MentalEngineer

We just had this discussion in our relativism seminar on Monday. "Nobody's a moral realist about norms of fashion," quoth my adorable Swiss professor, while wearing his suspenders under his shirt again. "Sandals with socks, Stan," the class unanimously replied. "Sandals with socks."

Yeah, this is something I'm getting rather curious about with Florida State. In the last ten years, fewer than half (in fact, only eight, including two who are no longer there and each only had one student - so effectively only six) of the faculty have supervised even a single graduate. I'm not sure if what's going on is just a confluence of interests around those professors, if only tenured faculty advise students (maybe this is a general norm of which I'm ignorant), if some of the faculty aren't taking students, if (as I suspect from skimming the titles) people are writing dissertations that are really tied to another professor and then sticking the name of someone more well-known on the front, or if it's a combination of all these. I doubt, for instance, it's a coincidence that Al Mele has by far the most students over both the last five and the last ten years. This is a good example of why one ought to ask about these things.

It's such a grab bag that I think you just have to ask. Some schools are very clear about showing when people graduated; others not. Some are very clear about showing every position people have had; others not. Some show people who completed and didn't get placed; others not. And then all of these possibilities, plus some others, all recombine into a factorial mess of individual placement pages. I think for the most part schools know all the answers to all these questions, so if you press for explicit information and they want you there they ought to eventually provide it. Probably less relevant for you since it (mostly) focuses on the Leiter 50, but Carolyn Dicey Jennings also has some pretty good stats on TT placement percentages over the last few years. Depressing as it sounds, my impression from her and crunching numbers on some other places that expose full data is that a 30-45% TT and a mid-60% academic-of-some-sort placement rate is the best you can expect from all but a few really exceptional schools. Although I've also heard anecdata to the effect that continental departments place considerably better.

I have a slightly different focus, but a similar methodology. And I'm bored, so I made a comic of my research program, if a dog had my research program.

I've been freed from the Cincinnatian Limbo Plane.

The Stoics would probably say that this is the only rational attitude for any of us to adopt about any of our applications. So good on you for carrying on a storied tradition!

Sell anything that's not a hard-to-find book or item of high sentimental value. Especially if you're going back into an already furnished house. Media mail the books. Get drunk and burn anything you can't ship or sell (not inside). Wear a mask if you own a lot of plastic, and maybe consider burning the stuff somewhere useful, like outside City Hall or your university president's mansion. Only the last sentence is facetious.

They're clearly not a sufficient condition. Someone in Arizona downloaded all of the three slightly better than decent seminar papers I put on there for the sake of having something on there. It seems to have availed me nothing. Granted, someone in Tallahassee did take a look, but not until a couple days after I got in.

I was just checking in hopes it was yours.

Look, I like RAH. Like, like like RAH. But anyone who chooses to save him over Herbert should go over the cliff too.

It feels unfair to feel bad about a rejection when I've got multiple acceptances, but PNP still stings. I've wanted to be in a program like that - and there aren't really many others like it - since before I was even in undergrad, and now I've been rejected three separate times. Guess I'll just have to get hired there instead.

Here's my clumsy way of seconding this point: The thing I learned the most at my MA was how to shut the fuck up. (I know. My classmates are laughing. None of you knew me before. Trust.) If you've never tried it, try it. First, I was stunned by how many times someone else would say the thing I was thinking much better than I'd formulated it, as if it was somehow alien to think that other people could notice the same points. Then I started noticing all the things people said that I would never have thought of that were way more interesting than whatever I was dying to say. Then I noticed that - shocking - more often than not the second kind of points weren't coming from the other white dudes. Shutting up is an experience. I'm still really bad at it (I cut off Andrea Westlund talking about Karen Jones today, FFS), but I think I'm better than I was when I started. God knows I highly recommend it. ETA: Also, if you're like me and you have pronounced nonverbal reactions to philosophical inquiry, sit on your hands. Save the wild gesticulating for after you have tenure.

I flipped it because I seem to recall they all came out at once last year. Then again, they also came out in practically the middle of January last year. ETA: Wanna just accept Pitt now and free up my spot?

I have not yet heard. Everyone else here who's applied has. This is making me very anxious.

You're running out of available weekends to visit programs!

Time to go yell at the classmate who got in but considers it his lowest choice to fucking withdraw already, then!

Basically this. Most of what's good on /r/philosophy you can find by reading Daily Nous and a couple of blogs specific to your areas of interest. If you don't know what those might be, ask around. Someone you know is reading all of them obsessively.

No, because some of us are adults and don't put that cancer on our phones

Just the listening? Or does one RATM oneself as well?

I gave you an upvote, but I wanted to give you a jealousy downvote.

Woo! Hope to see you in April

I'm probably biased, but I don't agree with these concerns. My program accepts and successfully places a significant number of older and less traditional students. While having an MA will raise expectations for your work quality, this is because being in an MA program will raise your work quality. If you're concerned about having strong background and feeling at home in academia, I would think seriously about the MA. One benefit that I saw from my program is that you can make the shift from "undergrad" to "academic" in terms of your level of work without introducing a ton of other pressures - teaching, starting on a serious research program, networking, and so on. Those things will start to happen, but they happen naturally in the course of learning how to produce better philosophy than you ever have before, rather than as a pile of things that are all part of your new job from Day 1. I feel so much more prepared to do the work that's unique to a PhD - learning to teach original material, do serious research on particular self-chosen topics, learn who in the field I want to be talking to and then actually talking to them, all that stuff - than I possibly could have a couple of years ago. I realize that the MA wants a decision ASAP because of funding issues, but my honest advice would be to decide at least partly on the basis of campus visits and your sense of departments. A PhD program that's tight-knit and supportive would probably be able to help you through those tentative initial stages and make it OK to go straight into it, but you can't tell that from a website. If the MA is fairly close to you, I would at least try to visit them; if they're offering you special funding, they'll likely be more than happy to accommodate an early visit. And if by chance the program to which you've been accepted is my alma mater, feel free to PM me with questions.

I had a 2.54 GPA in previous majors before settling on philosophy and was hardly a model student even afterwards. My philosophy grades include a couple of C's and a class that I failed and had to retake. I didn't address it at all in my applications straight out of undergrad, and maybe that hurt me a bit. But I think there were plenty of other aspects of my profile then that made me look unprepared for PhD work. And even then, apparently I was admissible, even if not directly to a PGR10 doctoral program. So it definitely doesn't destroy your chances, particularly if you can account for it well. It might somewhat constrain where you set your sights - maybe think harder about an MA, for instance - but my intuition is that any place that would reject you purely on this consideration isn't a place you should want to go anyway.

Looks like Urbana-Champaign is starting to send emails.

There's also this one: