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Quarex

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Everything posted by Quarex

  1. It really is distressing when you see bucketloads of acceptances and rejections for a school posted here, and then weeks go by and you still have not heard anything yourself. I am looking at you, UIUC. That said, CanadianPolSci is probably right, that if they start accepting people and you still have not heard back either way, you are likely waitlisted, or at least not at the top of their snap-them-up-now list. But there is still no reason to give up hope, since they are likely still seriously considering your application. Or at least we like to tell ourselves these things.
  2. I am actually thrilled to hear first-hand proof that my source was unreliable, even though it clearly makes me look kind of dumb. Thanks for clarifying, Rollinson; you undoubtedly made lots of us whose Ph.D. applications might only end up with consolation M.A. acceptances happy!
  3. Haha. I hear that. My girlfriend and I both applied to as many schools as we could reasonably justify, in an effort to go to school either at the same place, or at least within a couple of hours. We ALREADY both have acceptances a mere 11 hours apart, so things are looking up! Hmm, wait, there is something wrong with this picture. She had a great audition only about 1.5 hours from my other acceptance; here is to hoping! The worst part is that, of course, you WANT to be able to tell them exactly where you are going. And I bet, if they are anything like my friends and my girlfriend's family (my parents were both professors, so obviously they know how it goes), they just CANNOT UNDERSTAND why you cannot tell them anything more than "well, uhh, I still have not heard back from [this school]." Madison is 50% State Street, and 50% watching Badgers football. So close to awesome, yet so far. !!#$!#$ FOREIGNERS TAKING OUR ACADEMIC JOBS !!!#*&$ The best way I can describe it is that Duke is one of some generally small number of schools in the country that the average person not from that part of the country has likely heard about, so from that standard alone it does very well. It does have a pretty good academic reputation even beyond that, though, and I would say you are definitely in good shape. Also, regarding Peter's list, I am always excited at just how few of the "big names" in the field actually had programs that even appealed to me. Apparently only the small fries are into my kind of research! In the application database my girlfriend and I created, we have fields for the distance to the closest Steak 'n' Shake, IHOP, Denny's, and Perkins'. While these factors may not, in and of themselves, have much bearing, I would be more than happy if we ended up choosing between two universities based on whether we could get a nice bowl of Steak 'n' Shake chili while studying at 3 A.M. And good job, Ammar! Let Barbizan down easy
  4. You know, that is actually a good question. To hopefully divert an enormous coffee-fight between my best buds in the UIUC thread, I will start throwing out bunches of random names of places that may or may not actually even serve coffee, to try to distract you. I am a huge fan of sugar and cream with some coffee flavor thrown in for good measure, so what I consider to be good coffee is likely irrelevant anyway. But I do know my friends have sung the praises of Cafe Kopi (their webpage has drinks broken down into "coffee" and "not coffee"), and I always thought that the two competing places next to the Canopy Club, Espresso Royale (regional chain, though) and The Bread Company, had great hot chocolate and cappuccino. Plus, the Bread Company has fondue. Of course, none of the places I mentioned are actually in the "main drag" off Green Street by the quad. In that area, Moonstruck Chocolate Bar has fantastic coffee-hot chocolate mixes, but I am not sure about the pure coffee. The best part is that you likely were not totally serious in asking. But I sure do like typing. You truly have a gift for prose.
  5. This is at this point about third-hand information, but it stuck in my mind as something worth passing on. Another forum I frequent to talk about these issues once saw a guy ask about Chicago's MAPSS program, and whether it was a good "stepping stone" so to speak to eventually getting into the Ph.D. program there. Someone called to inquire about the rate of progression from the MAPPS to the Ph.D., and was informed that, to the graduate director's knowledge, no-one had ever progressed between the two programs. Certainly an ominous note, though it could still be apocryphal. Worst case scenario, of course, you take your awesome new degree and apply somewhere else in two years anyway, and likely have a considerably better chance of admission.
