you'll_never_get_to_heaven

If conditions are so bad at UCSC that grad students are on strike, why would consider enrolling in a graduate program there? Not merely a rhetorical question - I'm legitimately curious.

Posting in this so I get notifications!

It doesn't seem like they offer much funding at all for MAs. However, they offer "partial-assistantships." I T.A.'d a course as an undergrad and I worked as an office assistant (helped edit a published book, actually), so I have experience with that.

I feel like a bit of a jerk in saying this, but it's a vent thread so I will: sometimes I see the work current grad students are putting out (at conferences, or informally in some way if I use my tuition benefit from my job, etc.), and I do not believe that I wouldn't deliver far better and relevant work if I had access to the same resources with a fully-funded offer. They are safer students, not better students. I refrained from referencing any sob story in my applications about this or that event during my undergrad, and sometimes I feel like I should've done so because those events do have a significant influence on my scholarly work. It just seemed smarmy to do so, but if would've landed me a fully funded offer - shit, I would've done it. I didn't graduate from a pedigree school (although it is an excellent SLAC), but our external reviewers told the dept chair that we had the strongest group of majors of any school in our college association. I didn't think my department chair would be all that surprised that I didn't get into X or Y school, but his response was shock and some anger. He even asked who else wrote letters for me!

Yeah, my recommenders said to press for more information and more funding. Luckily (although for unlucky reasons), I don't have any debt from my undergrad and I have a good credit score, but I'm still quite wary of anything other than full funding. UNM has very good placement from what I have seen. I'm working on my response letters at the moment, all of which emphasize how much I would like to attend, but cannot do so unless I can be fully assured that I will receive adequate funding. I think all of the schools I received offers from could definitely find some way to offer more funding. If you're sufficiently impressed by my application to offer me admission, then you should have adequate incentive to entice me to enroll. Stony Brook's MA program is very small and highly specialized, so I would find it odd that they wouldn't be able to offer any departmental funding. None of these offers seem like the much maligned and scammy MAPSS at U Chicago.

Alright, so I was rejected placement in the PhD but offered admission into the M.A. programs at Stony Brook and University of New Mexico. Not sure what I'll do, as funding is murky at best. Both seem to be excellent programs. I am waiting to hear back from Georgia State, which would be fully-funded. This morning, I was admitted to the New School with a 50% merit scholarship - not bad. I don't know too much about the placement out of the New School and Stony Brook M.A.s, but I'd imagine that acceptance is very likely at a select few programs.

Stony Brook offered me a position in the Philosophy and the Arts M.A. program, but not the PhD program. I'll probably accept the offer to visit campus (might as well if they defray costs sufficiently, since I'd be applying there from any of the funded terminal M.A.s I applied to), but without secure funding I'm a bit skeptical. Most of the advice I've seen strongly advises against an unfunded M.A., even if it could be completed in three semesters and I'm worried that I wouldn't receive the same attention as PhD students.

There were some newly-renovated ones on S. Walnut St. last I checked.

Congratulations! Still waiting to hear back from Stony Brook myself. Seems like they sent out a round of rejections earlier and I was not one of them, and I had assumed they just wouldn't send out rejections until last minute and I had already been passed over. Perhaps not! Would be nice!

Alright, so, good to hear about UT Austin because I didn't apply there. I did know about the residency issues, but not all the rest of this. Because I kept seeing references to ranking repeated over and over in the post, I felt like making an account and replying to the thread. Let me say this: After a year and a half of researching programs prior to applying, I believe that relying entirely on the PGR in evaluating what programs to apply to and/or attend is incredibly foolish. Of course, it would be equally foolish not to look at the PGR at all. There are programs with excellent placement ratings in terms of actual job security in a place you can actually afford to live in with excellent faculty, excellent pedagogical training, etc. that are ranked lower on the PGR - or even not ranked at all. Most people are not going to ever find themselves in tenured position at a prestigious R1 university, and a lot of applicants should ask themselves if that's actually what they even want to do in the first place! I attended a SLAC with unusually good PhD placement for the size of its philosophy department. I have also audited undergraduate classes taught by faculty/grad students at a school within the PGR's top 30. I can say that the TAs are not developing their pedagogical skills much at all, which is going to crush them on the job market because they will likely find themselves applying to jobs that are primarily teaching positions. I know people at other departments farther down the list that will not face this problem, because the department prioritizes the development of teaching skills. Point blank: it's complicated. There’s no list of PhD programs that perfectly suits you and your interests. However, since you’re committing to six-years of substantial intellectual labor, it makes sense to spend several hours over a period of months scouring department websites and CVs, etc. Otherwise, you could make an extremely expensive and time-consuming mistake. The PGR doesn’t tell you anything about faculty-student ratios, teacher training, preparation for the job market, or placement – those are all presumably optimal. It also has a clear bias against particular research areas, or approaches within them. At the end of the day, rankings help to assuage the anxiety that goes along with any risk. A list might successfully convince you that the surefire way to avoid making a mistake is obsessive-compulsive checking, list-making, and hierarchical ordering, but it should be noted that not even the PGR intends to fulfill that longing for some mode of existence where everything is reducible to well-calculated pseudo-risks. I have a document on my computer at work with some helpful links to consider along with the PGR, so I'll paste those here. I neglected to post specific SPEP lists since I would assume any of us with such interests have already seen those. o https://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/11/29/Graduate-School-Placements-in-Philosophy-Continental-Programs-Job-Type-Placements.aspx o https://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/10/23/Graduate-School-Philosophy-Placement-Records-In-the-USCA-Prestige-Placement-Rankings.aspx · Academic Placement Data and Analysis – far more in depth than the Leiter report. Dense, but well worth your time.