Glasperlenspieler

"How much longer before you get a real job?"
My response: "How long before you spend some time thinking seriously and carefully about something for once in your life?"

Am I just too Catholic? because I legit cannot take the courting. It makes me want to jump into the sewer and never come out. 

Prescriptivist here. I don't think there's anything incompatible with being a prescriptivist and advocating for the singular use of "they." There's a positive use behind such a change. What prescriptivists are opposed to are unnecessary or degenerative changes to language. For example, losing the subjunctive in subjunctive cases: I wish I were at the party --> I was I was at the party.  Or, losing subtle distinctions between words that provide the richness in our language which are lost if we muddle and conflate words together: From Funk & Wagnalls "Difficult is not used of that which merely taxes physical force; a dead lift is called hard rather than difficult; breaking stone on the road would be called hard rather than difficult work; that is difficult which involves skills, sagacity, or address, with or without a considerable expenditure of physical force; a geometrical problem may be difficult to solve, a tangled skein to unravel; a mountain difficult to ascend."

bt l0l l@ngge b wt 1t b3, l3ts n0 grmmr.

I usually alternate between he and she in my academic writing. It seems weird to me to use one or the other exclusively, and the singular "they" still weirds me out (I'll come around, one day...).

I'm currently doing this after having been shut out, and I can't recommend it highly enough. I'm actually planning on doing a second year if all goes well and hopefully I can get in somewhere next time around. The only downfall is that for programs in most countries that speak a major language (French, Spanish, German, etc.), you will already need an intermediate level knowledge of the language to be accepted.

Howdy everyone,
My name is Jac and I'm taking over the philosophy admissions blog for the 2016 season. I'll be posting predictions within the next couple of days. Similar to the previous predictions, I will be making them by averaging most, if not all, of the release dates made in the past four years. Sometimes if it seems that there is a significant outlier or if there seems to be a different or significant pattern--such as releasing on a specific day of the week or never on the weekends---I will disregard a data point or take into account the closest relevant day. Since the data is so limited, outliers are a bit hard to determine. Hopefully over time though, we'll have collected enough data to make predictions better. 
You can check the blog out here: philosophyadmissions.wordpress.com 
I will be updating everything for the 2016 season shortly. 
Once admissions start to roll in, I will be pretty active on gradcafe.com and the blog. If any of you all need anything at all, please feel free to contact me here on gradcafe.com, by email personally at jacbarcan at yahoo dot com, or by email to the three of us (Ian, Sid, and Jac) at philosophyadmissionsblog at gmail dot com. 
Best of luck to everyone. I hope to see some of you on the other side soon. 
-Jac

The Committee on Social Thought in an independent PhD granting program at the University of Chicago. So to be admitted, you need to apply directly to the program, and unfortunately the deadline was December 15th (admissions details here)
That being said, there is also a philosophy and social thought joint program. So, for example, if you were admitted to the philosophy program, you could then apply to the joint program during your second year (see here).
 

Both the original article and this piece are incredibly under fire for huge methodological errors. Whether you agree with Leiter or not, the article and this response are filled with manufactured data from nowhere.

It's funny. There was a moment at one of my interview weekends last year when one of the current students was driving me and another prospective around. To make conversation, he asked what we would be doing if we weren't headed off to study medieval lit, if we chucked it all and did something wild and crazy. That moment's stuck with me a lot, because I'm a (slightly) older student who went to college to major in Medieval Studies at 28, leaving a perfectly successful career in restaurant work to pursue academia. Which is to say: this is it. This is my chuck it all to do something wild and crazy, work as a florist or own a bookstore or move out to the country and run an orchard.
I'm living my dream, man!

Because the QS rankings are not compiled by philosophers. The PGR is the only ranking that reflects philosophers' perceptions. It has a number of limitations, some serious, but it's definitely the best one around. The real problem is that prospective students take it as a gospel ordinal ranking of departments with clear-cut differences between tranches, or clear correlations to job outcomes. It's not. It's just a tool to help students identify research concentrations and reputation.
 
Yes, but that includes four English-speaking non-US countries, and it's actually pretty clear that the rankings do those programs something of a disservice, especially as far as the "overall" category goes. It's quite common to hear proponents of the PGR admitting, for example, that Canadian departments should have about .3 added to their scores to get a better sense of how they'd compare to their American counterparts.

