For context, this happens to be a visiting professor who was invited for a talk. When one of the organisers were introducing them to the audience, this person received a call, attended it for 4-5 mins and then told everybody in the room that their master’s student had a defence scheduled at the same time. He admitted not having it on his calendar, which made him forget about it and that the student is refusing to proceed with the defence without him.

After a few seconds of silence, one of the organisers suggested that he should proceed with his student’s defence and that their talk can be postponed. He then thanked and hurried out of the room.

I have so many questions and mixed feelings about this, especially feeling bad for that student. I get that we are human beings, I don’t want to think harshly and I am a research student myself. I just wanted to hear some perspectives about this incident.

I want to get something for one of my lecturers who genuinely is one of the few reasons that I've actually passed and will be able to graduate. He really went above and beyond for me so I want to do something to show my appreciation.

I was thinking maybe a bottle of whiskey but my dad made a joke saying something like 'you don't know, what if he's an alcoholic' and now I'm overthinking it. And what if he doesn't drink or he doesn't like whiskey idk. Would it be an appropriate gift?

I don't want to just get him a box of chocolates because that feels very small and low effort. But I might end up going for that if I can't think of anything better because I at least know that it's an acceptable gift.

I'd love to get a perspective from people who work in academia. Are presents appropriate? I'd be giving it to him after my grades are finalised but is it still weird? Is there anything a student has gifted you that you''ve really appreciated?

This is a post about me.

I'm struggling and failing to write my dissertation. That's not accurate--I'm struggling and failing to write my dissertation proposal.

I passed my comps with flying colors. My methodologist said that she rarely gives students 4's on their rubric and that I had multiple. They praised my in-depth knowledge of the field and my strong understanding and application of theory.

During my exam defense, all three professors were complimentary of my work and excited about my future.

But they all had the same critique: I struggled to articulate a problem to solve.

It's been 9 months since I passed my comps, and I'm thinking about giving up. Everything I've written for a dissertation proposal has been shit. It's the same shit over and over again.

I've written almost 80k words on various drafts, and most of it is dog shit.

I'm working with post qualitative inquiry, and I really love the theory part of it. But post qual resists methods and structure, so I feel like I'm flailing in the wind trying to latch onto something.

I keep reading and then writing and then reading and then starting a new doc.

Feedback from my chair has been really supportive and helpful, but it's not moving the needle in terms of getting towards the finish line. She's very patient. Far more patient than she needs to be.

But I'm not sure what to do any more. I don't feel like I'm actually writing about anything. Just describing and then realizing it's not connecting together. I really feel like I'm not smart enough to do this kind of work. No offense to traditional methods, but it would be pretty fucking nice to send out a survey and do a quantitative analysis of it. That way I'm not having to find some kind of niche in poststructuralist philosophy.

I think my biggest problem is the "why." I have an idea. I have a focus for my study. I know the literature for the review. I understand how post qual thinks about data and analysis.

But I don't know how to communicate why it matters. Or what the problem really is.

Sorry, I'm mostly just venting. But I'm getting to the point where I don't know if I'm going to finish, and that hurts.

Several years ago (around 2021), while I was still a student, I did substantial work on a research project. I wrote the code the whole analysis ran on, I prepared and cleaned the datasets, and I produced the figures that ended up in the final paper. When it was published, I was not listed as an author.

I did raise it at the time. I was told I couldn't be added because I wasn't affiliated with a university - I had just finished my degree. I was young, I'd just started a job, and I accepted that reason and moved on, I was so naive and didn't even search it on Google or ask on reddit just accepted what I was told.

Only recently (today actually 31st Aug 2026) did I properly understand that the reason I was given isn't valid: authorship is based on contribution, not on whether you happen to be attached to an institution at the moment. And when I finally read the published contributor statement closely, I realized the specific work I did is formally credited to two of the other authors. So it's not just that I'm missing - my actual contributions are attributed to other people.

I'm not going in empty-handed. I have version-controlled code with a commit history from that period, and emails from the time in which I shared the work with the group. So I can show what I did and roughly when.

I've now raised this with the full author group. A senior author's response was that they can't add me to an old paper, but that they could retract it instead.

That's the worst possible outcome for me - retraction erases the paper entirely and credits no one, so I'd end up with my work deleted and still uncredited. What I actually want is a correction that adds me and fixes the contributor statement, not a deletion.

