<p>You are, I’m afraid, completely wrong about graduate students teaching courses. This is easily provable if you just click the link I posted, which contains courses from various years, each of which are mostly taught by grad students (which you can see are the professors, not the TA’s). </p>
<p>This is not unusual, most of the best universities in the world have their grad students teaching courses to undergraduates. That’s because there’s really no reason for a professor to waste time teaching introductory material to undergrads when it can easily be taught by a graduate student much better than the professor can teach it (most excellent research professors are horrible teachers). </p>
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<p>Their <em>philosophy</em> department is not as good as NYU’s, their other departments are far superior to NYU’s other departments, which is why they will have more clout when a student with a 3.0 applies to, say, Princeton Grad School in philosophy, since that student will have taken much more rigorous coursework outside philosophy and done well. </p>
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<p>This directly contradicts Leiter’s and Schwitzgebel’s opinions about grad school selection. Undergraduates from NYU, Rutgers, Michigan, etc, are simply <em>not</em> preferred over undergraduates from standard issue prestigious schools on average. See this post for evidence:</p>
<p>(note the direct reference to US News top ranked universities as being the most popular among graduate student alma maters). </p>
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<p>Sure, I think your post is attempting to show its the case that if you put in a lot of research work, you can do very well at places like NYU and UCLA for grad school chances, as well as other leiter ranked university’s undergrad programs. I don’t dispute that. As I mentioned in my post, NYU would be a great choice for someone willing to bother professors and try to do a lot of philosophy research, and be good at philosophy. For someone who just wants to be an average-above average student, and not exceptional, but still have a good chance at grad school, I would recommend amherst and brown and the like (as Leiter does).</p>
<p>I don’t know what list you’re looking at… But just glancing at the Fall 2012 schedule, most classes are taught by professors and not just any professor, very famous professors. </p>
<p>Ned Block, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, Peter Unger, Samuel Scheffler, Sharon Street, etc. all teach undergraduate classes on a regular basis. </p>
<p>The only time most courses are taught by graduate students is in the summer, when the high school program is happening. </p>
<p>Number of classes I’ve had taught by a graduate student during term time: 1. </p>
<p>Every other classes I’ve had in philosophy? Taught by a very well-known or world-famous philosopher. </p>
<p>In terms of graduate admissions, having spoken to the NYU department about becoming a graduate student there, your claim that somehow a 3.0 from Princeton will be more credible than a 3.0 from say, NYU, is unsupported. When you apply to NYU graduate philosophy they most important thing they look at is your writing sample and then your ability to succeed in the program. I didn’t have the highest GPA at NYU, but none of my professors in the philosophy department there seemed to think I would have any problems competing with the thousands of other applicants that apply ever year. </p>
<p>Getting a degree from NYU in philosophy versus Amherst or Brown, say, has no disadvantages, unlike you seem to think. Besides, I’d much rather take a course from Ned Block, Peter Unger, Thomas Nagel, Derek Parfit, etc. (most of whom have been my professors) and I could have received a LOR from any of them. If there were somewhere that could make a claim for providing a better education in philosophy, I assure you, I would have gone there. The fact of the matter is that it’s very difficult to receive a better education in philosophy than one could at NYU. Graduate students do not teach classes as often as you claim, the only time I had a graduate student teach one of my classes was for formal logic. Intro, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Knowledge and Assertion, Applied Ethics, Ethics, Advanced topics in ethics, history of modern, history of ancient and philosophy of mind were all taught by full professors, most of whom are very famous in philosophy (see above-mentioned philosophers).</p>
<p>^ This is good. We too rarely see detailed input from recent graduates about classroom experiences in specific departments. NYU2013, it sounds like you’ve been very satisfied with your experience there.</p>
<p>My experience at UCLA was similar to NYU2013’s. While not all of our classes were taught by tenure track professors, most were at least adjuncts with PHDs from respected institutions (Princeton, NYU, etc.)</p>
