Duns Eith

@phil123 Did you choose a program? 

It is inevitable and it is good to keep this experience close to heart: it keeps you humble, and you can recall times like these when you've overcome major hurdles in understanding (namely, you can be grateful and glad for how far you've come).
Also, if you lose this feeling, get worried that you aren't reading widely enough (or you're likely reading authors who confirm your views more often than not).
While you have this feeling, take note what your methods are to solve the problem. Seriously, think about the steps you're following to grasp it. Are you writing things down? Are you journaling? Are you just getting frustrated and trying again? Are you looking at secondary literature to get another perspective on the text? I ask because many of these should be clearly set out in your mind as strategies that actually help you, that you can tell others to do, and for which you may remember and renew when you are feeling like you haven't had innovation or challenge lately. Undergrads will want this advice too.

I got this,...

I got this,..

In other news I got waitlisted by SLU literally this morning. Idk what took so long. 
 
Still hoping I get off the waitlist into UNC, but if that doesn't happen I'll probably go to FSU. Hard choices

I accepted OSU today, so if you're waitlisted at UCSD, Notre Dame, UT Austin, or Wisconsin Madison your chances just went up.
 
Best of luck to everyone!

We need the people that are accepted into the top 25 programs to commit. Once that occurs, things will move quickly because they will decline their offers from programs in the 30-50 range. 

I would like to invite you to a philosophy discord server. For teachers, students, and autodidacts.

The purpose of this discord chat is dedicated to the engagement of philosophical discourse and the exploration of ideas in the history of philosophy. Our main goal is to become more knowledgeable about historical thinkers and ideas from every philosophical domain through interpersonal dialogues. We are not a debate server. Argument is a method used by philosophy, but this isn’t to be confused with debate. The latter is competitive in nature, whereas the former is a cooperative endeavor. Philosophy is a group project that aims to determine what is true, and this server is a place for this activity. 

https://discord.gg/NyesZ6e5cp

Invite link is hopefully permanent, so you won't have to worry whether the link is working if you're reading this sometime in the future.
See you all there!

This is very cool. I wish I had time for many of these.

I think it depends. What you've written is a little vague, but I gather that you have people that you can work with. That's the most important thing--that you have a good, supportive advisor, and can put together a committee.
You're also in your first year. Things may change. Your interests could evolve. You probably don't know all the faculty in your department yet. You've barely started your program. My advice is to give it some time before thinking about jumping ship.
Whatever programs you're thinking about trying to transfer to will have other issues. Every program does to some extent. Make sure that whatever issues your program has are really going to be a problem before you spend a lot of money and time starting over somewhere else.

Hello, we are a group of reading and discussion enthusiasts. We run small casual read-togethers of several Great Books. Our discord server is here
Below is a non-exhaustive list of our reading groups:
Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil: Orgazined by Andrew, a New Yorker who majors in biochemistry and German Literature. Andrew works as a lab technician and German tutor. This group meets on Discord's voice chat on Fridays at 15.00 GMT.
Stirner's The Unique and its Property: Organized by Timothy, who has a background in Hegelian philosophy. The group reads four pages together every session. Currently, they are in §1.3. "The Free". This group meets on Discord's voice chat at 20.30 GMT on Wednesdays.
Marcus Aurelius's The Meditations: Organized by Luciano, a senior software engineer. Luciano is Dutch but currently lives on the Greek island of Lesbos. Luciano previously hosted the group on Epictetus's Enchiridion. This group currently is in Book IV. This group meets on Sundays at 17.00 GMT on Zoom.
Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics: Organized by Humphrey, a philosophy student at Newcastle University. Humphrey also runs his own IRL book club. This group currently is in Book III.
Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling: Organized by "Leno" a grad student of engineering. He previously hosted the group on Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus. This group is currently on page 21 of the Princeton translation. This group meets on Zoom on Saturdays at 16.00 GMT.
Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching: Organized by Alex, a History major, specialized in Early Christianity. This group currently is in Chapter 34 of the Red Pine translation. Alex also organizes a group on Chinese poetry. This group meets on Saturday very early in the morning (1 am GMT) on Discord's voice chat.
B. Russell's The Problems of Philosophy: Organized by Ezra, a mathematics student in his early 20s. This group's first meeting is this Saturday at 20.00 GMT.
Koch's The Feeling of Life Itself: Organized by "Nottola" a software engineer. "Nottola" is from Spain but currently lives in Rome. This group meets on Google Meet on Mondays at 19.30 GMT.
I also organize three groups (Ontology, Meaning of Life, and Plato's Republic). All of them are on Zoom (Thursday 20.00 GMT, Saturday 16.00 GMT, and Sunday 20.30 GMT respectively), on this link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2018595025. I studied history in the UK (MPhil Cantab, DPhil Oxon) and I can read Attic.
Apart from philosophy, we also monthly discuss non-fiction books (past books include 1984, Notes from the Underground, Brave New World, The Trial by Kafka et al).
We also have a film club, we watch an art movie together every Friday at 20.00 GMT. Past movies include: Battleship Potemkin, Arsenal by Dovzhenko, Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Cranes are Flying.
All welcome!

Correct. But the FAFSA is important for additional funding opportunities at Texas Tech, such as work-study, university-wide fellowships, etc.

