ThisGuyRiteHere

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.

Spend the money on Columbia/JH. It will be worth it. Period.

Look at where each school places.

A 450 in verbal is low. That's really low. I mean atleast a 500 would look good. But 450..sheeesh

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.

I think this thread is only for profiles for future applicants. If you have  a question, you should make your own thread.

I think this thread is only for profiles for future applicants. If you have  a question, you should make your own thread.

So let's say that you have multiple research interests in different categories (IR, CP, PT or AP)...How did you decided which one you would:

A. Write about in your SOP
B. Study Further in graduate school
C. Write your dissertation on

I have structured this question so pretty much everyone can respond somehow.

So let's say that you have multiple research interests in different categories (IR, CP, PT or AP)...How did you decided which one you would:

A. Write about in your SOP
B. Study Further in graduate school
C. Write your dissertation on

I have structured this question so pretty much everyone can respond somehow.

If you have a great record in graduate school (a couple/few published papers etc.) then a best case scenario might be to make a lateral move to a school of similar prestige. More common is that you usually, as TheMarketMan said, that you get a job one notch down. Now, keep in mind that it doesn't mean that your career ends or that you're stuck at a lower tiered school forever. A former advisor (now friend) of mine graduated from one of the smaller PhD programs in Illinois and now holds an endowed chair at a low R1.
 
I would advice against going into academia with the mindset that the job market has to improve. There are no guarantees that it will!

In terms of the waitlisting, I have been told not to apply to the same school again unless there has been a substantial difference in your application (better test scores, better LOR's, New SOP, etc.)

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.

Don't listen to anything in this thread so far.
 
Formal modeling is when you create and analyze a mathematical model of behavior of some kind.  It need not be game theoretic or social choice theoretic, though those are both very prominent in the business.  It could be something as simple as the Prisoner's Dilemma, which is a 2 by 2 strategic form game that most incoming students have heard of.  The Prisoner's Dilemma, despite being really simple, can be used to develop all sorts of insights about public good provision, and more complicated models of public good provision often boil down to Prisoner's Dilemma logic.  And so on.
 
A formal model, naively, has nothing to do with statistics.  People start seeing Greek letters and they figure "oh, quantitative is quantitative."  Not so.  Consider the social choice literature best represented by its exemplar, Arrow's Theorem.  Arrow's Theorem has nothing to do with the "real world."  It's not an empirical model at all.  There is no "testing" it to see whether or not it comports with the real world, because it isn't meant to and doesn't generate testable hypotheses.  Now, many people in political science would say that this means that Arrow's Theorem is flawed in that it doesn't tell us anything about the real world.  You might have seen arguments like that in your undergraduate courses---there's a well known book entitled Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory that goes into it in great detail.  Note also that not all quantitative analysis is alike:  Don Green, one of the authors of PRCT, has been highly influential by promoting field experiments and other causal research designs, and many of his influential papers are free of regression analysis.  After all, randomization does a lot of work if you let it.
 
Of course, not all formal models are like Arrow's Theorem (if only!).  For starters, Arrow's Theorem isn't game theoretic, and most applications of formal theory in political science are in fact game theoretic.  Not all of these are testable, either.  For example, James Fearon famously uses game theory to tease out three "Rationalist Explanations for War."  Very simple bargaining models, but certainly game theoretic.  He uses them to keep his logic tight and to facilitate the exposition---it's not like he gives us "Fearon's Theorem" out of it.  Some folks have tried testing Fearon's arguments, but it's hard to say "oh man, I just read Fearon's paper, and I got these hypotheses out of it."  In the study of American politics, you get a similar feel from the work of Riker, Shepsle, Ordeshook, Schofield, Calvert, McKevley, and so many others.  They're using formal models to describe and explain.  Often what they're doing interfaces with political philosophy as much as it does with "modern," empirical social science. 
 
So, formal models are not necessarily empirical, and not all Greek letters are the same.  One question that the business is grappling with is how formal theory informs empirical analysis.  You may have heard of the EITM (Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models) project, which offers summer courses and support.  While much of that is just dedicated toward good formal modeling, the name of the project itself should tell you what the idea is:  develop a formal model, derive testable empirical hypotheses, and test those assumptions.  For example, you might solve a model to determine the equilibrium expression of one parameter as a function of other parameters.  Then you can take a partial derivative of that function and determine whether it is positive or negative, which is an empirical hypothesis that can be tested in a regression setting. With apologies, some of the people that have taught me don't like that idea very much.  You might look into their book, which is entitled A Model Discipline.  One might also wonder how formal models can inform causal empirical models, which is a very difficult question to answer (and one I've been chewing on for a while---the answer gets messy in a hurry).
 
The use of such models in economics is pretty much unquestioned.  You don't have to be a super duper technician to be able to use or create basic models.  Hell, deriving a demand function is formal modeling.  Many famous economists use relatively simple formal models to make very sophisticated arguments.  Stiglitz comes immediately to mind.  Mancur Olson kinda sorta used formal models, though his arguments inspired many formal modelers.  For a really cool paper in that vein, you might look for Esteban and Ray's "The Group Size Paradox Revisited," which is kind of microeconomic theory and kind of game theory. 
 
