MorganFreemanlives

How interesting that what some posted as bad others posted as first. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT.

if you can explain for example a personal reason why a long distance program was ideal for you, like family obligation, distance issues ect, an you do really well, then im sure the reviewers of your application will be a lot more sympathetic. as for being open to applying this late , i woudnt take it as too alarming. the UK system simply cannot fund everyone who applies so its not like they have a finite amount of people they can fund, so they must choose in advance. over there, even in schools like cambridge and oxford, funding is a privilege and not an expectation so the admission/funding situation is different. first you get accepted and then you must prove how you will fund it, out of pocket or by scholarship. in their defense, their programs are a lot cheaper out of pocket than here in the states if you get accepted without funding, hence we say that in the states that if they dont fund you, they might as not want you. even in the UK though, the universities commit their scholarships in january-april so if they do accept afterwards i woudnt get my hopes up in terms of funding even if you are an amazing student since more often than not, they already ran out.

ediburgh is an interesting place to do philosophy. i have a soft spot for their program because 1. if you really know what you are doing, you can get the ph.d in 3 years,by doing well the first year at the m.phil an immediately transferring as a 2nd year ph.d student. and 2. one of my fav philosphers, Timothy Sprigge was a professor there. the online masters is a new thing and unfortunately, i wount recommend it unless as a last resort or if you simply want a master's for some other non graduate purpose. the problem is, philosophy is seen and with good reason best done with close interaction among its members, even if you do well in this master's it may raise a red flag as to why you chose a program of this type as opposed to a regular program which is unfortunate. if you like, apply to it as a safety school if you are not willing to wait another year doing nothing.

i will switch places with you anytime. miami is hell on earth, and im hispanic , cant stand the heat and culture. I would rather be where the white man has properly conquered ( LOL i kid , i kid you folks take yourselves and your thumbs way too seriously ) as for U of miami, it is a great place for pragmatism, virtue ethics and a few other specialists. they also have Susan Haack but with Mcginn now gone, who knows how its upcoming ranking in the gourmet will be. my institution being so close to UM (if you are a south floridian i prob already gave it away) and a few of my professors UM graduates, they have told me that unfortunately, their grad school culture is a bit apathetic to job placement as opposed to other universities which try to help you in the job hunt. many of their graduates end up being adjuncts or instructors at miami dade college. still if you t like the heat, cuban bread, pragmatism, and a decent 20k stipend, then i coudnt think of a better place.

Very juicy information indeed for 4 i wonder what constitutes relevant experience. my department has begun offering the top majors a chance to have tutoring sessions for students in intro to philosophy/intro to ethics. im delighted to have this privilege for its own sake, but if it can further aid my applications then im truly in joy. as for 5, i wonder if this supports the theory that many grad schools usually have a bias agaisnt ma students (as in they require much more of you to be equally impressive). maybe its just me but if you try to translate the 3.8-3.9 vs 3.9-4.0 comparison for undergrad applicants, a 55 percent advantage sounds off even accounting the difficulty of philosophy admissions. i guess the moral of the lesson is to try to get to the best place you can directly from undergrad if possible to be safe.

this will prob depend from university from university. while most of the british universities want to see an M.phil before a ph.d/d.phil, they do make exceptions if you have solid transcript and solid research experience. to add to the confusion, in the UK Ma are taught postgrad degrees while m.phil are research postgrad degrees. if your BA ha a good gpa and good coursework, then that will mean they will be more likely to take your MA more serious methinks. either way your best bet is to email departments your specific situation an get an answer from them.

im glad this is finally up but the format the information is presented in is pretty bad. here are some things im hoping to extract from the info 1.how significant is URM status 2. how many folks from unknown schools got into top places 3.did publishing show any pattern of helping an application

i believe you but i hope you are right. my primary specialty (british idealism) as it is is quite rare, but once you look for POI by considering leiter's top 50 and decent ma programs(which excludes specialists in non graduate school universities, retired faculty, and low ranking places) i have only found two perfect fits, one at oxford and another at ryerson university canada. as the application season begins, i just might message the one at oxford on a few questions. i have contacted faculty in my area who dont fit the criteria above but specialize in BI nonetheless and they have been very friendly. i think the reason its so different with POI at schools you apply to is that we fear giving a bad self image, when reputation (or so we fear) will affect what happens. what if the person who will read your writing sample happens to be the POI you incidentally got into an awkward conversation with?

