NathanKellen

To add on to what I see as good advice here: if you end up choosing UMSL, you need to get a letter from someone at WUSTL. That should be near the top of your priority list. I would ask the person who emailed you very frankly if it's possible to not only work with them, but to get a letter from them. If they answer with a strong affirmative, you should definitely consider that route. If not, I'd consider other options.

Awesome! Let's chat soon. I have friends who have done their MA at Amsterdam, and it seems a great place.

A good way to start might be to ask the students what you can do to help them. Explain to them that you're invested in their success on a professional and personal level, and that you'd like them to succeed. Often I find that some of my brightest students in class (the people who can answer and pick up on things fast) are some of the least motivated to work outside of class, because they're used to things coming naturally to them. Generally I take them aside after class and just ask them "So what's going on?" (don't fill it in). If they don't immediately fill in the target of the question, then explain to them that while they do well in class, their grades on exams aren't as stellar, and you know they can do better. Then ask them how they think they might do better, and how you can help them do better. Hope this helps. Send me an email if you have any more questions.

As philadam said, I'd just get in touch with some grad students. See if you can find the head of their grad student association or whatever (most schools have one of these) and ask them. I do this for the grads at UConn, for example. In my experience most, grads will answer questions completely honestly about their department life. Most people recognise they have a moral duty to do so, and they aren't so far removed from your position that they've forgotten how difficult it can be to get real, reliable information.

Just FYI, this week has been very busy at UConn. Dorit Bar-On's interdisciplinary "ECOM" Research Group is hosting a workshop which runs Fri-Sun, and speakers came in as early as Tuesday. Mitch has been involved in a lot of that.

My understanding is that, at least at most places, the graduate school doesn't play a major role, or at least not in rejections or outright admittances. At some places however, the graduate school may offer to provide additional funding for a department to accept a certain candidate, if they meet some requirements. For example, UConn's Graduate School offers two fellowships that I'm aware of: one for "outstanding scholars" and one for "outstanding scholars which promote diversity" (there may be more as well). My understanding (which may be wrong!) is that these are in addition to the funding the department provides, so instead of say, accepting 5 students, a department may be able to admit 5 or 6. I suspect, but don't know for certain, that many places operate similarly.

UW-Madison has a tendency to do a very, very long waitlist each year, even dating back to when I was doing applications.

Blackburn is still at UNC, yes. The most interesting aspect of this (to outsiders with nothing invested) will be to see how Madison responds. Given their government, I'm not certain it'll be easier to get a new hire (AT-AT Walker has an uneasy relationship with education, at best).

That's still pretty low, even for Madison. Everyone should keep in mind that not all funding packages are equal (see the helpful data put together, I believe by Ian, in the other thread). Also watch out for how much fees are, because those typically aren't covered by a tuition waiver, and can get quite large.

Well personally (and this was years ago now) I got rejected by 3 or 4 schools in the 40-50 range, and got two acceptances, one in the 20-25 range, and another into the bottom ranked school at the time (UConn).

Riverstyx: don't worry too much yet. A lot of the admissions process for many schools has to do with the AOS of the students, not just the perceived quality. Some of the smartest graduates I have met from any school got rejected at plenty of places, just because the departments "didn't need another student working on x".

In addition to the excellent suggestion about funding from philstudent1991, I'd also be worried about joining a program with a weak or nonexistent graduate community, professor infighting (or strong politics of any sort) or any climate issues in general (even if they don't effect you).

I'll throw some numbers out there for UConn (just the ones I know, from the past couple years). They might not be representative of any larger trend throughout the profession, and I have no idea about what this year's data will be like unfortunately. Fall 2011: 5 students - 1 with MA Fall 2012: 6 students - 2 with MAs Fall 2013: 10 students - 3 with MAs (and two more with similar coursework/degrees) Fall 2014: 7 students - 6 with MAs The 2014 class was a surprise to me at least. That's a huge percentage.

Unfortunately I've got no more information than you; they don't tell me any of the good stuff. Hopefully soon!

Congrats! Very exciting.

Congrats, that's a great program! We just recently announced a partnership with UC Irvine's C-ALPHA program, which will include faculty and perhaps student exchanges. It's a great place to do logic, that's for sure.

I visited Western last summer and it was an absolutely brilliant place to do philosophy. I think they're criminally underrated. I hear great things about various other places in Canada as well, so I think I'd have to agree with your claim.

All of these are great questions. I also recommend asking about the university fees which are over and above your tuition. They can be quite high some places.

I don't know anything about them, so can't be of help on that front. But I'd say the most important thing for you to figure out is their placement record.

Regarding this (given there's a bunch of posts about this topic): one of the first things that I did when I became philosophy grad president at UConn was to bring this up to the DGS as something to look at. I believe this practice will be changing, although I'm not actually privy to any of the real details of the admissions process.

When you said you emailed graduate admissions, did you mean the department DGS (Mitch Green) or the graduate school? Note that the graduate school will be closed on Monday January 19th due to the federal holiday. If you don't hear back by Tuesday you should shoot me an email (nathan.kellen@gmail.com) and I will mention it to Mitch in person. Sorry for the response time - our semester starts Tuesday and the last couple days of vacation are always kind of hectic.

I've looked at both Genesereth's and Restall's courses and prefer Restall's - have you seen it?. He also has a series of advanced videos available online which can be used to go along with the two Coursera courses.

On the opposite side of that, my greatest influence is Dummett. I'm so sad that I never had a chance to meet him. Apparently the Dummett/Davidson debates were legendary.

I've been told by people at Brown that they're working on new initiatives to place their students better. It sounded like this started in the past couple years, and thus might still be coming to fruition. Just something to note.

RE: the travel stuff - good to hear that some people are still doing it! In a perfect world everyone would, but some places are hit harder by budget cuts I suppose. Glad to hear Arizona was able to help people out; I hear it's a nice place (one of our newest professors, Daniel Silvermint, did his PhD there and speaks glowingly about it). There are a lot of great things about UConn: the department as a whole, the grad community, etc. Storrs isn't one of them unfortunately. It's a very small place with not much to do. There are towns nearby (e.g. Willimantic) which are better, but require using the (free) bus or a car. We also typically carpool from Willimantic to campus - I drive people to school 5 days a week myself. That being said, there is some good news. Storrs is rapidly expanding (much like our department!) and starting to get stuff built. It's absurdly different from when I started here - there are a couple restaurants, couple fast food places, a nice cafe, etc. It's getting better. Also we are close enough to other places, like Boston (1.5hrs), Providence (1hr) and NYC (2.5hrs) that taking trips isn't prohibitive. So TL;DR: it's not great by any means, but liveable, and getting significantly better in the past 2 years (and more to come).