phdhope2013

Obviously you want a new SOP, "better LOR's" - unless you have the luxury of reading them, then I don't know what you mean by this... I think one should apply to a school again (whether wait-listed or rejected) even if your test scores have not improved or only slightly improved. There are several people in this forum who went through a second cycle that already had very high GRE scores. As several faculty here have said already, each admissions committee is different and weighs various parts of an application differently. Having said that, I do not know how differently admissions committees are composed each year. If someone was on the committee one year, do they serve again the following year?

You should probably ask this in the "Faculty Perspectives" thread as well.

I agree with most of what is said. It is hard to judge what will be of use to you this early on. Most of the theorists that I know don't really use methods, but you should definitely take those classes and not blow them off.

Sorry about the confusion and thanks for posting the link Quigley! That is the post that I was referring to.

Really guys I don't think going to PSR/PSJR for advice is such a brilliant idea. I know I am not the one who should be lecturing on this considering my indecisiveness, but I've never gone there for advice (I came to Gradcafe). Take it from someone who has already written a proposal - you should only discuss this with your advisor and bounce ideas off of your cohort. If you are entering a US school, then you have TWO years to come up with a proposal, so no need to freak out! Plus, people on PSR/PSJR are just giving you really broad research areas, which does not help you much. Seriously, "global governance," "migration," "corruption," "human security," "nuclear proliferation," etc. are all too broad. A thesis needs to be narrow! You can't go to your advisor and say "I want to write on global governance." LOL. Going to graduate school is something that you should ENJOY. It seems as though people are going to graduate school focusing on all of the wrong things. Making your thesis marketable...seriously. Look at the key pieces in IR theory I can assure you they were not the "thing" to talk about when they were published.

I don't want to go into detail about my research topic, but broadly it involves a lot of theory (normative and positive) and its focus is on international cooperation. I was planning on doing a postdoc, but once again I would have to compete against people with US PhDs... The problem is that both schools do not have complete information about placement. I did ask the DGS from both schools and they just told me where their advisees were placed (all in good UK schools and some US postdocs), however, they don't have data on where all students in the department were placed (whether in academia or the private sector). At Oxford there are no teaching responsibilities, but at LSE you are required to teach. Both of my potential supervisors are very well known in academia (i.e. anyone who has taken comps will have read something by them)...

Job networking is my main concern. From experience, most professors at LSE/Oxford are gone every single weekend and often during the week at some conference or giving a lecture somewhere. Most students go to the big conferences in the US such as ISA and APSA and both schools do provide a separate stipend to pay for travel to these conferences. I do like the programs and the people there, which is why I applied to these schools. I am just having severe pre-PhD entry nerves and all of those rejections have me questioning my ability (yes, I know the application process is not the best indicator of this).

Dear Wise Faculty, I learned the hard way that "fit" is important, but does this apply when you are on the job market? If so, does this mean I am in serious trouble? P.S. I am the one with the "LSE/Oxford or try again" dilemma.

Thanks for this. I like to think that they made a stupid decision as well (it really does make me feel better). At the end of the day, I would probably be more upset if people who know me rejected me! I should stop caring about what a bunch of Professors who have very little information about me aside from the application sitting in front of them think of me. However, my goal is a TT job in the US (I am not picky. I would be happy with a decent SLAC), so that is why I am worried. If I wanted to stay in the UK, then I would have absolutely no problem (as long as my thesis kicked ass and I published well, but these are uncontrollable factors). You are right about the quality of the cohort I would be studying with. You always have to be on your "A" game. You are also right about name recognition. No one outside of academia, and even some in academia in the UK, would care that you have a degree from Madison or UCSD (except for Essex because they do security stuff there). And yes I do hate pedigree.

Thanks for the input. Not that making a life changing decision of this magnitude is easy, but your perspectives are appreciated.

Thanks for all of the advice and I am considering all of this. I will talk to my advisors tomorrow and see where I go from there. I know its been mentioned elsewhere that transferring out is always an option if you don't like where you are at, but, once again, I come up against the problem of "who will write my letters of recommendation?" And what if I am rejected everywhere again? I would totally make people in whatever department I am at feel like they are my second choice... I really am over thinking this.

I was wait-listed at 6 top 20 programs (according to US news), but have been rejected from all of them. However, I do have acceptances for a Dphil/PhD at Oxford/LSE both fully funded. I am not sure if I should accept these offers or if I should turn them down and go for the US schools again. The problem is that my letter writers come from both of these schools, so I am afraid that I will not be able to ask them again or they will find it offensive and not write good letters for me. Before anyone criticizes me, both of these schools do not have wait-lists, so I am not hurting anyone by not having made a decision yet.

I am in a somewhat similar situation. If I do not get off the wait-list on Monday, then I will be heading back to the place where I did my MA. It sucks because I kind of didn't want to be going back to that location (though located in one of the biggest cities in the world) I hated living there. I actually considered turning down their offer and reapplying for 2014, but I would feel awkward asking my former and will be current advisor, if I attend this school, for a letter of rec. for other schools. I should have thought of this before applying there. I wish I could go back in time.

