objectivityofcontradiction

Hmm... I feel it falls more in this order: 1. WS 2. Letters 3. Fit 4. Luck and/or the inclinations of committee members. Example: Professor X works in ethics and hasn't taken on students for a couple of years and decides, "Hey, this year I'd really like to start working with PhDs again. Look! This person's SOP fits great with what I am currently working on and every thing else seems to fall into the standard of excellence we expect form our students: great sample, good letters, high marks, good GREs. I'll argue for their acceptance."

^^^^Nailed it.

25 schools will run you AT LEAST $3,000....

I recently completed my MA at a quite pluralistic European University where I took a variety of courses and was able to write an MA thesis on two areas of philosophy that I have been studying for quite some time now (German Idealism and the work of Adorno). I chose the MA route partially because I felt my BA university, despite the excellent instruction I received in the Philosophy Dept., lacked recognition in the field (which sucks, but it is what it is). I also knew going into the MA that I would apply to phd programs. So for me the MA was more of a year of concentrated study of areas of philosophy I have been long fascinated by. I received plenty of excellent "professional" training, but that was not why I chose to pursue an MA. I am not going to mince words: it is a plain fact that if you are accepted into a well thought of MA program in, say, the UK, Ireland, Germany, whatever, you should go. At such places, there is a strong chance the faculty you will have a chance to work with are going to be people in the "know," as opposed to those at the best MA programs in the states. For some one who already had a BA from a state school that lacked a graduate program in philosophy it did not make much sense to me to apply to the UW-Milwaukee's or the Northern Illinois's or the Georgia State's. At my European University I was supervised by a philosopher who took a D.Phil from Oxford, took courses with a professor who wrote his dissertation in Paris under Derrida, and also worked with a professor who was once a colleague of Habermas'. These opportunities flat out don't exist at MA programs in the states. Even for those who are more analytically inclined, the places where the student's of your philosophical heroes teach are most likely not going to have a terminal MA program, so why not look to the U.K., where there is a plethora of top dog analytic philosophers teaching at universities WITH terminal MA programs? In Europe you also get a chance to be thrown into a different "pool" of philosophers, and I think this can be quite beneficial. Moreover, good schools in Europe are often more than happy to accept U.S. students into their MA programs. And, at such places, you really do a get a chance to work with some truly great professors. I understand that the tone of this response might be perceived as pretentious. I am not dropping my MA professor's educational backgrounds to brag. I mean only to draw attention to the fact that in Europe you can conduct a year of concentrated MA work with people who, were they teaching in the U.S., would no doubt be members of faculty at top 25 Universities, and who thus KNOW people at top 25 Phil departments. Get it? Some truly great MA experiences lie abroad.

For what it is worth, in October I sent an email to a member of the faculty at Boulder inquiring about the possibility of working with them if I were to apply. This person informed me that I should apply elsewhere for a few reasons that I don't suspect are related to the current issue there. However, I will say that I found it odd that a philosopher would not put up much of a fight in defense of their department. Maybe something is up.

Is there a point where over-practicing (with constant mediocre results) simply becomes too demoralizing and one would be better off stepping away and maintaining some semblance of hope in one self as regards this damn test? At this point I doubt more practice will help, especially considering that throughout the past month my results have been fairly constant week-to-week on practice tests. I take the test next week. Full disclosure: I already have an MA in my field (4.00 GPA), two publications, and a conference presentation, and have made several connections at the universities to which I will apply. Thus, I find it hard to believe that a less than stellar GRE score is going to sink my ship. Is any one else experiencing a similar problem? This is not one of snobbery but, rather, a simple, practical belief that if one has already shown themselves to be more than up to the task of graduate work in their field, the GRE score becomes utterly superfluous.

Ridiculously expensive indeed. It really is insane that some schools have the nerve to charge in excess of $80 bucks for a graduate application. Then again, I suppose all of us that fail will inadvertently fund those who succeed.