<p>Looking at UCLA’s fall philosophy roster, there’s ONE class being taught by a graduate student. From my research on this guy, all he basically needs to do is turn in his thesis, which many intentionally push back until they can land a tenure track job (In academia, apparently it looks bad to have your PHD for a long time and not have a job. Or at least that’s what one of my professors told me.)</p>
<p>Additionally, your claim was that ‘most’ classes were taught by graduate students. You then changed your most claim to some, although more accurately it would probably be ‘few.’ Given that you’ve lacked consistency towards what you’ve tried to claim, i see no reason to further address this.</p>
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<p>Your claim that graduate students are better professors than teachers is laughable. Not only is it completely unsubstantiated, but it’s also implausable. Professors typically have years of experience which makes them much better teachers than graduate students, who have little to none.</p>
<p>There’s no evidence supporting that being an excellent researcher correlates with being a poor (or good) lecturer. One of the most famous research professors in my department was an amazing lecturer, although perhaps an irresponsible one. (Both of the terms i took him, he canceled a weeks worth of classes to travel abroad to another country to do academic related things.)</p>
<p>Additionally, some professors enjoy teaching lower division classes to undergraduates. I know two extremely famous professors in my department who taught an introductory ethics class and an introductory symbolic logic class. These are things most graduate students could do, but these famous tenured professors did them anyway.</p>
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<p>Philosophers don’t care about how people do in non-philosophical fields. It doesn’t matter how good of a chemist you are if you can’t write or think like a philosopher. The latter skills are important for finishing any graduate school program, but specifically one in philosophy. </p>
<p>GPA is important, but so is major GPA. Both, however, will be noticed in applications. Unless they’re a philosophical prodigy, a princeton grad with a 3.0 is just as likely to be rejected as a 3.0 UCR grad. In fact, both would probably be eliminated first cut unless they had a 4.0 major GPA and amazing GRE scores probably.</p>
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<p>No they’re not preferred. But people at stronger programs will have access to stronger letters which will or will not determine if they’re accepted into a given program. It’s a superficiality, but one that can’t be overlooked.</p>
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<p>Trust me, that ‘prestige halo’ plays a very small negligable role in admissions. All you’ve shown throughout this thread is that you’ve never talked to any professor for graduate studies in philosophy. I doubt that you even know anything about philosophical graduate programs. </p>
<p>The reason people from Brown and Amherst get their people into top programs is because they put an emphasis on writing. As a result of this, their students become great writers and write great writing samples. Since admissions to these colleges are competitive, it ensures that the people who attend these schools are probably very motivated to work hard and hone their writing skills. An ‘average’ student from Brown would certainly be rejected from all the top programs, although he might still get into a ‘grad school.’</p>
<p>Having talked to the admissions comittee at my department, i know a bit about how their admissions system works. They start out with 200 applicants and generally begin with GPA/GRE (first cut) –> Letters of Rec. (second Cut) –> writing sample (final cut) –> 6-8 offers (out of 200 total applicants.) Something similar to this is probably mimicked by NYU’s department (although they probably put less emphasis on the GRE from what he’s said in the past.) There’s very little emphasis on where graduates did their undergradate education. And when it is emphasized, Brown isn’t viewed in a better light than UCLA or NYU since it has a much weaker philosophy program.</p>
<p>Although I am not a philosophy major, I had a chance to take several undergraduate philosophy courses at Rutgers. I took some classes taught in a big lecture hall while some were taught in small classroom. From my experience, I enjoyed the bigger philosophy classes than the smaller ones. More students allowed more thoughts and perspectives being shared. If you sit up front and participate, you can have a nice interaction with the professor.</p>
<p>Lots of misinformation circulating on this thread. Let’s be clear about one thing: not all public universities are alike. </p>