if any of you are fans of medieval philosophy i recommend listening to this while reading on Aquinas or the ontological argument. its the progressive power metal theocracy. an innate desire to love corny stuff is one of the intrinsic properties of my platonic essence it seems. must be my hispanic dna or something. interestingly japan and latin america are big on power metal for some reason so its not just self-deprecation

1. gre has an effect on many promising students who dont fit the convenient models, and lets not get started talking about bias on minorities 2. yes my bad, i meant northeast asia, japan, south korea and non-rural china 3.the countries you mentioned follow a system closer to ours than test obsessed asia,i just used the U.S to make the contrast simpler 4.are you seriously denying how hard working these students are for the sake of political correctness? here are a few examples http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120339767 korea stops on mega exam day http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2007/06/15/editorials/worst-student-suicide-rate-yet/ its not a mere boo from mom becase of a bad report card i unfortunately cant find the china one, but it shows actual shrines with different university names and the name of their sons in these to pray for their admissions, which involves the results in their exams the dominance of asian students in top universities is common knowledge. most surprising is caltech where they dont use the so called holistic approach and admit solely on merit. they have aroun 50 percent asian population. so, no im not merely speculating.

i see what you did there

I was wondering which books have influenced us philosophy students the most in undergrad career. name 3 philosophy books which heavily affected your philosophy views. for fun name one book which has utterly apalled, made you lose respect for the philosopher/tradition or even think its simply charlattanism. me first top 3 books Appearance and Reality by f.h bradley: i cant express how much this book has influenced me. it made my mostly analytic approach to philosophy go 180 directly into thick metaphysics. it was almost a religious experience. i own 3 copies, one reprint, a 1964 edition and a 1st edition from 1893 Ethics according to the geometrical method (aka the ethics) by baruch spinoza: it never fails to amaze me how pure yet rigorous this book is. its way ahead of its time. the first time i read it in continental rationalism class, i breezed through descartes admirable failure but when i read this, i just knew baruch was up to something. its a shame so many analytic philosopher wants to make a naturalist out of him which is a huge mistake. harold joachim's study of spinoza i think is the best seconary work on him. the philosophy of loyalty by josiah royce : a ery underrated work but reading it made me reconsider my amoralism. Royce's very simple theory of ethics bypasses most of the problems of egoist, utilitarian, deontological and incorporates virtue ethics in a more respectable light. my version of ethics is basically Roycean with a slight hint of Nietsche.(and im not even a big nietsche fan) most hated work Being and Time : OH THE HUMANITY. this is the only work i have ever read which i got absolutely nothing from and let me tell you hegel and whitehead are not easy. everytime i get the slighest bit of interest in tackling it, im immediately repelled by its combination of nonsense and tautological ramblings. at this point, i just view heidegger scholars as an academic cult.

yes the gre supports something beyond itself, it supports students who have trained for a test that wasnt supposed to be studied for and students who have lived in a "high score is most important above all" mentality which incorporates plenty of asian students (im not bashing them, i consider southeast asians and jewish populations to be the among the most hardworking populations). in a philosophy program we will not be bombarded with multiple choice exams and often trivial, "decipher which word fits best among 3 reasonable choices " what im going to say here is controversial and highly speculative and is an idea a math major friend of mine told me so take it with a grain of salt. he told me that although southeast asia has a superior and more hardworking population of students in secondary school compared to our failing american system, this is not seen at the post-secondary level an that even among the top students in both university systems , the american counterparts are more often the ones discovering significant breakthroughs, nobel and field prizes ect, and his explanation is interesting; in southeast asian countries you study for a test so perseverence and work ethic is valued more than critical thinking or creativity (you can thank confusianism for that) so if you want lots of decent to good doctors, and architects , and lawyers, asia is fine, but if you want innovators at the highest level and in all fields, america is better. interesting but a bit speculative, but at least it corresponds with the statistics. asians score highest in math, presumably asians born here whose parents were born in the mainland score highest since the language barrier is not there ect. do you want an area like philosophy to prefer good test takers? unfortunately even philosophy departments which are willing to not look at GRE scores are forced to for financial distribution by the graduate schools of arts and sciences because some lay bureaucrat wants to make his life easier to pick between students to fund. this situation is what's happening at the U of Wisconsin at Madison where the philosophy program allows you to not submit gre scores but if they are not submitted, you cant receive a fellowship

