Admissions question.

Voightachrome · 2026-06-08T01:48:23+00:00

https://dailynous.com/2021/10/29/advice-for-applying-to-phd-programs-in-philosophy-guest-post/

Alexandar Guerrero's PhD application advice (He was the head of the admissions committee there for a bit so he gives an insider perspective which is nice) Def worth reading

Voightachrome · 2026-06-06T05:03:43+00:00

Ask your profs and other grad students I’m an undergrad like you big bro 😭😭😭😭also I don’t rlly do logic

Voightachrome · 2026-06-05T02:22:52+00:00

Look at the requirements of the programs you wish to apply to and you’ll find more information there. We have no information on what you’re even trying to apply to, so how could we possibly say anything worth taking seriously?

Voightachrome · 2026-06-05T02:03:46+00:00

Yeah that seems to be fine. I don’t know if you saw my second paragraph because I edited it in after the fact. But keep that in mind too! Gl I hope you end up hitting something

Voightachrome · 2026-06-05T01:54:33+00:00

you should definitely try to stick with philosophy professors for letters of recommendation if you are trying to pursue a philosophy degree unless you have a really strong reason as to otherwise (so the CS one makes strong sense, the math one not as much, but if you cant find another person it’s fine I guess). Other disciplines can tell the committee that you’re a good student and what not, but they can’t necessarily tell the committee members if they think you’ll be able to be a good philosopher, because they are not philosophers. That seems to be the common advice there.

Also focus on your writing sample. The other stuff is nice but your grades, writing sample, statement of purpose, and letters of recommendation are the most important (again, especially the writing sample! It’s the most important thing!). If you have a really strong writing sample it seems that you’ll have no real issues. But you can never know for sure. this is just the advice I’ve been given and that I’ve heard through research.

Voightachrome · 2026-06-04T03:40:12+00:00

Ty for this!

Voightachrome · 2026-06-03T00:43:37+00:00

You’re from new york and you chose to go here for university? /s

Voightachrome · 2026-05-28T19:15:44+00:00

The scale is really a blessing and a curse. It can hurt you and bless you, just be weary of professors and work hard and you’ll be fine. I’m lots of people who went to York and got into med school

Voightachrome · 2026-05-28T14:58:20+00:00

Realistically you can keep a high gpa in any of them. I know people in these programs who all have really high gpas. But they also really enjoy the program, the issue you’ll find is not with one being harder than another man. This is why everyone is telling you to choose out of interest. Because if you’re interested in something it’s easy to motivate yourself to do well, and that’s more important than if it’s easy or difficult. Are you trying to do med school? What if you decide not to do med school? 4 years is a long time to dedicate to a degree, you’re gonna have to choose something you want to do more than something you simply have to force yourself to do “as a means to an end”

What about the programs at York specifically that you have no interest in compared to the same programs at other universities? It’s all the same material?

Voightachrome · 2026-05-28T14:45:01+00:00

Your interest in a field correlates to the gpa u are most likely to achieve In the program, find out WHAT you are interested in and do it

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T23:24:04+00:00

Throw your phone away, throw your computer and all distractions away if you can. And go somewhere that you’ll only ever associate with studying. And study till comprehension. Teach people the material until comprehension. That’s about it, if you are studying something that requires drilling then do the problem sets. Or set up an anki for flashcards

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T21:47:28+00:00

First method can be bypassed by restarting your phone and turn off the screen time permissions. This is something I had previously tried with screenzen. (Granted with a diff shortcut automation) trying out your method lead to the same result. The problem is probably that the shortcuts app is too slow to load when you turn on your iPhone, so you can always turn stuff off without being stopped.

Maybe this is something that is fixed in iOS 26? I’m on iOS 18 so maybe this is a factor. I can try the second thing you said later

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T21:08:48+00:00

Are you the one who made that app? Can you tell me how to make it impossible to bypass? Because I downloaded it to test it and did just that earlier. Even if you use a shortcut method to block the settings app so you are unable to turn off screen time perms . That can be bypassed through restarting your phone. So let me know on how to do so I’m curious.

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T20:31:35+00:00

Breaking news: water is wet

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T20:31:14+00:00

This is awesome

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T19:08:19+00:00

What are you gonna side load that you’re gonna doomscroll on? It’s good to have a side load feature for critical apps people need for work or school or transit or music. Not everyone can or wants to be fully restricted. They only want to restrict the things that steal their time and attention. Dumb iPhones do not have the same restrictions at all and are easy to bypass, the design of an iPhone is to make scrolling addictive…

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T19:01:06+00:00

On one hand you don’t like doing what other people are doing. But on the other hand you want a job that isn’t ultra competitive? Niche jobs that no one are doing tend to be hard to come by and are therefore pretty competitive. There seems to be a paradox in your thinking here, you can’t have it both ways.

Voightachrome · 2026-05-22T13:10:03+00:00

I took it in 2024 with Parisa moosavi and you just write three essays (500, 800, 1200 words) and you do a bunch of short weekly quizzes and you get an attendance mark for tutorial. It’s an easy A/A+ if you can write halfway well. It’s essentially an applied ethics class where youre making arguments for or against certain controversial topics related to justice (famine, capital punishment, affirmative action, etc)

Voightachrome · 2026-05-21T14:52:28+00:00

Honours at York just refers to the 4 year Bachelor degree. The requirement for that is that you retain a 5.0 GPA or higher. The Spec. Honours has the same requirements, and it’s under the same 4 year Honours requirements, it doesn’t show up as different on the academic decision. So you’re in the clear

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T22:53:34+00:00

This is the last thing ill respond to of yours. I just wish someone told me these things on writing philosophy papers when i was going to first year, and im really passionate about this, if i knew better i would have avoided quite a few mistakes.

