University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Sunday through Tuesday I was in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to visit the Department of Philosophy. According to the rankings, this is one of the top five departments in the English-speaking world, in addition to being of world class in the specific area of decision theory and rational choice. My visit consisted of a quiet Sunday afternoon that I used to walk around the place for a bit, a dinner party at Professor Tappenden’s house and then two densely scheduled days of lectures, seminars, one-on-ones with professors and hanging out with grad students.

In my area of interest, the two senior figures here are Jim Joyce and Allan Gibbard. My first meeting with Professor Gibbard, probably the most famous person I’m meeting on this tour, was at Professor Tappenden’s house on Sunday night. This turned into a fairly surreal experience as we only talked about sports without mentioning our common philosophical interests.

Jim and Allan were both very friendly and I would be very excited to work with them. Jim extensively complimented my own work and made it clear he would do everything in his power to get me off the waitlist for financial support. We talked quite extensively about his thoughts on imprecise credences and on expected utility theory. Regarding the latter, he tends to be of the opinion that most of the supposed counterexamples to EUT are actually bad experimental setups where the subjects’ beliefs about what is going on do not sufficiently match what the experimenters want them to believe to warrant the conclusions they draw. Most philosophers would disagree, I think, but it seems worthwhile to me to pursue this position and see where it leads us.

When asked about the other places I’m interested in, Jim made it clear he thinks highly of UPenn, LSE, Missouri-Columbia and CMU. A worry about CMU might be, according to him, that grad students often get towed into professors’ research projects to the extent where they find it hard or impossible to explore an interest outside a professor’s immediate project. A worry about UPenn and Mizzou would be that they have only one professor at each of these places that would be a natural dissertation adviser for me.

Jim also mentioned two or three junior professors who share my interests. I met one of them, Sarah Moss, who gave a special seminar on formal epistemology and a regular seminar on analytic philosophy that I both attended. She is easily among the best teachers of philosophy I have ever met. Gaining the opportunity to work with her would be a big attraction of this place.

This is the largest department on my tour so far (and I think overall as well) with faculty numbering in the upper twenties and grad students in the low thirties. As such all of the philosophical bases are covered in this department, and most of them excellently so. Out of all the places I’m considering, this one presumably has the best overall education in philosophy and the associated job market advantages.

Ann Arbor is a strong university in many areas. Through the Decision Consortium, an interdisciplinary research seminar organized weekly, I will be able to get in touch with other scientists interested in similar topics. For some reason, at this place these people will be from the psychology and medicine departments more often than the economics department. My overall impression is that UPenn scores at least as well in this regard.

Teaching requirements amount to about half of the total number of semesters one is expected to be in the program. This includes TA-ing and grading in the second and third year, and a chance to act as a lead instructor later on.

Course requirements take up most of the first two years, with two courses outside the department required, but outside courses generally can’t count for philosophy credit. Distribution requirements amount to one ancient and one modern history class, one ethics, two in distinct areas of M&E (metaphysics and epistemology) and one either in a further M&E topic or in a distinct area of ethics. In addition there is a logic requirement, the “cognate” (outside) requirements, a proseminar in the first year and a language requirement.

The funding package is upwards of $20,000 per year and was considered by grad students to be more than sufficient. In principle it is the same for everyone. One worry that was raised is that as an international student I might end up in a substantially higher tax bracket. This mystified me as I have heard nothing about this at any of the schools I have visited so far, despite taxes coming up explicitly at CMU when I asked about it.

The grad student offices are a large room in the same hallway that all the professors are in. The workspaces themselves are cubicles within that room. The Department is located at the front of a nice large building called Angell Hall (see picture). Almost all of the grad students live within a twenty minute walk in this relatively small university town (~100,000 pop).

Jim and Allan have about three and about six students that they are advising respectively. They can get rather busy, but are always willing to make an appointment if you email them, or so the grad students tell me. The relations among the faculty seem to be quite good in general.

As at Penn, there was some ambiguity about publications. Apparently the bigger schools in the US tend not to view publishing your work as hugely important and even potentially disadvantageous for grad students (when you publish something “immaturely” it might “haunt” you later on). Some students therefore only publish (parts of) their dissertation after graduating.

Expense accounts are available for visiting conferences, and students generally attend a few conferences per year. When you’re on fellowship (i.e. no teaching) you are also free to spend more substantial amounts of time elsewhere.

That concludes my notes on Ann Arbor. Let’s see what Wisconsin-Madison has to offer.

