Joy929292

top-20 easily

By "too much" I mean amount of years I'm ready to devote to research. In general, I do love research

It depends on university and professors. My RA consisted of collecting data for professor's research. I did all my work online at home. The hours varied, but mostly I worked 10h / week, sometimes more.

In fact, my undergrad degree is public administration. May be I just don't want to get a PhD. May be it's too much for me.

I know, it looks like I didn't think ahead before applying. And this is true. Many people are like me and did that mistake. That's why % of those who got PhD and % of those who was admitted is so drastically different. I expected grad school to be more qualitative and more applicable. I apologize if I offended somebody with my messages. I really like PS, but not when it comes to PhD obviously.

I agree. I read a bit of current CS research, not too much though. Some questions touch algorithms and optimization, for example, how to transfer data more effectively through network. An author can describe his theory / opinion in general terms and will not propose anything specific. But I feel like even this helps us a lot. One person describes the problem, another finds a way to implement a solution. But in PolSci how can we implement a solution? Ok, we know that crime victimization increases political activity (Bateson, 2013). So what? That's what I'm trying to say. Political science is just a good field for observation, but not for implementation and prediction. In politics money rules the world. So it means that the best thing you can do in PolSci is to study electoral and party behavior, because it will really benefit parties, when they know how to win votes. But that's it. IR is purely theoretical. What's left...Pol Economy is interesting, but again: how can we apply the knowledge we generate in this field? We simply can't because we have no power.

Thank you for encouragement. I heard about a guy who did the same, but from Food Science. To CS too. My friend transitioned to Economics from PolSci to another university, though our university admitted him to Economics with financial aid too. If other people could do it, then I can do it. But I'm a bit nervous about ethical side of this... What professors will think, what others will think, what if I won't make it and everybody will know about my attempt, etc.

Hello. I'm coming from abroad so sorry for any mistakes throughout the text. I've just finished my first semester in PS program and I'm very disappointed in my field, and in Political Science as a subject (on PHD level only). First of all, my undergrad degree is not in Political Science, though it is relatively close to it. I applied for PolSci phd programs all around America with the idea that this is my thing and this is what I want to do. But after my 1st semester I realized that what I want to do and what they study here is 2 completely different things, though my program is considered very good. Not from top-10, but very, very good. There are a lot of things I disagree with, I will put several for just to get an idea why I want to change the field completely. Though the point of this text is not to show flaws and disadvantages of PolSci on phd level, but instead to ask an advice about switching the field. You can skip this part if you want. 1. International relations. Especially the part where a lot of scholars study war causes (almost every aspect of this course). After passing this course I feel like IR is really, really dumb field to study and to do a research in. What has been done in this field for the last 20-40 years? Rational models of war causes, i.e. if costs < benefits from war = a leader goes to war. And that's it. All other models / theories were either rejected or were not match with reality completely. Scholars try to understand what underlying reasons cause wars when in fact there are a group of people who get direct benefits from wars and this is very, very obvious. But still, scholars try to pretend like "we don't know what exactly causes wars, let's do a ton of useless research". So hypocrite. And even if someone will assemble a complete model which will predict wars - will the world leaders listen to this person and stop doing wars? No way. They don't even care. 2. Professors don't even expect you to know what is going on around the world, the dates, the events, etc. (remember, I am in a good-rated school). Professors themselves sometimes don't even know that, for example, during Soviet era all other parties were banned. I'm not even talking about students who have very narrow scope. All we do is study theories, models, and other theoretical stuff which in 99% don't match the reality. Now you see why I disappointed in PolSci. I expected PHD program to be closer to real things, to events which are going on right now, to current world processes. I wanted to have hot discussions between professors and my peers during classes. But all I got is a bunch of theories which are produced by crazy people and we learning them and trying to find anything useful in them. I still respect PolSci and I love it, but I disrespect the way they teach us. Now the main part. I want to reapply to Computer Science. The reason for that is CS department in my university does real stuff. They do research which benefits people, they really produce things. Furthermore, I have a good background in CS, though I've never taken any classes. Their website says that anybody who want to switch his graduate program to their one have to take several mandatory classes. Even if I take 2 classes every semester it will take 1-1.5 year. Now the question. Given that I hold an assistantship outside of my department, is it ok to take 2 classes in my dept (to stay inside the program) and 2 classes in CS every semester? What others will think? Will I have any problems, i,e., Director of Graduate studies will try to "fail" me to kick me out of the program because I decided to chose another program? Please, give any advice. I feel very nervous about it.

