NathanKellen

Good question, and sorry if I was a bit misleading earlier. UConn doesn't typically (ever?) pay for students to visit unfortunately - it's just not in the budget. I'm not even sure that it's "usually" the case that departments pay for applicants to visit - none of the programs I was invited to did. I think it's become less and less common unfortunately. It's not much, but we do offer free places to stay (with grad students) and current students generally chip in to pay for meals for visitors, but there's no official support. I know that's probably disappointing, sorry!

Hi all! I'm a bit hesitant to make this thread, as it seems a bit self-advertising in a sense, but I figured it's worth it to give anyone who wants to an open venue for questions. Sorry if anyone is annoyed by this! My name is Nathan Kellen - I'm a third year PhD student and the graduate president in the philosophy department at UConn. I've been around since near the start of the semester, and have approached a couple people, but figured I'd make an open thread for anyone who's interested. I'm here to answer any questions you might have about the grad program here at UConn - e.g. about professors and their current research interests, the climate, the teaching, the area, etc. If I may just give a short summary of what I think this department excels in: 1. We are an excellent place for logic, and may very well be the best place for philosophical logic (i.e. work on the paradoxes) in the world. We have a big interdisciplinary Logic Group, which has members from philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, psychology and law (with an emphasis on the first three). You can check out this year's talk schedule here, if you'd like. We also host an annual workshop, which kicked off last year with a workshop on NeoFregean abstractionism/neologicism - you can see the workshop lineup from last year here. Grad students routinely take classes in the various different departments - this semester there were mathematicians in the modal logic course taught by Keith Simmons, philosophers in the set theory course taught by Reed Solomon and philosophers in the semantics course by Jon Gajewski. 2. We have a great cognitive science program which is very interdisciplinary as well. Students have an opportunity to get a cognitive science graduate certificate, and again there's a lot of crossover between the various disciplines, including talks, courses and research and reading groups. 3. We are an up and coming place for moral, political and social philosophy. We have two senior members, one who works in analytic philosophy and one who works primarily in Africana philosophy, as well as a bunch of junior philosophers who host their own "Injustice League" lecture series and annual workshop which is focused on injustice and nonideal theory. 4. We have a very vibrant graduate community which I'm particularly proud of. The graduate community puts on two internal mini-conferences each year, one at the beginning of each semester, to bring the community together to present and comment on each other's work. We also just rebooted our annual graduate conference which went very well and was on "Realism and Anti-realism". There are a ton of reading groups and workshop groups, some of which can be seen here. Anyways, that's enough I think to get a feeling for the department. If anyone has any questions about anything that they would like answered, please send them my way (it's part of my job). I'm a good deontologist who works on truth, so I'm obligated to answer truthfully. Feel free to post any questions here, or PM me, or email me at nathan.kellen@gmail.com. Hope everyone's applications go well! I still shiver in dread when remembering my season. PS: If anyone would like to come visit our department (either now, or even when you're deciding on offers) to get a feel for it, please shoot me an email. I organised one of those meetings earlier this semester for overoverover, and I believe it helped him. I certainly had a great time!

Write to the grad admissions head at Penn and just let them know that the letter is unfortunately late. They're professors - they know how other professors can be. Just try to get it in ASAP and apologise and you should be fine.

