General Resources

Information on Programs

The Philosophical Gourmet rankings, here. Pay particular attention to where programs are by speciality; NYU is a highly esteemed program, but if you’re interested in something like Philosophy of Religion, you’d be better off applying elsewhere. The breakdown of rankings by specialties can be found here.

PhDs.org rankings based on the NRC survey-based quality measure, here. Note that though this information is quite dated, there is quite a bit of useful data about individual programs, e.g., average time to degree completion, percentage of students who complete a degree within 8 years (which, in conjunction with information regarding average time to completion, tells you something about attrition rates), etc.

See the list of other program guides in the post, here.

General Information about the Application Process

A very useful series of posts from Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel on applying to graduate school in philosophy can be found here.

There is an interesting discussion regarding graduate admissions on Leiter Reports, including some comments from faculty who have served on admissions committees, here.

Advice and information regarding the application process and graduate school itself from Dr. Mathew Lu, here.

Advice on ways to improve one’s application, from Leiter Reports, can be found here.

An interesting anecdote posted on Leiter Reports about one student’s experiences in applying twice to grad school, here.

Writing Sample

Advice on how to write a philosophy paper from Dr. Jim Pryor, here.

Curriculum Vitae

For help putting together your C.V. see here.

Statement of Purpose

For information on writing a statement of purpose (sometimes referred to as a statement of intent), see here and here (as well as the series of posts from Dr. Eric Schwitzgebel above).

The GRE

Study tools, here.

More study tools, here.

Practice tests, here.  

More practice tests, here.

Sample questions from ETS, here.

Test preparation tips from ETS, here.

More Useful Links

For the past few years there has been some lively discussion amongst applicants on Live Journal, in the Who Got In community, found here (scroll through, several disciplines are represented and the philosophy discussions are separated by admission season). There is also The Grad Cafe, here, where applicants can post admissions decisions and method of notification. N.B. I found some of this useful, and it was good have discussions with potential future colleagues, but there are also an awful lot of shenanigans each year (e.g., fake acceptances, particularly uncivil conversations about wait-list limbo, etc. ).

When you’re considering offers, you may want to compare the cost of living in the different cities where you would be living. There’s a comparison calculator, here. When you factor in cost of living, funding offers that seem similar may actually be substantially different.