Hello, I’ve been a lurker of these forums for a number of years and thought I would finally sign up and post my experience in the event that it might be helpful to others. I recently completed my B.A. online in philosophy through the University of Illinois, Springfield. The experience was excellent. The faculty in the philosophy department is top-notch and they genuinely strive to make the program as rigorous as any B&M counterpart. I initially chose the school for three reasons. It is a state school with a B&M presence, it does not distinguish, when awarding degrees, between those earned online and those earned on-campus, and, finally, the admissions process is competitive. Regarding the difficulty of the coursework, I can tell you that students that do not work very hard will not do well. They are not shy about dishing out Ds and Fs. Regarding academic focus, the department is analytic (as opposed to continental) and focuses on strong foundational work in metaphysics, epistemology, and moral philosophy. The online program is still very young (I believe the first students were enrolled in the Fall of 2004). In fact, prior to this year, only seven students have graduated with the degree. Of those, two are now at good PhD programs (UIUC and SUNY) while two or three others are at various M.A. programs. I myself have already been admitted into one M.A. program with funding and should hear from Ph.D. programs in the next few months. Anyhow, I hope this will be helpful to those possibly considering the school, especially the philosophy department. If anyone has any questions regarding my time at UIS, I will be happy to answer them as best I can. I have benefited from the knowledge on these boards so it is only fair that I give back where I can. -RLD
Congratulations! What a great accomplishment! Take at least a little time to celebrate, you deserve it.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I'm really excited about starting my program there in January.
It's off to philosophy graduate school now. I'm just waiting for decisions to roll in from graduate programs so that I know what my options will be. In philosophy, it is quite possible to go straight into a Ph.D. program with only a B.A., though the competition if fierce. Some of us had worries this year about what admissions committees might think of a philosophy degree earned online, but the response so far seems to be positive. I was quite relieved when my first acceptance came in (for the M.A. program at CSULB)! -RLD
Congratulations! When do you get inducted into the Club of Philosopher-Kings? Any grad school plans in the offing?
Kudos! RLD: " Some of us had worries this year about what admissions committees might think of a philosophy degree earned online, but the response so far seems to be positive." My wife did her MA in philosophy by distance learning (Dominguez Hills). When she shopped around for PhD programs, of the six schools that accepted her, (Harvard, Yale, Pittsburgh, Loyola Chicago, Wisconsin, Vanderbilt), my recollection is that five accepted the MA without question, and one, Vandy, said in effect, "We're not sure about this kind of Master's, so we'll wait and see how you do in the first year of the doctoral program before deciding whether to give you credit for the MA." They did, which reduced her on-campus time to two years . . . and they still gave her their own MA after she passed her four qualifying exams.** ________________ ** Most of the exams had complex and elaborate questions. But my favorite was, in its entirety: "How do you know you're not a brain in a bucket?" She had 12 hours to write 20 pages.