eve2008
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Posts posted by eve2008
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actually, now i wonder what "stars and cupcakes" means....
i took it to mean "dream school"
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I don't know. Seymour Hirsch wrote an article in the New Yorker once and for 3 days everyone thought we were going to war with Iran.
I wrote an article that got returned 10,000+ google hits (i.e., people writing about it on their blogs) in the first 48 hours. The Black Eyed Peas Obama video has been viewed 20 million times or whatever on YouTube. That's what media is today. I am not saying that any one thing your write or television appearance you make will change the course of history, but you will change minds and you will inspire people. And that isn't optimism; it's my own direct experience.
Think bigger!
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Also, the reason the media doesn't pay much attention to what professors say is because the majority of America finds academics to be boring. Media outlets will get better ratings with people who are well known, generals, and pundits who've been associated with people who are well known. So just because a professor would like to speak out about an issue doesn't mean he'll be given a forum with which to communicate his message. And even when he is given the forum he seeks, he won't have his soundbytes aired on media outlets all week, or month, or year.
It's really *not* that hard to get on TV or the radio. I've done op-ed stuff and commentary before. I think most academics a) don't know how
aren't that interested or c) aren't particularly effective communicators. But that's something that can change.And there's definitely a rush from knowing that something you have written or said is being consumed by an audience of hundreds of thousands (or millions).
One of the best ways to increase your visibility is to start a blog. Then, when a journalist is looking for someone to cite or interview, there's a decent chance Google will bring them to your website. A few academics do blog. More should!
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And Harvard professors testify before Congress. Blah blah blah.
I don't doubt the policy-making world is full of solutions; the problem is, politicians often ignore them in favor of other interests. This is why I think it's crucial to educate the public...
...which will still, years from now, believe the reason why the Shia and the Sunni are fighting a civil war is because we didn't have the right plan, not because state-building is a foolhardy idea...
p.s.
i love realism!
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I don't think all of us should necessarily get our hands dirty, but we should deign to actually communicate with, you know, real people every once in awhile. I really don't get why most academics don't speak directly to the public more often about their research, and why shady think tanks and journalists and pundits end up with most of the power to shape popular opinion.
Why didn't all the major civil war / "nation-building" / Iraq experts get directly involved in the debate to go to Iraq before we invaded? Why didn't they go on CNN? Write op-eds? Maybe there were a few, but I don't remember them. As an undergrad who had taken a small handful or poli sci classes, the outcome seemed obvious: it would be a long-term, hard-fought disaster. There is actually a science to these things...and we're about to become its newest acolytes.
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On the predictive power of standardized tests: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... views.html
I think grad committees understand statistics, and are therefore willing to accepted a wide range of scores, provided other aspects of the application are exceptional.
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Thanks, Eve. Yeah, I certainly hope that excellent performance (which I am absolutely going to achieve, as I have never been more enthusiastic about something academically) will make me all but a shoo-in for the Ph.D. when that time comes ... but worst case scenario, if I have to apply somewhere else, I will have a whole new set of positives to add to my application. It sounds like Kansas and Connecticut will not offer much if any funding, but Arizona State sounded less negative in that regard. Still got another billion applications to hear back from, though, so who knows?
I think Arizona is a really cool place to live...I mean, just really, really beautiful.
Also, I have been out of school for all of 9 months now! :!: I actually just completed a master's degree in Criminal Justice, which I am considering my "real bachelor's degree," considering my terrible performance in (and the poor fit of) my English Literature undergraduate degree. Many programs said that if you did not have a political science degree, you would have to do the entire M.A. coursework (though potentially minus electives) anyway, so I was still expecting this work load--just hoping for the "big" acceptance right off the bat.To be blunt, a lot of top programs don't look favorably on a Criminal Justice degree, which is generally considered to be very practical/applied. So it sounds like an MA is the way to go. Congrats on your options!
Meanwhile, are you content with your options, or will you be disappointed if you do not get into your super-deluxe-stars-and-cupcakes schools?Oh, I already got into a super-deluxe-stars-and-cupcakes school, so I'm a mix of dazed/shocked and happy as a peach. The school I'm still waiting for I may or may not go to if I get in, but a hotshot prof. at that school wrote three of the five books I read as an undergraduate that made me want to become a political scientist, so I'm still crossing my fingers for that one :-)
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I will be posting in this thread for the next sixteen months while waiting for all these applications. Oh, sure, it might only look like one month to all the people who are not involved with the graduate school application process. But I assure you: it will be at least a year, and possibly ten years, in application waiting time before I hear back from all these schools.