yes, im aware of the statistics. GRE is a good indicator of grad school success but you cant leave it at that. the people who naturally score really well are often people who have been trained as good test takers most of their life. they get the ETS mentality subconsciously because of training. the point of the GRE is to measure something that goes beyond itself, otherwise no one would care for GRE's since all they would measure is your GRE readiness but when such exams show a preference for one restrictive neurotic student life at the detriment of others, thats when there is a problem. im also amazed at the fact no finds ETS academic monopoly frightening. i think completely abolishing GRE is not best either. i would recommend an optional approach where an applicant can choose to send their scores if they find them high enough to supplement their applications an here is why. GRE should be like what many gifted programs in the U.S do. there is a standardized test that if you score high enough, you are in, but not reaching that score can mean many things, and the student can join the program if he can prove himself elsewhere. its a conditional IF you score high in this exam-> you are X (were X can mean intellect, creativity, talent, book smarts ect) but NOT "IF.....high in exam" does not imply a detriment ~X. that would be a logical fallacy. unfortunately many grad programs are doing the opposite of my suggestion. if you score good to great, they wont hold it against you, or at best give you a slight advantage but if you score average, (often not being bad,) they will hold it as a detriment and it makes NO sense. now all else being equal under my suggestion, if two applicants are exactly or almost exactly equal and one submitted a high score in GRE, Then i think its reasonable to let it be a tie breaker given the tough situation this would be, but other than that, i find no excuse in most practices of using the GRE today for philosophy programs.

i count disagree more. gpa in a philosophy major when taking into consideration the quantity and difficulty of classes is one of the best indicators of qualities necessary but not necessarily sufficient for grad school in philosophy, it shows commitment , interest an how serious you are roughly, by gpa when the material isnt suspect. granted this is without any horror stories involving general education nor that spanish class you flunked which is why philosophy gpa and the last 2 years are most important. considering the flaws of everything else you turn in... GRE- the bias here is overwhelming. same with the SAT. to give you an anecote. i was done with my first two years of college at 17 which included stuff like multivariable calculus, with a 3.75 gpa, an had won a junior national level chess championship, and have scored in the 130+ in an IQ test administered at my school, yet when i took the SAT which is supposed to measure college readiness, i always scored in the high 500 low 600 range. same problem applies to GRE. reason was simple, i have no speed in non-creative thought, being used to self study, and 3 hour chess matches made me incapable of fast decisions even when i can get an answer. i dont doubt the gre in a few cases can point to superior abilities but it does so by heavily discriminating against other talented folks even in traditional definitions of intellect. the fact they make a whole business of our tears doesnt help. the fact schools like cornell and oxford with 200 and 300 or so applicants dont require gre's speaks for itself. letters of rec- the problem here is that anything other than great or perfect is a detriment,and some professors even with lots of good to say due to personal stances on objectivity may not be capable of expressing the capabilities of a student as well as others. the prestige factor is also relevant here although i dont find as disadvantageous. good teachers often produce good pupils after all. statement of purpose.-given philosophy's limited job flexibility, there is not much one can say here. they at best supplement a good application and are hardly if ever app-breakers, unless there is a severe AOI conflict maybe. writing sample:this with gpa are the two most important factors, but this alone isnt sufficient for any justified demarcation of applicants. i remember reading a post in the leiter reports stating how well the applicants each year get at writing superb writing samples, often being worthy of publication in decent (but not stellar) journals. in summary, writing sample must be supplemented in a a successful aplication unless you are kripke. yeah, GPA is mighty important. ultimately the bias you will face for low gpa boils to this. if you have to explain a flaw to me X or Y and this one of the most important parts of an app, i will naturally be very skeptical, especially considering the amount of apps that will surely not have that problem.

