NathanKellen

This is in part due to non-philosophers having input on hiring decisions. Lots of teaching jobs, for example, will have hiring committees which are half non-philosophers. Those folks will recognise certain "brand names" like the Ivys and often act accordingly. Even for research departments, this may happen at the administrative levels (deans, etc.).

It's worth noting that UNC has lost a bunch of folks recently: at the least, Dorit Bar-On, Bill Lycan and Keith Simmons. I don't know how many additional hiring lines they may have in the works, but that's a lot of people to replace if Paul goes too.

I would imagine that your department wouldn't be too happy to see you spending significant amounts of time on things not directly related to your studies.

You might consider your job prospects as a way to decide. I think you'd have a better shot on the job market with the program which gives you a PhD in something other than philosophy, but I'm no expert. I'd suggest checking the placement for both programs and talk to your advisors about that issue.

NB: while I haven't transferred programs or tried to, I know multiple people who have. Transferring programs can be tough. Very good students (at least in my eyes) who attempt to transfer often do much worse than one would expect. There are a number of reasons this may be, but none of them really matter to the advice that I'm giving, which is to avoid transferring if possible. You may not get in anywhere, you may burn bridges, etc. Ideally, none of this would be the case, but philosophy is no more above departmental politics than any other field.

In addition to what's been said: How much do you pay in fees per semester? (some schools can be really expensive) Is the department competitive? Cooperative? In between? Are graduate students part of a union? What is placement like? Not only if grads get jobs, but what kind of jobs? (this is the most important question you should ask) If anyone has left the department recently, why did they leave?

They place very well, and everyone I know who went there has said it was well worth it. It's also worth noting that there's not a ton of options for MA programs which focus on logic and the philosophy of mathematics. You have MCMP, which is also heartily recommended, and CMU, but most other philosophy MA programs don't have big names who specialise in logic or philosophy of mathematics, as far as I can remember.

This is awesome! I have Apology 38a (ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ) on my forearm. Yours is way more original.

When I moved I used a container shipping company (it was a division of UPS). It was pretty expensive but super convenient. But I had a lot of stuff. If you don't have much stuff, then I recommend shipping the essentials via flat-rate USPS and signing up for an airline credit card to get a free (huge) bag check on every flight. Then pack everything into that bag every time you go back and forth, slowly bringing things to wherever you're going.

In general mathematicians (and math departments) aren't huge on logic. Hell, look at Cohen's attitude towards logic after he finished his independence proof for a great example of this attitude.

UConn has about 30 students and graduates 1-4 each year. (as far as I know - I may be a bit off, but I'm sure you could email the DGS and ask for official numbers)

You may be interested in applying to UConn. We are, in my pretty biased opinion, one of the best places to work on logic in the world. We have a number of folks working on logic in the philosophy department, as well as in the maths and linguistics departments. Everyone comes together in an active interdisciplinary logic group, which you can learn about here: http://logic.uconn.edu/. You should also consider Notre Dame, which has a strong logic program across multiple departments as well. I don't know much about whether CUNY has connections between departments, but they have several logicians doing very good technical work in logic, including Joel David Hamkins, who is a professor in both maths and philosophy.

Yes, I think you should still apply to your dream schools (if you can afford it). You don't want to be worrying about how things could have been. Also if you haven't considered UConn, we may be a good fit for you! If you would like some details, shoot me a PM or email me (nathan.kellen@gmail.com).

Direct evidence that it isn't: UConn has two cross-appointments (Suzy Killmister, Daniel Silvermint), neither of which have a degree in the cross-appointment area.

I recommend you apply to all the schools on your list, unless your advisers tell you otherwise. You don't want to be looking back on this experience and be thinking "What if I had applied to X, Y and Z as well..".

UConn does not fund travel, sorry to say. State school woes!

I don't know about typical, but a friend of mine was the chair of the admissions this year at a PGR50 and gave 5 days.

Good luck, and congrats! NZ sounds great, and has some great people (Zach Weber is a fantastic logician at Otago who is incredibly nice).

You should definitely take the offer if you don't get in on any of the waitlists (and perhaps even then - I don't know what areas you're interested in). But there's no harm in waiting to see what pans out.

Don't feel awkward, and don't hesitate to go. This is one of the biggest decisions you'll make in a long time, and you should do it with as much information as possible. I'd encourage you to both go with the mindset that you had been accepted, and then figure out what you think based on that.

Here's some things that may be worth asking: what they're currently working on (as many people's research projects evolve faster than their webpages or publications) how often they are around campus if they've recently switched departments, why they chose to do so how many students they currently have, and what they're working on what they most recently taught grad seminars on I wouldn't be afraid to tell them a bit about your research interests either, maybe your thesis, etc., and get some of their off the cuff responses.

Those concerns make sense. I just thought that because you said you were interested in paradoxes and counterfactuals that the logic-y stuff might interest you. It's worth noting that we of course have plenty of resources to help people up to speed on logic (including a required grad seminar in logic, and various other introductory courses in our department and in linguistics and math), so it's not that one requires a bunch of logic just to begin. There are many people here who don't do any logic at all as well - it's not that we're a logic only program or something like that. The anxieties make sense, and not everyone has to be interested in or good at logic! You might want to see how much logic you're committed to in virtue of your research interests you've listed, though. There's little work that can be done in counterfactuals, for example, without some semantics knowledge, and likewise for most of the paradoxes I'm aware of. The history stuff is all clear of course. Hope this helps!

I'd strongly suggest you consider UConn as a possible choice, although it doesn't necessarily fully tick all your boxes. Let me do a quick rundown, and let's see how it sounds: 1. Paradoxes - UConn is one of the best (if not the best) place to study paradoxes in the world. We have a number of logicians (amongst the most of any department in the US), all of whom work at least somewhat on paradoxes, some of which work primarily on paradoxes. 2. Philosophy of Language - UConn has a strong philosophy of language faculty, including the logicians above, but also adding people like Dorit Bar-On, Mitch Green, Bill Lycan and Michael Lynch. 3. Counterfactuals - UConn has an extremely strong linguistics department, especially on the semantics side, where counterfactuals are often worked on. Our interdisciplinary Logic Group is composed of philosophers, linguists, mathematicians, psychologists and law scholars, and fosters inter-departmental research. In linguistics I know Magdalena and Stefan Kaufmann have worked on counterfactuals, and as noted above we have Bill Lycan, who literally wrote the book on counterfactuals (for a period of time). 4. Metaethics - we have several people interested in metaethics both broadly and narrowly construed, including Dorit Bar-On, Paul Bloomfield and Michael Lynch. 5. History of Philosophy - this is definitely the place where we have least specialty in your interests, but it's not a lost cause. We have two very good modern scholars in Don Baxter and Lionel Shapiro. We don't have anyone who specialises in ancient philosophy as a primary AOS, but there are a couple professors with interests and who teach it (Don Baxter, Lionel Shapiro and Sam Wheeler). Anyways, given how specific your interests are, UConn does a fairly good job (IMO) of covering your bases, which strikes me as good enough for an application. Feel free to ask any questions here, via email (nathan.kellen@gmail.com) or via PM, either now or during next season.

We are having our official time April 2-4th.

I've met a bunch of people who go to Buffalo and love it, and I've been consistently impressed with their people. I think it's an underrated place for sure.