University of Pennsylvania

From Wednesday to Saturday I visited the city of Philadelphia and in particular the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. I was lucky to have planned for a relatively long stay here, as the city and the department are both great.

I spent Wednesday just checking out the city, including a visit to its Museum of Arts at the recommendation of my first host Chris, and I attended a lecture on social norms by Professor Bicchieri. Thursday was rather hectic, as I met a number of professors, current graduate students and prospective, at the same time was making appointments for Friday with professors outside the department that I was recommended to, and after dinner moved to my second host Reed. Friday brought more meetings, including an almost two hour discussion with Professor Cristina Bicchieri, who would most likely be my adviser here. There was also a guest lecture by Professor Patricia Churchland, a famous philosopher of science, a little (prospective) grad student party and a move to my third host Lindsey. Saturday I found some time to meet with Jack, whom I studied with at the LSE and who lives near Philadelphia.

Professor Bicchieri made it clear that if I were to come here, I would primarily be helping her work out the theoretical foundations of a universal utility function that can be used to describe and predict behavior in experiments. This work would be done in close cooperation with professors at UPenn’s excellent Department of Economics and its business school, Wharton. As the head of the PPE program, Cristina has close ties with these people and I met two of them, Professors Dillenberger and Kimbaugh. I also met with the friendly neighborhood logician Professor Scott Weinstein and with Professor Michael Weisberg, an enthusiastic and talkative guy interested in the model-world relation, in particular in philosophy of biology.

To my surprise, Cristina spent some time criticizing her former department: Carnegie Mellon. Most relevant for me are her claims that the only person there willing to work with me on decision theory is Horacio and that they are virtually unable to place grad students in philosophy departments. I hope to learn more about these claims by communicating some more with the people at CMU and a friend of Cristina’s who was also formerly at CMU, Peter Vanderschraaf.

The financial package seems more than adequate at $24,000, although this is also the most expensive city I’m visiting. Grad students tell me it’s more than sufficient though. Everyone receives the same package so this is no cause for rivalries. There is also the possibility to earn free housing if you are prepared to live in undergrad dorms and serve as counsel to them a few hours per week. Chris is using this option.

Office space is again far from optimal. The grad students are packed into windowless rooms, and first years don’t even get their own desk, instead claiming some space in the nice little library that is part of the department.

The course load of the program seems reasonable. One must take at least twelve courses, about ten of which should be done during the first two years. Distributionary requirements will force me to take at least three history of philosophy and two ethics courses. Potential disadvantages here are the restriction on taking courses outside the department for credit (maximum three) and the lack of breadth of subjects among the faculty (e.g. no metaphysics). Michigan has a much larger faculty, while Carnegie Mellon has the Pitt Philosophy and Pitt HPS departments to draw from.

These considerations are only important if I want to get a tenure track position at a philosophy department after my PhD and if I want to have some of these missing fields as areas of specialization/competence. Unfortunately I have no idea about this. I guess philosophy of science and logic would be more straightforward AOCs for me than metaphysics though.

The teaching load I think is rather light at UPenn. One is expected to TA a course only in the second and third year, and then teach as a lead instructor for one semester in the fifth year. I’m expecting the teaching load to be heavier at the three schools I have yet to visit, as they are public rather than private universities, but we’ll see.

My two most likely advisers, Professors Bicchieri and Weinstein, both don’t have any graduate students currently. This is a blessing and a curse, as they will certainly have enough time to work with me, but it’s also likely that I will not be able to have in-depth conversations about my work with the other grad students (unless Hanna decides to come here).

It looks like there will be enough room to attend conferences and get some of the expenses paid for that (although I can’t remember whom I asked this). My question about spending time at another university met with some surprise. This is clearly not common here, but it should be possible, in particular in the fourth year, and they did not seem actively opposed to the idea.

Professor Domoltor made a curious remark in saying that only about 30% of grad students have a publication to their name when they are defending their dissertation. They do usually publish parts of their dissertation later, and the professor may have had a long timeframe in mind, but still. Reed found this hard to believe and so did I. I forgot to ask Michael or Cristina about this. Perhaps an email is in order here. Cristina does seem to publish a lot with (former) students and other co-authors. I wonder if she is in favor of single-author publications by grad students. I guess I should ask her this, too.

The faculty apparently get along reasonably well. I heard some rumors about a rivalry between two faculty members, but neither of them I’m likely to work with so that won’t affect me. In order to recreate something like the lively academic climate in Pittsburgh, I think I may need to be a little more proactive, attending PPE seminars and the like.

