setgree

Did a total 180 in first year of grad school away from the IR/theory path I came away from college with and now do causal inference questions in AP/CP. Most of the people I know who stuck closely to their original plans came in with a strong regional focus. Once you're in you're in and you can do pretty much whatever you want.

Current Ph.D here logging into gradcafe because IRB training is boring. I would advise you entirely against the plan you are pursuing. A political science MA, as far as I can tell, is worth very little on the job market. I mean really why would anyone care? One way to make it useful is to take a ton of quant stuff, but your GRE, overall GPA, and microecon score suggest this won't be a very fruitful path for you. This is harsh but you were a pretty mediocre student. I'd be very skeptical of a grad program that would take someone with your stats. A lot of them are just after your money and offer next to no value added. So many interesting things to do with one's life. Throwing away a ton of money on a useless degree is a downer.

I am, and I'm treating it like Schrodinger's Cat. They'll get in touch when they get in touch.

this is amazing. Every prospective applicant should read all of those posts. I'd add, from professors around the web: Monkey Cage- advice on choosing Vince Gotera- "The Grad School Letter Arrives ... Now What? " Chris Blatman- FAQ on PhD admissions Greg Mankiw- Choosing a Program , PhD or not, Working Before Grad School I'd also add, on a cautionary note, William Pannapecker's pseudonym-written "Graduate School in the Humanities: Just Don't Go."

Another way to think about it is that top programs have the luxury of being risk-averse. Say you're deciding between Candidate A, who is really solid, and candidate B, who is also solid but has one potential red flag.. You're aware that Ph.D attrition rate is pretty high (per the OSU stats linked to by BFD earlier- btw, some of the links within comparable data from other Universities don't work: Columbia, Penn State and WashU ) -- and you don't actually have enough information to guess who won't make it. So you guess. I personally believe that the tendency of people to move from certain undergrad institutions to certain grad schools to then dominating the academic job market reflects a somewhat hereditary, unfair bestowing of privilege between generations. But name me a field that isn't like that? That's what people with power do. They erect institutions to preserve it for themselves and people who are like them. I actually think that Barry Schwartz's recommendation for college admissions - figure out what some cut-off of "good enough" is, then have a lottery, because your measurement tools/heuristics are not precise enough to measure differences between applicants(which he calls the principle of the flat maximum) -- would also be a good thing for grad school admissions. But chances of that happening seem low. Also, I wouldn't be surprised at all if institutions 10-20 sometimes reject applicants whom they are reasonably sure will attend institutions 1-5. In a different field, a friend got an email from school #14 saying "we think you're going to get into a top five program. But if you don't or you really want to be in X geographically, let us know and we'll put together an offer." The same thing happened to a different friend undergrad, getting waitlisted at his safety school. I see no logical reason why poli sci would be any different, and the empirical evidence necessary to convince me that such a thing never happened would have to be outstanding. Having said that, Profs Nexon and Nooruddin, I'm super glad you're here and your comments are very interesting and valuable, thank you.

Dude I went somewhere that waitlisted me undergrad. I got over it. you can too. All that matters is that you get in somewhere.

You guys are the gold standard for transparency, thanks so much!

As it so happens the research-oriented think tank at which i work, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is hiring paid interns at this very minute- http://www.cbpp.org/jobs/index.cfm?fa=internships deadline is tomorrow- it's like $10/hour which is 20 a year full time so it's not a ton- but it's good enough, and a lot of interns go onto like RA positions at Urban, for example. Entry-level think tank jobs are extremely competitive because people from so many different career backgrounds view them as stepping stones, but it's not impossible. And once you're in, you're in and will have a lot of leeway to move vertically and laterally. Just a thought of what to do if you don't have any luck this cycle. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

The field's productivity would decline precipitously and then war and voter suppression would break out across the land??

Capital bike share. It's 3 miles from Mt. Pleasant to Gtown, it;s $75/year, and Roslyn is toooooo boring.

I've gotten a couple emails from people arranging grad. school visit weekends where you can see everyone on the cc list, so I know that one school admitted 40 people and another 39 this year, and each aim for a cohort of 18-20 or so. If each predicts that ~20 people will reject them, any individual person who says no doesn't clear a spot on the waitlist. That would happen only if >20 do so. i think it's a bit early to be turning down spots if you're still considering them, even if faintly. People also might be holding onto admissions to see if they can get schools to negotiate against each other with stipend offers. I feel that sometime around March 15th is the appropriate time to notify schools if you won't be attending, which gives them a month to move wait lists to acceptances, and gives people a month to decide. Georgetown might be different because it's a smaller program. If you all end up going, D.C. is great!! But don't live in Georgetown. Columbia Heights/Petworth is what's up.

