Admissions

August 25, 2009:

Admissions information
KU Department of Philosophy graduate program (Ph.D., M.A.)

Deadlines:

The Department of Philosophy at the University of Kansas has rolling admissions for its graduate program-applications are accepted at all times, and applicants are usually notified of the department's admissions recommendation within a few weeks of the completion of their applications. There is no firm application deadline, aside from the practical necessity of applying well in advance of the semester in which you want to begin your enrollment. If you want to enter the program in the fall semester, as most students do, you should be sure your application is complete by the end of the preceding April. If you want to enter the program in the spring semester, you should be sure your application is complete by the end of the preceding September.

There are, however, two earlier deadlines for related matters that are of interest to most applicants to our program:

1. Each year KU's Office of Research and Graduate Studies invites departments to nominate one or two of their applicants for fellowships that provide both a stipend and a tuition waiver for one or more years of graduate study at KU. If you want to be considered for this source of financial assistance for the 2009-10 academic year, make sure your application is complete by Monday, January 5, 2009.
2. Also annually, the Department of Philosophy allocates graduate teaching assistantships, which are the primary source of financial assistance for its graduate students, to current graduate students and applicants. If you want to be considered for this source of financial assistance for the 2009-10 academic year (which would be renewable in subsequent years), make sure your application is complete by Monday, February 16, 2009.

Application Materials:

To submit a complete application, complete the following six steps. (You can complete them in any order, since receipt of any materials will trigger the creation of a file for you.)

1. Application form

Go to http://www.graduate.ku.edu and complete an online application form.

• This is a standard form that KU requires applicants to all its graduate programs to complete. This step is also where KU collects your application fee. Soon after this step is completed, the Department of Philosophy is provided with an electronic copy of your application form, and files it with your other materials.
• The above web site may also include instructions for completing the application form in hard copy, in which case you would mail it, with payment, to the the address provided on the web site (not the Department of Philosophy address given below). The Department of Philosophy would then be provided with a hard copy of your application form, and would file it with your other materials.

2. Documents you send to the KU Department of Philosophy

Prepare the following documents and submit them as indicated below.

1. your c.v., if you have one (if not, don't worry about creating such a document just for this application)
   • Some applicants wish to provide such a document in order to present more information about their qualifications.
   • This document is not required. If you feel that your qualifications are adequately conveyed by your other materials (personal statement, transcript, etc.), do not worry about making a c.v. It's just an option, for those who want it.
2. your personal statement
   • If you are applying to multiple graduate programs in philosophy, you probably have a standard personal statement, also sometimes called a statement of purpose. That will almost certainly be fine for this application.
   • There is some additional information, however, that we ask that you include in your personal statement. We normally require incoming students to have taken, or to take as soon as they enroll in our program, the following seven courses (the last three of which overlap with other graduate-program requirements). In the personal-statement document that you prepare, please include a paragraph indicating what courses on this list you have taken, and how they are listed on your transcript(s). You do not have to integrate this additional information into the text of your existing personal statement-you can just put it in a separate paragraph following your prepared text.
     1. an introductory course in symbolic logic, including both propositional and predicate logic
     2. a survey course in the history of ancient philosophy
     3. a survey course in the history of modern philosophy (e.g., Descartes to Kant)
     4. a survey course in the history of 20th-century analytic philosophy (e.g., Frege to Quine)
     5. an advanced undergraduate course in metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, or philosophy of language
     6. an advanced undergraduate course in history of ethics, contemporary ethical theory, political philosophy, or some related area
     7. an advanced undergraduate course in 19th- and/or 20th-century Continental philosophy
3. your writing sample
   • This should be a paper that shows your ability to write philosophically.
   • Normally, a writing sample is an undergraduate term paper of 15-20 pages, but you can send whatever you think most favorably shows your philosophical writing ability.
4. your GTA application
   • The KU Department of Philosophy offers graduate teaching assistantships to approximately four incoming graduate students per year. These positions typically involve leading discussion sections for a large course in Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, or Reason and Argument (essentially a course in critical thinking or informal logic). After a year of leading discussion sections for a course, a GTA may be eligible to teach his or her own independent sections of that course.
   • A GTA application is not required for admission, and you do not need to submit this document unless you want to be considered for a graduate teaching assistantship in your first year of enrollment in our graduate program.
   • Your GTA application should consist of your answers to the following questions. (You can just paste these into a blank document and add your answers.)
     1. What aspects of your educational background qualify you to be a GTA for Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, and/or Reason and Argument? For example, what courses have you taken in philosophy or other fields whose subject matter might overlap with these courses?
     2. Have you had any experience as a teacher, discussion-section leader, or grader, and have you had any experience in public speaking?
     3. What are your preferences among the courses you might be assigned to assist with-Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Ethics, and Reason and Argument?

Electronic submission of these documents (in PDF, Word, or RTF format) is strongly encouraged. To prepare these documents for electronic submission, save each document in a separate file and give each file a self-explanatory file name, such as '[your last name]_personal_statement'. Then e-mail your files to the Director of Graduate Studies for the KU Department of Philosophy, Dale Dorsey, at ddorsey@ku.edu. You can expect receipt of your documents to be acknowledged by e-mail quickly.

Alternatively, you may submit these documents in hard copy, by mailing them to the following address:

Director of Graduate Studies
Department of Philosophy
Wescoe Hall
1445 Jayhawk Blvd.
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS  66045

3. Transcripts

Have one official copy of your transcript from every institution at which you did a substantial amount of course work mailed to the Director of Graduate Studies address given above. Have the official copy mailed directly from the registrar at each such institution to the address given above, rather than given to you to mail.

4. GRE scores

Have one official copy of your GRE score report mailed from ETS to the Director of Graduate Studies address given above. The school code for KU is 6871, and, as you probably know, the department code for philosophy is 2801. (For applicants to the M.A./J.D. program, an LSAT score report may be provided in lieu of a GRE score report.)

5. English-language-proficiency scores (if applicable)

If you have earned a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution of higher education that is located in the U.S. or whose language of instruction is English, you can disregard this requirement.

Otherwise, have one official copy of your TOEFL score report or International English Language Testing System (IELTS) score report mailed from the testing agency to the Director of Graduate Studies address given above. KU's minimum English-proficiency requirements for graduate students are stated at http://www.oip.ku.edu/~oip/students/mepr. If you are interested in a graduate teaching assistantship, note the English-proficiency requirements for GTAs stated in the last paragraph of that page.

6. Letters of recommendation

Have three letters of recommendation, on academic or other letterhead when appropriate, mailed by their writers to the Director of Graduate Studies address given above. There is no form that writers of letters of recommendation are asked to complete.

The University of Kansas requires departments to require forms to be submitted with letters of recommendation. Download the following file-KU_Philosophy_letter_of_recommendation_form.pdf-and give one completed copy of the form to each of your letter writers to mail with his or her letter.

Questions:

If you have any questions about these procedures or other aspects of graduate admissions, please contact Dale Dorsey (Director of Graduate Studies, KU Department of Philosophy), via e-mail, at ddorsey@ku.edu.