Applying to Graduate School in the US/Canada - Some Basic Information
Where to apply:
If you put together an application for grad school in North
America, you should consider applying to several schools. The
materials requested are more or less the same in all places. So once
you have everything, it’s not a huge deal of extra work to mail out
several applications. Doing so increases your chances of
acceptance, and you may even be in a position to choose.
However, schools charge rather high administrative fees and you’ll
also have to pay the postage, of course. So the more schools you
apply to, the more expensive it gets.
You should discuss where to apply with your supervisors/
professors who know you, to identify departments that suit your
interests and that you have a chance getting into. Departmental
web pages usually contain a lot of information that may be helpful
in figuring out whether a department’s profile fits your interests.
To arrive at a preliminary list of schools you’re interested in, you
should look at Brian Leiter’s ‘Gourmet Report’.
http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/
This webpage offers an overview of good graduate programs in the
US, informs you about their specialties, and gives a ranking of the
quality of departments. Generally speaking, it will be the more
difficult to gain acceptance to a programme the higher up it is in
the Gourmet Report. If you want to enhance your chances of
finding acceptance somewhere, you should apply not just to
schools at the very top of the list, but include some that are a bit
further down. Depending on what you want to work on, even a
school that is not at the very top of the Gourmet list may still be
very good for your interests.
The Gourmet Report measures the strength of the faculty of a
department in philosophical research. It does not measure how
strongly a department is committed to ensuring good supervision
for graduate students or to helping graduates to find a job. One
indicator of such commitment is a department’s ‘placement
record’. A placement record gives information on how many of a
department’s graduates found academic jobs and on where they
found those jobs. It is therefore advisable to check the placement
records of the departments that you are thinking of applying to
(these are usually available on a department’s webpage).
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Funding:
Most American and Canadian Departments offer funding to their
PhD students, i.e. admission to the programme will usually go
along with a guaranteed scholarship and/or the opportunity to earn
money working as a teaching assistant (who grades papers and
gives tutorials). But the level of funding differs from institution to
institution. In deciding where to apply (or, if you’ve been very
successful and have gained offers from several departments, in
deciding which offer to take) you should compare the funding
packages offered by different departments.
There are two factors that are relevant here: how much funding
you can expect to receive overall, and how much work you will
have to put in as a teaching assistant. Ideally, you get enough to
live on without having to spend an inordinate amount of your time
grading undergraduate papers. And to have enough time to do your
own research, needless to say, is going to make it easier to write a
good PhD-thesis and find a job after graduation. You therefore
have reason to prefer a department with a better funding package,
other things being equal.
M.A. students frequently aren’t funded. But here there’s the
opportunity to apply to the Fulbright Commission.
You should be aware of the fact that Schools in Britain don’t
usually offer guaranteed funding. So this is a major reason to apply
in North America.
Materials:
Of course, the authoritative source of information on exactly what
to send is each department’s webpage. There are some minor
differences in how schools handle things. So you should definitely
read each department’s instructions very carefully, and you should
follow them slavishly.
You should under no circumstances send more materials than are
explicitly asked for. If a department specifies word limits for
statements of purpose or writing samples you should under no
circumstances violate them, etc.
Typically, American departments will require the following
materials:
TOEFL
GRE
Transcripts
Statement of Purpose
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Letters of Recommendation (typically two or three)
Writing Sample
Timeline:
The deadlines for receipt of applications are usually in December
or early January (for taking up study in the coming Fall). If you
intend to apply to a programme in order to start in Fall 2010, your
application deadline will be in December 2009/ January 2010.
Many schools do not allow you to submit (all) your materials
online. You may therefore have to send off your materials a few
weeks in advance of the deadlines by snail mail to make sure they
arrive on time.
GRE and TOEFL may have to be arranged well in advance of the
deadline. You need to register for these tests, and you may have to
wait for a few weeks to get to take the tests. You may also want to
familiarize yourself with these tests. So this is something you
cannot start to think about doing in October or November.
You should also give your letter writers enough time (at least a
month).
Finally, it is very difficult to put together a good writing sample
and statement of purpose in a short time. You should give yourself
a few months at least to work on these.
The Bottom Line: You should start to prepare your application as
early as possible. Think about a possible writing sample, try to
start to think about what schools to apply to, what professors to ask
for references, and prepare to take the GRE/TOEFL. If you don’t
give any of this any thought until September, when the term starts,
it’s going to be very difficult to put together a good application.
The Process:
Schools typically receive a very large number of applications, and
the first order of business for a committee is to throw out most of
the applications rather quickly (and probably without studying
your writing sample carefully).
At this first stage, things like your GPA, the quality of the letters,
the prestige of the institution you come from, play a large role.
When people look at your grades, they are probably going to give
more weight to your philosophy courses than to your grades in
other courses. Your statement of purpose can hurt you if it’s really
bad, but it’s probably not a major factor in deciding between those
who are otherwise regarded as strong applicants. Apparently, GRE
scores are often not given a lot of weight, even though they are
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usually required. For the TOEFL, there is typically a specified
minimum score you have to meet.
If you survive the first screening, people will start to look at your
writing sample very carefully and the writing sample is going to be
the most important factor for deciding among those who are
considered strong applicants. In order to be successful, you
absolutely need a strong writing sample.
The writing sample is supposed to demonstrate that you have
philosophical talent. People look for a well-written, well-argued
and interesting paper. A mere literature-survey or a purely
exegetical piece will not go over as well as an argumentative
paper. It is very important that the sample be highly polished and it
should be free of grammatical mistakes and errors in spelling.
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