No. It puts the faculty member in a really weird place if the faculty member wrote the letter intending for you to not read it (as expected). If they say no to your request, then it will could make it look like you don't trust that they wrote a good letter. If they say yes, then they would be doing so because saying no is awkward and it may annoy them that they felt the pressure to say yes when they didn't want to. There's no good way for it to end, in my opinion.
I think that if the faculty member wanted you to see the letter, then they would have showed it to you. Let them initiate.
I do agree with you that there is value in a "debrief" of sorts after you finish your degree program where you can find out your strong and weak points. However, this does not require you to read their letter of recommendation. Instead, you can just set up a time, just before you leave the school, to talk with your letter writer and ask them what they think are your strengths and weaknesses. Don't surprise them with this---make sure you ask them well ahead of time and make it clear that you are hoping to get feedback on how to improve as a philosopher before you leave your undergrad school! You should give them time to think about it between your meeting request and the meeting.
Note: You may not be able to do this with all of your letter writers---depending on how well they know you and how invested they are in your success. For some of my best mentors, they initiated this conversation near the end of my time with them and it's advice that have helped me a lot as I transitioned to grad school.  I'm just saying that this is a big commitment on their part, so you can't necessarily expect it from everyone.
Finally, I would say that this type of conversation is far more useful to you than being able to read the letter. This allows for a dialogue rather than the monologue of the letter. In addition, the letters are usually overly hyped, in that positive attributes are often presented enthusiastically and it should be a glowing endorsement. While it's nice to read such nice things, reading only glowing endorsements do not help you grow and improve. A conversation with your mentors/advisors can address small but important weak points that aren't usually put into a glowing letter of recommendation.

1Q84 was giving very sound advice that folks should only attend fully funded PhD programs. This response isn't warranted or even relevant to the conversation. 
(Eta: to clarify, I'm not speaking as a moderator here.)

Thanks for the responses! I'm glad to see there's enough interest in aesthetics/philosophy of art on these boards to spark a disagreement. You're certainly right in suggesting that these figures are probably not representative of mainstream contemporary philosophical aesthetics (whether that says more about contemporary aesthetics or these figures, I'm not sure!). In truth the list I provided probably betrays more my peculiar interests than any impartial evaluation. As someone very interested in the intersection of German philosophy and philosophy of art, these are the sorts of programs I'm planning on applying to next season after (hopefully) another year teaching abroad. In particular, I'm drawn to approaches that blur the line between literary/art/film criticism and philosphy, something these individuals do rather adeptly in my view. 
So while these programs may not be in mainstream (not that anything in philosophy of art is), given the OP's stated preference for continental/historical perspectives, they are probably worth considering if the OP has a similar interests to me.

Since we are going way off topic (my favorite pass time!), I wanna respond to bhr's comment about grammar being 10th on the list of priorities. Spoken like a true compositionist! And I agree. But I sometimes think that our field, in its attempt to prioritize ideas over punctuation, forgets that style is an important canon and a rhetorical function. Writing instruction that teaches grammar in isolation? Ineffective. Writing institution that teaches grammar as a stylistic and argumentative strategy? Effective. I have taken some composition pedagogy classes, and they have all been so strongly "we don't teach grammar!" that when I started actually teaching, I had no idea how to approach teaching style. I read telkanura's post less about grammar (this is right and this is wrong) and more about style (academia prefers concise, direct syntax*). (*I don't know if that is universally valid.)

The first thing that comes to mind is reading more academic papers. The more academic work you read, the better able to mimic their style, tone, ways of argumentation, etc. The second is that you might want to consider forming or joining a writing group where you can exchange writing with peers and get feedback more informally. Seeing how others write can also help you see weaknesses in your own writing. 

Oh no, I also very much think it's fine--and good, and useful--for discussions to evolve! This has become, I think, I really interesting conversation; I didn't mean to suggest that we needed to restrict ourselves to the OP's question.
 
But the two aren't unrelated. You'd said that advanced electives didn't belong in the high school curriculum, but that was in the context of your suggesting an alternate structure for it. A quick clarification, then, as we move from the ideal to the actual: given that we do unfortunately have four full required years of high school and not the targeted, shorter, "basic knowledge for a few years and then let people progress to college level work more quickly if it makes sense for them" system you proposed, and given that while you may think I would have benefited from a true early-entrance opportunity it wasn't available to me financially outside of the public schools, do you still think Latin (assuming it's not replacing a spoken language like Spanish) is categorically inappropriate at the high school level in the system we actually have now, and not in an ideal one?
 
I guess I'm still thinking about having to take Making a Budget IV my senior year instead of German, or IB chemistry, or art history, and shuddering. 
 
For what it's worth, the The National Council of State Supervisors for Languages's paper on the rationale for foreign language study mentions more reasons for foreign language study than just the promotion of communication with target language speakers--although that is certainly one of them.

I don't know if any of those will help because I started early and kind of led a "traditional" path.
 