Here goes: I graduated Magna cum Laude (3.53), Phi Betta Kappa from a big state school in 2011. I completed my masters this year at a large European University. MA GPA: 4.00, one conference presentation, a recent book review published in a so-so international journal. Writing sample will be a shrunken, contained portion of my MA thesis which received a high mark. I anticipate my letters to be quite strong. I did a fair amount of networking while in Europe, especially with American scholars that spoke at/visited my University, which is known for its vibrant visiting lecturer series. Taking the GRE in two weeks. Interested in Kant, German Idealism, and the Frankfurt School (esp. Adorno). Systematic areas of interest fall in moral philosophy, metaethics (esp. the metaphysics of freedom and agency), philosophy of action generally, and contemporary epistemology. I'm applying to around 10-12 programs. Two of which are in Leiter's top 10 (Columbia and Yale). The rest fall around 20-35 on his list (one is unranked). Lastly, I am still toying with the idea of applying to a couple British/Irish Universities.

I come from philosophy, a discipline which is notorious for laid-back professors who are more than willing to respond to an e-mail from a graduate student minnow like myself, so this advice might not hold. However, I have always found that this simple format usually works. Open with a quick bit about your background and current interests. At this point the faculty member will already know why you are e-mailing them, as they will be able to see that your interests congeal with their own right off the bat. Professors are also usually happy enough to answer questions of which the info contained is of the sort that it should be generally accessible to interested students. But I'd avoid asking any thing that smells of the private realm. Questions about placement of students they supervised in the past, previous courses taught, their availability in the years you'd be attending, are all good. But like the poster above me has said, this info is usually on the department website. Hope that helps a bit.

Rocio Zambrana (PhD. new school) works on Hegel, and broads strand of stuff in German Idealism and the Frankfurt School. They also have Anita Chari in Poli Sci who took a PhD. with the committee on social thought at U Chicago and writes on the second and third generations of the Frankfurt school and I am told she works with some philosophy graduates, but not as their primary adviser of course. I mentioned Oregon only because recently a professor at my univ (where I am getting an MA) visited for a conference on critical theory and problems of normativity and told me that she had the sense that it was a department on the rise.

Oregon for those interested in post-Kantian social and political philosophy and Frankfurt School critical theory, esp. Habermas/Honneth.

I wanted to quickly clarify what I said yesterday. I do not think that you should assume that your paper won't be read front-to-back. I actually think you should go into this whole business thinking that each and every part of your application will receive careful examination IF you are a 'promising candiate.' But assuming they will read the whole thing does not mean you should worry about what the paper is about. And the realistic POV to take would be that they may not read the whole essay. But assume they will! Re: 'promising candidate' --- Who knows what this means. If I had to make an initial guess it would be that the meaning of this phrase is contingent on the quality of your writing sample and the recommendations of your professors.

Hi b_s_g, In my opinion (and the opinion of a few friends who were already in graduate school when I was asking them questions about WS, SOP, GREs, etc.) content or subject matter is the last thing you should be worried about when it comes to a writing sample. Unless it is blatantly clear that you have misrepresented a figure or given a highly suspect argument/interpretation that lacks textual support (which is obviously unlikely to be the case when it comes to the paper you choose to be your WS), members of admission committees are not going to be put off if they do not know much about the topic of your essay, nor are they going to be examining your essay to see what sort of take you might have on an issue. They aren't grading these papers. They don't care what they are about (unless they idea is way out in left field).. What matters is whether or not the paper shows that you are capable of doing good graduate level scholarship. This is not to say that it is a bad thing if the paper happens to be on a topic that you also include as an area of interest in your SOP. If your WS is on Nietzsche and you also mention wanting to focus on his thought during graduate school, this might then call for whoever is reading your WS to be a bit more conscientious about your knowledge of Nietzsche, i.e. to see whether or not you are 'on the right track.' In all likelihood some one will read the first page or two, flip to the middle to see whether or not you get down to some nitty-gritty examinations of a single passages or arguments, and then jump to the end. From what I have gathered it is more of a 'skimming' and less of a reading. I am nearly finished with my MA and as I recall when I arrived here last fall my supervisor (who don't get me wrong is fantastic) could barely remember what my WS was on. I took this to be standard. Check out Eric Schwitzgebel's (UC-Riverside) large entry on Graduate Level Philosophy in his blog The Splintered Mind, it is fantastic and extremely helpful. On this issue he says that the WS of 'promising candidates' are read front to back. He also says that he likes it when a WS is in line with a candidates SOP. So perhaps some of this depends on the school. Oh, and now that I think of it, UC-Riverside is also a pretty good place to study Nietzsche. You may want to look into it.

