Rose-Colored Beetle

Well, there's debate over whether they're truly continental... Also, Leiter has a feud with Fordham's Babich. Not that this directly impacts their unranked status, but it's at least iconic. I think it's worth asking what Socrates would think of the PGR...

Accepted Fordham over two MA's (WMU, Brandeis). An underrated program, I'd say. Large powerhouse faculty, access to classes at other NYC programs, and great placement. Thanks for a good run, everyone!

Declined WMU. Decided to take the Fordham PhD.

I would also keep in mind that the PGR rank only correlates weakly with placement, that is if you don't factor in likelihood of postdocs. I posted some freelance research on this here:

I was only recently admitted off the Brandeis waitlist. 98.5% sure I'm going to decline.

If you do move to Wisconsin, you will soon find that "UW" is not a definite description for UW-Madison! There are 26 institutions in our UW system. ;-) Congrats, by the way!

Hm. I'll have to check that out, thanks.

Hello, everyone! Given the strange concern some of us have for getting a job after completing our PhD programs, I decided to undertake a friendly/nerdy investigation. Perhaps this has been done before; at any rate, I found it enlightening. Maybe it will help you too, as we reach the final stage of our decision making. How strongly do Leiter's current (2018) Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR) rankings correlate with job placement into permanent academic positions? Rather weakly, it turns out. I contrasted the PGR data on a spreadsheet with placement data from 2017 research funded by the APA from the years 2012-2016 with some interesting results. (See below for a link to the data.) Before I report my findings, I should note a few caveats: The APA placement data reports the most recent placement status of a given graduate within the time period, so some of those in permanent academic positions are surely second- or third-year hires, given the substantial number of PhD-earners who don't get placed for a year or two. Leiter has criticized the APA-funded data for leaving out postdocs (who may have postponed a viable permanent academic position). This is good to keep in mind; however, a number of the postdocs would have applied for positions within the 2012-2016 period, which at least ameliorates the problem. I use the terms “weak” and “strong” for correlations in an intuitive rather than a technical sense. Numbers can be presented in very biased ways, especially when statistical or categorical lines in the sand are drawn. I do draw such lines, so take my categories with a grain of salt. I left out altogether universities outside the United States. Also, when a university was distinguished from its HPS (history and philosophy of science) program, I reported whichever of the two had a higher placement rate and left the other out altogether. So, for example, when calculating the PGR representation of the top 50 schools for permanent academic placement, I divided the 29 PGR-represented schools by the 45 of the top 50 which don't fall under either of these two exclusions. There are, of course, other factors to consider besides employment: publishability, raw academic opportunity (and correlation with personal interests), oddball placement factors (school X never hires from school Y), teaching/research balance, etc. This investigation is limited, but within those limits it is insightful. Without further ado, here are some of my findings about the top 63 permanent-academic-placement (PAP) schools vis-a-vis the PGR top 50. 20 of the top 63 PAP programs are PGR-unranked. These include the following: Cincinnati , Baylor, Florida, Oregon, Tennessee, Villanova, Penn St., DePaul, Catholic University of America, Vanderbilt, New Mexico, Emory, Miami, Washington, Fordham, Stony Brook, Duquesne, Georgia, USF, and Iowa. Given the top X schools for PAP, where X is a multiple of 10 between 1 and 6, PGR never includes more than 67.3% of them. Representation always declines as we approach the top of the PAP list (except moving from top 50 to top 40, but the difference is a negligible 0.4%). By the time we reach the PAP top 10, PGR only predicts half of them. There are 11 PGR-unranked schools that have PAP rates of 50% or better. (On the above list, these consist of everything from Cincinnati to New Mexico). This rate is better than that of half (25) of PGR-ranked schools. 10 PGR-ranked schools, ranging from PGR-rank 9 to 40, placed too low even to be considered by the APA study, which bottomed out at 38% PAP. These programs include UCLA, CUNY, Brown, and Duke. Only 1 of the 8 PGR “bubble” schools (Nebraska) was in the APA top 63. Important: It is true that PGR rankings do correlate more strongly with PAP into PhD-granting programs. Of the 20 high-PAP schools that are PGR-unranked, only 3 place students into PhD-granting programs at a rate of 10% or higher. By contrast, half of the PGR top 50, including the entire top 20 (minus some of the PGR-ranked schools which placed too low overall for APA consideration), place students into PhD-granting programs. Here's the link to the APA-funded study. The portion relevant to my post begins on page 43: https://www.dropbox.com/s/61qgeway2nyhr7x/APDA2017FinalReport.pdf?dl=0 Bottom line: If you're cool with teaching undergrads, PGR isn't going to be very helpful. If you strongly prefer teaching graduate courses, PGR is going to be very helpful; however, at that point you might as well just look at the APA rankings for PAP placement into PhD-granting programs. Hope this can help someone.