Here's how I think of it. 1)Wendt graduated in 1989; 700 poli sci doctorates were granted that year, whereas there were 900-1000 in the 2000s (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08321/pdf/tab44.pdf) (I can't find data on 2012 poli sci grad numbers?). 2) In 2009-10, there were about 400 "assistant professor openings," according to the president of APSA (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/shrinkage-in-political-science/). 3) Those spots tend to be dominated by people from top 10 programs (http://chronicle.com/article/PhDs-From-Top/136113/ ; take away is that Harvard/Stanford/Princeton/Michigan produce 25% of all tenure track profs, then next 7 produce the next 25%, and the remaining 100 or so account for about 50%). Conclusion: it made more sense for Wendt to go to a non-T10 program in 1989 than it does now. fact 5): attrition and/or dragging-on rates are pretty high in poli sci as a whole, http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2008/02/29/post_64/ - only 27% finish in 7 years or less, and only 45% have completed their degree within 10 YEARS. even at top programs, average completion times are high (http://polisci.osu.edu/graduate/placement/completion) - about 6-7 at most with Chicago the outlier at 9. Having said all that, I still strongly agree with the following: Superstars are going to stand out no matter where they are. A different professor told me "If you have questions you want to study, study them! The point of graduate school is not to get a job, it's to write a dissertation. You won't understand the opportunity costs of a decision until way later," and then told me about a recent star grad from Amherst who was getting a lot of attention. I too believe in pursuing our dreams! But let's be real about how hard the road is going to be. A well-ranked program is a head start, nothing more. But it is a head start.

Hey Eponine997, lots of great points here. I'm sorry to hear that things haven't panned out. It also sounds like you've got a really solid take on it and aren't getting discouraged which is awesome. i thought I'd respond to a couple specific points here. 1) I am a person who had a professor say, in his loveably austere British accent, "Go to a top ten program, or don't go." I mostly took that advice when applying to programs. My thinking was, given the competitiveness of the academic job market, grad school really only makes sense if you go somewhere with a strong placement record. Top 10 was a reasonable stand-in for that (and I didn't apply to Rochester because I'm a baby). Although my SOP was quite specific to my particular research plan, I customized no more than 3-4 sentences of it to each school and its professors, and contacted no one prior to admission. I've gotten into Chicago, Cornell and Columbia. (It also helped to come from an undergrad institution with a strong record of placing people in Ph.D programs). And FWIW I got waitlisted on funding at U Penn, which is the only school I applied to by virtue of fit rather than ranking. 2) my best friend is applying to econ Ph.D programs this year. He works as an RA for a professor who was recently drafted by Stanford from Harvard; his take, from talking to his supervisors and college profs, was that the very top econ programs barely look at your Statement, because a] they think you'll probably change your research interests a lot in grad school and b] they've got enough people to cover a broad range of possibilities. So I wouldn't be too skeptical of programs that don't care much about fit. They might know a lot more than we do about the typical trajectory about an academic-to-be. Good luck!

I pretty much meant the opportunity costs of academia itself . I think I'm getting this better now. i would have taken an all-out rejection as a signal that academia and i were a poor fit for each other and would have taken time to reflect and formulate a plan B, partly because I assume I can't make my application any stronger -- but perhaps that's wrong. Those of you who felt you were stronger the second time around, what did you do differently?