Dealing with the vast openness that is 'work' time in graduate school is difficult to grapple with. I am on the verge of completing my MA and so can speak to the issue of class work load (things will only open up more after course work is completed and it is just you and the dissertation for 3+ years). I had 6 hrs of class/week (three 2hr seminars) and often found it difficult to develop a standard work routine. There are many ways to go about it and here are two: either try and make sure the days when you have seminars are work days, i.e. you are putting in a concentrated 2-3 hours of work on each side of the seminars. Or do the opposite. On days when you are in class take it easy and focus on being fully cognitively present in the seminars and use days when you are not in class to do the majority of your work, i.e. 5-6hrs. I have had numerous conversations with professors over the years and they have all stressed the same point: whatever you do, treat graduate school like work. BUT something new I have discovered this year is that 'work' doesn't mean 8-10 hr days. Some people can do this, but not many. The consensus opinion in my MA program and in my undergrad was to attempt to put in 4-5 REAL hours of work every day in which you do some good philosophy. That means disconnected from the world, you and your work WORK. I would ask those who object to my advice to consider this interesting point a friend of mine raised the other night: those who are privileged enough to study philosophy are often times individuals who do not work well under the standard conception of work, i.e. 9-5 jobs. Perhaps when some of us are lucky enough to get a job then a return to the standard work day will be inevitable. But in graduate school, it is almost impossible to operate under such constraints. Hope that helps a bit.

Can't speak about UCL. But I am attending University College Dublin at the moment. The faculty here treat the MAs just as well as the MPhil and Phd students. What's more, the PhD. students treat us as equals. Great atmosphere. Profs join us for pints at least once every other week. I'd say UCD is equally as 'prestigious' as UCL and probaly equally as expensive. It could be considered a 'money-maker' program. But I have found it to be worth the money thus far. I've been put in touch with loads of people in the field. Saw McDowell speak three times last week. Have seen Chomsky, Geuss, and others give talks. Have had loads of time to do independent research and from what I hear from my fellow MAs, supervisor-MA relations are terrific across the board. They treat us like PhD. candidates. I'll be extremely lucky if when I go onto a PhD. program I have a supervisor who is as kind, genuine, and intelligent as who I am working with now. This is not a pitch for UCD. This is just a generally good tale about an American who is attending an MA program overseas. Sure, I'm taking on debt. But I feel I have solid momentum moving me towards a top program back in the states... if you want to hear a few negatives, shoot me a message.

The general chatter that I have come across over the past couple years of research into Grad programs is that if you received your BA from an ivy or from a top Leiter department, you can most likely get accepted into a PhD. program without the MA. But, I know the MA route is becoming more common. I think admission committees view it more positively than negatively these days. A few factors in this change of perception regarding the MA would be that admission committees feel safer accepting some one with an MA because they can assume that that student got a 'taste' for grad work in the MA and the fact that they are still applying to the PhD. means they have some sense of what they are in for. Another reason, which I think is an overall plus of doing an MA anyways, is simply that you are exposed to more philosophy. Maybe you have time to go back and read the Critique of Pure Reason, or take another course in ancient philosophy. Whatever the case may be, the MA gives you the chance to do more philosophy, and that always looks good on an application (provided you have good letters, of course). That's just my take. Of course, MA route is often unfunded and expensive and thus prone to aversion... and I am not so sure about what LawrenceVonBuskirk said about that reasoning at Vanderbilt... as far as I know, most programs will still expect you to get their MA equivalent in your first couple years into the PhD., and thus i believe they will still be funding you for those early years. It's not as if they just accept the MA and then automatically kick you into 3rd year PhD. work. Sure, you might be able to get credit for a course or two, but I think it's still common practice to expect you to complete their MA. It's also advisable to mention in your SOP that you are 'excited' to continue to take taught courses, even though you may have the MA already, just makes you appear eager for more philosophy: which we all are.

