Does an Academia.edu page make any difference?

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

Well, it's that time of year again - academia.edu is sending me emails telling me that various people in cities containing programs to which I applied have been googling my name and visiting my page. This is basically the only use that I have gotten out of that website thus far. The whole thing seems a bit like a scam to me. But do you think that having a good profile on this website makes any difference to AdComs? I've uploaded a bunch of my work on there, in case anyone on an AdCom would like to see some of my work other than my sample. 

[syn]

Not at all. It's completely predatory, and you can't trust those notifications.

(Admittedly, I have a profile there, but only to house my CV in an easy-to-update place.)

What's important is to have a PhilPeople profile. Link to it/mention it on your CV. Keep that updated. Philosophers will find/follow you there.

[Marcus_Aurelius]

Also, don't post anything on academia.edu that's not high quality. Since your writing sample is presumably your highest quality piece of work or close to it, it seems like it could be a bad idea to post lots of other stuff there.

[Estudiante Graduado]

4 hours ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:

Also, don't post anything on academia.edu that's not high quality. Since your writing sample is presumably your highest quality piece of work or close to it, it seems like it could be a bad idea to post lots of other stuff there.

I agree. I actually think this could count against you. You only want adcomms to see your writing sample. That is the piece of philosophy that demonstrates your best work. 

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

26 minutes ago, Estudiante Graduado said:

I agree. I actually think this could count against you. You only want adcomms to see your writing sample. That is the piece of philosophy that demonstrates your best work. 

It's a fair point, but having other papers out there shows a greater breadth of competence and interest. Good writing samples are on extremely narrow topics, and it's hard to show the full range of your specializations in a single writing sample. 

Additionally, what are the chances that an AdCom member is going to really read these papers? What I'm thinking is that they'll glance at a few, read the abstracts, and think 'okay, so he's also developing some ideas in fields x/y/z. Cool.'

Lastly, AdComs know that students devote an enormous amount of time to revising and perfecting their writing samples, and don't expect equally-high quality out of a few term papers posted on academia.edu. Those papers may be weaker, but that's why they're not the writing sample. I have a feeling that it can only help for an AdCom member to see you as, e.g. 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism, and also has some interesting if underdeveloped ideas on Chalmers' 2D semantics', instead of just 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism'.

Maybe I'm wrong though (or am unwarrantedly confident in my less-developed work). But I wonder what you think of these considerations.

[musicdegree4me]

I am extremely skeptical that most adcoms are going to spend the time to read abstracts of work posted on your academia page. These are people busy with classes and family life and their own research. They probably mostly care about doing a good job - but also probably mostly aren't looking to give themselves more work to do. 

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

43 minutes ago, musicdegree4me said:

I am extremely skeptical that most adcoms are going to spend the time to read abstracts of work posted on your academia page. These are people busy with classes and family life and their own research. They probably mostly care about doing a good job - but also probably mostly aren't looking to give themselves more work to do. 

I would have thought as much, but I am noticing a bunch of new page visits from cities where my programs are located... can't be a coincidence.

[musicdegree4me]

1 hour ago, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

I would have thought as much, but I am noticing a bunch of new page visits from cities where my programs are located... can't be a coincidence.

I have to admit, that seems to be relevant evidence. 

[Marcus_Aurelius]

5 hours ago, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

It's a fair point, but having other papers out there shows a greater breadth of competence and interest. Good writing samples are on extremely narrow topics, and it's hard to show the full range of your specializations in a single writing sample. 

Additionally, what are the chances that an AdCom member is going to really read these papers? What I'm thinking is that they'll glance at a few, read the abstracts, and think 'okay, so he's also developing some ideas in fields x/y/z. Cool.'

Lastly, AdComs know that students devote an enormous amount of time to revising and perfecting their writing samples, and don't expect equally-high quality out of a few term papers posted on academia.edu. Those papers may be weaker, but that's why they're not the writing sample. I have a feeling that it can only help for an AdCom member to see you as, e.g. 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism, and also has some interesting if underdeveloped ideas on Chalmers' 2D semantics', instead of just 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism'.