On the aesthetics front, have a look at the American Society for Aesthetics' Guide to Graduate Education in North America. It's essentially a list of MA and PhD programs with some kind of focus in aesthetics and the philosophy of art. It's not a curated list, so some departments are not necessarily as great as they look on paper, but it's a great place to start. You can then cross-compare with department pages and the Philosophical Gourmet Report (and Leiter's law school report) to find programs strong in several of your areas of interest.
If you want to combine a JD with a PhD (or an MA or an MPhil), of course, that's going to narrow your list of options significantly. But that's not a bad thing.
 

My guess is this might vary by department and application year, but I've heard anecdotally that more students are going into PhD programs with an MA than in the past. It's so competitive that it makes sense. I'm a few years into my PhD at a mid-ranked program. For whatever it's worth: my cohort at my program has 7 students. All but one came in with a master's. The year after me has 4 students. Two have previous graduate work. The first year cohort has 5 students, 4 have an MA. The cohort in front of me has 5 students, two of whom have an MA.
At my program, then, it's more common than not.

CSULB has a terminal M.A. and is very strong in philosophy of science (recent placement into Pitt HPS and UC Irvine is demonstrative of that)

You may want to consider an MA program in philosophy first.
https://fundedphilma.weebly.com/
There are funded spots at most of these. How are they funded? Well, they typically cover most or all tuition, plus a stipend to offset cost of living, in exchange for TA'ing (for first year MA students) and teaching (for second year MA students). This can be a great way to develop professionally, get into the academic scene, confirm what kind of grit you have for your passion (or the lack thereof), network and get letters of recommendation, and perhaps most importantly 'extend your reach' for top PhD programs. The majority of grad students at PhD programs earned an MA first.
On this note, I would strongly urge you to think of grad school as an internship + apprenticeship, and that you should not be paying your way but rather earning your keep. If you have no funded offers, try applying again or take it as evidence that you should go into something else. If they don't fund you, they literally don't think you're worthy of their investment when compared to the other applicants. It's competitive.

You may want to consider an MA program in philosophy first.
https://fundedphilma.weebly.com/
There are funded spots at most of these. How are they funded? Well, they typically cover most or all tuition, plus a stipend to offset cost of living, in exchange for TA'ing (for first year MA students) and teaching (for second year MA students). This can be a great way to develop professionally, get into the academic scene, confirm what kind of grit you have for your passion (or the lack thereof), network and get letters of recommendation, and perhaps most importantly 'extend your reach' for top PhD programs. The majority of grad students at PhD programs earned an MA first.
On this note, I would strongly urge you to think of grad school as an internship + apprenticeship, and that you should not be paying your way but rather earning your keep. If you have no funded offers, try applying again or take it as evidence that you should go into something else. If they don't fund you, they literally don't think you're worthy of their investment when compared to the other applicants. It's competitive.

You may want to consider an MA program in philosophy first.
https://fundedphilma.weebly.com/
There are funded spots at most of these. How are they funded? Well, they typically cover most or all tuition, plus a stipend to offset cost of living, in exchange for TA'ing (for first year MA students) and teaching (for second year MA students). This can be a great way to develop professionally, get into the academic scene, confirm what kind of grit you have for your passion (or the lack thereof), network and get letters of recommendation, and perhaps most importantly 'extend your reach' for top PhD programs. The majority of grad students at PhD programs earned an MA first.
On this note, I would strongly urge you to think of grad school as an internship + apprenticeship, and that you should not be paying your way but rather earning your keep. If you have no funded offers, try applying again or take it as evidence that you should go into something else. If they don't fund you, they literally don't think you're worthy of their investment when compared to the other applicants. It's competitive.

Thanks for posting this! The survey itself is interesting but the longitudinal stuff is really interesting.
Do you know if there's any speculation/analysis about some of the trends anywhere worth looking at? There's a pretty marked shift in ethicists' opinions on the mainline normative theories I'd love to read about.

This reddit thread may interest you, immanuel

"This site summarizes the results of the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, which surveyed the philosophical views of 1785 English-speaking philosophers from around the world on 100 philosophical questions.
The 2020 PhilPapers Survey was a follow-up to the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. The 2020 survey increased the number of the questions from 30 to 100 and expanded the target population. It also collected longitudinal information on how philosophers' views have changed since 2009."
https://survey2020.philpeople.org/
https://philarchive.org/archive/BOUPOP-3
What's also interesting is that there are comparisons made for how opinions have changed

"This site summarizes the results of the 2020 PhilPapers Survey, which surveyed the philosophical views of 1785 English-speaking philosophers from around the world on 100 philosophical questions.
The 2020 PhilPapers Survey was a follow-up to the 2009 PhilPapers Survey. The 2020 survey increased the number of the questions from 30 to 100 and expanded the target population. It also collected longitudinal information on how philosophers' views have changed since 2009."
https://survey2020.philpeople.org/
https://philarchive.org/archive/BOUPOP-3
What's also interesting is that there are comparisons made for how opinions have changed

Just to be clear this is not an endorsement for the UB program for accomplishing your goals, but that they would likely be competent to give direction for your goals.

UB has a PhD program and hence plenty of people who have insight to your question, right in your own backyard. Have you asked any professors in the Philosophy department at UB? Cohen, who teaches in both philosophy and Jewish studies department, might be worth considering meeting. He's very continental. Lawler works in continental. Williams is the dept chair. There are currently grad level courses on Nietzsche, on Hegel, and on pragmatists. Current grad students are working lots of the authors you named.

Just to be clear this is not an endorsement for the UB program for accomplishing your goals, but that they would likely be competent to give direction for your goals.