<p>Michigan has one of the top 4 or so philosophy departments in the nation, and one of the top handful in the world (#5 in the English-speaking world, according to the Philosophical Gourmet), so this is not your run-of-the-mill “large public university.” Michigan has a large and distinguished philosophy faculty and relatively few people majoring in the field, so almost all the classes are small, some tiny. By the time they’re juniors and seniors, philosophy majors can be taking graduate-level courses alongside an extremely talented bunch of grad students who come to Michigan because it’s recognized as one the elite grad programs in the field. </p>
<p>All the tenured and tenure-track faculty in Michigan’s philosophy department teach undergrad classes, every blessed one of 'em; in fact, they all spend far more time teaching undergrads than graduate students. The undergrad curriculum is also structured so you don’t get big lecture classes, even at the intro level. And almost all the classes are taught by full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty. I just checked their course listings for Fall 2012. They list 34 undergraduate classes (37 including independent studies). All but 5 of them are taught by tenured or tenure-track faculty, and 4 of the 5 taught by grad students are small sections of a baby intro to philosophy class that is not a prerequisite for any other class and that most serious prospective philosophy majors would just skip. The one upper-level class taught by a grad student is history of ancient philosophy, I assume because a regular faculty member is on leave and they needed someone to fill the podium, and an advanced grad student was as qualified as anyone they could have brought in from the outside. The 3 grad students teaching undergrad classes are all-but-dissertation and will likely be on very good philosophy faculties at very good colleges in a year or two. In short, you absolutely would never need to take a philosophy class from a grad student, but if you did it would be someone who is probably as well or more qualified than 90+% of the people teaching philosophy in U.S. colleges and universities.</p>
<p>The other way Michigan differs from Pitt or Rutgers, both of which have very strong philosophy faculties, is that Michigan’s students are much stronger. As I said, in your junior and senior yeasrs your classmates would likely be grad students, but Michigan’s undergrad philosophy majors are definitely NOT people seeking an “easy major,” because it’s well understood within the university that philosophy is historically one of the university’s strongest programs with an exceptionally strong faculty who teach intellectually rigorous courses and demand a lot of their students.</p>
<p>For top philosophy programs I’d definitely pick Princeton over Harvard; the latter has long had a reputation for having an aloof and remote philosophy faculty, with few opportunities for interactions between undergrads and faculty. Princeton’s faculty is much more accessible. NYU certainly has a lot of big stars, but I can’t speak to specifics of the undergrad experience. Pitt and Rutgers have very good faculties but overall the schools are not that strong. Michigan, though, merits serious consideration alongside Princeton and NYU. (By the way, I think the median scores on Philosophical Gourmet are more revealing than the means; on median score, NYU gets a 5.0 while Rutgers, Princeton, and Michigan get 4.5; from there it drops all the way to 4.0, a score achieved by 13 schools including among others Harvard, Yale, Pitt, Stanford, Columbia, UCLA, and UC Berkeley, all mentioned on this thread. These are all very good philosophy faculties but not quite at the same level as NYU, Rutger, Princeton and Michigan).</p>
<p>I was just wondering how long it would take bclintonk to chime in on this subject, his area of expertise. The OP should definitely take heed of his advice.</p>
Pitt and Rutgers philosophy majors aren’t seeing an “easy major” either. The most motivated Pitt and Rutgers students will have access to a star-studded cast of Philosophy faculty amongst the brightest graduate students in the field.</p>
<p>I would ignore all this advice and go to the most intellectually demanding university you get admitted to. There are more Brown alums in Princeton and Berkeley’s PhD programs in Philosophy than Michigan, Rutgers, and Pitt grads combined. NYU also seems to do very well as do a number of liberal arts colleges like Amherst.</p>
<p>All of the usual suspects will do just fine to get a top-notch philosophy education at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>“There are more Brown alums in Princeton and Berkeley’s PhD programs in Philosophy than Michigan, Rutgers, and Pitt grads combined.”</p>
<p>Michigan alums might prefer to go to NYU or Michigan. After all, they are among the top philosophy programs in the world. </p>