The advice I received as a sophomore, being interested in going to grad school, was to see if I kept having reason to go further. I got good grades, so I started talking with professors. They encouraged me and gave me opportunities to research with them or TA for them. That worked out well, so I started sending papers to UG conferences, I got accepted to those, so I started applying for academic programs within my university, sending to UG journals, etc. That worked out so my professors were inclined to nominate me for university wide awards, and so on. I took it one step at a time, and every time something worked out I saw that as a reason to take it another step forward. The same professors also advised me that I need to figure when my quit date is before I started applying to graduate schools and I decided two years. I'd apply the first year, if I didn't get in anywhere, I'd tweak some aspects of my application and apply a second year. Shut out again? Then that's it. If I make it through my program, I'll have the same two year cut off for jobs. I think it's important to know when you're going to quit and move on with your life. 

What's been going on in the English subforum lately? I've been following along and it's just sniping, sarcasm, and sometimes flatout vitriol. Even once gentle posters have seemed to take a turn for the nastier....
 
I know we all don't have the luxury of a summer break, but put down the mouse, take a break, and go sit in the sun with an iced coffee or something. 

So, it actually matters which one you are? I'm guessing that you are the one that believes in free-market liberalism, and am going to taylor my response to that. 

IN THEORY, a dissenting voice--if it engages critically and fruitfully with the existing canon--will not be shut down. If you can read Marx and respond to Marx in such a way as to respect the ways in which critique grows out of Marx, while simultaneously showing how this is better served by a different approach, you will provide a good (and perhaps necessary) reminder to scholars that they cannot take their political positions for granted. (Sorta like Nozick in philosophy). So, in theory, no, you shouldn't have a problem. You are all adults.

On the other hand, if your resistance to certain strains of political criticism is unsophisticated and stubborn, or you do not put your objections (however incisive they may be) in terms that appreciate your advisor's work, then you will find yourself in social/intellectual hot water.  I think that this case is a little more difficult than it would be otherwise because, to my mind, so much of how we do political criticism in literary studies is indebted to a conception of social relations that is marxist. In other words, I kind of don't see how you do what Adorno or Fred Jameson does without granting them their marxism. Perhaps a free-market approach to this subject would be very useful (it'd show how this kind of interpretive move does not need a marxist metaphysics behind it), but there's a good amount of heavy-lifting to get there. 

However, I would also add: Assume you are all adults and maturely able to handle dissenting opinions, until it is otherwise proven. If you are that concerned with the difference, you should email your advisor and talk about your concerns. I think you'll be fine, to be honest, but if there is going to be any kind of MAJOR PERSONALITY DIFFERENCE, you need to know that ASAP, so you can plan your time in your PhD accordingly. 

I made this video for people applying this fall: https://youtu.be/lam9E1JR5lQ

I, um, echo echo449.
 
This whole discussion, like all the million identical ones, is pretty much an anxious/doubtful/defensive feels-party. I understand the impulse towards it, and I don't ever slight people for involvement in it, but there's just no real point. If this--confusion over pursuing a terminal degree-- is the central problem you face, I hate to (be the 19th person to) break it to you, but you are not a member of the genuinely downtrodden in this world.
 
You sound seriously goofy when you seem to compare yourself to people who are stuck in inescapable cycles of economic oppression with no resources and no support. Everyone already knows there's an enormous problem with the American college educational system and enormous problems with job availability and security. As a result, "advice" bits that demonize academia always come off like excuses to vent embitterment. And the blogs and articles about it just make the authors look... sad and pouty and privileged.
 
Nobody on the application end needs to be informed of the job issue (or further convinced of it) "for his/her own good," because if he/she is seriously considering applying, he/she already knows. Or he/she will have someone closeby in the field tell him/her soon... because he/she is not actually getting admitted to a program without supportive letter writers... and a supportive letter writer would certainly offer that information. The grievance that I believe isn't real-- and yes, I mean I believe it's imagined and alleged-- is the part that suggests academia is an unstoppable machine of misinformation and systemized, intentional deception of students. In my own experience, nothing has been further from the truth. All professors and advisors have shot completely straight with me and helped me to work out my decisions in the context of clear facts. If some individual students were completely misled or kept in the dark about the job situation in academia by the professors and advisors that surrounded them in early college years, the bone they have to pick is with those professors (and I'd like to know where these wildly neglectful or cruel and twistedly motivated folks are. If the schools we're talking about are good, reputable schools, then which ones are they? They're not the ones I've attended or visited, and I can vouch for that. This kind of concrete clarification would be worlds more useful to a prospective applicant.) Those aggrieved should stop generalizing this bizarre deception to the entirety of college faculty and go confront whoever managed somehow to blindfold them from reality. Additionally, if a current/prospective applicant doesn't research enough to know the full state of the job market before he/she applies, or simply refuses to believe the job market is a real problem, then maybe it's an issue of not being too concerned, or having different job plans. If it's not a case of different plans, then frankly he/she deserves the surprise coming later. Life and making a living (in any field) is about educating yourself, making the best decisions possible, and then taking what comes.
 