  6. You are a gentleman and a scholar. And also helped me realize that the lack of avatars is just a coincidence, not a forum requirement. You might also want to look into writing Political Science Ph.D. Application-based short stories, if the kinds of entertainment gleaned from your average post is any indication. Political Science really is an enormous field. Surely I was not the only person who, when constantly poring over endless lists of faculty at various schools, kept thinking "how is it that some areas of this discipline are astoundingly uninteresting to me, yet this is unequivocally the field where I find myself at home?" I applied to more schools than seemingly anyone else, and even I have still only heard back from three places so far (one rejection, two M.A. offers). So I am definitely with you in the "hurry up already" department. Of course, the mail has not arrived yet today, so that might well produce something. Also, for the record, one of my main goals in life is bridging the gap between the inaccessible intellectual and the rest of the world. After a lifetime of hearing things like "you're the only one of your friends who never belittles me for not knowing something" and "wow, the way you explained it really makes sense," I started to think I might be on to something. Likely I will just be run out of town on a rail if I attempt to go through with this plan, though. Hey, no worries! Some of us never even made it to calculus! Besides beginning Java programming, a Philosophy class on Logic, and a basic statistics class, I never had a single math class after my junior year of high school. And it has not hurt me at all! ... Oh, wait, it probably has. At least I did well enough on the GRE Quantitative (~700) that anyone looking at my scores should at least realize I have the potential, even if I have not proven it, to learn more advanced material. That sounds fascinating, and I cannot wait until your work is used as the basis for all U.S. foreign military policy in that region. Yeah, their faculty roster really impressed me in the security area, which was why I applied there despite vowing to myself to never go to school in Illinois again. I seem to recall someone I was very interested in working with at the University of Michigan moving to UIUC over last summer, ultimately resulting in me scuttling my application to Michigan entirely and accepting that Illinois seemed a good fit. This post is enormous.
  7. My undergraduate degree is from UIUC. Here is everything you need to know before a visit: * The Courier Cafe has the best milkshakes on the planet * The university basically runs the entire town * By my rough calculations, the student body is 50% more attractive than at the average institution * No matter how well the story is told, the guy who needs money for gas to get back to Rockford never actually needs gas, and likely is not even from Rockford.
  8. These are all great responses; seems like people without Political Science degrees may be in much the same boat as everyone else; if your interests and aspirations happen to match up well with a department, you will get in. If not, you will not. Your master's degree sounds like what I ultimately tried to turn my Criminal Justice master's degree into, which I am hoping will be abundantly obvious from my research focus and thesis. What was your main area of interest in security policy? UIUC did not reject me yet, so that and your acceptance/background have me wondering if they are looking to expand their security research. Of course, if I get rejected tomorrow, this will sound very dumb. It is interesting; you may well be reading the proverbial tea leaves of my own future, since I have little doubt that a Political Science M.A. would have done wonders for my viability as an applicant. Of course, I have also only heard back from a tiny percent of the schools to which I applied. But so it goes for everyone here, really. I was under the distinct impression that mid-late February would have produced many more answers than it has. Of course, there are effectively three days of postal mail coming tomorrow ... You seem to be in a pretty good non-Political Science situation, with the overlapping political economy interest. Particularly since, as far as I can tell from my research, political economy is already huge and only gaining in prominence. Also, I suspect that the word filter for this bulletin board may be to blame for your "magna junk laude" degree. The worst part is that the profane version is not even spelled that way, according to the dictionary, but so it goes.
  9. Interesting. You would assume that the word spreading about thegradcafe.com since last year might explain the discrepancy--but obviously your LiveJournal example does nothing to indicate that "greater awareness" played a part there. Well, as we know, momentum is everything, and if people expecting to see a really popular LiveJournal thread came to find a relatively small amount of discussion, they might have looked elsewhere instead of starting it themselves, and ended up someplace like here. So, since things are a tiny bit slower here than they have been the last few weeks, let me propose this only partially selfish query: who here is applying for a Political Science Ph.D./master's without a prior degree in the subject? Have any of us gotten any outright acceptances yet? I cannot help but wonder if admittance to the M.A. might end up being as good as it gets for me, but maybe other people have already found that to not be the case?
  10. Kind of, yes. Comparative/international policy/politics is kind of a general way of addressing my specific interests (global security policy requires lots of domestic analysis!), and it is amazing just how many public policy programs seem to focus heavily on health, energy, environmental, or anything-but-security policy. You would think there would be a huge interest in security research these days, as I imagine the grant money would be easy as pie to obtain. One of the things that encouraged me about the University of Maryland was that, when I went to talk with them over the summer about my interest in the program, they told me that my research into identity/security technology (particularly RFID) would overlap nicely with their big RFID research grants. Of course, they also said they like to see applications from people with strong work histories in the field, and I only have about a year of political campaign experience total. So I will still not be totally shocked by a rejection. We will see! What issues are you examining through the American policy process? Or just the way that policy is produced? Likely, due to the "formal theory" thing. Northeastern's program attracted me since Michael Dukakis is faculty there, and I figured he would know a fair amount about the realities of policy creation as well as the theoretical aspects.
  11. I set out this last application season to apply to as many Public Policy Ph.D. programs as I could find that fit my qualifications. I barely ended up applying for any, discovering in the process that Political Science departments were far more likely to favor my research interests (and that some of the Public Policy programs that worked for me also required multiple semesters of calculus to apply, which as a social science student I did not have). That said, I still applied to the University of Maryland and George Mason for Public Policy, and to Northeastern's program in Public and International Affairs, which I think counts. No word from any of them yet.