How much tinkering is too much tinkering? I personally was not thrilled with how I conclude in this particular essay and yet it was accepted for presentation at a conference. So, do I leave it alone? Do I just make minor changes that won't effect my argument? Also, this is a very particular question, but as I have been re-reading my paper I find myself running into bits and pieces that seem to me to be the sort of thing that should be left out of a presentation for the simple reason that though they are perfectly clear if one were to read the paper to themselves, some of the arguments and details do seem to me to be a bit drawn out. This sort of nitty-gritty detail strikes me as the sort of thing that would lose an audience during a presentation. Advice?

Emory, Villanova, DePaul, Kentucky, Memphis, etc. have no one who works on Adorno. There's my simple answer. Meanwhile at Notre Dame you have Fred Rush. At Columbia there's Lydia Goehr, At Johns Hopkins there is Hent de Vries, who is affiliated with the Philosophy Dept. Other schools I mentioned in my very rough and sketchy list are long shots. My top choices will be schools that have some one working on Adorno... that is ideally where I want to be. I will obviously be applying to plenty of schools that are more pluralist, but I'm optimistic that I can get in some where where I can continue to study his work. Also, I don't think you'd find many who would agree with you, whether we're talking analytics or continentals, that Emory and Villanova are top notch places to do German Idealism. That's just flat out not the case. As far as Leiter fully determining my list--I've been researching PhD. programs for almost two years now. I have spent countless hours scanning philosophy department webpages, faculty profiles, reading publications, etc. from both 'lists,' Leiter and SPEP. It just so happens that though the schools listed on the SPEP are obviously billed as being more friendly to continental philosophy, the schools listed on Leiter are the places where good work is being done on Adorno and the Frankfurt school. 'Analytic' departments with strong interests in the History of Philosophy and German Idealism are willing to work with students who might come from a continental background (which, for the record, I don't. My undergrad degree in the states was almost exclusively analytic philosophy: Sellars, McDowell, Davidson, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Philosophy of Biology etc.) Some of the best work being done in the area of 'Adorno' these days is actually being conducted by philosophers who attended more analytic style programs. This does not mean that current Adorno scholarship reads like an article in Mind. But, rather, because of the difficulty of Adorno's texts, having fine-tuned analytic skills is necessary if one wants to try and dispel several of the rumors surrounding this great mind: that he never made arguments, spoke too rhetorically, was historically uninformed, etc. All I am trying to say is that no, I have not been blinded by Leiter's list as you seem to suggest... I've done the research into my area of study and the schools to which I will apply just happen to fall on the Leiter-side of the spectrum. I guess I should have worded the heading to this thread differently because I detest getting involved in conversations about these 'lists...' there is good philosophy being done in a wide variety of places, and the labels are useless. All I was really asking was if people would think such programs as the one's on Leiter's list would not entertain a proposal like mine. Which would really leave me in a pickle, since it is in those programs where Adorno is being studied in the U.S.

I was told by a graduate of the JHU HC that the HC is the place to apply if you have interests in continental philosophy and are considering JHU. JHU's placement record in philosophy is downright terrible. On the other hand, the HC record is very good. Although, many of the students are placed in non-philosophy departments. But the graduate I spoke with informed me that he is having some success in his current round of job interviews with phil departments. I'll most likely be applying to the HC next year with the hopes of working on German Idealism and Adorno with Hent de Vries and a few of the members of the philosophy department. It's not my first choice, but again, from what I gathered, if you are interested in Continental Philosophy and had pegged JHU as one of your choices, you'd be better off applying to the HC.. FYI: From what I have gathered, Michael Williams has no affiliation with the humanities center.

Any one on here trying to study continental philosophy at a highish-ranked Leiter Program? e.g. Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Notre Dame, UC Riverside, Yale, UC San Diego, Gtown? etc. I am looking at these schools for next year, with the intention of studying the German Idealist tradition and its legacy in 20th cent. euro philosophy (esp. Adorno and the Frankfurt School). I have a few friends that attended such places as UCR, ND, and JHU and were able to study continental philosophy... it can be done. Just wondering if any one from this years incumbent class went this route and if so, what sort of advice they might have regarding SOP and application structure for some one looking to study continental philosophy in some of these more pluralist departments. Thanks.