During my visit I met all of the first year grad students and many of the older ones as well. All of them were great, and we had a lot of fun together. The first years were a bit stressed about a logic exam on Friday morning, but they more than made up for that the rest of that day, and I feel like I really clicked with them. It would be great to be working with them for the next five years or so.

All of this is not making my choice much easier. Still, I’m looking forward to see what Ann Arbor has to offer.

University of Pittsburgh

Next stop: the History and Philosophy of Science Department at the University of Pittsburgh. I was shown around by Jonah Schupbach, a grad student I’d met in Konstanz last September. Coincidentally we were both there to present a paper we co-authored with Jan, my BA supervisor. Jonah kindly showed me around at the department, introduced me to a number of other grad students and Bryan, Peter, him and me went out for lunch together and had a nice discussion about Kevin Zollman’s paper at the grad student conference this weekend.

Unlike CMU, HPS does not have people working on topics that are directly related to my research interests so far (decision / rational choice theory). John Norton and Jim Woodward might be pretty good matches, with interests in philosophy of probability, general philosophy of science and philosophy of social science (unfortunately neither of them were around when I visited). If I were to come here, I would get a very broad education in history and philosophy of science and presumably branch into new research interests (in addition, perhaps, to satisfying some of my rational choice interests at CMU). Although I’m sure this would be great fun, I tentatively view this as a pretty big disadvantage of coming to Pitt.

Which is a shame, as this place scores nearly perfectly on any other criterion I can think of. I really liked the grad students I met (nearly half of the total population) as well as the faculty I spoke to. Although the student:faculty ratio is much higher here (3:1) than at CMU (1:1), I understand that most of the faculty members are around and available most of the time.

As I mentioned in my previous entry, the academic climate here in Pittsburgh is outstanding, with interesting stuff going on all the time between Pitt HPS, Pitt Philosophy, the Center for Philosophy of Science and CMU. As Jonah put it: “if you take some initiative to mingle with the CMU and Pitt Philosophy students and faculty, it really feels like one big department”. Note to self: it would be interesting to compare the size of this combined department to for instance the size of Ann Arbor’s department.

The funding package is very generous, in the vicinity of $24,000 plus most of your conference and reading expenses. Given that Pittsburgh is one of the cheapest cities in the US this should be more than sufficient. Although I probably won’t know for certain until a few days before the April 15 deadline, in recent years they have been able to offer funding to all waitlisted students eventually.

The course load is apparently quite heavy, with students taking courses for three or four years. Unlike at CMU, “courses” that are really research time don’t seem to exist. On the other hand, the teaching load is guaranteed to be light (as opposed to CMU, where it’s somewhat heavy in principle, with lots of possibilities to make it lighter). In your first five years (apparently most people end up taking six years) you have two teaching years and three “fellowship years”, usually the first, third and fifth, in which you have no obligations other than your own courses/research.

The facilities for PhD students are excellent, with office space on the 9^th floor of the Cathedral of Learning (see picture), all of which have an amazing view. There is also a nice common room where the students seem to hang out quite a lot. The grad students all feel confident of landing a good job, as excellent support from the department has enabled them to maintain a 100% placement record for years. Both students and faculty also felt confident claiming that this is the best department in the world for philosophy and history of science.

Grad students report receiving ample opportunity and money to attend conferences and even to spend significant time at other universities. For instance, Jonah spent nine months at TiLPS in Tilburg, Bryan spent a semester at the University of California, Irvine, and Katherine is spending a year in Berlin.

Students are encouraged to publish on their own (as in this case there can be no doubt about intellectual ownership), but co-authoring with faculty also happens. An important part of the requirements for the PhD at Pitt are the comprehensive papers. These are two single author papers, one on history and one on philosophy of science, that should be of publishable quality, written at the end of the second year.

The faculty seem to get along well. By the grad students’ account there are no factions or animosities either intra-faculty or between Pitt HPS, Pitt Philosophy and CMU. The grad students also seem to have a collaborative atmosphere going on, sharing their work for instance in the well-attended weekly Work in Progress talks.

That concludes my notes on Pitt HPS. Next up: UPenn.

Carnegie Mellon

Here are some of my notes and thoughts concerning Carnegie Mellon University.

CMU was the first university I visited, after arriving in the States Wednesday night. My host was Lizzie Silver, a friendly Australian girl who is herself in her first year as a grad student. She told me Pittsburgh is an old industrial city that has been shrinking ever since the steel industry collapsed. As such most houses are relatively old, spacious and cheap. It should be relatively easy to find a place here, and if you have a roommate prices should be under $ 500 / month.

