The Daily Nous has a nice blog about what is going on with the current volume of philosophy Ph.D. applications. The blog, linked above, shares some anecdotal evidence from schools reporting increases in philosophy Ph.D. applications. For instance, applications to the philosophy Ph.D. programs at Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and Harvard are all up about 50%.
To be quite frank, we thought the dropping of the GRE requirement and the pandemic-ravaged economy had increased philosophy Ph.D. applications even though the job prospects for these graduates aren’t necessarily the best. However, we had no idea the increase might be this high. (If we had to quantify it, we would have thought between 10% and 20% was far more reasonable for the application increase.)
While it’s great to hear these philosophy Ph.D. programs are receiving so many applications, we still wonder how much of this is due to the regular annual batch of applicants competing for spots in a much smaller pool after well over 100 Ph.D. programs paused their admissions.