Yes, I mean changing the field, reapplying. Incorrect word used.

Hello. I'm coming from abroad so sorry for any mistakes throughout the text. I've just finished my first semester in PS program and I'm very disappointed in my field, and in Political Science as a subject (on PHD level only). First of all, my undergrad degree is not in Political Science, though it is relatively close to it. I applied for PolSci phd programs all around America with the idea that this is my thing and this is what I want to do. But after my 1st semester I realized that what I want to do and what they study here is 2 completely different things, though my program is considered very good. Not from top-10, but very, very good. There are a lot of things I disagree with, I will put several for just to get an idea why I want to switch the field completely. Though the point of this text is not to show flaws and disadvantages of PolSci on phd level, but instead to ask an advice about switching the field. You can skip this part if you want. 1. International relations. Especially the part where a lot of scholars study war causes (almost every aspect of this course). After passing this course I feel like IR is really, really dumb field to study and to do a research in. What has been done in this field for the last 20-40 years? Rational models of war causes, i.e. if costs < benefits from war = a leader goes to war. And that's it. All other models / theories were either rejected or were not match with reality completely. Scholars try to understand what underlying reasons cause wars when in fact there are a group of people who get direct benefits from wars and this is very, very obvious. But still, scholars try to pretend like "we don't know what exactly causes wars, let's do a ton of useless research". So hypocrite. And even if someone will assemble a complete model which will predict wars - will the world leaders listen to this person and stop doing wars? No way. They don't even care. 2. Professors don't even expect you to know what is going on around the world, the dates, the events, etc. (remember, I am in a good-rated school). Professors themselves sometimes don't even know that, for example, during Soviet era all other parties were banned. I'm not even talking about students who have very narrow scope. All we do is study theories, models, and other theoretical stuff which in 99% don't match the reality. Now you see why I disappointed in PolSci. I expected PHD program to be closer to real things, to events which are going on right now, to current world processes. I wanted to have hot discussions between professors and my peers during classes. But all I got is a bunch of theories which are produced by crazy people and we learning them and trying to find anything useful in them. I still respect PolSci and I love it, but I disrespect the way they teach us. Now the main part. I want to switch my field to Computer Science. The reason for that is CS department in my university does real stuff. They do research which benefits people, they really produce things. Furthermore, I have a good background in CS, though I've never taken any classes. THeir website says that anybody who want to switch his graduate program to their one have to take several mandatory classes. Even if I take 2 classes every semester it will take 1-1.5 year. Now the question. Given that I hold an assistantship outside of my department, is it ok to take 2 classes in my dept (to stay inside the program) and 2 classes in CS every semester? What others will think? Will I have any problems, i,e., Director of Graduate studies will try to "fail" me to kick me out of the program because I decided to switch? Please, give any advice. I feel very nervous about it.

Hi, I'm sure everybody thinks about future jobs and positions before applying to grad schools or while studying. This is what bothering me right now. I'm a 1-st year graduate student at PhD Political Science program, though I'm not into research too much right now (it's my first semester). I love computer stuff, I enjoy programming (C++/Python mostly), I know how to handle databases and networks. I feel like I'm pretty fluent with using software and hardware. But since grad school is a time consuming thing, I take this computer stuff as a hobby and I don't have any degree in CS. The question that bothers me is how can I incorporate, or, better to say, combine computer skills with research and analytic skills, which we all obtain during our grad programs? What kinds of jobs should I aim at in order to increase my chances after graduation? Or do you think these 2 things cannot be connected so I should look for 'pure' jobs, like Political Science teaching position, or smth like this?