If the site were confined to the humanities, we might come up with all kinds of fantastic, mournful, self-deprecating slogans. Alas.

Does anyone know what the best funding is that Brandeis offers? I was just bumped from waitlist to acceptance, but only with a $10k merit-based scholarship and potentially $10k more in need-based aid. This comes nowhere close to the alleged $48k pricetag of three to four semesters, to say nothing of living expenses. Even supposing a $7k stipend per semester for TA-ing, that's still $0 for luxuries like food and shelter.

All the best in your decision!

Of course you need to do what's best for you. But I do want to point out that PGR rank and placement rate do NOT necessarily correlate. I'd recommend investigating and comparing on your own. From what I've seen, 76% is really good, depending on how it's qualified: is that the rate for tenure-track placement, or just university placement? Or is it the rate of matriculants who get a job right away period? Schools may not report all three. Two other factors: first, some schools place better in particular sorts of programs. Some schools place better at smaller universities. On the flip side, this may be because students at 'top' programs don't apply for smaller-than-usual jobs. Second, it's also true that a good portion of those who don't find a job their first year might find it their second or third. It would be good to find out how accommodating a program is of such people. One place I've looked at is good about letting you teach there for a year or two till you find a job.

Quick question: why would you turn down a funded PhD for an MA? I ask because I can think of some good reasons and some bad reasons.

Do you plan on taking yourself out of the picture at the schools that don't matter to you?

Other than curiosity, why solicit? I can understand if you haven't heard anything, because there could be a mistake. How, though, would knowing your position on the list help your decision in some way?

I wouldn't worry. The unpredictability of the admission process implies that one's quality as an applicant cannot be quantified on a linear scale. PGR is an idol! Don't bow!

I'm also being told that placement out of 'top' programs isn't necessarily better than lower-ranked institutions. An alumnus of a fairly prominent west-coast school told me that the department takes pleasure in throwing Yale applications in the trash... They don't care about how famous you are. They care if you can teach. Another thing to consider might be 'climate.' Since your marketability depends so much on your own effort, it seems worth asking where you think you'd thrive. For example, some departments have an atmosphere of competition, and other are more community-support oriented. Just my $2.

Hard to decline this early unless you're a rockstar...

As good as statistics are, I'd want to pay attention to specifics that lie behind the statistics. I'm sure the specific professors and strengths of each MA program matter differently to different programs in idiosyncratic ways. WMU, for example, has never placed anyone to Princeton or Harvard, but they have placed at Rutgers and ND. It'd also be interesting to see which schools each MA's students tend to apply to. It may be that students at one program tend to apply to or avoid particular programs. Perhaps they are advised to apply to different numbers of top programs.

I'm just curious if the words should be taken to mean anything meaningful.

Waitlisted at UWM. Out of curiosity, were any other waitlisters told that the committee was "very favorably impressed" with their dossier?

I wouldn't posit a hard dualism of student/scholar. Since programs place varying emphasis on writing versus testing, straight A's may well mean less from a school whose testing/writing balance is unknown to the committee. I guess that's not a red flag, exactly, but it is a disadvantage vis-a-vis a student with straight A's (or even a few B's) from a research-heavy undergrad. I'd take it that it's on small-school students to make sure our research background is adequately represented elsewhere. This is all theory, of course... who knows what biases committees really have.

Emailed Blain Neufeld at UWM, receiving a prompt reply. They have a record number of applications this year, for a smaller-than-usual number of spots. He expects acceptance and high-waitlist decisions by this Friday or the following Monday.

Ah, ok. Well, I emailed Jean-Luc Solère about it today, so we'll see. : P

@buffystrong, you know how the UWM application has that whole system where you check boxes and digitally sign all those sub-documents within the application? I just logged on to see if I had a decision, and I noticed there was a "tuition evaluation form" that I hadn't checked... but I was sure I checked all the boxes when I submitted the application. Do you know what this is, or do you remember signing such a thing? *panic slightly intensifies*