The next two days I spent visiting the Department of Philosophy at CMU. In terms of research the place seems very well-suited to me, with a strong focus on formal methods. Faculty that would be particularly interesting for me to work with include the decision theorists Horacio Arlo-Costa and Teddy Seidenfeld, Kevin Zollman who specializes in evolutionary game theory and David Danks who specializes in (causal) models of cognition. Unfortunately I did not meet Teddy Seidenfeld, but all the other faculty I met were all very friendly and open.

The Department is relatively small, by my estimate (I didn’t ask for exact numbers) around 20 each of faculty members and PhD students, plus a handful of master’s students. Master’s students are on a very similar program to PhD students, except they leave after two years with a master’s degree (usually).

Speaking of the program, PhD students are expected to take three courses per semester throughout the first three years of their enrollment (or was it the first two years? I forgot). There are a number of methodological courses everyone takes in the first year, but other than that you are expected to pick courses relevant to your own development. Taking courses at other departments of CMU and at the two sister departments at UPitt (History and Philosophy of Science and Philosophy) is encouraged.

According to David, in practice students take only two courses per semester after the first semester, the third slot being filled with courses like “independent research” or one-on-one reading with faculty – so effectively working on the research that will lead up to your dissertation.

An important goal of the course work is to develop areas of competence – areas that you would be able to teach courses in as you go into a career in academia. At CMU this is tailored per student, as different students want to go into different departments after the PhD, with some going to Math or Computer Science departments and others to Philosophy departments.

After the first semester a grad student at CMU is expected to work as a teaching assistant (TA), grader or research assistant (RA). Lizzie pointed out that serving as a TA in the intro to philosophy course at least one semester is compulsory. She decided to get this out of the way as soon as possible, so she would have her hands free if any possibilities for RAing came up. RAing is usually tailored to specific students in such a way that it is effectively pure research time for your PhD or close to it. Due to the relatively large number of grants active in the department, it is often possible to finance grad students in this way, freeing them from grading duties.

Work of the above-mentioned types can also be done over summer. This is a way to improve your financial situation as well as a chance to run your own courses as a lead instructor (i.e. lecturer) or to work on your research in relative peace. Ruth, one of the current grad students, indicated that the stipend as-is is somewhat minimal, but with the possibilities to earn more money over summer it is easily sufficient.

Much was made by both faculty and students of the open door policy. Apparently grad students spend a lot of quality time with the faculty, and also help each other a lot. Even though the grad student offices are located in a separate building from the faculty offices, they assured me they met up a lot, especially with their own adviser(s). There’s also the Thursday afternoon tea where the faculty come to the grad student offices for beer, wine and snacks (no actual tea).

The offices themselves seemed spacious enough, although only two have windows. They did have a nice common room and kitchen, with a fridge containing leftovers, which are often around due to the tea and other (free) food consumption in the common room.

The students seem nice as well. They were around a lot of the time, were very helpful in answering questions, and we had great fun celebrating St Patrick’s Day Thursday night and at the department dinner and conference party Friday night.

They told me they regularly attend conferences and submit papers to them. In general, the aim of the program is to have you submitting papers to conferences and journals as early as possible. Exchanges with other universities also happen, but they are somewhat rare, and due to funding issues may be more difficult to set up than in Europe.

Welcome!

Welcome to this temporary blog!

I will be using this to collect my thoughts as I travel around the North-Western part of the United States, visiting six universities that have offered me a place in their PhD program. Here I will post my first impressions of

1. Carnegie Mellon University;
2. the University of Pittsburgh;
3. the University of Pennsylvania;
4. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
5. University of Wisconsin-Madison;
6. University of Missouri-Columbia.

The big finale follows when I get back home on April 8 and will have one week to make my final decision on where to do a PhD.

Now, I need your help! I'm preparing a list of questions with the minimal information that I hope to get answered about each of these six universities. I want to learn about:

1. Who I will be working with and what they are interested in (obviously).
2. The details of their financial offer and (if applicable) my status on the waitlist for financial aid.
3. How much time can I expect to spend on coursework and teaching? What kind of courses am I expected to take and teach?
4. What facilities do they have for PhD students?
5. What can I expect from my supervisor (and what do they expect from me)?
6. What is their policy on attending conferences or spending time at other universities?
7. How expensive is the city and how is the housing market?

So, what are some other questions I should definitely ask?