Quarex

You just never know. Though you should probably keep your hopes up, as it really does sound like a larger problem than usual. One of my acceptances told me (as consolation, of course) that they were able to fund 2/3 of their incoming doctoral students before this year, and fewer than 1/5 of them this year. People from my thesis committee are telling me that none of their other doctoral-bound students are getting funding either, despite in past years even the less-talented students getting something. This really is clearly not the best time to be doing this! But we will persevere! Who knows? Maybe the total number of doctorates awarded will slacken in ~5 years as a result of these conditions, and we will be set! Do not forget to look into other scholarship and fellowship opportunities at the school, however.

27 applications may have been part of the reason I had no money left by the start of this year. I had to have my parents help pay for the last, oh, $1,500 or so. How much was it total? I do not want to think about it. And while I realize it sounds ridiculous, I had absolutely no basis on which to assume I would be accepted anywhere, coming out of a different field and knowing no-one to even help me find the right kind of people (I know plenty NOW, of course, as much as that helps). I looked at over 1,000 schools globally, narrowed it down to about 75, consulted with my girlfriend as to places that might make sense for us, and ended up "only" pulling the trigger on a little over 25 of them! I thought it was a remarkable exercise in restraint, myself. You might think I skimped on any given application with this process, but I literally did just about nothing else with my free time between August and December other than apply to schools. A job would have taken up too much of my time.

Aside from turning down four of my six offers, I am still deadlocked as to what to do now. Neither of the remaining offers is perfect ... but I still have three schools left. Granted, two I all but wrote off due to distance issues anyway (though if Brandeis offers funding, I will totally go!), but the third and final offer has the potential to be my best choice if I wait until after the "soft" April 15 deadline for them to see about funding. Considering the two acceptances I am weighing do not require an answer before April 28, looks like I am in for the long haul. Advantages of Mysterious Not Yet Finalized Or Even Assured Acceptance: Second-tier school (the best I could have hoped for, really!), several professors doing interesting work in my field, including one who seems incongruently influential with the otherwise seemingly nonexistent reputation of the department. Disadvantages: Maybe there is some obvious and/or weird reason that the political science department is not ranked well despite being at a good institution. Also, I will be commuting about an hour and a half. But this is only the case because I will be living with my girlfriend if I go, which is in itself a big enough advantage that it seems worth it. Particularly if I can maneuver to only a couple days of classes per week.

This came up in the Political Science subforum, and I can pretty succinctly repeat what I wrote there. When looking into potential schools, I literally looked at every single institution in English-speaking countries, so McGill did not escape my notice. Along with Toronto and Alberta, it ended up on my final application list. When I talked to people from my department and area (a little south of Chicago, MIDDLE AMERICA!) about those three schools, everyone recommended Toronto, a few people recommended Alberta, and nobody had heard of McGill. This really just confirms that it is a Northeastern America situation, but since so much of the country is there anyway, it might not be so bad. But it is true, why go for your entire degree in another country unless they have a specific program that you need or you want to stay there?

Well, when you two put it like that ... The unfunded Ph.D. thing had certainly weighed heavily on my mind. I do keep hearing that if you are not funded, then you are not really wanted. A couple of schools have so few funded spots that they might not necessarily work that way, but they are already off the list for other reasons. Having letters of recommendation from the actual field is likely going to help, too, huh. My criminal justice professors wrote me glowing letters, but there is only so much that a letter from someone not even in your field can likely do. My plan is indeed also to annihilate the GRE. Now that my scores are about to expire, and my admissions are 99% in, I must admit my great shame--I did not study the first time. I thought it was like the ACT, and your most current score was the one they kept. Yes, you can tell how ready I was for graduate school five years ago. It can definitely be done in one year, though I am not sure whether the summer will be necessary. Not a huge deal either way. That is one of the reasons it looks awfully tempting, knowing that another 9 months of academic preparation might lead to something amazing, and at the worst should surely lead to something at least substantially better. After all, if my GPA/GRE combo goes from ~3.3/~1300 to something like /~3.9/~1500, I am pretty sure it will help override any curiosity as to why I have two master's degrees. My plan is to apply to perhaps not as many schools as I did this time (...27...), but to have a less "overkill" and more "targeted" approach. I imagine my new department will have a much better idea as to what schools might want to work with my research ideas than my last one did. Thanks for your advice. Too bad it is not likely that you need any help figuring things out on your own! These forums are totally slowing down now that people have accepted admission and fled to party 24/7 until the Fall semester starts, apparently.