One thing I'd like to point out is that despite what has been mentioned in this thread and in other places, MAs in philosophy are not as stigmatized as one might think, so long as your undergraduate record is up to par. This means your undergraduate GPA was say, 3.5 and higher at a top 20 university or 3.7 and higher from a lesser-known or state university. If you did fine as a undergrad, admission committees might question why you went the masters route at all, but so long as your masters gpa is high and you produce a solid piece of work to use as your writing sample, it's really not going to hurt your application, so I would say. Also, something that cannot be stressed enough is your letter writers. If these people are reputed to be doing good philosophy, publishing in good places, then their peers tend to assume they are more than capable of judging the future potential of one of their current students. Plus one should never underestimate the benefit of having a professor who knows some one at the schools you are applying to. Just this week I poised a question on this matter to Eric Schwitzgebel at his blog The Splintered Mind (great piece up there on grad school in philosophy for those who do not know about it). I asked, why it is that universities prefer students with stellar undergraduate records over some one with a so-so undergraduate record and a stellar showing in an MA program. He answered that perhaps universities prefer to see consistent academic 'excellence,' from the start until the time when they apply. Rather than to see some one who struggled out of the gate as an undergrad and only picked up the pace third and forth and masters years. I should note that I am currently enrolled in a masters program and feel as though I am being trained and prepared as well as any student in their first year of PhD. work. The draw back, of course, is that MAs are expensive. Make no mistakes, they eat at your wallet. And I'd say that if you choose to go the masters route, like I did, you have to be confident that you are spending your money wisely and also that it is going to be worth it in the end, i.e. if you enroll in an MA program, you should do so with the confidence that you are going to be accepted into a better PhD. program than you would have been w/o the MA. Always keep the end goal in mind. If you are worried you made the wrong decision throughout your MA time, you are, simply put, going to do bad work. And that certainly won't help you any. Lastly, I'd be happy to discuss overseas MA options with any one on here. I applied and was accepted to some of the top ranked MA programs in the States last year. However, pound-for-pound, those places did not stand up against the quality of the philosophy being done at some places in Europe. I am at University College Dublin. The MA program is one year. The faculty are known for research excellence and most have at least a book published by a top publisher, and the visiting speaker program has put me in touch with some great scholars this year: Geuss, Chomsky, McDowell, to name a few. These opportunities would simply not have happened had a stayed in the states. Call me an MA apologist if you'd like---but I believe if you handle your MA studies correctly, you can in fact be at an advantage when applying for PhD. programs.

Content means nothing unless there is absolutely no one at the school you are applying to that would have a clue about the philosophers you are discussing and the basic ideas being expressed. It's all about showing them that you can write what would amount to a good graduate term paper. Worry more about the clarity of your argument and structure. My paper was super specific and I didn't change a thing about it. That's my take on it, anyways.

Hey Scot, --> I ended up at University College Dublin, studying an MA in contemporary european philosophy, working on Adorno, Habermas, and the concepts of reification, freedom, and legitimacy. I'm very happy with my decision. Best of luck.

analogue: no offense intended, but publishing papers in undergraduate journals really won't help (or hurt) your chances of getting into a top PhD program or any program (in my opinion). The only paper that matters is your writing sample. Even if the paper which you choose as your writing sample also appears in an undergraduate journal this won't matter. I've spent the past several months preparing for graduate study in philosophy and in so doing have read countless numbers of blogs and blurbs from current graduate students and professors who serve on admissions committee and most seem to agree that this sort of thing doesn't effect a students chances either way. I published a paper in my departments undergraduate journal, but did not even use this paper as my writing sample, nor did I mention anywhere in my Statement of Intent that I had "published" a paper. http://schwitzsplintersunderblog.blogspot.com/2007/10/applying-to-phd-programs-in-philosophy.html ^^This blog was extremely helpful for me throughout the process.

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/postgraduate-course/modern-european-philosophy-ma/ Might want to take a look here: also the university of warwick and the university of sussex in the uk have strong continental people working in their departments.