<p>“I would ignore all this advice and go to the most intellectually demanding university you get admitted to.”</p>
<p>I certainly wouldn’t recommend taking any advice from a poster here on CC that is notoriously biased against public universities, particularly the larger ones. I do agree that Princeton would be a fine choice for studying philosphy at the UG leve. Schools that are known to have just “good” faculty, no so much.</p>
<p>You should note that the NYU department hardly has any grad student who did undergrad at NYU, as does the Michigan department. </p>
<p>I also note that NYU2013 is quite wrong about the average number of graduate students teaching courses. The number of grad students teaching a course in fall of 2012 is 5, not 1, the number of grad students that taught a course this spring was 8, which made up the majority of the 13 classes being taught during.</p>
<p>A notable quote from The Splintered Mind blog, btw:</p>
<p>rjkofnovi doesn’t realize that PhD programs don’t typically accept students who did their undergraduate studies at the same institution. PhD admissions is unlike Law and Med school admisssions in this regard; you are better of getting accepted to Michigan’s graduate program in Philosophy with an undergraduate degree from Brown or Amherst.</p>
<p>^ Actually, many Ph.D. programs will accept their own undergrads, but in a field like philosophy they generally advise top students to go elsewhere for grad school to be exposed to a broader range of thinkers and approaches. One sensible strategy would be to go to Michigan as an undergrad and try to get into Princeton or NYU as a grad student. You can go through a significant chunk of Michigan’s graduate courses as a junior and senior, then move on to other professors and courses in grad school. Or the other way around. Either way you’ll be taking classes from some of the very top people in the field.</p>
<p>Michigan’s philosophy department currently has at least 2 or 3 grad students who did their undergraduate work at Michigan, along with a bunch from Ivies (Brown, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Columbia all represented), top private research universities (MIT, Chicago, Tufts), top LACs (Williams, Haverford, Swarthmore, Oberlin, Washington & Lee), public universities (Minnesota, William & Mary, U Vermont, Cal Poly SLO), and foreign institutions (U Toronto, U Victoria, UBC, U Sydney, London School of Economics, U Sheffield), as well as a few from lesser-known schools. So I guess the point would be, you can get into a top grad program from almost anywhere, but if you’re serious about the field, I think you should pack as much into your undergrad years as you can, and to me that means studying in one of the top departments, with one of the top faculties. Their recommendations, by the way, will be golden when you’re applying to grad school. And all those super-smart grad students Michigan’s philosophy department has collected from near and far? They’d be your classmates in your junior and senior years.</p>
<p>I’m amused by the length and asperity of many of these posts. Whatever else one can say about them, philosophers do love to ramble. ;)</p>
<p>A few things to note:
[ul][li]Most students do not stick with their intended or selected majors. Estimates and surveys indicate that about 70% of students change their majors at least once. The odds against the OP eventually selecting a major other than philosophy are high.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]The OP has indicated no interest in philosophy PhD programs whatsoever. In fact, most philosophy majors are not at all interested in graduate school. The percentage of students who enter PhD programs is quite low even at a place like Chicago.</p>[/li]
<p>[li]Per other threads, the OP is primarily interested in theatre, indicated among other things by his/her desire for BFA programs in theatre. Philosophy is at best a secondary subject of interest.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>Now, with all of that in mind, the question of “what are the best undergraduate programs in philosophy in the US?” becomes two somewhat different questions.</p>
<p><a href=“1”>b</a> What are the best philosophy programs given the student’s background, interests, and finances?**</p>
<p>As most of us know, high schoolers are not the best at thinking beyond rankings. Factors that to any college student seem obvious to consider - such as size and location - surprisingly do not always occur to them. Without more information about what the OP wants in terms of size, location, selectivity, atmosphere, and most importantly cost, no tailored suggestions can be made – one may as well simply refer the OP to the Philosophical Gourmet rankings and call it a day. </p>