You certainly would think I would have chosen by now! Of course George Mason is tempting. But my full-ride terminal master's offer is also tempting (I think the net savings would be about $50,000 for the course of my master's, at least if I did not get funding at George Mason), particularly since I could finish my coursework in a year and either take comps or (more likely for my verbose self) move to wherever my girlfriend was and take another semester to apply to schools again and write another thesis. I would also like for the three schools I am accepted to/accepted near (I am looking at you, Kansas, Arizona State, and Wisconsin-Madison) that have still not made their admissions decisions for my girlfriend's field to hurry up already. Surely they know they have to get this information out, you know, BEFORE April 15? Ha, you had me all excited briefly that I had blatantly overlooked a Nobel prize winner in George Mason's public policy department. Darn economics. Granted, I could certainly take some courses from that department. It would likely do me a world of good!

Hey, thanks for noticing my plight in the new "D" thread! No, the master's is a terminal degree. If it were not, I would just go and assume everything would work out fine. My Ph.D. offer is from a pretty low-ranked school, so the ignomy of the un-funded offer really got me thinking about how much nicer the funded master's program sounded. It would even give me the chance to re-do my GRE (my scores are about to expire! Woo!). The M.A. school is actually higher ranked in general than the Ph.D. school, too, making the decision potentially easier, yet that does nothing to assuage my worries about the uncertainty of facing the application process again ... if I did not get any offers that time, I would sure feel stupid. There is one decently-ranked school that told me I may well still be admitted, which would make this whole question moot. Though they sure are taking their sweet time on the final decision.

Yeah, come on, now. This is just easy. If Washington University were not a good (and seemingly getting better) program, you might have a more difficult decision on your hands. Plus, there are no guarantees of better placement after your M.A. at Columbia, anyway. Now, I have to pick between a fully-funded master's program at a state school and an unfunded Ph.D at a more prominent state school. THAT is a choice! Ha.

Firstly, it is true that there is really no need to study abroad, particularly if your interests are in American issues. That said, you could also undoubtedly justify studying abroad in England to analyze Old Bailey/Common Law/etc. records from pre-American periods to see how the development of the American system took hold. Secondly, I studied abroad at the graduate level in England, which seemed like a great idea to me since my surveillance/security/etc. focus went well with the exploding CCTV proliferation there. That time may well have been better spent, from a research perspective, just staying in America and working harder than usual. Granted, I would not trade my time there for anything, and I somehow managed to get 30 credit hours out of the deal, but it was something surely I would have managed without, as well. Also, I cannot help but assume the plural is "studies abroad," even though that somewhat distorts the clarity of the phrase. This is clearly important.

Hey, great responses, everybody. I remembered that you two were in my situation, Peter and Alana, but I actually did forget that you, Silencio, were as well. And while this forum is not particularly teeming with elitism, I personally appreciate that the people popping up here are definitely amongst the most down-to-Earth. I will be in good company. I am sorry that your state school literally had no name. That must make transcripts difficult. Yes, indeed, my master's degree is in Criminal Justice, and the main reason I thought I had any chance at all is that field's obvious links with security and privacy issues. But there is no substitute for study in the field. The global affairs program that accepted me has such a high tuition, and bleak enough funding prospects, that I would have to work part-time and finish quickly just to keep it as LOW as 100,000. But I also just got accepted to the public policy program at George Mason, finally nabbing a school that also accepted my girlfriend, so the 100,000 option is confidently off the table now. IN CONCLUSION, what I want is a funded doctoral offer from a solid institution doing interesting work in my field. The chances of me getting that in this cycle are slim, and I have often heard that going into a doctoral program unfunded, particularly if they start you at the master's level, may just get you exploited or ignored. Most of the schools who admitted me at all are willing to bring students in at the doctoral level if they already have a master's in political science, so in a way it makes entirely too much sense to go get a master's degree in a place I will be funded and have a faculty who actually wants to pay attention to me. But Alana's point is good, too--you should get out there and see what the world has for you, lest you get too accustomed to what you already have. What I do have going for me in that respect is a lifetime of world travel, including living abroad for about 3 years total, thanks both to my Fulbright-hopping father dragging us around and my own studies. I at least know what the world outside my alma mater looks like. That is why it is so hard to decide if I should go back. But, who knows? The "go someplace not that necessarily awesome, but do better than everyone else, and then end up winning!" scenario sounds pretty good. I just might do that. At least if I do not take this public policy Ph.D. offer to not be apart from my girlfriend, despite that clearly being not the 100% best reason to go somewhere. At least the program is pretty well ranked and in the D.C. metro area. I went almost the opposite route from you with my statement of purpose, and while I do not think it kept me out of any programs (my record took care of that), I imagine I might have had a better chance to get funding if I had done what you suggested. "Look, yeah, I know, my background sounds irrelevant. But it is the progression that brought me to thinking that these research interests are the most important thing in the world. I am going to be the best student ever. Go!"

