history of philosophy.
Agreed! Graham Priest is awesome. I would suggest reading In Contradiction or the relevant sections in his Introduction to Non-Classical Logic first. Doubt Truth to Be a Liar would be a difficult introduction to Priest's thought as I read this book to answer the question 'what does it mean?' rather than 'how?' Doubt does begin with an interesting interpretation of Aristotle's Prior Analytics that may be of interest.
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Hogwarts Phiosophy Of Muggle Studies, Other (F15) Rejected via Postal Service on 10 Jan 2015 I 10 Jan 2015
I'm surprised it lasted this long this year before there was a response from Hogwarts.
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I'm done with all but Oxford. Which program decides next week, Brett?
I for one am busier than I'd like to be right now.
Ohio State's Econ program. They've made a reputation for themselves as the first Econ program to send out offers each year. Unfortunately, they do not announce funding decisions (pretty much everyone is funded) until February.
I still have other applications, so I'm only done with the US. As much as I want to be done with the process, I'm really glad to have my mind occupied by everything I have left to do for at least the next week or so.
I noticed that some programs outside the US (mostly in Europe) have deadlines in March and April. I'm waiting to apply to those until I see how I fare with the programs that have made announcements before the end of February.
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I sincerely regret putting in a good bit of time to forecast when decisions will be released for each of my programs. The first one is next week and I'm anxious!
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When is the earliest you all are expecting to hear back? This obviously assumes that the notification dates of previous years are reliable guides to the future. I have one school around January 13th and a handful of others about the same time in February.
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As long as it's footnotes, I don't really care. If you use endnotes, you are what is wrong with the world.
Agreed!
I used Chicago Notes style since early in undergrad. This past Fall, two places requested that I use Author-Date style. After I adjusted, I find footnotes distracting when there are at least a half-dozen or so on a page. When I use Author-Date, I find myself citing the same work a lot less too.
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Wow, look at Phil Math/Logic! I recall Ethics and specifically Metaethics being much more popular AOI last year.
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Being honest can backfire.
Dishonest strategizing can backfire.
1. If being honest backfired, I might regret my failure to be strategic, but I wouldn't regret my honesty. (1 regret)
2. If dishonest strategizing backfired, I would regret strategizing and regret being dishonest. (2 regrets)
3. If being honest benefited me, I would not regret it. (0 regrets)
4. If dishonest strategizing benefited me, I might regret being dishonest. (0-1 regret)
I'll take honesty.
Fair enough, but I took it as what was under discussion wasn't whether to be honest or dishonest. Instead, it was to omit or include the relevant information. One could hold that the omission is equivalent to dishonesty. If that's the case, consider a different example. With Carnegie Mellon's app (I believe), you can list only 5 other programs. Suppose you is applying to 10 programs. Which 5 should you list? This is more of what I had in mind.
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i think it depends on the rarity of your specialty within the department and in general. if you work on a field where a department likely has multiple people working in that field, then maybe keeping it blank makes sense, but when you have a sub specialty were even finding an appropriate faculty among departments requires doing some homework, then it can be to your advantage to write a name down.
Agreed. I've spent a good bit of time thinking about the 'Other schools you're applying to' box. It signals at least two things. First, the quality of the schools listed may indicate how the student evaluates themselves against their peers. Second, the school may use the information to act strategically. Suppose you're on an admissions committee of a lower ranked school with poor funding. An applicant has an amazing profile but is also applying to several top ranked programs with better funding. Should this particular applicant be admitted, potentially taking up a spot and pushing other students onto the waitlist? In light of this, I left it blank in all but two cases.
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I read this as "The Logic of Cold Drunk People" I imagine one would get the same results.
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How is How to Prove It ? I know it doesn't require much of a math background, but how much of a logic background is too much for the book to be useful?
How to Prove It is well written textbook that is comparable to several in the Bridge to Advanced Mathematics niche. If you haven't gone through the material on relations, functions, and infinity (i.e. cardinality) before, I would suggest doing so. It will provide a nice foundation for approaching other mathematics in the future.
The second question is difficult to answer. If one has only taken undergraduate logic courses at a level lower than The Logic Book or has not taken a proof based Math course, then it is worth glancing through these sections. Philosophy and Math tend to approach logic differently and, in some sense, Philosophy is more formal (deductions literally have no content).
I additionally suggest More Precisely by Steinhart. This is an excellent introduction to mathematics in philosophy and should be required reading IMHO.
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I'm reading Choices by Michael Resnik. I am planning to finish Book 3 of Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Despite its many flaws, it's an enjoyable read.
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The typical answer is 'take math classes through the math department!' Given what I've read, it is unlikely that you will be competitive at higher ranked Masters programs. With this being said, a lot turns on what kind of graduate program you are applying to and what you want to do afterward: professional then industry, academic then Phd, etc. It's difficult to offer advise otherwise.
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Their application page looks like it was made in the 80s.
Ohio State's is equally terrible. At some point in the past, they added an additional form for supplemental materials, CV, transcripts, etc, but did not bother to mention this on the application.
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I guess I should say where I am: I've submitted my applications. I finished my sample a few weeks ago, and my statements of purpose a bit after that. I have a few letters that need submitting, but they have plenty of time
I'm in much of the same boat, except I have to wait until Dec 22 to send out most of my current transcripts so they will contain my Fall grades.
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Differences in interpreting the uses of decision theory in ethics/political philosophy.
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This may be of interest: http://heterodoxnews.com/hed/graduate/
It's a list of heterodox graduate economics programs. Once you open the link, just ctlf+f 'marx'
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Here are some significant results from an ols regression with a PGR Top 20 Acceptance as the dependent variable. There's not enough data for the interesting things to work like SOP and writing sample topics.
Variable DF Parameter Estimate Standard Error t Value Pr > |t|
e_sel_sel 1 -0.42592 0.20732 -2.05 0.0459
urep_t50 1 -0.46770 0.26485 -1.77 0.0843
mino 1 0.33844 0.16598 2.04 0.0475
exp_rel 1 0.49385 0.19707 2.51 0.0160
gr_gpa_80to89 1 -0.57997 0.23284 -2.49 0.0166
Here's the interpretation:
- Relative to a very selective undergraduate uni, by attending a selective school one is ~40% less likely to get a T20 PGR acceptance.
- Relative to attending a Top 20 undergrad uni, by attending a school ranked 35-50 one is ~45% less likely to get in.
- Relative to not being a minority, by being a minority one is ~30% more likely to get in.
- Relative to have no relevant experience, by having relevant experience one is ~50% more likely to get in.
- Relative to a grad GPA between 4.0 and 3.9, one is ~55% less likely to get in with a grad GPA between 3.8 and 3.89.
No others were significant, unfortunately. Are there any other dependent variables anyone would like me to look at?
Edit: resolving formatting problems
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Can someone provide a list of the Continental Graduate programs that will be reflected in the admissions data?
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Hi Ian, I wanted to thank you for all that you've done! I'm going to take a good look at it over the weekend and think about what possible statistical models one could apply. I'm thinking it would be useful to use a probit regression with the dependent variable being either a specific uni with a several observations (Pitt, Cornell, etc.) or PGR top 20. This would shed some light on the analytic/continental question. If anyone's interested in this type of thing, then let me know and I'll work on cleaning the dataset and creating a dictionary.
Funding for Flyouts?
in Philosophy
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CMU funds visits.