Applying to philosophy programs....

So, after three semesters at Tufts' MA program in philosophy, I'm ready (I think) to apply to PhD programs in philosophy. I'm going to try my best not to make the same mistakes as last time.

One notable mistake was applying to just four schools. Tufts has reinforced my interests in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of physics, and logic. After talking to various folks, it's become clear that there are a fair number of places which fit my interests well. Here are what appear to be the top 16. If I can, I would like to eliminate four from this list. But if it turns out to be too difficult to do that, I suppose the extra $200ish in app fees isn't so big a deal.

I list the programs in alphabetical order. After each program I provide a series of numbers, all from Brian Leiter's 2004-2006 survey of philosophy programs. The first number is the program's overall rank, followed by its rating in philosophy of science, philosophy of physics, philosophical logic and then mathematical logic. The lower the number, the higher the rank (1 is the best for each.) One note: for programs outside the US, I had to estimate where they would fall on the overall rank. Hence the brackets.

I don't provide my personal ordering of the programs. There are two reasons for this: I don't know enough about the programs, and I don't know enough about my own interests (how I would weight them relative to one another) to know how to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each program.

That having been said, it does seem fairly clear that Pittsburgh will turn out to be my top choice. We'll see what happens....

Program	Overall	Phil of Science	Phil of Physics	Logic (Phil)	Logic (Math)
Harvard University	6	-	-	3	3
Indiana University, Bloomington	29	4	-	-	-
New York University	1	4	-	1	2
Oxford University	[2]	3	1	1	2
Princeton University	3	3	3	3	2
Rutgers University, New Brunswick	2	3	2	4	-
Stanford University	6	4	6	2	1
University of California, Irvine	17	2	2	2	2
University of California, Los Angeles	6	-	-	2	2
University of California, San Diego	18	3	5	4	-
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	4	3	4	3	4
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities	34	4	-	4	-
University of Notre Dame	11	3	4	3	3
University of Pittsburgh	4	1	1	1	2
University of Toronto	[3]	4	-	3	3
University of Western Ontario	[20]	4	4	-	4