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The following advice was gathered during workshops conducted in 1998-1999 in the Department of Philosophy. We hope it's helpful, but don't take it as gospel truth....

First, some pessimistic takes:

A first, blunt point: the bar goes up for grad school. The top of an undergrad class will make up the full range of abilities in grad school. Or to put it even more bluntly, some top undergrad is going to be the worst grad student in their program. So you should only aim for grad school if you have good reason to believe that you're very promising as a student. This isn't to say that you have to be a super-confident person -- the best philosophers aren't necessarily those who THINK they're the best. But look over your grades so far, and ask professors and peers you trust for their honest advice.

Another point to keep in mind is that the bar gets raised again when it comes to moving from a PhD to the academic job market: while many philosophy PhDs will get jobs (and the situation seems to be getting better), only a fraction of these will end up as tenure-track professors in large research universities. So don't assume that going to grad school will have you sitting where your professor does five or six years down the road.

There are 'opportunity costs' to going to grad school: you'll spend important years of your life being relatively poor, and possibly going into major debt. Nor does the financial situation suddenly get rosy when you get a job, since entry into the profession may involve a number of years of part-time or insecure sessional work.

OK, now the up-side:

If you're thinking about grad school, it's likely because you love doing philosophy. Grad school means you'll get to keep doing it full-time (though it's of course possible to philosophize in contexts other than grad school, including in some professional schools and professions, or in your spare time.)

Philosophy can lead to jobs other than in the academy: in business, law, software design, and so forth (though an MA, even a BA, may be credential enough for some of these contexts).

Some people do win the employment crapshoot and end up with a pretty darn good job as professors in research universities: they don't get rich, but they get to live a scholar's and teacher's life, which can have great rewards. And some people are quite happy with the prospect of teaching at a community college or small school, and so don't feel they need to snag one of the 'top' jobs.

So all of that is to say that you should think about the alternatives facing you, and choose grad school (if you do) with open eyes.

What is it like doing a PhD?

Well, here's the short story (surf around to department websites for specifics): a Ph.D. typically involves a couple of years of coursework, and sometimes a requirement to show proficiency in a second language. After the coursework usually comes a set of written and oral 'comprehensive exams', which test your grasp of a number of subfields of philosophy, and that typically involve months of preparation. From there you go through stages of preparing and submitting a dissertation proposal, and showing that you're equipped to proceed with the work. The doctoral dissertation itself can be up to 100,000 words, and is subject to evaluation by a committee of internal and external examiners.

So what's that whole process like? Well, it can be intellectually stimulating, and often involves a lot of fun, friendships, fulfillment, and involvement with quirky, smart people. Graduate life increasingly involves professional activity like conferences and publishing, especially if you aspire to academic employment. Many grad students spend considerable time working as teaching assistants, research assistants, and/or lecturers: this can be a requirement of funding, and also an important credential for the job market.

On the downside, grad school (like university in general) is a pretty hierarchical place; when this goes badly, it can leave you subject to the whims and assessments of a small group of people.

What about doing an MA?

There are very different opinions on this, but here's one: a key reason to do a Master's is to improve an iffy academic profile, in order to get into a top school. Many faculty agree, though, that if you're in a position to go straight into a good PhD program, you should do so.

How do you choose where to apply?

Well, before we talk strategy, how might you figure out what the options are? Do research!. Indeed, treat this as your most important research task ever: use the web (see links below), reference libraries, journals, and discussions with different professors. Your decisions about where to apply and where to go really matter. As noted above, one way they matter is that there can be close connections between where you study and the kind of job you'll be able to get (though that's not to say that this is entirely predictable).

You probably have some idea of the areas of philosophy that interest you: what schools are good places to study this? Talk to profs, think about particular people you'd like to work with, and use the web (there are a number of resources that seek to evaluate or rank the relative strength of programs: take these with a large grain of salt, but don't ignore them).

Once you narrow down your list of schools that seem appealing, contact the ones you're interested in. Grad schools compete for the best students, and will likely be eager to sell themselves to you (if they're indifferent or rude, you may want to think about whether this indicates something about what it's like to study there.) Later in the process (say, once you've got offers from a couple of places and are trying to decide), you may even want to visit campuses; the ritzier schools may even pay your expenses for a visit.

Here are some things you may want to know about schools that seem interesting:

• What are their completion rates? (As many as 50% of students starting a PhD may not finish.)
  
• What are average completion times for the degree?
  
• What is the placement record of the school like; do their graduates get good jobs?
  
• What kind of funding does the school offer? What proportion of students are funded, and to what level? Is the funding through scholarships or TA-ships? How many years of support do they guarantee?
  
• What is the quality of life like: what are housing costs like? What's the town or city like?
  
• Are there a number of people there you'd like to work with? (If Professor X is the only one you'd want to work with, what happens if she gets hit by a bus the day you arrive? What happens if your interests shift to another subfield of philosophy?)

• Transcripts
  
• Three or four letters of recommendation
  
• A 'statement of purpose', explaining what you hope to study and why.
  
• A sample of your written work (about 20pp.)

• The professor doesn’t have to be your buddy to be willing to write a letter on your behalf. It’s a routine part of our job. You want to ask politely, but don’t have to grovel to get us to agree.
  
• Ask before the last minute; think about mentioning grad school plans with a lot of lead time, and getting advice. The professor can interact with you with a letter somewhere in mind.
  
• Try to ask in a way that gives the professor a way out if she doesn’t think she can write supportively. Ask, for example, not just whether they'll write a letter, but whether they feel they can write a strong letter.
  
• Provide referees with a statement of purpose that’s going with your application (which means not writing this at the last minute). It's also not a bad thing to provide a copy of the writing sample you intend to send. You may get useful feedback from referees on the writing, and access to the writing sample will allow referees to be specific, which makes letters of recommendation more convincing.
  
• Try to convey what you take your strengths to be. Let referees know of anything that needs mentioning or excusing.
  
• Don’t make your referees do archival work to remember who you are — give them a list of courses with them and your grades, a sample of graded work from their courses, etc.

Links

• APA guide to non-academic careers for philosophers
• Going to graduate school in philosophy (CPA)
• APA Data on the Profession
• The Philosophical Gourmet Report (to be taken with a grain of salt!)
• The Real Guide to Grad School's school rankings