Hi there, maybe I can shed some extra light. I just organised a graduate conference at UConn last month and I've been to and presented at multiple other graduate conferences (presented at Brown and Western), so I've seen both sides. As maxhgns notes, most graduate conferences are harder to get into than professional conferences (I know this because I have organised both, and talked to many other professors as well). The reason for this is that most graduate conferences are open-topic, which means that you get a lot more submissions, while almost all professional conferences are on a very narrow topic (and so you get far fewer), the exceptions being stuff like the APA, CPA, AAPA, etc. The organisers of the Brown conference the year I presented said they received over 80 submissions and chose 6. Comparatively, the UConn Logic Group conference last April received 10 submissions, and accepted 3. Sometimes conferences choose a broader theme rather than something very narrow, e.g. UConn's solo grad conference this year was on "Realism and Anti-Realism" in any area of philosophy, and these receive more submissions than the especially narrow topics, but less than the open (we received 35 and accepted 4). That being said, don't mistake competition for quality, perceived or otherwise. Just because you get into a grad conference doesn't necessarily mean your paper is amazing, nor does it mean that you'll be able to publish it. Like maxhgns notes, getting into several with the same paper and using all that feedback is a good sign that you're on your way though. Similarly, getting your paper rejected doesn't necessarily mean it's bad - I and my co-organiser had to reject several papers that we liked this year for a variety of reasons (e.g. not enough slots, too long to feasibly present in allotted time, off topic). So if you get rejected, don't give up hope. You should definitely put grad conferences on your CV, but note that they're not super impressive. More important than a line on the CV is networking with other grads and professors working on the same area and getting feedback on your work which will lead to improvements. The line (or multiple) won't get you a job, but coming out of workshopping a paper and making it a publication might. Hope this helps! If you have any specific questions, feel free to post them here, email me (nathan.kellen@gmail.com) or PM me.

I absolutely think you should tailor your personal statements, if only ever so slightly. The only reason I wouldn't do it is if you didn't have enough time.

It really depends on who it is, what programs you're applying to, etc. Having a well known mathematician as a letter writer for a program like UConn might help you (depending on who is on the admission committee). Personally I'd suggest having three philosophers and for those schools who allow a fourth letter, having that mathematician.

Well damn, that could've helped me in the past! But seriously, there really aren't that many Bestwesterners around, is there.. Anyways to the serious stuff: The school I attend (UConn) has a pretty diverse group of students, but I don't think it's due to AA. That being said, there's no harm in using whatever advantage you're given, so I would never feel bad about marking yourself down as an URM.

Yup it sounds like you're in a good place. If you have the extra time, try to personalise your statements for each school. Good luck!

How many people have seen it? Try to get as many eyes on it as possible. What I often do is let something sit for a couple weeks, then come back to it. You'll feel like a stranger to the paper, and it's often easier to see what can be fixed, cut, etc.

In talking with various professors I've never heard of this being a negative. I will ask around though.

You might also consider Baylor. I have a friend who mentioned it, and it might have been on similar grounds as your motivations.

I sat in on a placement meeting last night where the professors mentioned that, in applying for jobs, sending very large writing samples is looked down upon seriously because it is disrespectful to those who have to read them. Now job applications differ from grad applications of course, but I think it's going to be a similar response from at least some people. And thus it's not worth the risk.

Do you have an MA? I am told that most UK schools won't accept students without a previous MA (this is true for at least St Andrews).

As an attendee of UNC Jr (UConn having recruited Bill Lycan half time plus Keith Simmons and Dorit Bar-On) I can also attest to UNC being a good program, even despite their losses. Hiring Gillian Russell was a great move and although it isn't quite the philosophy of language/logic powerhouse it used to be I'm sure that students would still be well served by applying there.

