What should undergrads do if they want to go into philosophy?

While visiting Boston, I was put in touch with a sophomore undergrad who was interested in graduate school in philosophy. In particular, the student had heard that I attended the UC Boulder Summer Seminar in Philosophy and wanted to know what I thought about this and how useful such a thing would be. I ended up talking about the issue more generally and thought I would mention some of what I thought here.

When I was an undergrad, I did a lot of extra curricular philosophy. I was the president of the philosophy club, published a paper in an undergraduate journal, did a teaching tutorship, did research under professors, etc.. I undertook these activities because they offered more chances to do philosophy and if you are interested in philosophy, you should of course do these things. But, not all of these things directly contributed to the strength of my grad school applications. For example, I doubt if publishing in an undergrad journal provides much help to you in the application process. It might give you something to talk about in your statement of purpose, e.g. a chance to explain some philosophy you’ve done, but I doubt the fact that it got published helps at all. You could just as easily talk about a paper you wrote for an upper level class.

From the perspective of strengthening your application, I think the best use of an undergraduates time will be spent focusing on those skills that will help you write a good sample and working towards the best letters of recommendation you can get.

Letters of recommendation are, I think, an incredibly important part of the application process and, in most cases, letters from people the selection committee has heard of (or even better, know) count for more than those from people they don’t. I don’t mean to start a debate about whether this is rational or not (I tend to think it is, but perhaps in another post I’ll defend that).

So, you want good letters from recognizable people. How do you go about getting them? Well, getting good letters is probably a matter of your doing good philosophy and making it known to your writers that you are capable of just that. I don’t have any tips (not that I’ll mention here anyway) on how to go about getting better at philosophy. For me, it was a matter of jumping in and doing a lot of damned work that was too hard for me until it wasn’t too hard for me.

On the other hand, I do have some advice on how to get letters from recognizable people. First, you have to find recognizable people in the area(s) you are interested in. Perhaps you go to a school where such people are on the faculty. If so, take classes with them as often as possible, contribute productively (don’t be annoying or snooty!), and write good papers. Let these professors know as early as possible that you are thinking of pursuing a career in philosophy. This will probably make them start thinking about the possibility of writing you a letter and therefore more likely to take mental note of your philosophical ability. You should actively seek out opportunities to work with these professors outside the classroom. If you are lucky, the school offers research opportunities for undergrads. If your college offers graduate seminars in philosophy, ask if you can audit them.

If your department doesn’t have any recognizable philosophers in your area, there are steps you can take to secure letters in addition to those philosophers with whom you work closely in your own department. If you are in a big city, find out if you can take classes at another university. If you can, do so. If not, you can still ask to unofficially audit a class. If this is not an option, you should look to apply to summer programs in philosophy. The Boulder summer seminar was not only amazing for my intellectual development, but also I got to know Bob Pasnau and he was one of my letter writers.

Auditing graduate seminars and attending courses at other schools not only can help to secure letters, but also help you in becoming technically proficient in philosophy. What I mean by that is that you are able to start thinking, writing, and talking like an academic philosopher. A good writing sample will demonstrate your ability to do philosophy to the admissions committee. This doesn’t mean you have to write a journal worthy paper, but it does mean that your paper should be structured in a way that makes your exegesis and arguments clear, the arguments themselves should be carefully constructed, the exegesis accurate, technical jargon should be used carefully and correctly, etc.. I don’t mean to claim that you need to be able to write an ultra-technical logic paper to apply to graduate school. My sample wasn’t like that at all.

Like I said above, I don’t have any tips (and especially not a method) for achieving technical proficiency. However, doing philosophy intensively with a diversity of philosophers is certainly going to help. In addition to taking courses elsewhere, you should take a variety of upper-level courses at your home institution. In a way, doing philosophy is doing philosophy no matter the area. The best philosophers can make contributions to many areas precisely because being good at philosophy means seeing the same problems everywhere and being able to think through them no matter the disguise they wear. Don’t think that becuase you are interested in, for example, ethics that you have nothing to learn by taking courses in, for example, philosophy of science.

Of course, you need a good statement of purpose, gpa, and GRE score. But, these are probably easier to come by than great letters and a great sample. If you are thinking of applying to graduate school in philosophy, you probably already have a decent gpa or had better be working towards one. The GRE is just something you have to grab a book, buckle down, and study for. As far as a statement of purpose goes, I think it will follow naturally from the work done preparing a good sample and securing good letters.

Of course, these are just my views on the matter. I’ve thought about these things for awhile and try to talk to people on admissions committees as much as possible. Others may disagree. I’d love to have comments on this an other posts about applying to grad school. They can no longer help me, but this blog gets a lot of hits for people searching for things like “philosophy applications” so any comments could certainly help them.