  12. Well, I am glad we can all agree that Jethro's Reliable University and BBQ's application responses cannot possibly come soon enough. Do not completely psyche yourself out, though. It does not sound like many people really end up with 100% rejections--you must have thought there was something good enough about your application to make yourself competitive! Sounds actually a bit like my undergraduate work, except I was in English, transferred to a much higher ranked school (despite relatively unimpressive grades; still not sure how that one worked), and did not really figure out what I was doing until my Criminal Justice master's degree. I even considered law school before going for my master's instead. As for the application process, my first response was a rejection, too. But then I got that kinda-acceptance, so do not give up hope! Playing poker for a living is an even better plan than the ribs-and-sweet-tea stipend. There was a point in my life when I probably would have considered taking that funding package. I would probably still take "sweet tea and a slight tuition reduction."
  13. Hahahahaha. I like you. And I feel the same way. Now, ultimately, one of the big problems I had with my application list is that nothing felt like a safety school. This could be because I am coming out of Criminal Justice, and thus my actual Political Science background is weak enough that I almost anticipated 100% rejections. But the things I researched in my field overlapped pretty well with a lot of schools, so I thought that would help. I guess it helped enough to at least get me into one M.A. program, but I would definitely prefer that sweet Ph.D. invitation at "Insignificant University of State Everyone Forgot Existed." Or perhaps "Jethro's Reliable University and BBQ." But it would have been nice to have any place that seemed like a sure bet.
  14. Wow, I sort of wish I had applied there now, just so I could have used more of my thesis! It was hard figuring out what part(s) of those 200 pages to use for my writing sample, particularly since most schools only want 10-15 pages. I suppose applying to Ph.D. programs out of a bachelor's degree leaves you in a much more confusing place as to how to present/produce big writing samples. I never would have imagined anything over about 15 pages being possible at that point in my life, really.
  15. I checked the application page just in case they worked like Yale, but they do not. I actually did hear something from them, though, hilariously enough--I got a letter complaining that my FAFSA information did not match up with my transcript records. I went to UIUC for my undergraduate degree, and enrolled under the shortened version of my name, rather than my full name. This never caused any problems until this graduate applications cycle. But oh boy, has it ever caused problems. On the plus side, if the rejections already went out, surely they would not need me to correct my name on my transcripts just to reject me? Or maybe they are cruel like that.
  16. For anyone who is interested, which seems to be no-one so far, but better safe than sorry, I am the guy who was offered an M.A. at the University of Kansas after applying to the Ph.D. program. Could have been worse, and I will totally do it if nothing else pans out. Or, potentially, even if something else does pan out, since the University of Kansas is way more awesome than I ever would have thought when analyzing the word "Kansas" earlier in life. I am a little concerned that they just want my money and would never dream of letting me continue on to the Ph.D., but worst case scenario it would still give me a solid degree with which to try this whole thing all over again in a couple of years. This thread has also given me some modicum of hope about the Ohio State University, since my status on the application there is still the same as the day I finished it. They could always do rejections in waves, though, so, there is that. Otherwise, I have only heard from Yale (rejection, no surprise there) so far. Plenty of other applications to go! C'mon, mailman! Count me in as another person who does not know why you would apply somewhere with no research overlaps. That was basically the only way I ever winnowed down the final list, by cutting out programs that did not have at least two (and ideally three or more) people on staff who would likely be interested in my research.
  17. Considering that seemingly everyone on every Internet forum discussing this, not to mention everyone I know in real life going through this process, has had multiple rejections and acceptances come through by now, the fact that I have still heard absolutely nothing from any of my schools regarding my admission should be driving me crazy. And, indeed, I was feeling increasingly insane until about a week ago. Once February came, and I still had not heard anything, I decided that I was either going to hear back from every school I applied to on the same day, or just never hear anything from any of them, and that clearly worrying was getting me nowhere. Now, I am totally cool again! ... Until the first one comes in. Then, I suspect all rationality will break back down again.
  18. The thing is, you have to keep this in mind--the "acceptance" rate is not the "matriculation" rate. Now, the statistics may still be off somehow, based on faulty data, or something similar. But if you start to look at universities that are probably considered "safety" schools for the majority of their applicants, their ridiculously-high acceptance rates start to sound more reasonable. If 100 applicants show up, and they try to take the best 15, and only 1 of those 15 actually goes ... looks like the next 14 get in! Oops, only 2 of them came. And you can see how it might snowball from there. Now, this could be completely wrong. But I have also seen several departmental pages differentiate between acceptance and matriculation rate, so there is definitely a hefty dose of logic and reason there.
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