<p>This is, of course, pretty unfortunate. A prospective classics major who hates big cities might well be miserable at Columbia, regardless of how strong its classics program is, and thrive at a place like UVA, with a weaker but still good classics program and a much better environmental fit. Alternately, a student from New York might fall in love with the excellent zoology programs at Michigan State and Wisconsin but be in for a rude awakening when financial aid offers come out. </p>
<p><a href=“2”>b</a> When is a program sufficient for a dabbler’s needs?**</p>
<p>Most people in majors like history, anthropology, religion, art history, etc. end up in careers far removed from what they studied. What is most important is that students are taught to think critically and carefully and develop good writing and communication skills. Few companies will care that you know what craquelure is or can scan Longfellow; they do care that you can process information quickly and effectively. From this perspective, the strength of one’s major is often entirely overrated on these boards. Of course, you also want a good grounding in your major and to be taught by competent faculty; a good number of available courses is also ideal. For this reason, I think it is less important to focus on “good programs” and much more important to focus on “good enough” programs.</p>
<p>For biology, this is a hundred or more schools - although Harvard and Cornell may be among the best places for biology, one can get a perfectly adequate education in biology at Colorado-Boulder or Northeastern. For a major in an obscure subject like Egyptology or Assyriology, which has a far steeper drop-off between strong programs like Chicago and Penn and noticeably weaker programs like Berkeley and Michigan, one must obviously draw the line at a much smaller number of schools. I don’t know enough about philosophy to say where this line should be drawn, but I suspect one could get a perfectly good philosophy education at a university lower down on the Philosophical Gourmet list than Michigan or Pittsburgh.</p>
<p>“For this reason, I think it is less important to focus on “good programs” or much more important to focus on “good enough” programs.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know enough about philosophy to say where this line should be drawn, but I suspect one could get a perfectly good philosophy education at a university lower down on the Philosophical Gourmet list than Michigan or Pittsburgh.”</p>
<p>Then by all means, the OP should apply to Duke if one is not interested going to a top program.</p>
Your bitterness and paranoia do you no credit, and increasingly I have little patience for them. I have the greatest of respect for Michigan, which I regard as one of the world’s best universities. Duke and Michigan are clearly peers, with Michigan having an edge in many fields; I have never said otherwise. I regret that you don’t hold my alma mater in the same regard, particularly because Duke has no Duke moderator to delete anti-Duke remarks, but I am not particularly concerned with what people think of Duke. I know it to be a fine school, though not perfect, and that is good enough for me. As for me, you are welcome to peruse my past posts, most of them I made as helpful and informative as possible and mentioning Duke only where pertinent, as in the marine biology thread yesterday. You are welcome to then compare it to your own track record of doing little but blatantly ■■■■■■■■ for Michigan. </p>
<p>You grew up in Michigan, no doubt raised to love Michigan, and it would’ve been an excellent in-state bargain for you. It was probably strong in your major, and you obviously loved it. </p>
<p>Great. Good for you. </p>
<p>Michigan is good at most things it does. That doesn’t make it the perfect school for all or even most people; no college in the country even comes close to such a thing. After all, the number of students taking the SAT last year outnumbered the number of Michigan applicants by a factor of 40. I think it could well be a very good fit for the OP; after all, it’s superb at both philosophy and theatre and has a good quality of life. What I don’t see - unlike you, apparently - is the sky falling and the world ending if the OP looks beyond NYU, Princeton, Michigan, Pittsburgh, and Rutgers. Maybe that includes Duke; maybe it doesn’t.</p>
<p>“Your bitterness and paranoia do you no credit, and increasingly I have little patience for them. I have the greatest of respect for Michigan, which I regard as one of the world’s best universities. Duke and Michigan are clearly peers, with Michigan having an edge in many fields; I have never said otherwise. I regret that you don’t hold my alma mater in the same regard, particularly because Duke has no Duke moderator to delete anti-Duke remarks, but I am not particularly concerned with what people think of Duke. I know it to be a fine school, though not perfect, and that is good enough for me. As for me, you are welcome to peruse my past posts, most of them I made as helpful and informative as possible and mentioning Duke only where pertinent, as in the marine biology thread yesterday. You are welcome to then compare it to your own track record of doing little but blatantly trolling for Michigan.”</p>
