sebgrebe

I am doing a PhD in the UK and I've never heard about someone doing this. There are in general two sources of funding in the UK: AHRC funding (this is a governmental funding body) and funding from the departments or universities themselves. There is definitely no room for negotiating for more AHRC money since this is a fixed amount, set by the government. I am quite confident that there is also no room for this with departmental funding, since usually this kind of funding is also advertised with a specific amount (usually about £13k/year for three years). Universities/Departments have, in general, significantly less money for funding than schools in the US and giving more money to you will mean taking away money from someone else, which I am pretty sure no department will do.

Sure thing. Academic experience: all in all, it was great. The programme is quite intense. When I was doing the programme, you had to write twelve 3,500 words papers for 6 courses + a 15,000 words dissertation in 12 months. They lowered the work load a bit, but it's still stressful. You do a lot of different courses - so it's broader than for example the Cambridge MPhil where you only do three courses, but it;s less research focused. I liked this since it gave me the opportunity to look into stuff I hadn't done yet, and which I eventually ended up doing my PhD thesis on. I stayed here for my PhD and am very happy with it. Of the 9-10 people who went on to do a PhD (not 15 as I said above), 5 stayed in St Andrews to do their PhD. Housing situation: there are halls just for postgrads. If possible, you should rather go into private accommodation since student accommodation is either horrible or expensive (£600/month). For a room in private accommodation be prepared to pay around £400/month. Town: St Andrews is lovely, directly located at the sea. However, it's tiny: 15,000 people.

I have done the St Andrews MLitt. The comparison with the Oxford BPhil is pretty straightforward: The BPhil is clearly more prestigious and will provide you with better chances to get into a PhD program afterwards. In Oxford you have about 20 students per year, in St Andrews 35-40. The quality of the admitted students to Oxford is higher than of those admitted to St Andrews. That said, St Andrews is still a good second-choice and a decent amount of people go on to do a PhD (hard to give exact numbers. I would say 10-15 in my year, most of them at UK departments). I would say it's the best choice out of the programmes you have been admitted to so far in general. Things might look different if you look at your particular interests and you want to compare departments with respect to this. However, most of your interests seem to be covered quite well: there is a good political philosophy course taught by Cruft and Saunders (they are based in Stirling), there's usually a course in philosophy of religion (either taught by Haldane or Broadie, both internationally renowned scholars in their field) and Hawley usually teaches the metaphysics course (she's one of the best known philosophers of time, AFAIK). Philosophy of science is not taught on the MLitt. Let me know if you have more questions.

Hi, I'm German and did my undergrad there, but am now doing a PhD in philosophy in the UK. Concerning where to go for political philosophy: Yes, Frankfurt is a great place to be for this. (http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/04/the-future-of-political-philosophy-in-germany.html) Concerning funding: there are in general two ways fund a PhD in Germany: 1) Work as a research assistant. I think these jobs are hard to get and people often seem to get them on an informal basis, for example because they knew the professor before - but I am not sure about this; 2) Get a scholarships from a foundation; there are 11 national scholarship foundations, some of them are political, some religious, some have no religious or political affiliations (http://www.stipendiumplus.de). In order to apply for those, you need a recommendation from your future supervisor. Plus, they are very hard to get. Of 200000 PhD students in Germany, only about 4000 have such a scholarship. Given that you don't have to pay student fees and that standards of living in Germany are relatively low (compared to the UK at least), it is possible, I think, to do a PhD and work another job at the same time. True, your PhD might take longer than 3 years, maybe 5, but this is not uncommon. Your prospects of getting a job in academia after this, however, are probably very slim. However, you might just be interested in doing the PhD for personal, intellectual reasons.

All UK institutions, except for Cambridge and Oxford, don't have application fees, neither for their MA nor their PhD programs.

Hey, take one of the PhD offers. 1) To get funding for Master's in the UK is hard. I read somewhere else in this forum that only about 25 % of the BPhil students in Oxford get funding from the university. At other places, funding is even scarcer (in St Andrews, where I am, only about 10 % of students get funding). Given that you haven't majored in philosophy, your chances to get funding might be even lower. Consider further that rents in London are ridiculosuly high + living costs are in general significantly higher than in the US (where I suppose you're from?) (My answer assumes that your PhD offers include funding) 2) Don't worry too much about fit of interest. Your PhD will take at least fife years, probably longer. During that time it is highly likely that your interests will change again. The validity of my advice obviously depends on how much your interests differ from the work done in the departments. Say you're interested in Foucault and stuff and the departments you have offers from are hardcore analytic, then this would be an issue. If the difference is not that harsh, I wouldn't worry. 3) In general, it probably won't get easier to get into PhD programms in the next years. Leiter just recently posted something about departments taking less and less people in and given the tough situation on the academic job market, this process might continue (and would probably even be a healthy one). Thus, yes, I think it would be some kind of insanity not to accept your PhD offers;) Consider yourself lucky. Congrats, BTW!

If you're willing to go to the UK, consider the MA "Philosophy and Public Policy" at the LSE. There is a similar program at UCL, too. Both are top schools for political philosophy (cf. Leiter). Albeit, these programs won't give you a broad background in philosophy. If you want to have this and study at world class top university for political philosophy, I would go for the MA "Philosophy" at UCL. It's very unlikely to get funding for MAs in the UK. On the other hand, tuition fees are probably much lower than in the US.

Hi Jon, I applied for UK programs last year. I think it will be very hard for you to get into Oxbridge, since all evidence I have indicates that you need at least a UK First to get in - this would probably be something between 3.6-3.8 on the US scale, although different universities use different translations from US to UK scales. However, Edinburgh and St Andrews are worth a shot; I know of people whose GPA wasn't particularly terrific and who got in. What definitely helps is to apply early, i.e., December or January, since these universitites have rolling applications. Good luck!