MA program rankings?

[existentialcoffee]

Hi, Guys. Besides the philosophical gourmet website, I was wondering if there was some place that had rankings on philosophy MA programs or if there is any that should be recommended. Anything helps! 

[maxhgns]

Not really, and the PGR's brief mention of MA programs isn't great either. 

Frankly, there's not a whole lot to rank because the goals of an MA program--and the relationship you have to your supervisor--are pretty different, and it's not clear to me (at least) that a ranking will do much to capture those features. (Not that ranking the research prestige of PhD programs does either! But it comes closer.)

The goals of an MA program are to give you breadth of knowledge in the discipline, and to introduce you to research norms and methods. It's a peek into the academic life, and a chance to see how another department works and build connections there. Quite a lot of MA programs will fit that bill, even if they're not the prestige programs like Tufts, SFU, and NIU.

So... Just look for a program that will fund you, and that has a good record of placing students into the kinds of PhD programs you want to attend (if that's what you want). If you can attend one where you'll get a letter from someone active in your desired subfield, that's even better.

[kretschmar]

Agreed. What constitutes a good MA option is just too dependent on your interests. Create your own "rankings" by synthesizing program research and thinking very specifically about what will foster your interests. Start with Geoff Pynn's list of funded MAs. From there, go through departments faculty member-by-faculty member. This may take a bit, but you will end up with a far better conception of what's really out there.

One thing to recognize if your interests range much outside of analytic philosophy – and you may know this – there is a profound tendency to overvalue the analytic tradition in the United States. Treat any rankings of philosophy programs like lists of the favorite novels of someone enamored with science fiction.

[Duns Eith]

Set some reasonable goals for where you want to study for a PhD, then look at the funded MA programs' placement records. If, say, you want to go to UC Santa Barbara because of [professor x and y] then prioritize the programs that have actually placed there. Hard work, I know.

Also, I would give this website some weight as well, even though Leiter doesn't like the competition:

http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/10/20/Graduate-School-in-Philosophy-Terminal-MA-Programs-In-Philosophy.aspx

I would pay attention to what the data means, and give the interpretations weight commensurate with the reliability of the method that the author makes explicit.

[hector549]

On 8/26/2017 at 10:12 PM, Duns Eith said:

Set some reasonable goals for where you want to study for a PhD, then look at the funded MA programs' placement records. If, say, you want to go to UC Santa Barbara because of [professor x and y] then prioritize the programs that have actually placed there. Hard work, I know.

Also, I would give this website some weight as well, even though Leiter doesn't like the competition:

http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2013/10/20/Graduate-School-in-Philosophy-Terminal-MA-Programs-In-Philosophy.aspx

I would pay attention to what the data means, and give the interpretations weight commensurate with the reliability of the method that the author makes explicit.

I think there's some interesting food for thought in the website Duns Eith mentions, though there are definitely some issues as well (as Duns Eith also mentions). The post is kind of old for one thing (2013), and the writer uses data going back to 2002 from old Leiter Reports which may not be as relevant to someone who might be wondering how programs have done in the recent past. Nonetheless, it is interesting to look the kinds of places MA students end up, or the other fields they end up pursuing, as well as some of the placement information (though I'm not sure how significant the distinctions are which the writer determines).

After I was accepted into a few MA programs, I averaged the Leiter PhD program rankings to which students had been placed from the past five years for the programs to which I had been accepted--somewhat similar to the philosophynews.com post, though with a much narrower scope--since PhD placement was important to me. Interestingly, this average placement-rank value tracked fairly well onto the overall prestige of the program. Were the distinctions significant? I don't know. I do suspect that there is a little difference in placement between some of the top programs, though it's doubtful how significant they are. There may also be some small differences between programs Leiter ranks a bit lower, like U. of Missouri-St. Louis and Houston, though, again, I'm not sure such differences are significant. However, my sense is that there may be more of a significant difference in placement between a higher-ranked program like Georgia State and one lower-ranked such as Texas Tech. Of course, one's own experience with respect to PhD placement may not be reflected by the average placement scores of these MA institutions at all.

Also, placement is only one criterion. I took into consideration the program's fit with my current general interests, diversity of ideas (insofar as there were sufficient faculty working in diverse areas to support my possibly evolving interests in the future--e.g., what if I suddenly became really interested in the history of philosophy or in continental work, or what have you? Would there be people I could work with?), location (I preferred to be somewhere reasonably urban/cosmopolitan and close enough to fly home cheaply), and funding/cost-of-living (could I actually fully support myself on the stipend for two years?), and teaching/thesis requirements (how onerous these were with respect to coursework requirements--e.g., some programs will ask you to teach several classes independently, others will have you TA or tutor. Some programs will not have a thesis requirement at all, for others, the thesis will comprise the bulk of what you'll be doing).

 

Edited August 28, 2017 by hector549