John Mctaggart. the poor man is basically only known for chapter 33 on time from his magnus opus The Nature of Existence , but once you read that masterpiece you get a feeling most contemporary analytics are wasting their time on legos and the continentals in europe got poisoned by eating playdough. i dont think this is just the case for Mct, the late 19th and early 20th century was a reinassance of very impressive systematic metaphysics which holistically tackled all branches of philosophy. how many of you guys have even heard of the likes of james ward or samuel alexander? figures like these are simply forgotten now. still, if any of you havent seen his argument for the unreality of time, this should explain it well, it will either piss you off or give you a "how clever" smile on your face but you cant deny its genius. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXG0gi4rNEs

I agree, these were good placement records. schools that have impressed me with their placement record which are not top 30 are john jopkins, which has a high tenure track placement rate, and penn state which is lowly ranked only by analytic standards. Stony Brooks also does pretty well and its not even ranked. some schools however seem to have it rough even with high ranking though. Brown and CUNY graduate center have bad placement record for their ranking. U of miami which is a 20 minute from where i live unfortunately ,i have been told by reliable sources, is not good in placement because they are not supportive enough to their grad students in the job market ,which is rather unfortunate. its currently ranked in the high 30's but who knows how Mcginn's departure wil affect rankings. canada seems to be having a glut of ph.ds and happen to offer tenure track positions to american and uk graduates since they have much appeal, often at the expense of canadian students. canadian universities pay their professors extremely well with many, earning high 80- slightly over 100k, regardless of the school unless you go to a total unknown. the one exception to this is U of toronto and maybe Mcgill which on ranking can hold their own to other american universities. in the UK, placement record is a bit trickier. oxford for example sends their graduates EVERYWHERE, and often their positions are hard to compare to assistant professorship here in the U.S. they also seem to be a wild card. your initial placement can be a post-doc at some random place in Austria or a tenure track placement at NYU. then there is the fact that the UK works on a lectureship system, which has but is not identical to the protection of tenure. Cambridge's placement record is sadly not too impressive given the history such university has in philosophy. i havent looked deeply at the rest. idk about the situational in Australia or continental europe. Just wanted share my small research project

idk, the oxford b.phil is very prestigious, they can afford to be more strict in selection standards. BUT Oxbridge is at a bit of a disadvantage in not being to offer funding to all their students, losing them to other top 10 or even top 20 who do fund them. prob even more so for cambridge. oxford's b.phil quite recently accepted 22 (or was it 27?) of 220 applicants. for a Master's program thats quite competitive, but considering many of the b.phil do the d.phil at oxford,and many top places will welcome a b.phil student, it may be the easiest top 10 statistically speaking with the added bonus of being able to leave elsewhere without the 4-5 year commitment of a more traditional ph.d in the states if need be. when taking into consideration the funding crisis, oxford prob accepts at least 35 or 40 students knowing they will lose a few to other schools. NOW, the tricky part is to get accepted with funding. when you multiply the chances of admission with the probability of full funding (i have heard numbers between 10-25% i really dont know , i can totally be wrong here) you realize that getting full funded place at the b.phil is now more comparable to a place at a top 10. on the bright side, if you are wealthy or can afford the loans,you will have it easier, and you wont worry about being a TA , at least not exactly in the states.

another option is a canadian MA. since the usual route in canada is MA first, lots of places will offer the MA. The other advantage is that canadian education is far more stable so to speak than the HUGE academic disparity in American institutions so being accepted to an unknown MA wont hurt as much. the fact that they often offer some funding helps. it will still be difficult since you have to prove to them why they should take you over a canadian student with equal or higher stats, but it is a chance.

i would like to comment that im surprised at the amount of people interested in continental philosophy in the forum. the reason it surprises is that,assuming most people in the forum are from countries of english speaking universities, which tend to be overwhelmingly analytic (Leiter's report not mine) i would expect more of a correlation in the number of analytic institutions and lets call them analytic (or at least continental neutral) students. of course, it can mean other things. maybe continental folks are more friendly and less likely to lurk.

the problem with low gpa as opposed to low GRE are multiple 1. if nothing else, a high gpa on a decent philo major shows proper dedication and work ethic, which is a must on any ph.d program. while a high gpa can mean different things across the fields an universities, a low gpa implies a shortcoming, either due to unfortunate circumstances, or sloth but it can tarnish your image 2. GPA in principle is far more in your control than GRE scores. the gre is supposed to mimic the SAT in so far as it was meant to be a test you werent able to study for and inflate your score. of course today, we know this is bunk since ETS makes a business out of our insecurities with at least some prospect of success but just like in point 1, its less excusable. 3. some universities (UK, most of canada, Cornell and John Hopkins, prob most european universities) dont require GRE's but all schools will use your Gpa so its not like you can selectively hide a low GPA. 4. graduate schools when handling financial distribution to departments prefer to see numbers since they are less disputable. while GRE is also used, low GPA is more alarming, especially under 3.0 . look at it from their perspective. can we really trust this person with a class or TAship if they didnt even devote the time to get a good gpa in undergrad? not saying its impossible, but you will really need to win the heart of a decent MA program with a killer writing sample, and even then, more realistic is a fighting chance at a relatively unknown but with prospect to improve MA program to redeem your record and perhaps needing some loans to pay it off.

