zephyr

tidefan sorry to hear about the bad family news. i would contact illinois and talk to maybe the DGS in the department or any profs you've communicated with. explain the situation to them. while some places don't let you defer, if this is an unusual situation (which it obviously is, given your enthusiasm to go the illinois), i'm sure they'd be considerate. hope it works out.

be careful....you don't want to jeopardize the offer you have in hand. you can email them and let them know the situation, but given that every school probably still has people on waitlists, they need to know by the 15th. i would definitely tell them yes by the deadline if you hear nothing from cornell.

in terms of geographic location, cambridge is definitely a pretty cool place to be, though palo alto obviously has the better weather. personally, i'd really think hard about stanford over harvard, though. have you seen the recent placement record? it's freaking sick. seems like EVERYONE graduating from stanford goes on to a top 10-15 school for their first gig. plenty of people do so from harvard, too, but not everyone. though this may have a lot to do with people's preferences when they finish as to where they want to teach, stanford's record is absolutely incredible. i think this is probably the most important thing in choosing a program...placement record. however, if you feel harvard is the better place in terms of what you want to do (and not just for a professor or two, since they can leave while you're there - and given the difficulty of getting tenure at harvard, i bet this will probably happen during your doctoral studies if you go there), then go for it. overall, you have unbelievably good options and will do great either way.

yeah...any clarity on their funding situation?

washu is an excellent place to go. outstanding phd program. and most importantly, fully-funded. i'd say this is a no-brainer.

i think the william and mary study is probably the best one for IR, but it has its problems, too. even within subfield, schools vary in their strengths. for instance, if you want to do formal IR modeling or quant work, rochester is probably one of the absolute best places to be, though they show up in the high-teens/low 20s (can't remember exactly) in the IR ranking in the W&M study. minnesota and ohio state are two of the best places if you're interested in constructivism, though both rank in the teens for overall IR. so, i hate to say this, but "it depends" is the right answer. in general, i've heard texas and indiana are very good IR programs, generally perceived as top 25/30 or so, depending on who you ask.

makes sense. i was wondering why apparently only 2 people per subfield were offered funding so far. hopefully some of us get some good news next week.

that explains a lot - seems like they historically notified a bigger set of people in early march who were offered funding - if they fund 10, it seems reasonable to offer 25-30 people funding. but that's probably because they knew exactly what kind of budget they had. this year, it seems like they only contacted a very select few so far about funding - i bet the uncertainty over the budget amount had a lot to do with that. i bet more of us will hear (hopefully!) funding info by some point next week. unless they're not doing a bigger yield and waiting for each one of the 10 to decline before they move down their list for fellowships. hope that's not the case!

anybody ask the department how many funding offers have currently been made? folks here suggest that only 2 offers per subfield have been made as of now, with everyone else on a waitlist. either way, i suspect we're gonna have to wait it out 'til mid-april.

the thing is, the realist school of IR, while traditionally thought of as conservative, is finding a lot of commonality with progressive politics. its very weird, but that has definitely happened. realists argue against US intervention abroad (progressives would call this neo-imperialism) that ultimately results in negative responses to the US...as such, they were among the leading IR voices against the iraq war. offensive realism is a bit scary, but if you think about how the world is versus how you want it to be, its easy to see that some states do seem to securitize by going on the offense. this is definitely true of the bush doctrine. also similar to the (as bacevich would call it) economic imperialism of the clinton years. mearsheimer and schweller are the two main IR voices i've read taking the offensive realism point of view, while walt and van evera are two of the better known defensive realists.

well, i've heard of other programs that don't fund everyone only invite funded and alternate students to their open house. i really hope that is the case for g-town, but i'm not sure. obviously, not everyone comes to these open houses, but considering how serious a commitment a PhD is, I gotta imagine at least half, and maybe as high as 70% of people invited show up. and, if g-town invites all those accepted (80+ last year), that makes their open house an absolute logistical nightmare.

are any of ya'll going to the open house?

this is my area of interest. the thing you need to look for is both schools w/ strong reputations in international security, and people with interests in the regions you want to focus on. my thinking is that columbia, chicago, and MIT are the 3 best international security places - though, again, this all depends on what aspect of security you want to focus on, as well as what region. however, all 3 are insanely competitive. actually, all top programs (i'd say top 25 to top 50) accept somewhere between 6-20% of applicants, so getting in to any respectable program is pretty tough. stanford, harvard, ucsd, yale, and princeton are also outstanding. georgetown's not too shabby, either. again, figure out what exactly you want to do w/ security, figure out if there's a geographic region you're particularly interested in, and then look who trains the most scholars in that area.

this is also interesting...the letter of invitation for the open house says they are inviting attendees as "one of the top applicants to the department." i am guessing its a generic letter that all admitted students get, but maybe (hopefully) they only invite funded and top alternate students to the open house???? considering they usually admit a lot of students (85 last year), logistically, maybe they only invite candidates high on their list???

thanks, ya'll...now comes the hard part...getting funding! hopefully i'll have a better idea after their open house in a few weeks.