The Application Process: More Thoughts
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Thursday, April 20, 2006 at 5:58 PM
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2 Comments |
The dust has settled, and, like John, I now feel able to reflect more clearly on the philosophy grad school application process (see this post for further thoughts).
I was admitted at Notre Dame, UC Riverside, U Colorado Boulder, and UC Santa Barbara, waitlisted at NYU, UCLA, and USC, and rejected at Rutgers, Princeton, Cornell, and UC Irvine.
The Personal Statement
Every department requires of its applicant a personal statement. These are supposed to indicate why the applicant wants to do graduate level philosophy, what her areas of interest are, and why she is a good match for the institution.
Many applicants choose to use the personal statement as a place to list accomplishments and awards: a sort of expanded CV-in-prose. I began with this approach, but eventually decided against it for two reasons. First, it appears vain to discuss one's own accomplishments in prose. Far better to have the letter writers do the same thing than to come off as a braggart. Second, such information typically takes up space. A lot of it. And if there is a mortal sin in philosophical writing, it is verbosity.
So the personal statement I opted for took a different route. For all but one of the programs I applied, to, my statement weighed in at under 315 words--one double-spaced page. I began with a stark, brief summary of one puzzle that drives my interest in philosophy, noted my primary areas of philosophical interest, and in some cases, indicated the faculty I hoped to work with.
Letters of Recommendation
Most programs ask for three letters of recommendation, some four. I submitted six. Four are undergraduate philosophy professors at Biola, one at Talbot (Biola's graduate school), and one teaches philosophy at another college (I had the chance to take a class with him some time ago and have maintained contact). Overkill? Perhaps not. Having this many letter writers dovetailed with my above personal statement strategy. I gave my letter writers detailed instructions, designed to focus their comments in particular areas. In the end, the conjunction of all six letters covered everything I wasn't able to in a short personal statement.
Writing Sample
Nothing opened more doors for me than did my writing sample. Last summer, I chose the topic (consequence-style arguments for incompatibilism with respect to causal determinism and free will/moral responsibility) for a few reasons. First, it's at the center of debates that take center-stage in my areas of philosophical interest. Second, it's not in philosophy of religion or any other "ghetto" sub-field of the discipline. That is, general practitioners can find something interesting in free will debates, and that can be exploited. Finally, and most importantly, it's an area of research with room for technical work. Committees keep an eye out for students with a penchent for the detailed, specialized prose and literature usage common in analytic philosophy, and I wanted to catch their attention.
Presentation and Publications
In preparation for graduate study, I spent a lot of energy my junior year trying to get published. It happened. Eventually. But the (three) papers I managed to land in journals were not my best work (ah, the clarity of hindsight!). And the journals they appeared in, while professional and peer-reviewed, were not top-flight ones. I thus did not mention these papers anywhere in my applications except in my CV. I had five conference presentations at the time I applied. At this point, I'm really not sure if they did anything for me. But they couldn't have hurt.
GRE and GPA
I have little to say about this. My GPA (3.9 in and out of philosophy) and GRE scores (710v, 690q, 5.5w) were solid but unremarkable--the sort that do not attract any attention, whether good or bad.
2 Comments:
surfsnell at 7:16 PM said... Most insightful. Great idea with the rec letters. I'm intrigued that out of the n programs applied to none had the "send nothing more than is requested" clause.
Cheers!
hamlet at 8:50 PM said... congratulations!
welcome to grad school!