Maybe I'm wrong though (or am unwarrantedly confident in my less-developed work). But I wonder what you think of these considerations.

Do you have evidence for this claim? I haven't talked to any professors about online research they do on applicants, so I don't actually know, but my instinct is opposite yours about what impression a less-than-stellar paper online would give.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

5 minutes ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:

Do you have evidence for this claim? I haven't talked to any professors about online research they do on applicants, so I don't actually know, but my instinct is opposite yours about what impression a less-than-stellar paper online would give.

I have no evidence for this claim other than the fact that the very same papers, when submitted to professors as term papers rather than as writing sample drafts, regularly receive strong grades and commendations, even if they also come with substantial objections and suggestions for improvement. For example, I submitted my writing sample as a term paper, and received an A and highly encouraging comments that suggested that my professor was impressed by it. But then, a year later, when I re-sent it to him, telling him that I thought it was my best candidate for a writing sample and asking for his suggestions, he tore it apart (as a result of which it has been greatly improved). This suggests to me that professors view writing samples with a uniquely critical eye, since they know that the sample is supposed to be 1) the best work of philosophy produced by the student and 2) the product of intense revision over the course of months and years.

Another consideration would be the reception of papers at conferences and job-talks, and the kind of papers that philosophers regularly circulate as drafts. Typically these are well-regarded even when they contain many errors, argumentative lacunae, etc. People aren't so critical because they realize that they are dealing with a work in progress. So I think that philosophers have different standards for evaluating finished work from those that they employ in evaluating works-in-progress. And I'm figuring that AdCom members will view samples as the latter, and other unpublished papers as the former.

[Marcus_Aurelius]

My guess is that an AdCom member who sees that you posted work online will assume that you consider it good work unqualifiedly, not an undergrad-level work-in-progress. And there's a big difference between a professor's WIP and an applicant's. In my experience, early-career folks don't tend to post WIPs online much either. (Much of this post is anecdotal and guesswork, so I invite those with more inside information to correct me if indicated.)

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

9 minutes ago, Marcus_Aurelius said:

My guess is that an AdCom member who sees that you posted work online will assume that you consider it good work unqualifiedly, not an undergrad-level work-in-progress. And there's a big difference between a professor's WIP and an applicant's. In my experience, early-career folks don't tend to post WIPs online much either. (Much of this post is anecdotal and guesswork, so I invite those with more inside information to correct me if indicated.)

It's a fair worry and in the end what I did is this. I had four papers, and I added parenthetical explanations of their status as follows:

• [Paper title 1] (Writing Sample for PhD applications)
• [Paper title 2] (Graduate Seminar Term Paper, Draft)
• [Paper title 3] (Graduate Seminar Term Paper, Draft)
• [Paper title 4] (Undergraduate Honors Thesis)

I'm hoping that this will flag which papers I think are well-developed, and which are less-developed. Hopefully that way I can satisfy all desiderata.

BTW, there is no doubt that AdCom members are looking at stuff like this. Some of my 'page hits' now explictly mention the institution with which the viewer is affiliated, and they are from the schools to which I applied.

[Eheydon]

Just got a notification from academia.edu that someone googled for my profile, in a town near one of the schools I applied to. So yes, they are looking. 

[syn]

I hate to burst anyone's bubbles, but two things:

1. A very timely post by Leiter (granted, from 10 years ago) asked people if they Googled grad school applicants' names (https://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2020/01/blast-from-the-past-do-admissions-committees-google-applicants.html). It was overwhelmingly a "no" and, in comparison, most said they were far more likely to Google the name of a prospective job applicant, but not a grad school applicant. Now, a caveat: this was 10 years ago. Things change. A lot of things change. Ten years ago, you figure the people on most applicant committees today were probably still grad students or junior faculty, and with technology's change, so too do the people. So I wouldn't doubt if there are some savvy people (with more time than they admit) who do Google grad students. However:

