MattDest

I would caution that philosophy programs usually vary quite significantly from other fields in terms of advisor/advisee relationships. It is not always the case that you suggest a project at the outset and find someone to work with right away. Because of this, I'm not sure it's worth the expended effort to reach out to every POI at every department. In some cases, they might not be on the ad com and may not even have a say in whether or not you are admitted. 
 
Personally, I would use the time to polish your writing sample and make the rest of your application excellent. 

I disagree.

I chose Arizona because DUH ITS SO MUCH BETTER THAN EVERY OTHER DEPARTMENT THAT EVER EXISTED.

So, is this a thread about the PGR rankings or a thread where we personally insult Brian Leiter? 

Metaphysics of Furniture, esp. the special composition question relating to desk chairs. 

Well, this is obviously in the context of philosophy, given that it's in the philosophy forum. 

Finally the brutal process is over! Rejected from Purdue and UW-Madison waitlist (btw anyone waitlisted at UW-Madison may want to confirm- I emailed them and was told that the admissions process has been closed for this season, they did not notify me!). 
 
I am attending University of South Florida and have a 5-years of funding! I am absolutely THRILLED!!!!!!!! 

Glad to FB with anyone that would like to! I've found some of my favorite FBers are people I've met here. Just PM me!

I've declined offers from Indiana Bloomington and UMass Amherst, and will be attending Northwestern University in the fall. 

I just got back from visits at Pittsburgh, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, and UC San Diego. I'll try and say a bit about what I thought of each.
 
Pittsburgh: It's more or less my dream school, so I was really happy to be there. I had heard some rumors of climate issues there, but I was really happy with what I could tell of the environment. (Which isn't to say that climate issues definitely don't exist.) I got along well with many grad students, and I'm really hoping to get in off the waitlist. I got a great impression from all the faculty I talked to, and asking some of their advisees about working relationships, I was surprised by the amount of energy the faculty put into advising. So overall it seemed great. Pittsburgh is also a surprisingly nice city.
 
Johns Hopkins: This was my only visit that wasn't during official visiting days, so perhaps it's a bit unfair to hold it to the same standards. But I didn't love it. The grad students didn't seem tremendously happy to be there, and apparently there's some animosity between students with different interests (a factor which is very important to me). For instance, there have apparently been cases of students yelling at each other during colloquia. On the other hand, the faculty seemed amazing. But given how important the grad community is, I turned down this offer today. Also, I don't want to live in Baltimore, even though the cost of living is quite low.
 
Georgetown: I loved the department, including both faculty and grad students. They seem very supportive, interested in others' work even if it isn't directly connected with their own, and like everyone enjoys hanging out with each other regularly outside of scheduled activities. One downside is that there aren't a huge amount of grad students working on my primary areas of interests, but there are many people who work on directly related areas. Supporting grad students during their program (financially and otherwise) and afterwards on the market seems like a primary emphasis of the program, which I think is a great sign. Very high level of morale, from what I could tell.
 
UC San Diego: I don't think there's a school with a better climate, meteorologically speaking. One thing that I loved is that there's a really big community of grad students working on German Idealism, all of whom seem like really cool people. I also got along really well with the faculty I talked to. One downside is that it seemed to be a fairly male-heavy department, especially in terms of grad students and prospectives. On the other hand, they're doing really cool work with the UCSD summer program for women. The funding is a bit lower here, but students said that they get by just fine. There's also a general cogsci/empirical focus throughout the department, and while I think that's totally fine, it's generally not my sort of approach to the things I work on.
 
Basically, I'm trying to figure out where to accept if I don't get into Pitt. Pro Georgetown, there's a really nice emphasis on Sellarsian/Pittsburgh school style work in a lot of areas. Pro San Diego, there's a large German Idealism community. Making this sort of decision is a good problem to have, though definitely still a problem.

All other things being equal, choose the one with the best school colors.

Establishment's advice seems right on. Also, you ought to consider the specialty rankings for your AOI, especially if you think they will remain constant during grad school. WUSTL's PNP program is definitely one of the stronger cog sci programs, and I imagine that their placement record in that AOI is quite good. 

Establishment's advice seems right on. Also, you ought to consider the specialty rankings for your AOI, especially if you think they will remain constant during grad school. WUSTL's PNP program is definitely one of the stronger cog sci programs, and I imagine that their placement record in that AOI is quite good. 

I'm all for PGR prestige, but even I would say it would not make sense to turn down your PhD options for an MA. There's nothing stopping you from attending your PhD programs, and applying out after two years. I have known many people to have done so. In fact, transferring out from a PGR graduate program will probably do a lot better for your application than a terminal MA. Worst case scenario, you don't get in anywhere. But then you're still at a good PhD program, and not with an MA and no where to go.
 
Also, at this point, you should be more concerned with the placement records than PGR prestige. How's placement at your program? How's it specific for people with your interest and with the faculty members you are interested in? If placement is poor, then only then does it make sense to transfer out (and it probably only makes sense if they're just as strong a fit. You don't want to go somewhere with a higher placement if you can't do what you enjoy).

So, looks like about two thirds of the users on TGC are on the wait list at UW Madison. 

BUT CHALMERS! Here is Chalmers with a lightsaber (and me). 

Great. The only reason I was interested in UW-Madison in the first place was because of Shafer-Landau and the day I hear I've been waitlisted there this gets announced ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hi all-
 
It strikes me that people will probably start to go on visits soon, if not already. I want to start a thread that's a little less practical. Since there already is a thread giving advice on questions to ask during visits, I thought it'd be fun to share some stories (including maybe ways of indirectly getting information, behavioral indicators of politics, serendipitous findings, things caught you by surprise, etc.).
 
You don't have to reveal the names of the school or the people involved if you don't want to, though you can (especially if it's a positive story). If it's a story about a city, it's probably helpful to tell us which city it is.
 
Some other things people might want to talk about:
- things you immediately wish you had done differently
- how travel reimbursement was handled
- how do faculties match or don't match your prior expectations based on reputation
- the information you get from faculties vs. from students (are they different?)
- whether this visit has changed your decision/ mental ranking of places
etc.
 
(I'm going on my first visit by the end of this week, so I'll have more substantive things to add a bit later. So far I've received overwhelmingly friendly contacts from this one institution, and nearly no contact from the other that I'm visiting. It's hard not to read too much into this  )

Just to be clear, I really don't care if you down-vote my post, I just thought the irony was quite funny.
 
Apparently, it was not sufficient moderating, and instead of reminding people to be mature I should have moved straight to removing offensive posts, and warnings & suspensions. I seem to have overestimated the responsiveness of the posters here.

Nice to see that people are maturely taking my warning about appropriate forum behavior to heart.

Down-voting a moderator warning people about abusing downvotes.

Evaluating MA programs is not totally unlike evaluating PhD programs, in my opinion. A lot of the same questions seem to apply just as well at either level. Instead of looking at job placement, however, you want to be looking at placement in PhD programs if that is your ultimate goal. One thing that wasn't really apparent to me until after I left my MA institution was that I think depending on who your thesis advisor/committee was (especially if they are writing your LOR), it might impact your ability to place well at PhD programs when you go through that process. If you have an idea of what area your thesis might be in, you might ask students or the faculty directly how students in those areas tend to do in PhD applications. 

That post deserved more downvotes than it got, and now you keep chastising people in the forum...what sort of moderating would you call this? Do you want people to use this site?

Accepted to Rice!  

Hello overoverover. Couldn't help but notice we have similar usernames! 

BUT CHALMERS! Here is Chalmers with a lightsaber (and me).