Muska i can only give book recommendations on philosophers i read for my research but i think these wont dissapoint especially since you dont shy away from kant and hegel. John Mctaggart, Some dogmas on Religion : This book is more of a casual read since McT intended it for a non-philosophy audience but its a nice mixture of philosophy wrestling with religious questions from the perspective of an atheist idealist metaphysician. It tackles questions on God, immotality, pre-existence, free will and so on. Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity: Royce like Hegel has given his own twist to christianity, but unlike Hegel whose main message is christianity's manifestation of the dialetic through the holy trinity, Royce's message is that christianity propery captures the religious sentiment of the community of spirits unite by "the invisible church". Brand Blanshard: Reason and Belief : in this mammoth work, Blanshard embarks on analyzing religion as a source of truth, and while sympathetic to faith, concludes that reason is ultimate over faith in the arbiter of truth. he does however think that religion has an important role in the development and even completeness of the individual. Timothy Sprigge The God of Metaphysics: this book which im currently half way through is a work analyzing whether systematic metaphysics can ground a religious sentiment contra Pascal's famous dismissal of the god of the philosophers.Sprigge analyzes the metaphysical systems of Spinoza, Hegel, Green, Bosanquet, Royce, Whitehead, and his own, with a section also devoted to Kierkegaard's criticism of system building metaphysics and its dysfunctional role in religious belief. Sprigge concludes that metaphysics can indeed provide a meaningful spiritual foundation for religious sentiment. these books are not a perfect fit for your request BUT in my defense 1. the break between medieval and modern philosophy is best explained by the weakening influence of faith. philosophers were becoming bolder and bolder in letting reason alone to lead the way, and perhaps spinoza and his influence on the hegelians is the best example of how religion and reason via metaphysics relate so these works manifest this and 2. some of these works actually reflect the spiritual crisis of their era. Mct and the british hegelians were responding to spiritual crisis caused by darwinism that was shaking the core of the victorian era, likewise Royce was writing at a time where american identity as a nation was midway the transcendentalists and the pragmatists. hope i was of any help, i will shut up now lol

Oh its no big deal, I must actually thank gradcafe for knocking some fear into me. coming from an unknown state school puts me at a disadvantage so i thought i needed some way to compensate. There is also the irony of becoming interested in an obscure branch of philosopy that none of those classes went into detail over and discovering it all by my myself. Its also pure luck, i started taking college classes non stop in high school, so i basically had all my general education requirements (the A.A) by the the time i dropped out of junior year of high school, so i had the choice of either getting my bachelors at 19-20, or take my time and use the extra 2 years in taking more courses, and decided the latter would help me more. im flattered by the compliments though, i just hope the adcons are symathetic with such assestment, and dont think the weirdness of my application is to hide something fishy

If its a serious read nothing, if its a more casual reading i would just put what i would normally listen to; symphonic power metal

i have been lurking here since last year, but finally decided to come out undergrad: will graduate from an unknown state university with a 3.85-3.9 gpa in the fall. i will leave with 35 philosophy courses (not credits) completed which include 2 or 3 independent studies. Gre: not sure if i will take, im a horrible test taker. im mostly thinking to apply to UK and canada for this reason. Interests: Primarily British Idealism (esp Bradley, Bosanquet and Mctaggart) Josiah Royce, Spinoza and Leibniz, Process philosophy, philosophy of religion, contemporary metaphysics esp time and space. Other info: URM, candidate chess master (not like its gonna help), Singer disaproving veggie Applying to: John Hopkins, Cornell, Oxford , Cambridge, Leeds, Edinburgh, Mcgill,U of British Columbia, Toronto, Ryerson (MA) might add a few more