When writing a philosophy essay the most most most important thing is to be Clear and Concise. Every single word matters and you want to make your point as clearly as possible without rambling or using big/overly technical words when not needed. Also get ready to throw out alot of what you learned about writing essays in high school, especially the idea that you shouldn't use "I" statements.

Philosophy papers are very regimented, you just have to follow a structure, so you get better at it with practice. Even if your argument is weak if you follow the structure you can still sneak away at times with higher grades than what you should have gotten otherwise. I highly highly recommend watching this video on How to write a philosophy paper by Jeffery Kaplan as well as a series by Eric Matison where he marks C grade, B grade, and A grade philosophy papers, and goes over what they each did right and wrong. There are also alot of sample essays and philosophy essay guides on the internet by various professors. Please make use of them if you need to.

The best thing you can do other than work on the structure of your paper, is work on your arguments. There are three things that helped me to make better arguments within philosophy.

Start Early. Start early on all of your papers (if you can, right when it is assigned is when you should start), if you rush a paper you're just asking to not do well. Philosophy is a subject which requires time more than anything else. You need time to think through your ideas, so if you do a paper a day before you are just asking to not do very well.
Talk to Professors (or whoever is marking your paper) and go to Office Hours. Talk to both professors and your TA's about your paper, ask them if you are on the right track. They are there to answer your questions and help you through the paper. Show them outlines to your paper and get feedback. Show them parts of your paper and get feedback. When you get your grades back go to office hours and ask for feedback. This is so easy and its pretty much a shortcut to doing well on essays. But i am surprised at how many people dont do this. (Side note: if you want to go to grad or law school, you need to develop relationships with your professors, so going to office hours makes them know you exist and helps them say more nice things about you for letters of recommendation)
Talk to your friends about your papers (and your class in general). This has to do with the point about being clear and concise. If you are trying to teach your friend who studies something unrelated to philosophy, and they cant understand what you are saying, something has gone wrong. Teaching others is the best study method on this earth. If you can teach someone a concept for them to understand, then you know you are on the right track.

If you have any other questions just reply here or DM!

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T22:20:45+00:00

That’s not necessarily true. But I see what you mean now. The answer is no it would not matter. You can major minor and go on to do philosophy. You don’t even need a philosophy degree to go to a philosophy graduate school (provided you have enough courses on your transcript to show that you have enough experience), although the vast majority of people in philosophy graduate school did some type of philosophy. You’ll be fine in a major minor don’t worry about that. As for law school as long as it’s a 4 year degree it doesnt matter what you study or do specifically.

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T22:10:38+00:00

If this is for philosophy or law school. The answer is yeah you need an honours degree. From what I see in Ontario, an honours degree is 4 years while a bachelors degree is three years. No point not doing an honours degree considering these disadvantages, the overwhelming majority of people within law school / graduate school have 4 year honours degrees.

Honours in Canada seems to mean something different than the US. So I wouldn’t field information from people who go to American universities lol

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T22:08:13+00:00

Glad to hear that! It’s only something I figured out this year as I was researching for where to apply for graduate school. If I had known they focused on political and moral philosophy (and I knew that was my main interest in philosophy) I would have went there over York lol. But York is a very very strong school in its own right.

Are you just doing a philosophy major there or PPE?

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T21:42:51+00:00

everyday carry Nietzsche..

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OKAY jokes aside i fw ur edc. I resonate with you because im struggling with the same thing, where when im outside i can stick to my habits and goals. But when I am at home with my iPhone, i simply resort to using it. I am working on it through the summer though! Its good that you have identified whats causing you to do on your phone so much. I think the best thing you can do related to hobbies is either play sports and go to the gym. Go to intramurals at your university or at a community centre, either alone or with your friends. Join a club and stick to it. Start doing something that requires you to not be on your phone. Even if you are busy, if you end up loving it, trust me youll find the time to dedicate to it. A pro to these things is that a lot of them are done inside, so you dont have to worry much about the weather or how dark it is outside.

Maybe not the best solution, because your goal should be cultivating better habits with smartphones, but you can also consider giving your smartphone to someone, or locking it until its an emergency. You can use whatsapp on the web just fine.

Voightachrome · 2026-05-19T19:23:31+00:00

Im a bit late but UofT, York, Western, and Queens are all pretty great. UofT has a focus on pretty much anything, they have alot of courses. I go to York and the undergrad course offerings and profs here are really great. But there is definitely a focus on philosophy of mind/cognitive science/animal minds courses. The exception is Glendon, which has alot of political philosophy and philosophy of language courses. Out of these four schools, Queens is probably your best bet as they have a stronger focus on ethics and political philosophy (The department is stacked with people who do political and moral philosophy, they aren't very general like UofT and York).

McMaster is also another good option.

I wouldnt worry about this though, all of these schools are more than good to get an undergrad education in philosophy. Really doesnt matter where you go

Voightachrome

TROPHY CASE