Students Who’ve Taken Time Off and Older Applicants to Grad Programs


A reader of Daily Nous writes in with a question about admission into graduate programs in philosophy:

I graduated a couple of years ago and the state of the profession kept me from going for a Phd. I went abroad and taught English, partly to pay off some of my student loans, but also to see how I would feel about philosophy in the mean time. Well, I still find that I am constantly thinking philosophical questions, going back to old ones, and still discovering new ones. In any case, philosophy is still my main passion, but I am unsure of how admissions will look at someone who took a break, as it were. I wonder, also, if my age will affect my chances (I’m 26). Would it be possible to get comments on this?

Readers, especially those with experience on graduate admissions committees, please let us know what you think. Is taking five or so years off between undergraduate and graduate studies a negative? And in your experience, does age affect one’s admissions chances? (The person with the question is only 26, but I would imagine that much older potential applicants are curious about this, too.)

Thank you.

Eric Roux-Fontaine, "An Ordinary Man"

Eric Roux-Fontaine, “An Ordinary Man”

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Sartre Rock
Sartre Rock
7 years ago

Wouldn’t discrimination on the basis of age in this case be immoral and, in some countries, illegal as well?

Nope
Nope
Reply to  Sartre Rock
7 years ago

There is much about the state of graduate philosophy that is immoral.

Herodotus
Herodotus
Reply to  Sartre Rock
7 years ago

I’m as much a fan of self-loathing as the next, but there’s a difference between penalizing a person for being out of academic philosophy for some number of years and penalizing a person for being a certain age.

Ghost
Ghost
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

I don’t think you mean that people should be penalized for doing other things (especially teaching English- which is relevantly like the job they’ll be training for in grad school) with their lives for a few years. That would be weird, and roughly about as bad as penalizing them for their age.

I think you mean that people who have been out of academia for a while might be a bit rusty, and are likely to be weaker candidates. But if someone’s writing sample is recent, and up to snuff, they’re probably not too rusty to get their chops back in first year proseminars, right?

atrcia
atrcia
Reply to  Ghost
7 years ago

Hi! My 91 year old father recites information he reads and studies, does research, and can carry a high level conversation with most people. He has kept his brain highly functional.
Thank you for your post here.

Patricia

Herodotus
Herodotus
Reply to  Ghost
7 years ago

I think you’re reading too much into what I said. All I was suggesting was that there’s a difference between age discrimination and penalizing people for being ‘out’ for a while. The legitimacy of either is an independent matter from the other. Sartre Rock conflated them.

highfive
highfive
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

i don’t know herodotus.

seems like you’re going out of your way to discourage this poor innocent, obviously real, reader who is definitely is a real flesh-n-blood person, writing to the daily nous for some help with their actual life. okay, herodotus?

ask yourself, is that very nice herodotus?

Herodotus
Herodotus
Reply to  highfive
7 years ago

I’ll give you this much: saying my name three times did make me appear :3

R
R
Reply to  highfive
7 years ago

Justin, please disregard the “report” of the above comment – it was purely accidental due to scrolling on a phone in humid conditions.

HFG
HFG
Reply to  highfive
7 years ago

Lol, Herodotus.

Chris Couch
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

Hello Daily Nous readers,

I did not write the question above, but I could have. I’ve been reading this blog and anything else I can find which discusses the job market in higher education at present. The conclusion I have drawn is that I am, almost certainly, far too lazy to be an academic. Moreover, I feel that even if I aspired to become the hard-working, career-wise young intellectual who manages to secure a steady university job, my suspicion is that the politics and publication nonsense would quickly kill me.

I’m 26 years old, have a BA in Philosophy from UCL and have bounced through various jobs since I graduated. I started out in marketing, then moved to educational publishing. At the the moment, I’m writing budget textbooks for A Level Ethics and Philosophy of Religion. Mostly, I’ve worked as a writer, but I have done a bit of teaching and tutoring on the side. All signs, I feel, point to academia: most other educational writers have advanced degrees, and so too do the people who set the curriculum.

