Re: Postgrad. Entry

I don't know about aesthetics, but Andrew seems to have covered that! As for what offers you are likely to get, they can and do specify offers between simply a 2:1 and a 1st. Cambridge offered me a 67, which at my university translates to a high 2:1 (in my subject 60-68.5 is a 2:1); I don't know about others.

Andrews is right about careers being important beyond postgraduate degrees. I'm not really sure I am interested in a career in philosophy so I didn't bother too much about this. I basically had a choice between Cambridge and St Andrews, and ALL my tutors (and I mean all) told me to go to St Andrews (with one telling me that the only advantage to Cambridge being the weather). This was apparently because they trained people really well overall and this gave them a good step onto the job market. In the end I choose Cambridge, but partly for non-academic reasons. As it turns out I've become more interested in language and I am looking forward to working with Simon Blackburn. However, I remain slightly convinced (on no evidence mind you) that the quality of your work says a lot more about you that merely where you went, but what do I know? Some places might well give you a better grounding in the subject.

Whilst we're critiquing Oxford my old tutor suggested to me that because of the size there is less of a community of philosophers feeling. There are so many fellows that they don't all feel the need to go to seminars etc, and there are so many postgrads you might not know them all, whereas he said at Cambridge (where he did his PhD, but the same is probably true at other small departments in not too big towns) everyone got together and had great discussions on stuff. Apparently the same is true of St Andrews, which is a great place if all you want to do is eat, breathe and sleep philosophy, but I need to be able to take a break!

One final work on the letters of your degree: MPhil etc: don't pay too much attention to them. MPhil is often a higher research degree, but not always. The normal Cambridge masters is an MPhil. In fact the five places I applied had different names: Sheffield MA, UCL MPhilStud, Cambridge MPhil, Oxford BPhil, St Andrews MLitt. The courses seem pretty similar, except that Oxford and UCL are two years, and the Oxford BPhil has significant to huge amounts of prestige attached. I don't think there is much in whether the degree is technically taught or research either, since these seem to be assigned at random. I have seen a research masters and a taught masters that worked in the same way.

On 24/08/06, Andrew Bacon <andrew.bacon@lmh.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

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> one final question for matt, on his claim that oxford seems to be a level
> above - i know they've got a massive department, but do they actually have
> any aesthetics specialists? as far as i know they haven't. whereas at
> southampton we have 3 top people. so sometimes the overall reputation of
> the department isn't the best thing to go for....
>

We've got Alison Denham, John Hyman ('The Objective Eye: colour, form and
reality in the theory of art') and Roger Allen who is doing something about the
Aesthetics of Music. I know nothing about aesthetics personally, but it appears
we are represented.

As for just looking at the best department, my tutor says this isn't always the
best career move (that is, if you're looking for an academic career afterwards).
Often it matters more that you've got your PhD from a big name university and
have a good referee - not the way it should be, but there you go. I'm going to
do more research this year, but so far I'm looking at Oxford, Cambridge or St
Andrews in the UK, and perhaps some American universities: MIT, Cornell, UCLA,
Princeton etc... or ANU in Australia.
--
Andrew Bacon
Lady Margaret Hall
07830048336
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~lady1900

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