There's also a wrinkle: the committee that would review this internally is at the same institution where the work was done and where one of the senior authors is on staff, so I'm not confident that process is neutral.

For anyone who's navigated something like this, I'd really value your experience:

How do you push for a correction / corrigendum that adds an omitted author, rather than a retraction?

If not all the authors will agree to it, what actually works from there?

How much weight does an internal committee at the authors' own institution carry - and can you take it to the journal/publisher independently of that?

Anything you wish you'd done differently in your own case?

I'm trying to handle this professionally and without attacking anyone personally. I just want my contribution recognized. Any advice appreciated.

*Used AI to brush up wordings.

Hey all,

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this. Currently I work in public administration and am on the tail end of my MPA. My studies in grad school have piqued my interest in academia and I have had serious thoughts about pursuing a PhD at some point in the future.

However, I am already established in my career and have a family, which makes attending an in-person PhD just about impossible.

My question is, would an online PhD be looked down upon? Even if it is from a brick and mortar university? Specifically, Old Dominion’s PhD in public admin and policy has caught my eye, but I also don’t want to waste time or resources if it won’t be fruitful. Does it mean anything that classes are synchronous and cohorts are expected to meet regularly. I appreciate any insight from those already in the field.

Hi everyone,

I’m considering applying for a research assistant position at an institute that is quite different from my field of study. I’m not planning to build a long-term career in this particular subfield it would mainly be a temporary, stable job, and I’d genuinely like to see what the work is like. So I thought, why not give it a try?

The problem is that one of the mandatory documents is a recommendation letter from a professor at the higher education institution I graduated from.

I graduated quite a few years ago and haven’t kept in touch with any of my former professors. Some of them have retired, and honestly, I wouldn’t even know who to contact. I feel quite awkward about the idea of emailing some random professor I’ve never actually worked with and asking them for a recommendation.

I’m also worried that it could become weird if they start asking around the faculty who I am and whether anyone remembers me. After all these years, suddenly showing up and asking for a recommendation feels a bit embarrassing, and I wouldn’t want to create unnecessary fuss.

Another reason I hesitate is that my career wasn't what it should be and I wouldn't want to show them my CV, otherwise back in the day there wasn't a very good relationship between my department of specialization and the other departments and it might make more noise than necessary.

As for getting a recommendation from my former workplace, that’s basically not an option. I had a pretty toxic experience there and definitely don’t want to go back to those people asking for anything.

So I’m wondering what would be the most sensible thing to do. Should I just submit the other documents without the recommendation letter and explain the situation? Or is it pointless to apply if I can’t provide it?

Has anyone else been in a similar situation, especially after graduating many years ago? How did you handle it?

Starting a thread for this years application cycle (which was due August 4th of 2026)!
Best of luck all!

I need to get a poster to me by Saturday, preferably high quality, matt and A0 and not sure which site to use. Are there any sites that people can recommend in particular?

My apologies if this has already been discussed but I haven’t seen it if so. The below article is generating some level of discourse and I am listing some bullet points below that I’ve seen that have stuck with me.

1. We have reached peak Youth. From here on out, the number of students every year will be slightly smaller than before.
2. Ivy leagues will be fine. Flagships states will be fine. There will be a massive slew of liberal arts, private schools that close, and knock on effects of those will echo through small towns. Sort of an academic rust belt.
3. Outside of Ivy leagues, it seems that a lot of wealthy students from the east coast that otherwise might have gone to a place like Syracuse are going to southern, SEC schools. I’ve heard some talk that this is some sort of knock on effects of Easy Coast being more restrictive to Covid vs South that was less. I doubt this is the biggest factor, but I’ve been wondering if there was sort of an under discussed effect on youth from the COVID restrictions.

4. Universities that want to compete will increasingly have to become more “amusement park” like with a focus on football traditions, Greek life, partying/social club for four years, to compete.

5. I do believe changes will happen much faster than people are expecting. You sort of see this with age the birth rate dropping way faster than estimates from years ago, and age demographic shifts hitting harder. I especially see this where I live, public schools are consolidating, there are much fewer kids around.

Anyways, just some observations from the inter web. Discuss!

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/syracuse-student-application-enrollment-crisis-budget-ff142896

So I am currently employed as a Teaching Assistant (TA) at a K-12 private school within a well known university system. I have a bachelors and a masters already, but I wanted to aim for a PhD eventually to one day work as adjunct professor and later down the road aim for a goal of full-time professor (I know that is quite competitive in of itself as a goal, but worth mentioning anyway as I like planning ahead in life).