Yet there seems to be such misery in the university; in fact, I often read complaints similar in kind to those I heard from long-term lecturers in further education, which is a mess (and that does not only apply to philosophy). I am still keen to do an MPhil but doubt I could go beyond that. In fact, I think I’ve dug myself into a hole and will shortly have to find something else to do. Regardless, as a relative outsider, I look on with great sadness: naive idealism or not, I went into this subject thinking professors of philosophy were great intellects I could learn from, rather than yet another cog in the nonsense machine.

Ian Werkheiser
Ian Werkheiser
7 years ago

I taught ESL as well for about a decade before applying to a PhD program. I don’t know if that counted against me at some schools or not, but I do know that I was accepted to two quite different programs, and after completing my PhD at one of them I landed a tenure-track job I’m very happy with. So to someone in my former situation, I would say that it is at least possible to have some success despite the gap. To schools considering student or job applications from people who took time off before getting their PhD, I would say that they should interrogate any negative biases they might have toward older applicants (not least because age is a protected class in US employment law for people 40 or older). While there might be some negatives for older applicants (e.g. they’ll have less time in the field), I’ve found that people with some life experience outside of academia often make for better students and colleagues, both in terms of work ethic and interesting perspectives.

Molly
Molly
7 years ago

I started grad school when I was 26. I did 2 years in an M.A. program (because I didn’t major in philosophy as an undergraduate) and 7 years in a Ph.D. program, which means I finished my Ph.D. at the age of 35. I don’t think starting late sets you back career-wise, but it will set you back life-wise, if you’re interested in buying a house, having kids, saving for retirement, or whatever. I still can’t afford a house, and I only started saving for retirement at the age of 38. So I think the main issues to consider are financial ones, really.

Harry
Harry
Reply to  Molly
7 years ago

Yeah, that seems about right to me as well. I graduated with my PhD at 36, and didn’t get a position until I was 37. So it’s only now that I’ve been able to start my retirement account and to begin saving for a house.

bigbird
bigbird
7 years ago

Mmm, what are my chances of getting into a PhD or Masters program at 50? Just finished my undergrad in philosophy.

Aidan
Aidan
Reply to  bigbird
7 years ago

It can be done.
I applied at age 44 and got in.

bigbird
bigbird
Reply to  Aidan
7 years ago

Thanks, encouraging to hear that people are getting in during their 40’s without too much trouble.

Kevin
Kevin
7 years ago

In short, no, not at all, 26 is a common age to commence PhD study.

Keli Birchfield
7 years ago

Taking a few years off gave me time to think about what, specifically, I wanted to study; and about what I wanted out of a program. As a result, I was able to set my goals and intentions clearly and concisely on the application for a school which directly serves my purpose. Having traveled and gained teaching, as well as life experiences; you’ll bring rich insight to the table. Visit the places which cater to your interests, and meet with the faculty and department heads. Impress them with your passion and persistence; engage them with your story from a philosophical standpoint, and use your time off towards your own advantage. I honestly think taking time off improved my chances of acceptance, so no worries!

Brad
Brad
7 years ago

While I don’t know how age affects admissions decisions on the whole, I applied to grad programs this year and was admitted to a couple of well-regarded schools. I’m much older than the original poster. I can’t of course know whether or not age was a factor for those schools that decided against me, but I doubt it. While I am much older than the original poster, I did continue to take courses over the years. This was likely an important factor and perhaps assuaged some concerns that my age might have engendered. I’d recommend applying and seeing how things go.

Eddy Nahmias
Eddy Nahmias
7 years ago

It seems immoral, potentially illegal, and overly paternalistic to hold age against an applicant, so I hope people would not do that. (It would not be overly paternalistic for mentors to inform her or him about the drawbacks and risks, just as they would for any applicant, some of which are exacerbated for an older applicant, as mentioned above.)
Personally, I think it’s an advantage for people to work in a ‘real’ job for at least a couple years before graduate school, on the one hand learning work habits more useful for grad school and academic jobs than those deployed by most undergraduates, and on the other hand, learning how desperate they are to avoid a job in a non-academic setting and hence whether they really want to take on the risks of grad school. Plus, certain jobs will provide people with a fallback plan if grad school doesn’t work out.
On that note, if an older applicant has both the ability to get into grad school and a career path to return to if it doesn’t work out (including if she or he decides to return to it), that seems ideal. Sure, the program is not gaining a ‘placement’ to put on their webpage, but they get to send a more trained philosopher into the world, they don’t have to feel guilty about a(nother) graduate unable to get a job, and no one should hold it against a program if some students are listed on the placement page as “Entered [or returned] to career in [carpentry, law, nursing, journalism, Navy, computer programming, advertising, high school teaching, raising children, law enforcement, ……..]” (By the way, programs should be listing the ‘status’ of all their graduates (and non-graduates), not just those who get positions in academia.)

