College, law school & graduate study
Advice for choosing what comes next.
A living guide to college applications, law school, philosophy graduate study, and the practical judgments that matter before—and after—an offer arrives.
Google Doc · Last updated September 11, 2026 · Comments welcome
HOW TO USE THE GUIDE
Advice should enlarge your choices.
This guide gathers the advice I most often give students considering college, professional school, or graduate study. Some of it is intentionally unorthodox. It is meant to help you ask better questions, compare genuine options, and make a decision you can own—not to replace conversations with teachers, advisers, practitioners, students, family, or people who know your circumstances well.
Read across the sections, even if you already know which path interests you. Seeing what different programs reward can make the assumptions behind every application easier to recognize.
What the document covers
College applications
How broadly to apply; why “safety school” thinking can mislead; the importance of cost, campus scale, location, program fit, testing, and retaining some enjoyment in the process.
Law school
Whether law is the right vocation; how prestige, regional placement, specialization, debt, the LSAT, written materials, and professional purpose should affect an application strategy.
Philosophy graduate study
Questions to settle before pursuing a Ph.D.; choosing programs and advisers; funding, location, teaching, application materials, waitlists, April 15, and the realities of academic work.
Programs and alternatives
Selected terminal M.A. and interdisciplinary programs, specialty blind spots, practical alternatives to conventional philosophy departments, and cautions about combined J.D./Ph.D. routes.
Six principles that recur
- Apply broadly enough to preserve meaningful choices. Breadth should be purposeful, not random.
- Treat cost as part of academic fit. Price, funding, debt, local living costs, and opportunity costs shape what an offer actually means.
- Research programs, not merely institutions. Course offerings, advisers, placement, requirements, and institutional strengths matter more than a familiar name alone.
- Consider the life around the program. Size, geography, housing, community, and lifestyle will affect years of your life—not just the day you enroll.
- Make the application tell a coherent story. Your record, aims, written materials, recommendations, and stated fit should reinforce rather than contradict one another.
- Seek many perspectives, then decide for yourself. Good advice clarifies tradeoffs; it cannot make the choice yours unless you retain final responsibility for it.
Writing & application examples
Further resources
These documents extend the page from choosing programs to preparing written work. They are offered as advice and example, with their different purposes and stages clearly marked.
Academic Writing Guide
A general guide to structuring, drafting, and revising academic work, with particular attention to philosophy and law. It combines broadly useful conventions with observations and preferences drawn from my own practice.
This is a living document. I will continue to revise and expand it as my thinking and experience develop.
Google Doc · General advice · Living document
Archived Statement of Purpose (2019)
The statement of purpose I submitted as an undergraduate when applying to the philosophy Ph.D. program at Indiana University Bloomington. It is shared as an archived example of what I did at that stage.
Disclosure: This is the archived 2019 version. I plan to add my present comments to it in the future, reflecting on the statement now that I am post-Ph.D.
Word document in Google Drive · Archived undergraduate example
Use the living version.
The full guide contains the detailed arguments, examples, program notes, and qualifications behind this overview. Because the document continues to develop, the Google Doc is the authoritative version.