Maryland is a great school for public policy, and as you recognized, the department is full of very friendly and helpful people. Perhaps you should feel fortunate that you live somewhere that made visiting campus impossible; I had a great several-hour meeting with the department last summer before applying, and got rejected flat on my face. While I am hardly an expert, everything I have seen indicates that, all other things being equal, you would potentially go with Georgetown, but your funding at Maryland combined with a good research overlap suggests you should go to Maryland instead. I would do anything for a research assistantship right about now, though, so this could be biased.

Obviously, there are good public policy schools in many areas of the country. But every piece of advice I have heard, both from people in the D.C. area as well as my master's institution and home (Illinois), is that it is almost a given that you will have more outside opportunities in public policy if you are in D.C., not to mention that all of the D.C. schools are well-ranked (George Mason is currently only a upper-middle ranked institution, but by all rights it is on the way up [yes I certainly want to believe this since I might well end up starting a Ph.D. there myself in the Fall]) and have plenty of talent to go around. But, well, it is also half the price to go to Albany, and the educational experience itself would likely be comparably good.

Well, this is likely not hugely helpful, and you may have already decided or something, CanadianUndergrad, but consider this: When talking to my department and some political science people about applying to Canadian schools, they seemed to think my University of Toronto application was a good idea, and none of them had even heard of McGill when I brought it up. My experience is from a school near Chicago, though, so quite definitely outside McGill's "American range" as stated earlier in the thread, so take that however you feel as well.

Wow, looks like this information was bursting at the seams waiting to come out. Thanks, everybody, for all this excellent advice, thanks Silencio for posting that survey again, thanks Sacmutt for that enlightening discussion, and thanks Just_Me for reminding me that wikis do indeed exist for every possible thing anyone wants to know. I do not want to post a five-page-long message responding to everything, particularly since some things were already covered in others' responses, but a few things seem like they should be addressed again: You make excellent points about trying to dive in head-first without adequate preparation. All the drive and desire to achieve at the top of your field in the world will not get you respect if you do not know what you are doing yet. It sounds like avoiding the temptation to take all the hardest courses at once, as well as to study whatever seems like the surest path to success, probably could help a lot of people avoid burning out. Also, I suspect the Middle East is going to be the hot topic in comparative/international relations for the foreseeable future. Those without solid research goals yet, take note! Might be a good time to start becoming an expert on the new Cuba, too. And do not discount the Association of SouthEastern Asian Nations! Reading that "Penn State Cuts Theory" thing on the Political Theory blog link you posted did make me shudder. Someone might worry about being laid off at work, but what did the students half way through their dissertations do when their program ceased to exist? That is something seemingly unexpected for a student. It does sound like Political Theory is feeling the pain of political science's shift to quantitative studies, and the always-present general societal mistrust of anything too overly, or overtly, intellectual. Yeah, I started worrying about my intents to focus on Western Europe when I kept noticing that having even one faculty who primarily focused on those regions would be unusual (though there were exceptions, as always). On the plus side, as we discussed in the other thread: This was actually my problem figuring out my field in the first place. I wanted to study very specific issues, and my research into them thus far focused on American politics, but primarily through comparing the political climate of the U.S.A. to other Western democracies. I kept staring at the drop-boxes saying "American Politics / Comparative Politics / International Relations" and wishing they were check boxes instead. Maybe I would have gotten into a few more programs if I had played up how much of my work was about America. At least I can start doing that now. Or not, as you suggest--my primary conversations with the professors in my life these days are about two things. 1: What you said in your point #6, that maybe working as a comparative/IR line-straddler could be as professionally useful as focusing just on America. 2: Do I really want to live in Texas? I have certainly seen that; half the ~25 faculty in my alma mater's political science department retired in the last five years, and a few more are definitely going to leave soon. Then, after that, it seems like everyone is like ~35-40. Of course, that could mean the wave is cresting right now, and WE HAVE TO GET TO THE JOB MARKET THIS MOMENT! This advice is good since it basically reminds all of us to just focus on what we truly love. "Faking it" to focus on American Politics might get you somewhere, but the guy or gal who has been fascinated with bicameral legislative bodies in New Hampshire since age 16 is still going to out-publish you no matter what you do. Could be better to be one of five people studying Madagascar and South African environmental politics for the two jobs available in that field! Also, I believe I speak for everyone when I say that, if I had a name like "Malhotra," I would automatically feel like I would be taken more seriously. I mean, honestly: Malhotra. That is about 100 times more professional sounding than the average name. It instantly conjures up images of mysterious long-forgotten dynastic regimes, the sweltering desert sun, and naturally, elephant riders. This is probably why I have been considering using my initials (I have two middle names!) for publishing purposes, since Amazon's book search has already informed me that my full name is not going to be unique. I realize "how your name looks in print" is likely one of those things we are not supposed to worry about, but it could make a difference. If my name were (this is not my name if you were wondering) Jonathan Steven Thomas Smith, then "John Smith" would not exactly be a catchy name to write under. But "J.S.T. Smith," now that sounds like someone I trust to tell me about the effects of exit polls on voting patterns! The "first name/initial/last name" pattern always seemed to be born of desperation, but just abandoning the other names entirely seems intentional. This is clearly a point we must debate at great length.