My question is: should I just stay the path and eventually move up to a high school teaching role itself or should I consider a PhD still and go for that instead? Would it be wiser to stay in my current role and move up the ladder or try to pursue my long-term goals instead?

If anyone has been in similar situations before, what is the best advice you would give in terms of finding more teaching opportunities? Would you say it is better to be a high school educator with a fair salary or try to make ends meet as a PhD candidate?

I'm doing a postdoc in a lab that's making me miserable.

My PI is DEEP in the AI-psychosis. They have no real background in any of the current projects so all of their ideas are inputted and outputted by AI, as are timelines. For example, they wanted a complete novel protocol from conception to implementation within six months because AI told them this was feasible. Preliminary data analysis is fed into AI to speed things up.

On top of all this, they pile more and more work on all the postdocs even when experiments are not working. They truly believe that instead of thinking about why protocols fail and how to troubleshoot them, time is better spent on doing more experiments (with the preliminary protocol) and hoping it magically resolved itself.

I've been looking into biotech and other industries but I find that despite all of this, I still enjoy the type of research done in academia.

If anyone else has gone through a rough postdoc and come out the other side still in academia (as a PI, senior research scientist, etc), how did you do it? How did you not absolutely hate your science and still want to show up and keep working? And- what were things that worked to maintain a work life balance so you weren't totally consumed by the stress from your PI?

I’d like to hear from people who transitioned into academia without having a Cell/Nature/Science paper.

I’m currently ~9 years post-PhD and working as a research scientist in industry in Asia. My background is in industrial biotechnology, metabolic engineering, enzyme engineering, and bioprocess development. I also have some competitive grant experience and several years of industry R&D experience.

I have a decent publication record, but I don’t have a CNS paper. Most of my publications are in established specialist journals in biotechnology and related fields.

I’m now considering trying to transition back into academia and eventually establish my own research group.

For those who have made a similar transition:

• Were you able to get a faculty/PI position without a CNS paper?
• How much did journal prestige matter compared with your overall publication record?
• Did grants, industry experience, research independence, or having a clear research niche make a significant difference?
• At ~9 years post-PhD, is it still realistic to make the transition without a CNS paper?

I’d especially appreciate perspectives from people who have actually served on hiring committees or made the transition themselves.

I’m not specifically targeting elite institutions. I’m more interested in whether a credible academic career is still possible without CNS.

Thanks!

Summary: Does earning full professor at my current institution make me less competitive for other jobs?

I teach at a small regional university in the US with below median salaries and small raises (that don't keep up with inflation). For earning tenure/promotion we get a 5k salary bump and for earning full professor we earn a 6k salary bump. Neither of these raises have been adjusted for years. I earned promotion and tenure a few years back and now I can start preparing to apply for full professor.

However, I don't plan on staying at my current institution for the rest of my career for various reasons. I'm on the job market and I am fine with the idea of having to earn tenure/promotion again at a different (more competitive) institution. So at this point, I'm associate professor applying mostly for assistant professor positions. In discussion with my colleagues, some of them have argued that being a full professor could limit potential employment elsewhere for a couple of reasons:

1. Applying for a job without tenure looks strange from a full professorship, so this practically makes you less eligible for assistant professor postings. I know my eyebrows would raise if I saw a full professor applying for one of our tenure-track positions.

2. There are less associate/full prof/open rank positions than there are assistant professor jobs.

My basic only incentive to get full professor at this point is a 6k base salary bump, so I am weighing whether to pursue that (with all its requisite paperwork) or to just focus on being more competitive for outside positions. I don't want to potentially limit my future opportunities.

Thoughts? I tagged the humanities but I'm open to everyone.

My research paper has been accepted for publication but it will get published by the end of October. And I have to apply for an internship, for which that publication weighs a lot and the application deadline is tomorrow only.

Or should I only mention it in my cover letter and not the CV?

I recently got to the final round for a research engineer position at Google. They rejected me in the end and the feedback I received that I've been out of touch with research for too long. I finished my PhD almost ten years ago and since then did various data science / software engineering / AI engineering stuff.