Laura C.
Laura C.
7 years ago

I didn’t start my graduate work in philosophy until I was 30, and I’ll probably be 37 by the time I finish.

Spider Crab
Spider Crab
7 years ago

I applied to grad school for philosophy at age 30. From what I can tell, the life experiences that I accrued during my academic break made me a more interesting candidate. I was accepted by two top-20 schools, and wait-listed at a few others. No one seems to hold my age against me here, even though I’m the oldest among my cohort, and the second-oldest grad student in the program. From what I can tell, no one considers my age at all. I feel compelled to warn you, though, that entering a humanities grad program later in life will put you in a precarious situation. I’m now finishing up my degree. I have no savings, no retirement, and due to the market, dismal job prospects. I’ve spent almost seven years in an endeavor that has not increased my earning potential or helped my job mobility in the slightest. The same is true for nearly all grad students. But they’re in their 20’s. I’m 36. It seems to me that, the older you are, the harder such financial instability will be. Consider another field.

highfive_ghost
highfive_ghost
Reply to  Spider Crab
7 years ago

Everything but the last sentence, Spider Crab.

Herodotus
Herodotus
Reply to  highfive_ghost
7 years ago

Seems imminently sensible to me. CONSIDER, he said. Think twice, and hard.

ghosting
ghosting
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

yeah. i was expecting this response.

look, nobody should be a grad student unless they have considered other fields. in fact, while they’re grad students, they should constantly be considering other fields.

but “consider” has an implicature of “choose”. and i think crabby spider already provided many helpful things to consider when choosing whether or not to go to grad school.

going the extra mile by implying that some students ought to choose some particular way has the potential cause a lot of harm to those students, and who knows, maybe to philosophy, and those students’ would-be students.

Herodotus
Herodotus
Reply to  ghosting
7 years ago

I’m sorry, but I have more respect for my students than to think that they could be “caused a lot of harm” because some dude on the internet gave his perspective on grad school and then (maybe, possibly–but god would it be tedious to argue about) implicated that they shouldn’t choose prof philosophy.

Heck, I’ll outright say it: they shouldn’t choose professional philosophy. For all the reasons Spider Crab gave. But they’re big boys and girls and they’ll decide for themselves whether they agree and they’ll, somehow, survive having been exposed to the opinion.

highfive
highfive
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

you’re just saying that because i won the reasons on this internet corner.

ghosting
ghosting
Reply to  Herodotus
7 years ago

yeah. i was expecting this response.

look, nobody should be a grad student unless they have considered other fields. in fact, while they’re grad students, they should constantly be considering other fields.

but “consider” has an implicature of “choose”. and i think spider crab already provided many helpful things to consider when choosing whether or not to go to grad school.

going the extra mile by implying that some students ought to choose some particular way has the potential cause a lot of harm to those students, and who knows, maybe to philosophy, and those students’ would-be students.

RecentPhD
RecentPhD
7 years ago

1) Do all you can to sell YOUR OWN interpretation of the break – don’t let others guess about this. Give it the framing you did, and be sure to highlight this in your applications. I think it won’t be a bit deal as long as you address it head on. It might even work to your benefit.
2) One big problem with taking time off is that your contacts for recommendation letters and your philosophical work is probably not very current anymore. That, IMO, is probably the biggest obstacle when you take time off. I took 2 years off between undergrad and grad school, and ended up doing a 2 year MA to get my credentials polished enough to get into the kind of PhD program that I wanted.
3) Others have been pointing out that the older you get, the higher your opportunity cost will be for doing a PhD. I think that’s true. Graduate school is expensive in opportunity cost anyway, and being older just makes it worse. That’s good to keep it in mind as you proceed. Good luck!

Old New Student
Old New Student
7 years ago

Although discrimination on the basis of age may be illegal and reprehensible, I don’t think those are significant obstacles to it taking place when there can’t really be any good evidence of it happening in any particular case.