Yup, can do! As far as ethics and political philosophy go we're a burgeoning department. We have 4 faculty that primarily work in those areas, two senior and three junior: Paul Bloomfield (senior), Lewis Gordon (senior) and Hallie Liberto, Suzy Killmister and Daniel Silvermint. I quite like all four people and think they do a lot of good work. Paul works primarily in metaethics, defending moral realism and virtue ethics sympathetic accounts. Lewis' work is quite well known in the continental tradition and he's the leading figure in Africana existentialism, but his work is also in social and political philosophy as a whole. Hallie is now working on a new theory of promising which she is getting a lot of attention for - she's currently on a prestigious fellowship year at Princeton's Center for Human Value for that work. Suzy works on autonomy and political philosophy and has a cross-appointment with UConn's famous Human Rights Center. Daniel works on oppression and well-being and is also a cross-appointment, this time with Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. All five people are quite keen on working with students and very active in the department. We just started a new draft workshop group in moral and political philosophy for grads and faculty and have a longstanding ethics reading group as well. In addition to these the department has an "Injustice League" Lecture Series which brings together people working on non-ideal theory in moral and political philosophy. ILLS has several speakers a year as well as an annual workshop; this year's topic is 'Dominating Speech' with Ishani Maitra and Jason Stanley headlining. You can learn more here: http://philevents.org/event/show/15122. As to Storrs - it's quite rural and very small. There's not much to do which is good in the sense that you can get a lot of work done, but there's no nightlife to speak of. Most people move to nearby towns, e.g. Willimantic, which have their own set of problems (being further from school, being a bit shadier, etc.).

That's right, and I totally agree with that. But I also don't want to be that guy who sits here advertising stuff that no one wants to read, so I figured I'd be more passive. But I'll give a quick spiel: As far as UConn's community goes, I think we're a great place. We have a growing department of excellent people, including lots of young, energetic researchers. We have lots of events, including: an interdepartmental Logic Group (primarily with maths and linguistics), an excellent CogSci program, Dorit Bar-On's NSF funded research group on Expression, Communication, and the Origins of Meaning (ECOM) and half a dozen or more reading and research groups each semester (this semester for reading groups: Kevin Scharp's Replacing Truth, Ruth Millikan's new book draft, homotopy type theory, medieval philosophy, ethics and Wittgenstein). Students are very keen to work together and help each other with research, and we have plenty of ways to do that, including a mini-conference with 12 speakers this upcoming Saturday, as well as running series during the semester. The downsides to UConn are there, but not related to philosophy at all in my opinion. They have to do with our outrageous fees ($1200 a semester) and living in Storrs, which isn't for everyone. But most of us sacrifice something, and as far as sacrifices go these are pretty acceptable.

So I can offer basically any info requested about UConn. You can ask here or send me an email at nathan.kellen@gmail.com. For what it's worth, I think UConn has a great philosophical community with strong connections to other departments and an extremely active graduate community.

A new post would be best for that, I think. I'd be willing to contribute some info for UConn (and have already chatted to several people via PM).

I took a seminar this past semester on Frege/neo-logicism, which was quite fun. We spent almost 7 weeks on Grundlagen alone, and only finished up because we wanted to get to contemporary topics. In some sense it's really the dawn of a new era in philosophy.

There was a discussion on another thread about the dangers of writing on "hot topics" (e.g. Street's Darwinian Dilemma). That might be part of the reason. The other part is probably because, surprisingly enough, a lot of departments don't have many courses dealing with contemporary issues, and writing samples often come from your favourite courses.

Copleston is the standard answer, but it's hard to compare to massive sets like that.

Ah yeah, proof theory is great. There's a lot of people interested in that around here, but mostly for philosophical applications (e.g. Dave Ripley), and so not really up your alley. I take it you're not leaving the US then? Greg Restall is a great guy and does fantastic work on proof theory as well, but maybe not quite as mathematically inclined as you'd like.

Amsterdam has a great logic program in the ILLC. I don't really recognize any of the people at Barcelona, but their LOGOS center is good in general. If I were to suggest going to Europe though, I'd just say MCMP and be done with it.

What topics are you interested in in mathematical logic? I might be able to suggest some other places you could try as well. I don't work in mathematical logic but know plenty of people in the area.

Hi all! I'm (as the username states) Nathan Kellen - a third year grad student at UConn. I've been told by other students that this is where applicants tend to hang out, so I figured I would stop by. As the philosophy grad president for AY2014-2015, I hope I can be a resource for any potential applicant to the programme. Just figured I would introduce myself and say hi. I imagine there's no questions yet, but if you do have some, feel free to contact me via post here, PM here or email (nathan.kellen@gmail.com).