While obviously the Ph.D. is the ultimate goal for most everyone posting here, it is certainly the case that there are two very different paths you could take to get there, at least if you are assuming no previous graduate work in the field. You can either find a school with a good terminal master's program, and then move on to a school with a doctoral program, or try to get directly into the doctorate (and likely end up getting a master's from that school anyway). My situation, one I know I share with at least a few others I have spoken with in private here and elsewhere, is thus: My application for doctoral programs was not terribly strong, though it was good enough to get into a few Ph.D. programs, including a (very) modest assistantship from one. The jury is still out on four of my applications, two of which are promising. All that said, I also sent out an application for the terminal M.A. program from the school where I received my master's in another field--and, naturally, to make my choice difficult, they accepted me with the best financial package I have yet been offered. Even though no-one in my life, professional or personal, has come out and said it yet, I cannot help but wonder if it would look suspicious as to why I just "stayed" at the same school (with a year break working across the country at least) if I was going to change fields, and why I did not just get a degree in that field in the first place. I could easily and excellently explain my field shift, but whether I would have the chance to explain is another question. Essentially, I am trying to figure out if my chances of admittances with funding, or a my general chances of admission, would increase enough the next time I applied to doctorates to justify biting the bullet and going back, or whether I should be happy that I have the chance to prove myself (and hopefully one day get funding) somewhere else, even though with that choice I could also just end up $100,000 in debt. While obviously it is hard to say if anyone here has any direct experience with taking this route, or even in engaging in the admissions process and seeing people who took this route. But maybe we can at least get some sense of how people are perceived who come into the process with terminal master's degrees versus those who apply directly to the Ph.D.; are they seen as less academic? Less serious? Just more financially sound? Neutral?

Oh no, our poor stadium! THE BEARS USED IT. IT MUST BE GOOD. Oh, wait, I do not care if it is lame. Especially not now that they made the TERRIBLE (probably excellent for them) DECISION not to admit me! We will just see if my UIUC alumni license plate holder stays on my car!!! Yes! I occasionally force my loved ones and friends to go to Alexander's for birthdays or other celebrations. It is distressing to me how few of my friends like cooking their own steaks, and complain about how you have to pay to have the staff do it; hey, if you are too much of a whiny baby to make your own steak perfect, instead of letting some sucker mess it up for $2.50, you deserve what you get. Particularly since I know I have basically had 1 steak in 10 cooked the way I actually want it at a restaurant when I am not doing it. I never did go to Papa George's when I was there. How sad. Let us keep talking about food. Now, if you do go to UIUC, keep the words "The Beef House" in mind. That is the name of a restaurant just past the Illinois-Indiana border on 74 that has literally the greatest beef IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. Now, I have never wandered in Texas looking for the greatest steaks, and I imagine there must be better steaks in the world, but that is one of the only "legendary" restaurants we have in the surrounding corn-areas. Oh, and you should obviously visit my hometown (Bloomington-)Normal for its CORN FESTIVAL over the summer, since it is hard to get better corn anywhere in the world (I do feel pretty confident with this one).