I’m 45 and was admitted to two programmes this year, both just outside of the PGR top twenty. I’m very happy to be going where I’m going, but I’m fairly sure my age precluded me from many programmes. I can’t really judge my own abilities or suitability for such programmes, but at the time of applying two of my fourth-year papers had been published, one in an ethics journal ranked in the top two or three, and the other in the top journal for its specialty; being able to publish early seems fairly rare, and a good sign of capability. My grades, letters, and GREs were strong, and my writing sample was one of my published papers, so I’m inclined to think that my age was the reason for not even getting on the waitlist anywhere else, including a programme where my application was supported by a professor there. Of course, there could be weaknesses in my application I’m not aware of, or publishing might not be as important an indication of ability as I’ve tended to think.

I’m sure being 26 is no obstacle whatsoever. 🙂

Old New Student
Old New Student
7 years ago

I should have made clear that there was no break in my studies; I started university when I was 40.

Brian Boyce
Brian Boyce
7 years ago

I applied once at 45 and again at 46. The odds are definitely stacked against older people getting admitted. It was explained to me as being a question of resource management. That graduate programs were to create pathways for professional philosophers, not for people trying to understand more about the world and ask questions.

Charles Pigden
Charles Pigden
7 years ago

Until very recently I had three colleagues (one of them has just retired) who only got into philosophy in their thirties, forties and have all gone on to have distinguished careers: Colin Cheyne, Greg Dawes and James Maclaurin. Collin Cheyne was a high-school maths teacher for many years before getting into philosophy in the late eighties and early nineties, to begin with by taking correspondence courses at Massey. I was the internal examiner for his PhD thesis (1994) subsequently published as a book (Knowledge , Cause and Abstract Objects, 2001). Greg Dawes, a former priest, was already university teacher but in another discipline, Religious Studies (he is a biblical scholar, with a string of publications in this area) when he got into philosophy. Although he is about my age (I am about to turn sixty), he did not complete his PhD in philosophy, his second, until 2007. Again I was the internal examiner, and again his thesis has been published as a book (Theism and Explanation, 2009) which helped to get him the distinction of an interview with 3AM Magazine. James Maclaurin is a former actor who only turned to philosophy in his thirties with a BA from Victoria University at Wellington and a PhD from the ANU. He too has got a well –regarded book (co-authored with Kim Sterelny) What Is Biodiversity. For more details on all of them you can check out our Otago website.
Now none of this directly answers the original question, which is whether some graduate schools (presumably in the US) discriminate against people who have been out of academia for a year or two. But it does suggest that success (not just in intellectual terms but in careerist terms too) is perfectly possible for people who were not (like me) dedicated to a philosophical career from the age of twenty onwards. And if there are any graduate programs which DO discriminate against the non-young, then perhaps my tale of three colleagues will suggest to them that they are making big mistake.

Barry Lam
7 years ago

I’ve met many Iraq and Afghanistan vets now getting their PhDs in philosophy, many working in military and war ethics. The work, informed quite a bit by personal experiences of prolonged wars, is some of the best I’ve encountered in philosophy in my decade in the field. It would be a disservice to philosophy not to take them seriously when they’re out on the job market for being “too old.”

Mat
Mat
7 years ago

Its never late for philosophy. We should take seriously Epicurus’ recommendations.

Gimli
Gimli
7 years ago

I’m a 33 year old who has just been accepted onto an MA, so take my advice with a pinch of salt, but here it is…

There is a definite trend in subjects that prize ‘innate brilliance’ (philosophy, economics, mathematics, etc.) towards younger PhD students. I doubt everyone who makes these decisions is consciously aware of it, and it definitely doesn’t apply to all departments (though, from what I understand, the majority of top departments think like this).

The reason is that ‘innate brilliance’ dims over time. While many (most?) philosophy departments might not put a great deal of stock in IQ scores, IQ is almost certainly what these professors are looking at when they talk about ‘innate brilliance’. Philosophers (like physicists, mathematicians, economists, etc.) have freakishly high IQ’s in general (the ‘average’ student in these subjects is two standard deviations above the mean – Mensa level). This isn’t surprising, because they are engaged specifically in problem solving (with words or numbers) which is more-or-less what IQ is a measure of.