So far, I have an exciting choice of three M.A. consolation acceptances, each 1,300 miles apart: Arizona State, the University of Kansas, and the University of Connecticut. I am not honestly sure what I will do, especially since I still have plenty of other applications out there to hear back from. If it ended up being a choice between those three, well, it is hard to say. Kansas sounds like the best scholastic bet, but Arizona State was much more upbeat and chipper about wanting me there and implying that I am a shoo-in for the Ph.D. if I perform as well as my POTENTIAL indicates. Connecticut, meanwhile, has a great ice cream bar. Oh, and I met with their faculty, and they were all amazingly helpful and knowledgeable and everything, and they actually suggested a potential advisor in my acceptance letter--that does not sound completely like standard M.A. acceptance fare (at least, not to me), so it seems encouraging.
I will sadly not be able to show Tidefan around to all the best coffee shops at UIUC, now that my alma mater shot me down. I can finally start ignoring their donation requests with a clear conscience!
If you perform well, it sounds like you have a change of advancing to doctoral candidacy at any of those programs. So you should definitely pick the best fit for you. Will you be getting funding at any of them?
Also, I don't know how long you've been out of school, but an MA could be a great chance to strengthen your credentials before applying to Ph.D programs.
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You can definitely get into graduate school without a publication, although they obviously help. The key is *research experience.* So RA for a prof, write a kick-ass senior thesis, do summer research. You also might try approaching professors whose work you like (going by their office hours, etc.) and confiding in them your desire to go to graduate school. They would be able to give you the best advice and may help clue you in as to what kind of research opportunities are available to undergraduates. As with anything in life, relationships are key.
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I do know of graduate students and postdocs at Princeton who live in New York or Philly and commute. It's not fun, but it's certainly doable. The town itself has many investment banker-types who commute Monday-Friday.
There is no bar scene. You will drink at the D-Bar (liquor subsidized by the university!) and in the first few years, might go the eating clubs which often have free live music and decent parties. However watching 18 year-olds puke themselves gets tiresome after awhile. But I think grad students do make their own life and there are always parties and various goings on.
There's no hiking per se, but a bike is an excellent idea. There's a lake and you can rent canoes. There is also a tow path that goes from Trenton, through Princeton, all the way somewhere else and which you can run or bike. You can also bike through the Institute Woods. There are farms nearby that sell fresh produce. And you can party in New York City every weekend if you like. After your first year, you might also decide to get a car, which will give you more access to shopping options on Route One and make it easier to access NYC/Philly.
Princeton has the most picturesque, aristocratic campus in the nation.
It's not a bad place to live for a few years.
Get ice cream at the Bent Spoon!
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I have no idea if this would work (and I've received contradictory advice) but you might try telling UW that they are your first choice, but that you've been accepted into these other programs with better financial packages. In other words, negotiate. The worst they can do is say no.
You should also ask if students in the past have been successful applying for outside fellowships, like the Javitz. In fact, I have no idea what outside fellowship options exist.
I know in CA, you are out-of-state the first year, but I think by the second year you can count as a resident? Or something? At what point would you count as a resident of Washington State, and therefore be eligible for in-state tuition?
Congrats on all your acceptances! I'm sure you'll have a few more before the cycle's over.
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yup! today looks like the day.
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acceptances via email?
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Is UNC your top choice because of money or because of fit?
Also, how does funding work at the latter stages of your dissertation. A lot of schools offer five-year funding packages, but most people in comparative take six. A few take seven. Does your funding for fieldwork then necessarily come from government fellowships?
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I thought it might make sense to start a thread where political science applicants could celebrate their acceptances and weigh their options.
As someone who is still waiting to hear from her dream school, but who has already been accepted by some fabulous programs, the anxiety level of the main 2007-2008 apps thread was starting to make me, well, anxious!!
To everyone who hasn't heard yet, you won't know all your options until mid-March, so keep heart. Best of luck!
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Of course, it is also possible that you are overqualified for your safety and they, having read the other schools you are applying to (don't they have a section where you fill out where else you have applied?), decided not to waste a slot. Or that, as other posters have said, you were just not a good fit. Keep faith!
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where else are you applying?
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I really enjoyed reading your objective post - though perhaps a little less than the 'smiley' admissions decisions signature - A+ on that one..haha
Those are pretty much exactly the faces I made when I found out...
Every once in awhile, when I feel really excited about the future, and I think no one's looking, I do this:
This is me staying up all night mulling over choices that will affect my life for a good long time, posting on internet discussion boards to help allay the anxiety: :shock:
This is me when I think about taking linear algebra and reading 8 books a week, and generally trying to keep my head above water the first year:
I have never make this face: :mrgreen:
:wink:
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if you want to be a correspondent, you want to be unencumbered by debt, especially if you decide to string or freelance at any point during your career. debt will make it more difficult for you to take risks.
if you can stomach the debt, go to columbia, but it will place some limits on your future options.
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Hmmm...how come I didn't get an email?
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The test purposefully provides trick answers, that would make sense if you attempt to reason it out using the root or part of sentence/speech tactics. This is just silly in my opinion. Under these situations you are just testing the ability to memorize vocab lists, and not to reason or to understand the dynamics of language and word usage. I recognized this early on and memorized the word lists like a good little girl--hence my decent score on the verbal section--but I still think it is stupid.