Me as well y'all. shit happens. 2) "one of the incentives of making quality comments on here could be that there is a slim chance a professor at one of the schools to which you have applied identifies you as a thought provoking individual and will reward you with their support in admissions." This strikes me as absolutely not within the realm of possibility. Same is true of the idea that U Chicago kid is hurting his/her chances anywhere by putting down UCSB. No way do adcoms behave like this. 3) Personally, I hope the application process will prep thinner-skinned/folks for how much worse grad school and the academic job market will almost certainly be. Or, as a Swarthmore professor put it: "What you need to know first is that graduate school will almost inevitably suck. A lucky few have a great time. They’re the exception. For most, it will hurt. It will be humiliating. If you have suckled off the mother’s milk of the approval of your teachers until the point you arrive for your first graduate seminar, get ready to have a professor dislike you for no other reason than he or she disagrees with you. It won’t matter that you do all the work and do it well. You’ll be treated like a colleague inasmuch as you will be subject to the bruising ideological, intellectual and social conflicts that characterize academic life. Your views and actions will be taken seriously in that sense. But they’ll be taken seriously at exactly the moment that you most lack any platform to stand upon, when you lack any independent profile outside of your relationships with your professors and your discipline. No one is going to pat you on the head and tell you how wonderfully smart you are for sassing them anymore. That time of your life is over." (http://weblogs.swarthmore.edu/burke/?page_id=4_) 4) This is one reason I'm a bit surprised people apply more than once. The opportunity costs are SO HIGH and there are so many fun things to do, so many adventures to have. Anyone who is on their second round care to speak to why they gave it another go?

"Our program admits about 18 students per year." Direct quote dawg. Maybe they meant enroll, but it says admit.

also claiming a Columbia, IR. cannot believe it. Also, email says they admit about 18 a year. 9 people just posted simultaneously on the board. i didn't think gradcafe's saturation of applicants was that high. that's pretty great.

No it is not safe to assume this. If and when they decide to reject you, they'll send the letter. Admissions is like quantum physics. Until the decision takes a final form that you observe, i.e. a letter in your hand, and not your inference based on the unreliable information of a message board, it's an unknown.

Hey guys, this thread got linked to on the poli sci thread, thought I'd chip in. I'm admitted in poli sci but without funding. my take is that you cannot pay for your own tuition. The email I got said " Unfortunately, we cannot at this time offer you a full five year funding package which the University of Pennsylvania requires of each matriculating student." This indicates that if they can't find the funding then I'm not really in. Another way to read it is that if i/you get the NSF or something, admission is much more likely. Good luck!

just got waitlisted at Upenn. it was a weird email, basically saying you've been admitted but there's no funding, Penn requires that every grad student receive full funding, so until we come through with the money, you actually haven't been admitted. I heard M.I.T. Econ does the same thing and that if you get the NSF, you're in. It's gotta be tough for the smaller programs. Having said that if i were Penn and I wanted to woo people away from the top 10, I'd start by offering bigger and better fellowships. But I suppose that ~25k per year x 5 is not trivial. Cash Rules Everything Around me,

Yogi Berra said it best- "It ain't over till it's over." We know next to nothing about how grad committees work, when they'll release everything, which information is legitimate, or how to interpret it properly. Until I have a letter that says my name and some variant of "NOT THIS YEAR BEOOOTCCHHH" (which actually would be great) It's an unknown. in the meantime, a propos of nothing, here's some excellent advice about men's fashion and life in general http://asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com/2009/12/shibumi.html

I do spreadsheets for a living, this was welcome. Two notes- if you make this a google doc, maybe other people can add directly, and 2) Chicago's letter says they received "nearly 500 " applications So maybe that's worth updating. The sour grapes on the board is not super surprising. There's a great book about it, called of all things "Sour Grapes" by Jon Elster,pol. theorist at Columbia; he talks about the ways in which "adaptive preference formation" fit or don't fit rational choice theory. Anyway the point is none of it is personal, and I definitely sour grasped UCSD when I didn't get in.

i'm not sure it's kosher to post the email address online, but if there's some way to add the domain name @uchicago.edu, that would work I think. Also I'm IR at Chicago. I think if you check the survey results, a lot of info is up there.

First of all, i had to look up "their ears were burning," that's a great phrase, I'm going to use it more often. second, it said "Greetings from U Chicago!" and its entire text was "see attached." Attached was a very nice letter detailing the stipend for which I've been "recommended," lord only knows what that means, visiting students day/travel stipend (it's march 7-8), and the itinerary for visiting students day. I hope your all good news comes soon! (Also i meant to say, UCSD, the school from which I got rejected last week). For half a minute this morning I was considering applying to their masters program, and also to a variety of other jobs for next year, but now i know, I'm in somewhere i'm very happy with. I feel like Biggie- "It was all a dream, I used to read word up magazine..."

JUST GOT INTO U CHICAGO. SO HAPPY. HAVE TO USE CAPS LOCKS. I got rejected from UCD last week and I have to admit, I panicked just a little bit. The email went to my spam folder, check them just in case!