hector549

Most funded MA programs in philosophy have low funding. Mine paid me something like $8000/year USD. Unless you're totally unfunded or your program is particularly mediocre, I doubt that it's worth trying to transfer to another MA. Don't forget that you need to get letters to apply out, and you'll only have been at your program for a couple of months before needing to start the application process. It's tough to get good letters, because you won't have even written anything for anyone yet. My advice: tighten your belt, cut your expenses, and apply in your second year. Your application will be s

I don't think you'll be at a disadvantage coming from a European university. People here have heard of Leuven and LMU Munich. Those are schools with some prestige here, at least in philosophy. As @Marcus_Aureliussays, focus on your sample and getting strong letters from faculty. If you want to work on 20th century German and French philosophy, though, Virginia and Missouri aren't going to be a good fit for you, so make sure you're applying to programs that make sense given your interests and the topic of your writing sample.

@Duns Eithhas already given you good advice. To add to the general air of negativity here: if there's something else that you'd like to do, and that you think you'd be good at, it would be preferable to do that if you can. There aren't really many good academic jobs at all in philosophy, more are disappearing every day, our society doesn't much value humanities education, and most public universities in America (the ones where you'd formerly have had a chance of getting a job) are struggling/going to struggle more (especially humanities departments at these institutions), thanks to the economi

Yeah, I think the class size they're shooting for will be a little smaller than normal, as it probably is at a lot of programs this year.

Don't know about rejections, unfortunately. I'm at Riverside. If you have other questions about the department, feel free to ask them here or DM me.

To my knowledge, all initial offers have been made. Not sure about waitlist notifications.

I think that this is going to depend greatly on the MA program. At my MA program (not Tufts), almost no one was from an unknown school. Most students had a degree in philosophy from at least a reasonably well-known public or private university, and a number of students had gone to top institutions--both top in terms of PGR and also in terms of overall US News rankings. There were also a few of us who had turned down ranked PhD offers to do the MA first (I was one). There were, of course, some students from relatively unknown schools, and several from non-philosophy backgrounds, but they were t

Different institutions have different requirements for waivers. Some will ask for the FAFSA SAR report, some that you receive SNAP or other benefits, some that you have participated in certain programs, and a few will want your tax returns. For those schools that require the FAFSA SAR, they're going to look at your EFC (expected family contribution). If you're independent on the FAFSA, then your parents' income won't need to be included in the SAR calculation, so you'll likely be eligible since your EFC will be very low. If you're a dependent for tax purposes, though, then I doubt that yo

There are some major problems with this list. U. Penn is "strongly recommended" for studying continental philosophy? Western Michigan, Houston, and Rutgers are "recommended"? These are good programs, but are strongly analytic in orientation. Why are Houston and West Mich listed under the "recommended" PhD program list and then also under the MA program list? These departments only offer the MA, not the PhD, and are fully analytic programs. There are other issues as well. Why is Washington State Pullman listed? They have no grad program in philosophy at all. American U. is listed as a "str

Keep in mind the PGR is a reputational survey, and the subfield rankings roughly reflect things like how many people are working in a particular subfield at a given department, and things like faculty research output. I'm not in metaphysics, but Cody Gilmore is, to my knowledge, a well-known metaphysician. The only dedicated metaphysician at Madison is Alan Sidelle from the looks of things. I'm sure he's a fine scholar as well, but if you look at both their publication histories, Gilmore's is more extensive/has more prestigious pubs/etc. This is probably the reason why Davis is ranked for

I applied there in the past, and I know someone there. I don't know all the in's and out's of the program, but I'd say that it's a good program depending on area of interest. I'd say it's strongest for certain areas of continental philosophy (Hegel, Nietzsche, I think there's someone who does French phenomenology, etc.) and logic/phil. of math, but there are also a bunch of ethics people and a well-known philosopher of mind. They used to be great for pragmatism as well, but their senior scholar in this area (John McDermott) recently passed away. From what I understand, many students at this pr

More recent data from ETS say people intending to study philosophy who take the GRE have a mean verbal score of 159 and quantitative score of 154. What we can infer from that about people who actually apply to grad programs is a different question. A few programs have average scores of accepted applicants on their websites. e.g., Notre Dame, UCSD, Mizzou, and Chicago, to name a few, though it's hard to know how up-to-date this info is. My two cents to @Prob and anyone else: don't sweat the quant score too much. If it's in at least the 50th-60th percentile range, that's sufficient. I certa

Duns Eith has good advice. To add a few thoughts: I think it can be hard sometimes for North American departments to evaluate universities that aren't in the world of Anglophone philosophy. That being said, don't be afraid to apply to a spread of programs. I knew folks from my MA department and at my current PhD program who didn't get their undergrad degree from Anglophone programs. If you're interested in phil of action, apply to FSU, Riverside, Cornell, etc., as well as some places in your sub-field ranked higher on the overall rankings. There are great people at lots of different plac

@Mahdi Ahmadi @CynicismJX I think you folks may want to use links to a Google doc rather than trying to attach files to your posts.

This is important. These pay-to-play programs don't post placement because their purpose isn't to get students into good programs, their purpose is to make money. And their placement is undoubtedly poor as a result. I know several people who went to MAPH who got into PhD programs. This doesn't mean that going there is a good idea. For one thing, it is obscenely expensive. Check out the link; tuition for the one-year program is $60,300. Add another $15-20k to live in Chicago for a year, and you're looking at close to a six-figure investment for a program that doesn't even give you their