I am pretty sure if you email the Professors at the school you are attending they will give you the reading list/syllabus to courses you may want to take and use that for any reading you want to do.

Did you apply to PhD programs this cycle? I am just asking because while CIR placement is good, it is hard to deny that the majority of those schools these students are being accepted to are ranked below Chicago, so you may be better off going straight into a PhD program. Considering your 2 choices are almost complete opposites of each other, I would go with Chicago since you are interested in doing a PhD and financially I believe Chicago would be the less risky option.

I am only familiar with job prospects. LSE - better internationally/Europe Chicago - may be better for US jobs I have friends from India, Peru, and China who went to LSE and had no trouble finding jobs back home. I would say both are good for transitioning to a PhD and I think it would come down to which program would cost less for you to go to. I think LSE may be cheaper not sure though. As no MA program guarantees PhD acceptance I wouldn't go to one that would become a severe financial burden. Also, I think by posting this here you are opening yourself to some biased answers when it comes to wanting us to list pros/cons. I am fairly sure that you will get completely different answers if you head over to thestudentroom.co.uk. Hence, I think you need to do this yourself.

Great. I was checking the results board and for some of the schools I am waiting for that did accept people off the waitlists they were not notified until the 24th and the 26th! I have no idea.

Hypothetical: I accept an offer, but after April 15th I am notified that I got off the waitlist to my #1 choice. What are my options? And this is why I think waitlists should not exist.

I did a 2 year program (1 year in a UK institution and another in the US). The UK institution was by far more rigorous. The US program barely touched on other theories. Its main focus was on the varieties of liberalism and realism! I hope committees do not discriminate against applicants who have lower grades from top UK universities because I don't think a one year program can truly reflect a students intelligence. I have the US GPA to show that I can do MA level work, but I can't imagine what those with just a UK MA are going through because I wouldn't be surprised if most committees cannot comprehend the UK grading system and therefore reject/waitlist very intelligent people.

Can anyone explain why some schools will send out some rejections mid-February, but then the rest in March? (This is just a general question. I am not referring to any school in particular and especially not to Chicago because they have the MA issues to deal with).

I found some of the advice here to be useful (though it is not written by a political scientist). http://www.uni.edu/~gotera/gradapp/results.htm

If someone emailed Minnesota, have you heard back from them? I've heard nothing, but I guess it doesn't matter so much now since we will most likely hear from them within the next week.... :/

First I would like to state that I've lived and studied in the UK before (did my Bachelors in the UK. I know very odd for an American). I'm not just some random American who knows nothing about European programs. I had a discussion with several American professors and they kept on bringing up the fact that job prospects for an American with a UK PhD in the US is not great (obviously the big question is "what is wrong with an American who does a PhD in Europe?" However, this shouldn't be a problem for you.), but several did mention that Oxford/LSE PhDs did do postdocs at Princeton/Harvard. One of my former supervisors graduated from Oxford and he did his postdoc at Princeton and later taught at Harvard (of course, he also was a lawyer, so he has a lot going for him). I also know of two other LSE PhDs who have done postdocs in the US. Have you thought of emailing the head of the department at LSE or better yet their secretary (Hilary Parker)? I would imagine they would have a list somewhere or at least they should. I wouldn't want you making a decision based off of what I say or my observations, but this is probably something that you should look into. I also wouldn't recommend choosing a school based off of where PhD students end up doing postdocs. Obviously, it is no guarantee because if you don't have a good proposal you won't be accepted for a postdoc, but having a PhD from Oxford or LSE will not rule you out of doing a postdoc at top US schools. It will probably make it difficult to get a tenure track position in the US. I still think that Northwestern will provide better training overall, but it does emphasize qualitative methods like LSE, so you don't have a quant vs. qual. problem on your hands. However, you should keep this into consideration. Also, Northwestern has a better campus (prior to living in the UK, I've lived in the midwest) than LSE, but LSE has a better library.

Doing postdocs may not be ideal, but LSE PhDs tend to their postdocs at Princeton and Harvard, which is not a terrible thing to have on your CV. I believe LSE also has that option where you can spend one year at George Washington during your PhD, which wouldn't be a terrible thing to do if you end up going there. Congrats on the options you have though! You should be proud that you got into both!

LSE and Northwestern are not heavy "quantitative" departments. Most of the professors at both schools emphasize qualitative methods, which really does not require much training and is easy to learn. I know I am not helping you much with your tough decision. If you don't attend Stanford, Yale, etc. in the US you can pretty much guarantee that you will be placed at an "ok" school in the US. You are always placed lower than the school that you attend. Only way to move up is if you "discover" a brand new theory or method, but even then this is difficult to do if you don't attend a CHYMPS (academia is not so egalitarian). Northwestern has a good reputation and is a good school (no one will think that you are an idiot if you went there), but I would not put it in the same category for IR as Cornell, John Hopkins, or Berkeley. Actually, they are in completely different leagues (especially if you compare it to Berkeley).