Going into this whole process, I downplayed my interest in analyzing American political systems and policy, keeping it firmly mixed in with my interest in comparative systems. I imagined Americanism as a basic death sentence when it came to either getting accepted by a program, due to heavy competition, or to ultimately finding a job. After all, I reasoned, surely studying America is far and away the most common thing for Americans to do! Then I actually started reading about jobs, and seeing some things that made me do a double-take. For example, the "Getting What You Came For" graduate studies book, which is seemingly cited as a must-read for any graduate student, directly says that American Politics graduates are going to have a comparatively easy time finding employment. Now, this was a little over a decade ago, and I imagine plenty has changed since then--but why was/is this field lagging behind in competitiveness? Is it just because every political science department in the country needs at least one, and likely more, American specialists, whereas anything else is open to personal departmental preference? Or is it really the case that Americans studying America are less common in this field? Even beyond this question, it would be interesting to get other good sources talking about the overall political science job market. This is something that we need to be thinking about the entire time we are in school, whether we realize it or not, as gainful employment is likely the preferred end result of finishing a doctorate. It is hard to imagine that anyone who has given the issue a lot of thought would say "eh, just kick back and take it easy for a few years, then figure out where you want to work after you graduate!" I have been trying unsuccessfully to relocate the graph showing average numbers of job postings available in the last few years in each different field (this one showed ~200 places for American and Comparative, ~180 for International Relations, and 60 or fewer for Public Policy and Political Theory, if this helps anyone help find it). Surely this is not the only set of data out there, either. In any case, it seems that there may well be a fair amount of good advice in this area waiting to be unearthed, but other threads are mostly focused on the application/admittance process, so it seemed logical to start this up.

Haha. Yeah, those schools made me think there was certainly hope as a Huskie! The schools that have never even successfully placed a student at another moderately-ranked program are the ones you really have to wonder about.

The BIG NAMES are totally dodging these questions--likely because there is no good answer, and probably not even an acceptable answer, without knowing everything about the circumstances. Is your application going to be any stronger next year? If not, then it seems reasonable that this may well be the best chance you have, and you should take it. If so, then, well, it is harder. Now, I have seen Connecticut's placement list, and it was not exactly hopeless. Not many schools I had heard of on the list, no, but still some places I would not mind being, either (not to mention that surely some of those other colleges are just regionally known instead of nationally known). Think of it this way: If you take everyone's advice to heart, and dedicate yourself to your research and studies like never before, odds are certainly better that you will be one of those fortunate people placed at a decent school. Hmm, perhaps my unfunded "top-40" acceptance is a GREAT idea after all! I can heartily recommend Michigan's ICPSR program, as that is where my dad doing doctoral research on a summer grant met my mom who was finishing up her master's degree. Thanks, Michigan's ICPSR program! In more serious news, I suspect working constantly on your dissertation proposal, while presenting at conferences and publishing articles, is a good way to go in your first summer!

The talk of "official offers" in this thread brings up an interesting point--how common is it to dangle unofficial offers in front of students as a reward for accepting soon? I know someone who was informally offered an assistantship, but it was implied that the competition was strong enough that if she could not commit by the end of March, they would need to "officially" give it to someone else.

While I do not know Lenin's situation, I know that being currently 0 for 6 in terms of acceptances with funding makes it somewhat likely that I would not be terribly competitive for external fellowships, either. I imagine both Lenin and I (particularly for me, since Lenin got into a "higher ranked" program than any I did) would likely be best served by either not going at all (not bloody likely; I really have no good way to improve my application, short of working my way into a good job [with, again, overall unimpressive credentials] over the span of like 5-10 years, by which time I will likely have kids and other responsibilities and thus no motivation to go to school instead of making "money") ... or just trying to find the best ways to prove ourselves to our departments once we get there. An unfunded acceptance is likely the most exciting professional offer I have received in five years or more. Of course, there is a third way, if Lenin is like me. I was admitted to M.A. programs for half of my acceptances, which in theory could mean we can try for funding again in a year or two when finishing those up.

I have been weighing two main attractive offers, being "there may be an assistantship available as early as next year" or "there is very little likelihood of any assistantship money becoming available for you." So far, I am leaning towards the former--thoughts?!? No, but seriously, it sounds like $15,000 is seemingly the most average number tossed around. I would be glad to get, oh, 1/15th of that.