It's easy to get sucked into this spiral on a mental level, and it feels falsely productive to hash it out over and over. I had a professor intervene in one such spiral of my own and offer the only advice that's ever truly useful here, IMO... If the research and writing and learning is important enough to you-- if you're really, consistently passionate enough about it-- for that alone to truly justify the time and effort of pursuing the degree, and if you can live knowing that the professional outcome is uncertain and will simply be what it'll be, then do the Ph.D. If not, don't.
 
If you think you'd ultimately regret spending ~7 years reading and writing and studying were it not to get you a tenure-track job, don't do it. If you need a guarantee of a certain type of job to feel that those ~7 years would be truly worth it, don't do it. If (the likely outcome of) graduating from a program only to be shoved into a faceless teeming crowd of Ph.D.s fighting for drastically fewer jobs than there are people would make you feel bitter and taken advantage of, don't do it. If anxiety about future finances is a debilitating thing for you, don't do it, and for the sake of your mental health go into a field with more job certainty. If you have staked your sense of self-worth on a longterm academic position and would never feel successful as a human were that not to materialize, don't do it, reconsider the odds you're relying on, and choose a different goal accordingly. If the amount of teaching you'd be taking on as a graduate instructor in order to receive funding during your Ph.D. work would make you resent the system and feel that you were crushed beneath the heel of a soulless master, don't do it, and seek out a different offer. If a school you'd like to go to (for a Ph.D. or an MA) doesn't offer you funding throughout your degree work, don't do it -- go to a different school that offers full funding/a liveable stipend. ...Unless you can afford it through independent means and you've got your heart set on it and you're entirely sure it's worth it to you.
 
As hokey as it sounds, time spent at this level of education should justify itself as a means for personal development and enrichment. It's a commitment beyond simple financial terms-- it's a decision about a big fat chunk of your life-- and if the practical cons compromise it being a good self-actualization path for you, then it's up to you to know that for yourself. If you were to get the degree the day before all colleges suddenly ceased to exist, would you count it as a waste and wish you could have your ~7 years back? If so, don't do it. Personally, I'd be grateful that I'd had the distinctly first-world opportunity to spend ~7 adult years dwelling on the literature that I love and the ideas that fascinate me, and I'd put a bow on it and start searching for a different career. (I'll qualify that by saying I have no direct dependents and enough of a family safety net that I wouldn't be left immediately to starve if absolutely no jobs in any field presented themselves... and maybe that qualification is one to check for.) Having finished my master's, I feel that way about the 3 years I spent doing that regardless of where it goes from here...and if I have a change of heart about all this when faced with the pressure of the Ph.D. (which I highly doubt), then that's on me.
 
Many, many career fields are uncertain now in terms of job availability. The economy sucks. The government's handling/budgeting of education sucks and has for a good long while, but so do a lot of other things. All careers, especially those pertaining to the humanities, involve a lot of gross bureaucracy and competition and an abstract system that doesn't always regard you as an individual human. But it's your life, and if doing Ph.D. work and having a Ph.D. would make you happy, all possibilities considered, then do it. I want very much to be a professor-- that's my preference-- and I'd like to stay in academia, but I wouldn't do this unless I was okay with the chance that I'd have to look outside of tenure-track positions to make a living (and there are plenty of good and worthwhile non-academic jobs out there). And unless some harsh, larger set of circumstances dictated it, I definitely wouldn't adjunct and live under the poverty line for 5-10 years before I flew the coop and got a decent-paying job at a high school or think tank or non-profit or publication or community college or library or tutoring center or arts coalition. Some people just desperately need to drop the entitlement, see a counselor, accept that they've been in charge of their own decisions, and learn to cope better with life.
 
 
Pardon the essay, folks.   You're all smart people (as you already know) and I think we're all going to survive, one way or another.

Oh my goodness. I just got off the waitlist at Pitt. I'm total disbelief, but I'm absolutely thrilled.

I only applied to one program this year. 
 
I had been shutout from all the schools I applied in two years of applying, so this year I only applied to my best chance/fit. This gave me time to really tailor my application to Maryland's department. Plus, I really couldn't put myself through the process of applying to tons of programs and being rejected again.
 
It paid off in the end. I was accepted to Maryland this afternoon.

Heads up, USTA Austria has already started choosing alternates! I was given the alternate notification on April 3rd and was given my assignment yesterday. That was really quick but I can't complain haha. Looks like I'll be in Leoben next year

Awesome, Katla.
 
Not sure if you're a used bookstore lover like I am, but Elliott Bay Book Company is a great used/new bookstore in downtown Seattle (close to the Space Needle, too). Plus you have the famous Powell's Books down in Portland, as well as my personal favorite used bookstore, Henderson's, two hours north in Bellingham. I've never found a bookstore remotely close to the quality of those three places on the east coast (save for Strand Books in NYC, but that goes without saying).