How about being poor in math?

[failingunder]

 

I'm an international applicant planning to apply to MA/PhD programs in Philosophy. I wish to specialize in phil of mind, especially consciousness, and have heard that few people including this forum say good math grade is a good sign. Then how about bad math grade?

 

I have poor math grades(about 3.5/4.0) whereas a little bit nicer Philosophy grades (about 3.8-9/4.0). It's not just a problem of my first two years at university. I have got so many Bs throughout all the undergraduate years.

 

So I'm worried that my poor math grades signal my lack of abliity to learn about abstract things which, I think, is crucial to graduate student.

 

 

[anonmaly]

I'm no expert here, but I would imagine your philosophy grades would demonstrate an ability to learn about, examine, and analyze abstract concepts. 

 

If you were doing philosophy of math, this might be an issue. I'm not even sure about that claim, though. 

[lantedodo]

Not all great philosophers are great at math. As my senior thesis advisor at a high-ranked Ivy told me: "Some of my colleagues here aren't good at math. It doesn't really matter unless you're going into philosophy of physics, etc." And then there's the notable example of Derek Parfit. From a New Yorker piece:

In the autumn of 1961, [Parfit] went up to Oxford to read history. (He studied Modern History at Eton, which for England began when the Romans left, in 410.) He was a little bored by the subject, and briefly considered switching to P.P.E.—Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He was apprehensive about the mathematics that economics would involve, however, so he read a few pages of a textbook and came across a symbol he didn’t recognize—a line with a dot above and a dot below. He asked someone to explain it, and when he was told that it was a division sign he felt so humiliated that he decided to stick with history. After Oxford, he went back to America for two years on a Harkness Fellowship. ... He decided to study philosophy.

I hope that adcoms keep this in mind when they're faced with that final list of 20 students and are looking for reasons to cut someone. But who knows these days.

Edited December 30, 2016 by lantedodo

[lantedodo]

PS: 3.5 in not great, but it's by no means "poor." Right?

[hector549]

If your philosophy grades are good and your overall GPA is solid, but your scores in math are slightly lower, I'd venture to say you should still be okay. The only other concern might be how you perform on the GRE quantitative section. Are you planning to apply to US programs? If you are, but you haven't yet taken the GRE, you could try taking an ETS practice test and seeing how the math portion goes for you. While the verbal part is far more important for philosophy programs, having a reasonably decent quantitative score is still a good thing, as is having a good overall score.

[Duns Eith]

This may be a classic case of someone having such high standards for themselves that they forget that they are high. Most people get less than a 3.5 in math. The vast majority get less than a 3.5 in college over all. Very few get a 3.8+/4.0 in philosophy. If you have a normal or slightly above average math score, great. Your reading comprehension (vocabulary, analytic skills, etc.) are far more necessary. You need math in the following cases: formal logic, philosophy of math, formal epistemology (to some extent), some very formal philosophy of mind or cogsci, or some very formal philosophy of language or linguistics, and finally philosophy of [some science or another, like biology or physics]

So, two questions:

1) The kind of phil mind that you want to do, is it more armchair or is it more cog sci? There are people who take hard-line stances on these issues, and there are others who lean one way or another. Which way to do lean?

2) If you were to read a phil mind article that relied on statistics or maths, would you be able to ascertain what the import of the study is? If yes, you're fine. If you're not intent on specializing in a part of phil mind that develops or relies on empirical data, then you don't need to worry, especially with your maths background.

Edited December 31, 2016 by Turretin