Establishment

Damn, this sounds rad. I want to apply even though I already have an MA in philosophy.

I know you didn't ask me, but adjuncting is kind of fucked if you want to make a living. Universities seem to have in place a max amount of courses you can teach, between two and three in my experience. This is perhaps due to the ACA. They'd have to offer you benefits if you started to teach more. Which means you're going to have to find two to three, at least, universities to teach at, and hope that you can in future years still get 5 courses that don't overlap with each other. That lack of job security is probably the worst. I'm adjuncting and am only teaching one course granted, so I haven't experienced the above, but that seems to be the way things would play out. In regards to the original post, I'm actually going to law school in the fall, this was sort of my fallback plan (although I made the choice to not apply out at my MA). But I'd forgotten just how much I love teaching philosophy. In addition to trying to adjunct in the city where I go to law school, I honestly won't be surprised if I apply out for a PhD either after my JD, or after working for a few years. (I sort of regret not taking the PhD offer I had out of undergrad...)

I considered myself lucking if I ever even received a rejection notice.

It'll depend on the program. I've heard the NIU exams are incredibly difficult. My understanding is that one takes three exams over different areas, and no one has ever passed all three exams in their first try, and that it takes two or three sittings. On the other hand, exams at certain other MA programs are fairly trivial. EDIT: Looking at the NIU website, their MA requirements seem to say differently (one exam, two chances to pass). So maybe they've changed it recently.

Considering that increasingly more students are being admitted with an MA, one might even argue (and some professors have publicly remarked as such), that MA's are becoming and will eventually become almost a required step.

That sounds like the PhD advisor is (relatively) old. The philosophy job market is not what it used to be just a few decades ago, where it wasn't uncommon for a student to get a BA and PhD from the same place and then go off to some nice university with a TT position.

Because their best paper was written for an ancient class? Maybe they didn't take an ethics class, or the class covered topics they weren't specifically interested in and so they didn't have a paper they were really excited about. All the advice I've seen is to simply send in your best philosophy paper. If that's in a different area, then no one is going to look askew at it. It'd be way too weird and nitpicky to do so.

Don't for the love of God go to an unranked PhD program if your career desires are to enter into academia.

It's really just the age old intuition of: trust your gut, which I've actually seen people recommend regarding grad. school. If you attend two different places, and just really feel at home at one place and not the other... you should give a lot of credence to that feel, even if there's nothing on which you can justify that feeling (that is, it's not like professors were distant at program b but really nice at program a...)

Not at all worth it if it's for-profit, and therefore means you're paying for it. It's not different from UChicago's cash cow MA program for it's rejections. Don't go into debt for graduate school. Particularly for some illegitimate cash cow program.

I randomly looked at UMichigan's placement since 2005. They've placed one person who was offered/is currently TT at a top-30 program. This is normal. Welcome to the philosophy job market.

Don't accept earlier than you need to. The more interesting case is turning down a program you already accepted after the April 15th deadline. Although it's not ideal, no one would blame you for accepting say an admission to U Nebraska on April 15th, and then getting off the NYU waitlist on April 20th, and asking Nebraska for a release.

I'll have to disagree re: MLK, and that he was: "in fact very well versed in what students of analytic philosophy consider philosophy." His letter talks about the distinction between just and unjust laws, but this doesn't mean any familiarity with the philosophical literature of legal positivism and natural law (and no, I don't think quoting Augustine on a pretty famous point, one that anyone who studied theology had to have come across anyways, is any appropriate indication) in the same way that when some Western hippie talks about "we're all just one," I don't think he's familiar with Parmenides. Now, if there's any evidence of him reading Hart, or writing a paper on Augustine's view of the law, then that's a different story. Excluding that, I don't see how Ian's example of MLK is a wash. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail doesn't indicate to me that he is in any way a philosopher in the sense that academic philosophers use the term.

Syracuse the last two years is looking scary, so you might want to ask people there what's going on. But on the whole, they (and Connecticut too) seem to be getting a number of VAP's and tenure track positions in philosophy that the LSE isn't. I've also heard the outside (and even still from) Oxford, employment prospects from U.K. institutions isn't as strong as prospects from American ones.

I would nope the fuck away from Temple. All they have regarding their placement record is a blurb and no real data. ("At present there are over 35 Temple Ph.D.s teaching in universities around the world...")

If this is actually true, that sounds pretty immoral.

I'm actually going to go against the grain here. I think attending an MA program that has courses you'll be able to learn new material from, and be interested in, is a lot more important than a thesis/non-thesis option. You're going to be taking around twelve courses over your two years. Your thesis/non-thesis is basically one-twelfth of that, as it's one course your final semester (if you replace one of your regular classes with a thesis writing/exam prep. course). Additionally, I know the culture at NIU is not to do the thesis option, but the exam option there is incredibly challenging, and they are nevertheless incredibly successful at placement. So sure, all things being equal, do a thesis over non-thesis. But that's not the case here, and I'd worry about over privileging thesis/non-thesis.

