Advice on shopping around for schools

[BabyFarmer]

Hi hello!

I'm a first-year MA student at a Canadian university. I'm getting an early start on collecting information for schools I'd like to apply to for my PhD. Broadly, my interest is in bioethics, especially in paediatrics, global health ethics etc. but I'd really love to do more work on altruism. I did a small undergrad thesis on the subject and I'd love to revisit the topic after my MA. The thing is that I don't know about a ton of American schools beyond the big names. Does anyone have advice on where I could/should look for someone whose interests may align with mine when it comes to the study of altruism? 

Thanks!

[hector549]

On 10/6/2018 at 4:35 PM, TheCarbWhisperer said:

Hi hello!

I'm a first-year MA student at a Canadian university. I'm getting an early start on collecting information for schools I'd like to apply to for my PhD. Broadly, my interest is in bioethics, especially in paediatrics, global health ethics etc. but I'd really love to do more work on altruism. I did a small undergrad thesis on the subject and I'd love to revisit the topic after my MA. The thing is that I don't know about a ton of American schools beyond the big names. Does anyone have advice on where I could/should look for someone whose interests may align with mine when it comes to the study of altruism? 

Thanks!

What exactly are you getting at by "altruism?" Are you referring to effective altruism which is currently trendy among tech people, or altruism as a component of utilitarianism more generally? Or are you talking about altruism in a moral-psychology way? It seems like you might have quite a few options since you might be able to work with normative ethics people or moral psychology people, depending on how you want to approach things. Have you looked at the Gourmet Report sub-rankings for ethics? It would probably be a good place to start. Also you could take a look at the SEP article on altruism, and see where people are working who are cited in the article. You can also just go through every program in the rankings and see who's a good fit. I know it's laborious, but that's what I did when trying to find people to work with in my subfield. I took a lot of notes when I did this. I (like you) started doing this in the first year of my MA, and it was totally worth it.

[BabyFarmer]

@hector549 Thank you for your insight! Much appreciated.