As you age, your IQ will begin to decline. Because philosophy is comparatively hard, a philosopher should ideally be doing his best / most eye-catching work between his late twenties and forties. There is also the element of time: academic success is not easy. The older a person is when they start down the road of original research, the less potential they have to alter their subject dramatically (based, simply, on time available to do so).

The good news is, the above is probably not true everywhere (I imagine a lot of people read that and thought “what the f*ck is he talking about?”) It’s also, clearly, not true of everyone – some people are talented / lucky enough that they could start their research in their sixties and still change the world. Lastly, it doesn’t apply to you yet. 26 might seem old to you, but you are not particularly old to start a PhD, and you should not be discriminated against because of it. Yet….

As a tip, play the “take a break” card as a period of reflection that will guarantee your dedication to finishing the doctorate – doctoral drop outs are ten a penny, and no university wants to put all that time in without a PhD-holder emerging at the end. In that way, it could even aid your acceptance chances.

Geriatric Grad
Geriatric Grad
7 years ago

First of all, I don’t think 26 is old at all. I’m seeing a lot of people starting PhD programs right at about that age in the last several years. Also, I’ve met numerous older grad students in top departments who came from non-philosophy backgrounds, who were formerly employed in the real world, and then took up philosophy. This happens all the time.
I started my PhD program at a top 30 school at age 32. Some time ago. And at the time I was by far the oldest student in my dept. Taking time off did not seem to be a problem for me, however. I did not sense that it was an issue on the minds of my department. One thing I did during the interim period before applying was to stay involved with my department where I had done my MA, which meant I was in continued contact with faculty there and sat classes and attended talks and colloquia in the area. This allowed me to make the case in my Statement of Purpose that I had at least tried to be active in the philosophical community.
Unfortunately, after a few years getting done with coursework,, I had to drop my program due to several health-related and family-related circumstances that prevented me being able to continue in my program for the time being. It’s been quite a while since I left, and now it actually looks like I may finally return to finish up. (Again, I have stayed very active with my department in the intervening years.). However, at my present age, I have absolutely no expectation of ever securing a bona fide, salary-paying, academic job. Should I find myself securing a real academic job after finishing up, I would consider it a miracle, precisely because the cult of youth/age discrimination are in fact quite in play in academic philosophy. While I don’t think at all that someone starting as a 26 or 27 y/o would face the same age-related difficulties as someone starting in their 30s or beyond, I do think everyone needs to take very seriously this very likely outcome that you wil not land an academic job, or that if you do, you could be getting what’s left at the bottom of the barrel. I am currently thinking about how I may use my PhD as a base degree for pursuing a more professional degree, but still related enough to value and build on my skill-set, and actually see if I can land a professional job that way. You gotta pay the bills and eat. (Also, as you get older, you actually do start to see the practical applications of philosophy in world that is terribly bereaved of rigourous deployment of good ideas in, for example, public and educational policy.).

In addition, I second Spider Crab’s warnings about not having built up a savings for retirement, the older you get when you enter into the PhD grind. You will be surprised how quickly time flies and suddenly you find yourself in your 40s with nothing in your savings. Wow, this is bigger deal than I ever imagined when I was a young 24 y/o pursuing my MA. It could take you as many as 8 years to complete your doctorate, all while living on a pittace of a stipend or none at all while working sub-minumum wage adjuncting jobs. (May I recommend, if you should end up pursuing your doctorate, NOT thinking that adjuncting is the only philosophically dignified choice and instead working jobs that actually support you and that pay you enough to save a little while giving you valuable work experience that you might need, considering that the chance of landing a real academic job nowadays is next to nil?).
But most importantly, I want to say that whether you’re 24 or 34+, getting admitted is the *least* difficult hurdle you will face. The difficult hurdles are the fact that you will inevitably end up staking your identity on philosophy and being very attached to the philosophical community and yet will come to find that there is no place in the academy for you when you finish your PhD, and no other “legitimate” space outside the academy where philosophers get to identify themselves as philosophers and be attributed the same credibility/legitimacy as those who do secure a job in the academy. It’s like you’re not really a philosopher unless you get a teaching job. I spent the better part of my 30s coming to terms and peace with the fact that my internal identity will probably never be my “public identity,” regardless of my degree completion. I think I had to get through that struggle before I could commit myself to returning to finish up the PhD. I had to know what finishing up meant and what it didn’t mean and basically cut myself loose from worries about success and identity. When you are in your 20s and 30s, you think your identity is the sort of thing that is confirmed by others in a public/social sphere, and that is by all means exactly how academic philosophy works. There have even been disputes on this very blog about whether to call non-teaching philosophers with PhDs actual philosophers!! Which goes to show that the field guards the achievement and status very jealously! So Identity and how to make it your own and not someone else’s in the face of many likely disappointments: That is major hurdle #1. No one in the field is immune to it. It is the contemporary grad student’s daily anxiety. Resolving it positively means that you can clear the way for either pursuing or not pursuing (which is just as legitimate an option) the PhD without all kinds of neurotic anxieties in the periphery of your consciousness wearing you down. A second hurdle is finding yourself fairly unemployable, but for low-wage jobs, despite being extraordinarily well educated and no doubt extremely intelligent. Which is why I would recommend taking jobs other than adjuncting as you support yourself through unfunded years of education in order to diversify your skill-set so you are prepared once you get spit back out into the real world. So hurdle #2 is something you can mitigate against by making job choices outside the box. Other hurdles abound, but I’ve said enough for now.