I think what's most important is the reaction that faculty members will have, which is an empirical question. Contra above, from the number of people I've known who have transferred out after one or two years from an MA/PhD program, they've all had positive reactions from their professors. Obviously if you go in day one talking down the school and your peers, acting as though you deserve to be at a higher ranked PGR program with smarter peers and professors... then you'll burn some bridges. Otherwise, I haven't heard of anything happening. So my advice, is to ask your professors, how they would react to a student wanting to transfer out, and what their suggestions are on how to handle this. (I've known some students who went in day 1 and told professors they were ultimately looking to transfer out after two years, and received the department's full support in doing so. I've also known students who "held their cards", and instead a year later told the department that they felt they would be better suited at a different department)

I'm all for PGR prestige, but even I would say it would not make sense to turn down your PhD options for an MA. There's nothing stopping you from attending your PhD programs, and applying out after two years. I have known many people to have done so. In fact, transferring out from a PGR graduate program will probably do a lot better for your application than a terminal MA. Worst case scenario, you don't get in anywhere. But then you're still at a good PhD program, and not with an MA and no where to go. Also, at this point, you should be more concerned with the placement records than PGR prestige. How's placement at your program? How's it specific for people with your interest and with the faculty members you are interested in? If placement is poor, then only then does it make sense to transfer out (and it probably only makes sense if they're just as strong a fit. You don't want to go somewhere with a higher placement if you can't do what you enjoy).

The attitude is justified in that for years and years there are hundreds of new PhDs. 50 PGR programs (doesn't cut close to the amount of programs there are), 5 students admitted each year (let's say, average might be higher), that's (ignoring attrition), 250 new PhD's a year. There aren't 250 new jobs each year in academia. And it's not just those 250 who are applying for those <250 jobs. There's the remainder of PhD's who from the previous year and the previous year and the previous yer and so on who are applying for those <250 jobs. Previous discussions online regarding this by professors on Leiter Reports and Philosophy Smoker have had many people believe that it is borderline immoral to encourage students today to pursue graduate study in philosophy. Regarding the actual evidence, there's: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2015/02/pedigree-matters-and-prospective-students-are-entitled-to-know.htmlThere's your link, which recognizes that the PGR can explain, "a little over half of the placement." No one's expecting a 1:1 correlation. There's previous discussions regarding hiring practices, such that more and more work is expected of you in order to make up for attending a less prestigious program. That is, those from top-10 programs can get good hires without any publication history, whereas the further down out of the top-10 you fall, the more you have to prove yourself with a publication history (which you have to do while focusing on your own coursework and dissertation work at your PhD program). Like Ian said, it's a bit hyperbolic, it's a bit reductionistic, but there are strong motivations behind the advice.

At least as recent as 2008, "an annual stipend of approximately $20,500 together with some summer support."

I've been told by professors to not even bother going to grad school outside of the top-20 if you want a job, given the competitiveness.

Check to see what courses have been offered in the past and how they align with your interests. I thought some MA programs looked nice based on faculty, but saw that the courses I wanted to take hadn't been offered in the past whereas at others they were being offered on a regular basis (for example, some MA programs only offered very basic logic classes, and others regularly offered some advanced stuff, despite the fact all the places had competent logicians). Check placement records, in particular placement records correlated with thesis advisors or interests. Does one program excel in placing students in meta-ethics, and another in Kantian philosophy? Find out from current students what it's like working with the professors you are interested in. Are they difficult to work with, or absent? Nthing to find out what sort of things school do to set students up for PhD programs. I've heard that at one MA program, most students do not write a thesis but take an exam option (which takes up a lot of their time). Which means they have to write a writing sample on their own. I've heard at another MA program that a thesis is required in order to apply out. I've heard at another MA program that there are writing workshops set up for students to write a good writing sample. If you're disciplined enough this might not matter. If you're not, then this might be important.

According to Kukla from Georgetown (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/masters-degrees-postdocs-and-the-hyperprofessionalization-of-philosophy-kukla.html), "the large majority of the people we admitted [in 2013] had some graduate training already," and that there is a, "hefty – and I think growing – percentage of the students we admit are coming out of terminal MA programs." I think it'll vary from school to school and year to year. I think USCD had a year where like everyone they admitted came from GSU, other schools might rarely admit MA students that one might think they were biased against them. Matt Bauer's figure might be a safe average, albeit one that has been and will probably continue to increase. Here's one ranking (http://www.philosophynews.com/image.axd?picture=%2f2013%2f10%2fMAplacement_14.png) (from: http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/10/20/Graduate-School-in-Philosophy-Terminal-MA-Programs-In-Philosophy.aspx) of PhD programs based on percentage of admitted students with MA's. I have no idea how accurate it is though. Georgetown is relatively low on the list despite Kukla's report. UCSD and UCR are high however, which I would expect. These to me seem to admit a lot of MA students.

1) Won't ever happen. 2) If anything, I imagine if you're applying as a graduate student from a good US PhD program, that'll look better than if you were applying out as just an undergrad from a UK university. (I don't know if there's any preferential treatment for those in the UK already, but even if so, that would be offset by the fact that you were admitted and are attending a grad. program and will thus be a bit better trained) 3) I don't think know about expectations, but I think it'd be best to get letters from at least both places. US programs should be fine. I knew a guy who transferred one year into his program to another program, and he was able to acquire some nice letters from h is current program.