Evaluate my profile?

[mariogs379]

Hey guys,

I'm a junior philosophy major who's interested in pursuing graduate work. Here's my profile:

Top 20 LAC (only here for my first year)

GPA: 3.83

Intro phil (A), Contemporary moral issues (A)

Columbia

GPA: 3.92

Phil of religion (A), Environmental Ethics (A), Rational Belief (A), Phil of Science (TBD...possibly getting a b, grad seminar on phil of education (pass), phil of mind (pass)

I haven't taken logic yet, but I have taken multivariable calc, differential equations, and linear algebra so I'm hoping adcoms will realize that I'm a logical thinker despite not having taken a formal logic class (although linear algebra does go over truth tables and obviously proofs).

I know job prospects are brutal for phil PhDs so I want to go to as good a grad school as possible. I have a couple strong contacts at Columbia who I think are good philosophers...fairly well known, etc.

What do you guys think? Seems like Harvard/Princeton/MIT/NYU/Pitt/WashU are all insanely competitive and I might not be competitive there...what about Yale/Stanford/UCLA/Berkeley?

Thanks in advance,

Mariogs

[tarski]

Hi mariogs,

Your profile looks great. Continue to do well, make sure you get to know your profs for letters, etc.

Just wanted to mention something about competitiveness. All the schools you listed are competitive, imo, and there's not enough of a significant difference between their levels of competition for you to (using only levels of competition as a reason) not apply to Harvard/Princeton/MIT/NYU/Pitt/WashU and instead to apply to Yale/Stanford/Berkeley. Apply to places that fit from both of those groups. Hopefully that made sense.

[sometimesiexist]

Also, it's important to mention that you should, while in undergrad, try to fill different types of distributions (even if you're analytic, I could be wrong about this because I'm continental) like logic, which you mention, but also classical and modern philosophy. From my impression, if you don't do them now, you're most likely going to have to go back and do them later.

I agree with Tarski, almost everything is competitive. Most of the schools you listed accept between 2-4% of their applicant pool. You'll find those numbers don't get much better anywhere. As far as I'm concerned, it's a mixture of fit, writing ability, luck (the right person reading the right essay written the right way...etc.), and the ability to persevere.