I like you, FuzzyDunlop! When applying to any department that did not make you specifically pick one focus, I talked about how comparative politics and international relations both seemed within the scope of what I was doing--hoping they would not sense that I was clearly a neophyte in the field. In regards to America and Great Britain, I focused on how the dialogue in English politics is generally more accepting of their surveillance and centralized identification system, a system that would basically have the majority of people and politicians alike on both sides of the aisle up in arms here (as evidenced by entire states refusing to comply with the Real ID Act, a which itself is a hollow shell of a pale imitation of the already-in-place British system). Ultimately, this specific scenario may go no further in the future, for all I know, in terms of my research. I just know that I want to compare aspects of the paradoxical and confusing American political system, particularly in light of the issues I mentioned, with other modern democracies. Well, that is part of the problem. I came out of a Criminal Justice program, and the works that my professors recommended to me/that I found on my own reflect that. Many of the people outside of my own field whose works I cited were in computer science or law, given the highly technological nature of, and difficult legal challenges involved with, modern/future identification systems. I otherwise have no interest in those fields. The political scientists I did cite (I learned after the fact when trying to see if I would be able to work with them) are mostly dead, retired, or not at academic institutions. There were exceptions, but one was at Yale; Yale did not seem impressed by my application. Not much of a surprise. The other ones are faculty in programs that were otherwise poor fits for me (be it because the department does not even have a doctorate, or the professor is the sole person on faculty at all interested in my work, etc.). My interest in the subjects I wrote about is so great that I am nearly positive it would survive any amount of directional focus-tinkering brought upon by its necessary alterations for a political science paradigm. The debate between the politics of governmental authority vs. public autonomy, in regards to identity documents, has been relevant for at least 150 years already, likely continuing to be so in the future as well (particularly in light of the continuing pro-authority push response to terrorism), and will always be interesting to me. If the basic issue there is not a crucial political science debate, then I suppose I do need to re-think this. As mentioned in my response to Fuzzy, I hope to continue examining this question and other related issues by analyzing the political impact of differing implementations of centralized surveillance. My knowledge of political science is quite admittedly not what it should be; I did not expect to get accepted directly to any Ph.D. programs without some remedial M.A. coursework (though I have been, somewhat surprisingly). Maybe I will figure out after a couple of semesters there that I made the wrong choice again. Sure, my work could seemingly fit in political science, public policy, public affairs, or sociology, and I have had professors say as much to me. Criminal justice, too, if I could find a department that researched the issues behind the standard policing/courts/corrections triumvirate. I just think political science is the best choice for my future goals, and my research indicates there is plenty of support for this idea. But I also like having to defend my choices, so this is all excellent.

Yeah, this really seems like the best advice. Sure, I finally got a couple of Ph.D. acceptances--but the funding situation is dire at best, and every place that rejected me told the same story, that my academic preparation (not my research interests or GRE or height/weight ratio) was the problem. So taking the time to complete an M.A. in the field and shore up most glaring weakness seems like a good way to continue dragging out my delusion that I will be accepted somewhere wonderful with funding next time around! Glad to have your perspective. I think ultimately the reason that the advice goes down the way it does is that most people who get into top-25 programs are the kind of aggressive go-getters who would likely succeed regardless of the extra oomph that comes from their pedigree; sort of an academic momentum-propulsion system. Those who do not end up in a great program either have to figure out why their work was not quite enough and fix it, or accept that they are likely not determined, intense, or other adjectives enough to get what they want out of a less-prestigious program.

Oof, look at me not come back to comment on Eve's great advice. Thanks for posting here, Fuzzy. You two have really helped me think about whether I was doing the right thing. Without getting too much into incredibly boring specifics, your responses do make me feel as though comparative politics is certainly not the wrong place for me, even if I might end up changing my focus a little bit to fit better there. A lot of the master's thesis I wrote on the issue focused on comparing erstwhile similar countries (mostly English-speaking modern democracies) in their attitudes toward and implementations of identification systems. The U.K./U.S.A. divide is particularly fascinating to me, since it seems largely a European "government good corporations bad" vs. American "corporations good government bad" schism. I did not just want to focus on those two, though, and also brought Iceland, Australia, Germany, and Canada into the mix, and analyzed why American ideas of civil liberties/legitimate authority/etc. were so different than those of most other quasi-similar countries. My goal for further research was to narrow my focus, both in terms of what regions I was studying and what issues I was analyzing. Some degree of policy analysis seems a necessary side issue/outcome of this work, certainly, but it was never the primary focus (plus, no public policy programs accepted me, so that is easy). I discussed the sociological ethics of privacy vs. legitimate surveillance as well, all the more reason criminal justice was surely the least logical field in which to do this work in the first place. I probably would have thrown out at least a couple of sociology applications if I had found any departments working in the area, just in case, but I devoted far less time to researching that field than to the other two (and less even than criminal justice, which proved to be a bust pretty quickly).