2. In my "regular" life, I've worked in digital marketing at every level, from specialist to executive. And I have some bad news: these sites lie to you, and they're very convincing in doing so. If you, say, applied to Harvard, and you've gone to their website, it's likely the Harvard website put a cookie on your computer. Academia.edu, no doubt, knows how to read these cookies, and can likely even identify the cookie signatures of all the top universities, if not all universities, to some degree. Thus, if you go to Harvard's website, Academia.edu will read the cookie, and put you into a list of, "People who have visited Harvard.edu in the past x days." Then, automatically, they send out these notifications that say, "You've been searched by someone from Cambridge, MA! Upgrade to Premium to get more statistics like these!" It's a marketing scheme, and arguably fraudulent. There are no ethical bounds for profit-driven people: they'll do anything for the almighty dollar, which is one reason I had to leave the industry. Never trust a website (like Academia, LinkedIn, etc) where the notifications are tied to upgrading your account.

tl;dr: Most applicant committees probably don't search for you online, but a few might. Regardless, never trust these websites.

[Estudiante Graduado]

On 1/26/2020 at 3:15 PM, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

It's a fair point, but having other papers out there shows a greater breadth of competence and interest. Good writing samples are on extremely narrow topics, and it's hard to show the full range of your specializations in a single writing sample. 

Additionally, what are the chances that an AdCom member is going to really read these papers? What I'm thinking is that they'll glance at a few, read the abstracts, and think 'okay, so he's also developing some ideas in fields x/y/z. Cool.'

Lastly, AdComs know that students devote an enormous amount of time to revising and perfecting their writing samples, and don't expect equally-high quality out of a few term papers posted on academia.edu. Those papers may be weaker, but that's why they're not the writing sample. I have a feeling that it can only help for an AdCom member to see you as, e.g. 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism, and also has some interesting if underdeveloped ideas on Chalmers' 2D semantics', instead of just 'the guy who does first-rate work on debates between ontological universalism and nihilism'.

Maybe I'm wrong though (or am unwarrantedly confident in my less-developed work). But I wonder what you think of these considerations.

I don't have much else to say that Marcus_Aurelius hasn't already said. I think that we should have little to no degree of confidence that they will even look, and further, that my intuition is that reading less developed work will more likely harm rather than help an admissions decision in the rare case that they do read them. 

[Moose#@1%$]

On 1/25/2020 at 7:23 PM, Coconuts&Chloroform said:

Well, it's that time of year again - academia.edu is sending me emails telling me that various people in cities containing programs to which I applied have been googling my name and visiting my page. This is basically the only use that I have gotten out of that website thus far. The whole thing seems a bit like a scam to me. But do you think that having a good profile on this website makes any difference to AdComs? I've uploaded a bunch of my work on there, in case anyone on an AdCom would like to see some of my work other than my sample. 

Like many aspects of you application, I doubt having a less than amazing academia page will help, but it will most certainly hurt you, if your ad com people are really looking at your page. Truth be told I get about 10 emails a week from academia that my name (10 times or so) has been mentioned in papers in the last x (entire times span). I highly doubt that's the case, since I haven't really put anything on there, nor am I that amazing of a philosopher (yet ) that so many people are mentioning me or looking me up. So, take those notifications with a grain of salt.

[Coconuts&Chloroform]

3 hours ago, Moose#@1%$ said:

Like many aspects of you application, I doubt having a less than amazing academia page will help, but it will most certainly hurt you, if your ad com people are really looking at your page. Truth be told I get about 10 emails a week from academia that my name (10 times or so) has been mentioned in papers in the last x (entire times span). I highly doubt that's the case, since I haven't really put anything on there, nor am I that amazing of a philosopher (yet ) that so many people are mentioning me or looking me up. So, take those notifications with a grain of salt.

Sure - having a less than amazing anything will hurt. It goes without saying that nobody should upload work they've done unless they're quite confident in it.