flickering.light

Oh yes, I definitely agree. I haven't visited the PhD program yet but a big part of my decision will hinge on the visit. If I am really happy there and feel I can accept the offer "wholeheartedly," as it were, I will do it. Decisions like this are painstaking but once they are made there is no point wondering what-if, you are right.

Thank you. I don't mean to sound pretentious. I would be perfectly ok with working at a community college. And of course I would feel very lucky to get any tenure track placement, given the market. I'm just trying to determine which option has the greatest probability of "success," measured not only "prestige" of job prospects but by the quality of philosophers I am able to work with and the work I will be enabled to do given my environment (both of which I suspect would correlate with rankings). Of course it is possible I could enter the MA and get in nowhere, I'm just really, really unsure just how likely this is........ On the whole I guess it's a personal choice since I'll need to decide whether the risk is worth the gamble. I'm just not even sure how big of a risk it is.

Hello, long time lurker here. Looking for some advice on my specific situation, and this looked like the thread for it. I've narrowed my options down to 2. Option A is a terminal MA program that is highly ranked (top 5) and very highly ranked in my AOI (top 2). There are multiple well known faculty there that I would love to work with. I feel that attending this program would enable me to not only grow as a philosopher, but also to improve my application exponentially and enable me to gain admission into a top-tier program. However, my undergraduate records are less-than stellar so I worry that even the best MA program in the world wouldn't get me admitted into a T10 University. Option B is a PhD program ranked in the 30s on the PGR. This is respectable but I know how important prestige is and I wonder if I could do better. Granted, the school really is good, has good (but not great) placement. That is, they consistently place students into post-docs or professorships, but I haven't seen many get placed into professorships in T50 schools. Is this an unrealistic expectation anyway? I keep getting different advice from different people whom I trust and that are informed about the general climate of philosophy admissions. On the one hand, I feel lucky to be admitted to Option B given my not so great undergraduate career. My worst fear is choosing option A, and then getting in either somewhere worse than Option B or into nowhere at all. Even looking at Option A shows that many graduating students go on to schools like Option B or even, sometimes, worse. BUT they also (and I think I could, too) often go to places much better than Option B. If I settle with Option B now, I will never know if I could have done better. Further, the time spent at the MA program would be valuable in a sense even if at the end of it I did end up going with Option B, I will have made more connections, fine tuned my abilities, and ultimately be ready for the rigor that is a PhD program. I know in the end the choice is my own. But I would gladly accept any and all opinions on the matter. For example, are there any of you who would like to slap me for considering denying a T50 program with really good placement? Am I being greedy? Or, do you think I could do better after the MA (given the little information I've provided)?