<p>I know you are fair warblersrule with your evaluations of Michigan and I do apologize for insulting your alma mater and using your own words to do so. I will be more careful in the future with quotations. Duke is of course a great university.</p>
<p>RJK - No harm done, and apologies from me for using a harsh tone. I know that many Duke posters over the years (including goldenboy in this thread) have been overly zealous in promoting and defending their school, and Michigan in particular seems to be targeted and attacked. These posters are obviously wholly misguided, but it is best not to turn irritation with these people into a grudge against the university itself (or relatively innocent bystanders like me).</p>
<p>I think the best philosophy educations are very well rounded. Generally, a good philosophical education will include some mix of the four branches: metaphysics, ethics, logic, and epistemology. Schools have their specialties, no doubt, which are influenced by people who work there This can be seen with Carnap and UCLA; Foucault and Berkeley, Rawls and Harvard. More recently, i think, this can be seen with Kripke with CUNY, and probably Burge with UCLA. Also, i think NYU’s being very heavily influenced by work on consciousness, which is probably being pioneered by Block, and certainly supported by others on faculty.</p>
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<p>I wonder who this is referring to? :D</p>
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<p>I think i’d like to link this response to what you said earlier. It’s certainly possible to get a fine philosophical education at many universities. IMO, this would include Duke. I agree with RJK that Duke isn’t a top program. It’s great at what it’s good at (ranked #1 in philosophy of biology and applied ethics) but is lacking in many fields. For example, it’s nearly wholly unranked in the Metaphysics and Epistemology categories (these are two of the four branches in philosophy!) and it’s wholly unranked for history.</p>
<p>However, whether that would matter to the OP would depend on the OPs post graduate plans. If he intends on being a lawyer, the small class sizes that Duke would be able to provide (as well as the prestige Duke provides) might carry him well into graduate school; if he’s looking to attend graduate school in philosophy, it might not take him where he wants to go.</p>
<p>As a final point, i think the Leiter rankings need to be taken with a grain of salt. Those rankings are to some degree influenced by current research being done in the field rather than historical influence. As a result, it punishes universities with ‘graying faculty’ that are tenured and publish little new, exciting work. This makes sense since if rankings were done by historical influence, they’d change very little. (<em>cough</em> ARWU <em>cough</em>) That being said, it’s pretty laughable that USC is ranked higher in philosophy of language than UCLA. The latter has arguably had the most influential department in the US in the subject. And although it may be ranked higher, that doesn’t mean that the professors there are esteemed to the same degree, and that there letters are similarly strong. But again, whether or not this matters to the OP depends on his interests.</p>
<p>Again, there are multiple sections of logic, each being taught by a graduate student, but even if we evaluate number of professors teaching classes versus number of graduate students, we get 3 (one graduate student for each section of logic) vs. 14 (one professor for each of the 14 other classes being offered); nowhere near the 8 graduate students teaching classes that you claimed. </p>
<p>Please, if you’re going to post, at least know what you’re posting, what you’re talking about, and have accurate data. It’s obvious you don’t know anything about the department at NYU, so why don’t you do everyone a favor and stop posting about it?</p>
<p>The number of graduate students I’ve had teach a class while at NYU: 1</p>
<p>And again, my claim was that <em>on average</em>, graduate students tend to teach more than professors. The exorbitant amount of graduate students in each logic section illustrate that. (I referred to fall 2011 as spring 2012, unfortunately, which indeed has 13 courses, although again, a minority are graduate students). </p>
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<p>I’m not sure why it would matter whether you went to NYU or you went to the University of Barcelona, or anywhere else, since the data is easily available to anyone on the website.</p>