I agree with this assessment of the verbal GRE entirely. For the verbal SAT, I figured out this trick maybe a week before the test and did nothing but study word lists. I got a 770. This time around, I didn't study at all. I did not score nearly as well. I fall into the "look ma, no hands!" camp. I took one practice test, memorized the triangle formulas, and took the test two days after flying halfway around the world. I wouldn't say that I'm proud of how reckless I was, but I certainly don't think it has anything to do with my potential for graduate work! Maybe it's having spent time living in dangerous places, but I feel like I could die any day, and if I were to die before the end of the admissions cycle, I wouldn't want to say in those last moments of light, "but at least I spent three weeks studying for the GREs." I had other things I'd rather do, that I thought were more important, and I was pretty sure that if I got into the school of my dreams or if I were rejected across the board, it wouldn't be because of the 50 or 100 points lower I scored from not studying.
Of course everyone is different. I've always been decent at standardized tests, and I took the PSAT and the SAT twice in high school. Even all these years later, I knew that I still had a certain level of comfort with timed tests and with SAT/GRE-style tests. So maybe I'm still reaping the dividends of the obsessive months of study I put in when I was 16 or 17! Everyone needs to decide what works for them and their goals, and so I respect anyone who put in the long hours to raise their score to a level they wanted, and I certainly understand anyone here who couldn't be bothered to study...to each his own. Why the animus?
Also, on the importance of scores, I'll just repeat what one of my advisers told me--I don't know if it is true, but it's the conclusion he/she has come to after many years of experience sitting on committees.
Admissions committees for Ph.D programs DO NOT CARE about GRE scores, unless they are troubling low. But even then, there is no hard and fast cutoff.
The definition of "troubling" differs by school and department. So for engineering, below a 750 on the quantitative section would be troubling perhaps at the top 10 or 20 schools, but the threshold might be lower--at 700 or 650--as you go on down the line. For my programs, I was aiming to get about a 700 on each section of the GRE since I was told that 700 or above would put me in a range where GRE scores wouldn't be a factor (but above that, it was a waste of time to try and score higher). Once you get above whatever you think the threshold is for your target program, you gain absolutely nothing by working hard to edge up your scores by 10, 15, or even 100 points. College admissions were different. Every point mattered, and the difference between a 650 and a 750 mattered a lot. In graduate school--at least in political science--they really don't care. I know, for example, of an applicant who had scored in the 500s on the verbal and quantitative sections, but had an absolutely stellar application in all other respects. The schools interviewed him to try and reconcile his score, and his performance in the interview confirmed what all the other aspects of his application had suggested: he was brilliant. So he got into several top 10 programs, and at least one top 5 (in poli sci). At the top five program, they admit about 4-7% of applicants each cycle, but get hundreds upon hundreds of applications, so you would think they would have a strong incentive to implement some kind of auto-cutoff rule. Clearly, they didn't.
This is not to say GRE scores don't matter, but rather the "I got a 3.65 and a 680V 720Q, what are my chances at Harvard?" posts are ridiculous. Your GPA and your GRE are really the least important components of your application to a Ph.D program.
Nonetheless, there tends to be some rough correlation between reasonably strong numbers and the aspects of the application that matter far more--a well-written, focused statement of purpose, stellar LORs, research experience, and writing sample. It is unlikely that an applicant with a 2.2 GPA wrote an A thesis, won awards, or did well in enough classes to knock the socks off of the three tenured professors writing her letters of recommendation.
This is how I spend my time while waiting for the mail. *Sigh*
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I really love this thread.
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congratulations!
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I have obviously been really lucky this cycle, but I just wanted to chime in because I did spend a lot of time wondering about what would happen if. I had several friends from college with higher grades and better scores who "struck out" when they applied, and so I entered this cycle intimidated and fatalistic, perhaps to an irrational degree.
Anyway, I swallowed hard and threw my apps into the lottery. I pretty much knew academia was my dream, and decided to give myself two cycles to get into a dream program. If it didn't work out, I would consider myself lucky. A Ph.D is an incredible investment, and I think being admitted to a program you like is an important vote of confidence by other academics who have been doing this a lot longer that yes, you potentially have whatever it takes.
If you strike out, I would say take another year to work on whatever aspect of your application may have been weakest; reconsider your application strategy (did you apply to a range of reach/safety schools? did you contact any faculty beforehand and are the departments *really* a good fit for your interests?); and consider applying to a master's degree program if that's feasible (a chance to get more research experience, better recommendations, a more focused statement, and new grades). But don't give up! At least, not if this is your first time.
I know a poster on the xoxohth site who applied to at least a half dozen programs last year in sociology, was rejected from all of them, spent another year in the policy world getting some kick-ass experience, applied again this year, and was rejected again from every school, save one: Princeton.
PoliSci 2007-2008 Cycle
in Political Science Forum
Posted
that is f-ing beautiful