So the past few months I've been reaching out to old colleagues and people I've met at conferences to see if we can collaborate on a few research papers. I joined three projects with different people, and I'm quite shocked at that everyone is offloading everything to AI with barely any human intervention. All three projects followed basically this premise:

1. Ask AI to do deep research, and come back with ten ideas for a research paper, with the disclaimer that it should focus on easy gaps to fill.

2. Ask AI create a detailed spec with hypothesis, stages and gates. Use AI to refine and validate.

3. Ask AI to implement each stage. Ask AI to review the code and if it matches the requirements in the specs.

4. Ask AI to run experiments (our experiments are just training/finetuning/optimizing agents on expensive GPUs).

5. Ask AI to review the results and create pretty graphs.

6. Ask AI to draft a paper.

Then you notice that a lot of shit in the paper don't make sense and you end up spending a week asking Claude to fix bugs, rerun experiments, redo analysis,... etc.

The whole process from ideation to submitting takes 1-2 weeks. I asked my co authors if this is normal and they all said that everyone is doing this these days.

Is that the status in academia now, or was I just unlucky with the people that I got involved with.

i'm based in india, and want to gain research and work experience in environmental policy or anything to do with sustainability and/or public policy. i've been cold-emailing some professors to ask to be a remote RA or intern, but have not heard back yet

do u guys know any professor from any university anywhere who would be responsive over email, who could either consider me for work or give me leads? again, since i will work remotely, any professor from any country is okay with me, but preferably somebody that u know is legit and actually good at what they do

areas of interest: environmental policy/management, environmental econ, climate science, sustainable development, environmental humanities, environmental health, public health, public policy. even someone in a tangential field is ok

edit: this actually has worked out for me in the past and i did get a remote internship with a prof so please only reply if u have constructive feedback :)

Wondering what this is supposed to mean in terms of when my recommender needs to get their letter in by? I've always hated "it's due by" because it's not clear to me if they mean 11:59 the night before or the night of...trying to figure out if I'm going to miss being included in the first round of consideration if my advisor misses turning in the recommendation by the end of tonight since it says they'll be starting the reviewing tomorrow...This is for a humanities job at Wellesley if anyone happens to know anything there.

For context, I'm a Canadian with a BA in PPE (Philosophy emphasis). I'll be applying this cycle to high-ranking law schools in the US and Canada, and though things have gotten increasingly competitive, I'm relatively confident about my prospects. I'll likely also be applying to a few graduate programs (Bioethics, Public Policy, etc), though I'm not sure how likely it is I'd choose that route over law school.

While important, my primary concern is not what makes the most money. I want to do what I'm passionate about. I believe I could do well in the legal field, but as an ultimate career goal, I would really like to end up in legal academia. I'm sure I'd still be relatively content just practicing if that's how things go, but given the choice, I know academia would be far more fulfilling and suited to my interests. I understand that this path is quite competitive, so I would sincerely appreciate any advice on how best to position myself for it.

I already have a decent bit of research experience and held several TAships throughout my undergrad. I'm currently working on a paper co-authored with a professor of mine, which we conceptualized together, and hope to soon submit for review.

One thing I'm specifically curious about is joint programs. For example, the JD/PhD in Philosophy program, such as the ones at UPenn, UCLA, and the University of Toronto. Should I be prioritizing these kinds of programs? And in terms of qualifications, would a JD and a PhD in Philosophy suffice for legal academia? Would an SJD be viewed more favorably than a PhD in Philosophy or another field?

I'm currently finishing my BSc in Physics in Italy (UniPD), and I'm trying to figure out where to do my Master's. My longer-term goal is to pursue a PhD in physics, ideally somewhere in the broad area of astroparticle physics, cosmology, dark matter, particle physics, or related fundamental-physics topics. Could be theoretical or experimental, I don't want to restrict my options yet.

The thing I'm increasingly concerned about is how to maximise my chances of actually getting a PhD position afterwards. I know there is no guaranteed way, but I want to tackle this problem the best I can.

My current thinking is that the most important thing about the Master's may not be the exact name or ranking of the degree, but whether I can get into a strong research group and become genuinely involved in research during the MSc.

I'm therefore looking at universities where there are strong and well-connected research groups that MSc students can realistically access. For this reason I'm considering Amsterdam's Physics "GRAPPA" (Gravitation, Astro-, and Particle Physics) MSc. What I also like about it, is that you have a whole year dedicated to your thesis, compared to the one semester you'd have in Italy. I think this would be an advantage.