OK, that's more answer than you wanted, but this is a hobby horse of mine and I'm sitting around convalescing after surgery anyway.  If you're looking to read some formal work, you might look into some basic social choice stuff (even though it isn't all that applicable now).  Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values, Riker's Liberalism versus Populism, and Ordeshook's Game Theory and Political Theory are nice books.  To see a very direct interface between formal theory and political philosophy, you might read some of Sen's Rationality and Freedom.  Or even more directly, you might skim some (deep, technical) work by John Harsanyi, who basically developed models aimed at getting after Rawls' initial position.  Fearon's famous "Rationalist Explanations for War" is an amazing paper always worth reading, and again, you'll note that it interfaces with qualitative work---this time history.  Many, many formal folks in IR and comparative have done similar things with history or qualitative security studies; many of them cite Schelling or Clausewitz or Waltz.  Indeed, two of the most prominent formal modelers in IR---James Fearon and Robert Powell---were Waltz students.  To see some argumentation and testing, you might look at Krehbiel's Pivotal Politics versus Cox and McCubbin's Legislative Leviathan.  Those guys disagree about how to model Congress, and as such disagree about predictions, and as such disagree about empirics. 
 
If you have more specific questions, feel free to IM with the sort of things you like reading and I'll see what I can come up with.

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.

Looks like UW Madison and UCLA. Think (s)he chose madison, Africanist Qualitative..

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.

Best programs for people who don't want to do their own research. Ready, go . . .

This is how i do it.

Top Down Analysis.

1. Look at the top 100 according to whatever ranking you choose (they are all pretty much the same name of schools, just in different rank)

2. Find some area of the country you may want to live (if this is not a factor, skip to step 3)

3. Look at each department and see what the schoars are doing work on

4. Try to find admission standards AND funding percentage (some schools are 100%, some may give 3 offers out of 15 accepted students)

5. Read said research of the scholars

6. If you want to, email the scholars SPECIFIC questions about their research OR email the grad assistant/DGS and ask for basic information about the program (If you dont feel comfortable doing this, skip it)

7. Fill out applications, financial aid info, etc.

8. Profit

*Note - In terms of school selection, you MUST have a fit with a prof..preferrably 2-3. Fit is most important in PhD admission. A political scientist work is no difference than a biologist work. You need to find someone who can teach you how to do the research they do. It is like an apprenticeship. ALSO, try to find FULL PROFESSORS who do what you want to do . AP's can leave while you are there and if there is no one else there who does your topic, you will have to transfer.

This should be a good starting point

Hello everyone I am a first year university student and I am in an intro Political Science class. My final essay is the question listed above, I was wondering what everyones educated opinion/facts/ideas were?? 
 
Thanks

For all of us who have just been through a tumultuous application cycle, I wanted to share what I've always thought is a profound graduation speech by the English writer C.S. Lewis. It particularly addresses the cult of "getting in" and the feeling that there is always a higher and more elite circle that we can belong to. I'm not going to Harvard, but even if I was, I bet that I would still feel like there was somewhere I was being left out of.
 
http://www.lewissociety.org/innerring.php
 
A great reminder about being grateful for the now!
 
See you all in PhD land --

I feel like we are being trolled by PSR...

ND

CPE would usually be something like cross-national (or sometimes subnational) comparison of units that don't interact, for example, comparing the social welfare systems of Canada and New Zealand, or the effect of state income tax between Maryland and Ohio.  They have no effect on one another but can be individually measured and compared.  IPE would involve some sort of international actor (IMF, WB) or international interaction between countries (trade, FDI, labor migration, etc.) and its effects on whatever (which can be done by comparison of two or more countries/sets of countries, comparing one country to itself over time, process tracing, etc).  Does that make sense?  Not a great distinction, if someone else can come up with a better one, feel free, but I don't necessarily think there is an obvious textbook definition because there is some significant overlap.  

Think about the signals you are being sent.

Lets use economic reasoning.

You have been rejected to every school but Ox/LSE. No school has admitted you, or offered you funding. However Ox/LSE has decided to admit you and fund you. Why is this?

1. Your GPA/GRE was satisfactory
2. They figured that you are a strong enough fit to give acceptance and funding

So answer these questions:

1. So why would Ox/LSE choose to admit you and no one else?
2. PV theory - Things are worth more today than they are tomorrow - if you give up a funded Ox/LSE offer this yr for a *chance*, you may do better, you may not. Is it worth the risk?
3. What are you going to do to strengthen your profile by next year? Are your improvement in your GRE or other minimal changes going to be enough to garner you a higher admission next year? You more than likely already have a MA, so you really can't get another one...
4. Psychic cost - Will you be able to live with yourself knowing you have up a sure thing at a good uni for a chance at a better uni. Will you mentally be able to cope with your whole life on hold? easy to make the decision today to give it up, but I made a mistake 2 yrs ago and i live with it every day knowing my situation can be different. I have fallen into depression multiple times this year because my life is essentially on hold. It is not fun.
5. If your results are the same, or worst next yr, will you be able to live with yourself?

I found a William Hsieh at Indiana University South Bend on the Fulbright Database...

I am in awe that people have unfunded AND funded offers and are holding the unfundeds...those are the easiest to give up