low1death
low1death
Reply to  Geriatric Grad
7 years ago

stop.

everyone knows this stuff. everyone.

nobody in grad school is not told this regularly. it’s hard to motivate (in or out of the profession) when people are doomsdaying your life all over the place.

this thread is seriously unhealthy justin, and i think you need to rethink posting these sorts of topics so regularly. if you need help framing this issue better, check out magicalersatz’ post on attrition. that is solution-seeking. this is not.

seriously, like way to make people who have fairly good senses of humor about life want to hurl themselves in front of a train. i can’t be clearer, this topic needs to stop.

HFG
HFG
Reply to  Geriatric Grad
7 years ago

“A second hurdle is finding yourself fairly unemployable, but for low-wage jobs…”

Can we see some data on this?

Feelosophy
Feelosophy
7 years ago

I hate to ruin all of the positive energy here, but umm “give me a break”. (S)he’s 26 not 56, and all this concern about ageism just strikes me as an excuse they’ll give themselves if they don’t get in.

Bottom line, if you’re qualified, you’ll get in, I know many people who started their Ph.D.’s into their 30’s and if you don’t get in, it’s because the admission’s committee didn’t think you were right for the program.

As for “putting off life” yes that’s a genuine concern, but not at 26, and I know many 40 year old’s who still haven’t started “life” if what you mean by life is having a mortgage payment.

What so irks me about this post is how it plays into a contemporary vogue of moral disengagement which allows someone to just blame their personal inadequacies on large political concerns like “ageism” and how willing commenters are to take them at their word rather than call them on their obvious BS….

Glen
Glen
Reply to  Feelosophy
7 years ago

I’m the student who made the query.
Obvious BS?
Thanks for being charitable.

Glen

SecondCareer
SecondCareer
7 years ago

26 seems far from old to be starting a PhD. It seems almost expected, especially if many people are completing an undergrad degree, then a two-year MA program, all before apply to/enrolling in a PhD program. I applied to PhD programs in philosophy in my 30s. I got into all of them to nearly all of them to which I applied (5 of 6, with full funding, and was strongly recruited). So if we are simply talking about age being a barrier to acceptance, I have data that points to the opposite: my background seemed to make me an attractive applicant to most programs that I also thought would be a good fit for my intended course of study. My work and life experience contributed to the reasons that I felt it imperative to go study philosophy professionally; I made this case in my statement of purpose, and still stand by it being the right choice for me now. Being an “older” student had numerous advantages, not the least of which: having work experience and an established work ethic, having a strong sense of self, and having had other life and professional accomplishments already.

Henry
7 years ago

I am in my late 30’s, and currently in a philosophy master’s program, albeit on a part-time basis. I intent to transition to a full time phd program, which I am approaching as a midlife career change. It is hard, because I have to balance my aspirations with my spouse’s and our children needs, but I don’t think it’s impossible. Approaching it as a career change, which is what it really is, allows me to better plan for all the challenges that come with starting a new career later in life.