I'm open to other university suggestions. I'm in fact also considering Copenhagen, Geneva, and others. Unfortunately I have to limit myself to EU universities.

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who have actually gone through something similar, especially someone who has done GRAPPA/knows someone who has done it/knows enough about the subject to better educate my choice.

A few things I'm wondering about:

• First and foremost: is my reasoning even correct? Is it even a good choice to do an MSc abroad after having done a BSc in Italy? Would there actually be an advantage? (for physics and the objective of a phd, strictly speaking)
• Is GRAPPA any good? Teaching-wise and academic carreer-wise?
• Which other universities would you recommend?
• Are there better/other options/strategies?
• How does it all compare to Italy?
• If you had to choose again specifically with the goal of maximising your chances of getting a good PhD position, what would you do?

Thanks in advance to anyone willing to share their experience or advice.

Hi! I am a history major at UCR. I’m currently in my junior year, I do want to pursue my masters and my PhD I was just curious which masters programs would be good to apply for? I am a first generation student and I’m still confused with the process, so I’m sorry if the question seems silly. Also, should I be doing internships during my undergraduate, is that an requirement to do a masters program?

I’ve recently completed an MSc while working full-time as an NHS paediatric nurse. My MSc dissertation focused on an area that is currently evolving quite rapidly and seems to align closely with the direction of the NHS 10-year plan. I’m conscious that I am more experienced in a clinical/NHS background rather than a traditional academic career path, so intrigued about what views I will find here.

My dissertation supervisor has been very encouraging about the quality of the work and, importantly, thinks the research question/findings have potential to be developed into a PhD. Importantly, they feel unable to support me (for various reasons). Obviously, I’m aware that one supervisor’s opinion isn’t necessarily an indication that a project is genuinely PhD-worthy, but it is something I am seriously thinking about.

I’ve recently had an abstract based on my dissertation findings accepted for a poster presentation at a conference. There won’t be a formal oral presentation alongside the poster, but the conference is attended by people working in the relevant area. I also made some useful contacts at the same conference last year, so I have an opportunity to reconnect with people I’ve already met as well as hopefully meet others in the field.

I’m interested in potentially pursuing a PhD, but I’m still at the stage of trying to establish whether my current work has sufficient potential, what a sensible PhD research question might look like, and whether there are particular academics/research groups I should be approaching.

How would you recommend I make the most of this conference opportunity?

I know I am potentially overthinking this somewhat, but it feels like I am at a bit of a ‘sliding doors’ moment.

In particular, I’m pondering at the moment:
Is it appropriate to approach established researchers at the conference and ask for their thoughts on whether my MSc work has PhD potential?

Would it be better to have these conversations informally around the poster rather than explicitly asking someone to critique the project?

What would make someone think, “This is a promising potential PhD student/project”, rather than simply “This was a good MSc dissertation”?

Is it worthwhile contacting potential supervisors/research groups after the conference, and if so, what is the best way to approach this?

Are there any mistakes I should avoid as someone relatively early in their academic research career?

Thank you for making it this far and dealing with my imposter-syndrome anxiety contrasted with a desire to share my ideas and take them further!

Hi everyone,
Not sure if this is the right place to post this - I couldn't find anything in the rules saying not to, so I thought I would just post this here. I am a fourth year PhD candidate sort of gearing up to defend soon (hopefully early spring of 2028). I am thoroughly interested in teaching/mentoring, and I currently have extensive teaching experience ranging from adjunct instructing to tutoring. I am really drawn to the idea of serving as a TT prof at a PUI that emphasizes undergraduate teaching and mentoring as the publish or perish mentality of an R1 is not for me. Unfortunately, I won't have a lot of first author papers once I defend as a lot of my projects were mostly on my own and slower moving. I am therefore asking you all here who might be TT profs at PUIs if I should pursue a postdoctoral fellowship somewhere prior to applying for TT jobs. Is a postdoctoral fellowship required for these? Will I be at a disadvantage if I don't pursue one? Any advice is appreciated - thanks!

