Professionalization Workshop

Students who are applying this FA20 to pursue further graduate-level training in Philosophy are invited to participate in a professionalization and placement workshop. This workshop will offer a concentrated opportunity for students to develop and polish some of application materials—vitae and statements of purpose, primarily—and to discuss questions about their materials and the application process. It will be held via Zoom from 3:00pm–5:00pm on Friday October 16th 2020.

This workshop will be run by Dr. Cory Wright as a proper workshop. (There is no departmental service position for placement coördinator, officially, and so this role usually falls unofficially to the graduate advisor.) It is not a talk, lecture, or panel discussion. Instead, the focus will be on renovating each students’ documents, using various combinations of critique and feedback.

After the workshop, you will want to revise your documents while the feedback is fresh in your mind. Once your statement is revised, you may do well to get some additional feedback from select philosophers who are not your letter-writers. Once these documents are finalized, focus heavily on your writing sample. The writing sample is frequently treated as the most important indicator of admissibility.