I feel like it's pretty common for people entering a PhD or Masters to talk about feeling overwhelmed about having to propose their own research project, but I'm a postdoc and I still feel overwhelmed and anxious any time I have to propose a project. I've proposed and seen three projects through to paper submission (the three chapters of my PhD), plus I had to propose a few projects for postdoc position/fellowship applications (some of those postdoc interviews did feel like free labor on my part, but not the point of this post). In my current postdoc position, my current PI has implied that he'd like me to take more ownership of my research by proposing a project, and I'm also applying for faculty positions that ask for research statements, which also feel like project proposals, and all of that makes me so anxious I want to throw up. Does not liking to propose research projects mean I should leave research? I like most of the rest of the research process: the data analysis, team management, results presentations at conferences etc., and even paper writing, but I feel like most PIs I've met act like they wish they could do nothing but the project proposal brainstorming, so I feel like a total imposter that it makes me so anxious. (I do think I'm pretty good at it, for the record, it's just that I can't eat while I'm doing preliminary lit review/brainstorming, which is annoying because it takes a while). Does it ever get easier? Does anyone else who's not a first-year grad student feel the same?

About three years ago, shortly after graduating, I came up with a research project idea after reading a paper that I found particularly interesting. I was actively trying to build my research profile and looking for future PhD opportunities, so I was serious enough about the idea that I hoped it could eventually lead to a first-author publication.

I initially contacted an assistant professor by email and later discussed the idea with him through Google Chat. He eventually added me to a group chat that included several faculty members. In that group chat, I explicitly proposed the project and suggested that we should pursue it. I still have the chat records and timestamps. One of the faculty members directly replied that it was something that should be done, so the idea was openly discussed among the group.

After that, the discussion gradually faded away. I was never contacted again about the idea, never invited to participate in any related work, and eventually assumed that nothing was going to happen with it.

Recently, I discovered that there is now a fully funded project that has been running for more than 10 months. What caught my attention is that the project title is almost identical to the one I originally proposed, with only one additional objective added. The core concept and most of the major goals appear very similar to what I suggested at the time, although the project has naturally grown and developed beyond the original discussion. Several people are actively working on it, and it may be one of the first projects of its kind in my country.

To be clear, I am not accusing anyone of misconduct. I understand that ideas can emerge independently, and I recognize that turning an idea into a funded project requires much more than simply suggesting it. I also have no way of knowing what discussions or developments occurred after I was no longer involved.

At the same time, I find myself struggling with how to feel about the situation. On one hand, it feels validating. As a recent graduate with no established position, I believed strongly enough in the idea to propose it, and seeing it become a funded project suggests that the direction may indeed have had merit. On the other hand, I would be lying if I said I felt no disappointment. I genuinely wanted to work on it, and it is strange to discover years later that a project so similar to the one I proposed is moving forward without me ever having heard another word about it.

I'm not looking for a verdict on whether anyone did anything wrong. I'm more interested in how people in academia would process a situation like this. If you were in my position, how would you think about it?

Hello everybody,

I'm a European student currently trying to figure out where I might want to pursue a PhD in the US, and I'd really appreciate some advice from people who are familiar with American philosophy PhD programs.

My main interests are political philosophy and social theory, particularly 20th-century and contemporary thought. I'm interested in areas such as critical theory, pragmatism, postmodern/post-structuralist theory, and thinkers like Habermas, Rorty, Schmitt, Foucault, etc. I'm still early in my studies, so my interests will probably develop quite a bit over the next few years, but that's roughly the intellectual direction I'm currently interested in.

At the moment, I'm in my second year of a Bachelor's degree in Political Science, and I'm starting my third year of a separate Bachelor's degree in Philosophy. These are two completely separate bachelor's degrees at two different programs, it's not a dual degree, combined bachelor's, or double-major within one degree which I think makes me somewhat more competitive(?). I'm hoping that having substantial training in both political science and  could be useful if I eventually apply for a PhD focused on political philosophy/social theory.

I'm also a European/international student, so I would be applying to American universities as a foreign student. Funding is therefore a particularly important consideration for me.

I'm wondering which US universities have the strongest PhD programs in philosophy for political philosophy and social theory? Are there particular professors I should keep an eye on over the next few years?

How important is having a very strong background specifically in philosophy when applying to top US philosophy PhDs? Would the combination of separate bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Philosophy be viewed positively?

What are some ways I can make myself especially comptetitive when applying? And generally, what do you wish you had known before applying to a US philosophy PhD?

I'm currently only a sophomore, so I'm not applying anytime soon. I'm mainly trying to understand the landscape early so I can choose my courses, reading, research interests, and eventually master's/other preparation accordingly.

I'd especially appreciate answers from current or former US philosophy PhD students, professors, or international students who went through the process.

Thanks!