BFB

I wish I knew, sorry. I'm not ignoring this; we just don't have waitlists. It seems as though, from what you're saying, that adcoms have good information on you, but that, because of your country's research traditions, that information is disadvantageous. If you're convinced that lack of training is the problem (I'm not; I don't expect methods training in undergrads, though it's great when I find it), I'd think about trying to get funding for intensive courses, like the ones that ICPSR offers in the summer. Those would help with the skills that you'd mention, and they'd constitute a costly signal. Edit: +1 to GopherGrad's response, again subject to the caveat in the previous paragraph.

Possibly. But how certain would I have to be to say to someone, "Yeah, you say you want to go to grad school, but I don't think your heart is really in it"? It'd be roughly like telling that couple not to get married in the first place. ... hm. Nominally, we all add more value than what's reflected in our compensation. Otherwise, the University would never make a profit. I assume going in that that's inherent in any business that doesn't want to fail. Grad students may add more than most, but to make that calculation you'd need to factor in the fact that most have tuition covered, some never end up teaching or working as an RA at all (through fellowships and attrition, for example), etc., etc. I honestly don't know what the value calculation is in purely monetary terms. And I don't know how much it would be in your interest to cut into your own value: the cost of boosting the stipends of 15 incoming students might be that we have to de-fund one or two sixth-year students (it all comes from the same budget). Whether that's a good idea probably depends on whether you're the incoming student or the sixth-year. I actually don't know what resources are available for financial, health, and relationship counseling, and I should. I'll look into it and pass the info along to our grads. Thanks for the thought. And around here, it's as likely to be ramen and R, I'm afraid.

I've looked at attrition numbers a fair bit. We don't record age coming in, but impressionistically I don't see a clear relationship. Since becoming DGS, I've realized that attrition is pretty multifaceted. Some people get stuck on a dissertation topic and go around in circles endlessly until their funding dries up. That's bad, when it happens, and we want to do what we can to avoid it—but it's not the main source of attrition. More often, people find that grad school didn't interest them as much as they thought, or another, irresistible opportunity arises, or a spouse has a career change, or family draws people elsewhere... in short, all sorts of stuff. When that kind of attrition happens, while it's regrettable, things are as they should be: we don't want to keep you in graduate school if it's the wrong thing for you to be doing. It's very much like Louis CK's take on divorce: there's no such thing as a bad divorce. It's not as though a happy couple was walking along and all of a sudden, bam!, they get divorced. If they split up, it's because they shouldn't be together, for whatever reason. Same principle applies to most attrition. Edit: That said, I'm 100% on board with the "more money for graduate students" idea. Our Grad School came through on that front this year, happily enough. But here at least, we don't have much control over that.

Yes. I'd just add two things: (1) Credibility and prestige are far from perfectly correlated. (2) All else equal, it's more impressive to read "best student in 40 years of teaching" than to read "Best student I've seen in the three months since I started as an assistant prof." But that's really only a consideration at the margin, and all else is rarely equal.

"v."? I like Dan. Are you sure that's what you're going to get? I mean... does the big name say, "Sure, I'll write you a letter; given your record, I'll send out letter 12b"? Formulaic vs. personalized is... not the major cleavage I see. What I see is informative vs. uninformative. I know of one very well known senior prof who sends letters that are quite formulaic—I can predict what'll be covered in every. single. paragraph—but very, very informative, because that content varies usefully. I'll give you an example. When I started out, I made a MSWord template for myself, complete with a set first paragraph with pull-down menus. "Smith is a superlative/an outstanding/a very good/a good student who was the top/among the top/one of the better/[ ] I've had in all my time teaching/in the past few years/this year/this semester..." that sort of thing. Then paragraph 2 started "In particular, ..." and went on to describe the student's individual qualities. But if you ever put some of my letters side-by-side, you'd know immediately how to rank the students. That's the kind of letter you want. Not, "Like 90% of his peers, Smith is in the top 10% of his class."* Not helpful. ----- * hat tip to Bill Zimmerman

+1

For us, there's a big cutoff: if your verbal and quantitative scores don't average 75th percentile or above, you're ineligible for the grad school funding competition unless we use a waiver. Waivers are plentiful in the first round and ridiculously scarce in the second. That doesn't mean that we won't pursue you; it does mean that we may run into problems getting you funded. Same goes for a GPA under 3.6. Neither of those cutoffs plays a role in our decision making, really, but they can in terms of outcomes. As far as the role that GREs play in decision making: they're one factor among many, neither necessary nor sufficient. If they're a little low, a higher GPA can compensate; if both are a little low, a great statement or strong letters can compensate. There's no magic formula. We look at everything all together. Out of curiosity, I looked at our records going back about 15 years, and at least when it comes to completion, GRE scores don't mean squat, either individually or interactively. I've seen insignificant results before, but these were really insignificant. They might predict placement, I don't know (placement data weren't included in the dataset I got). But personally, I don't pay a huge amount of attention to them.

Blame Neal Beck I had this discussion with Gary King a few years back, when we were considering hiring a Harvard Ph.D. for a job at Harvard. His argument was that, in a world in which quality can be readily discerned, merit-based hiring will be indistinguishable from nepotism at top departments. Simply put, both predict that top students will end up in top places. I'm not as confident as he is, given all of the variables that go into the process, that we as institutions are able to distinguish among top candidates that well. Speaking just for our department: we simply don't do that. For one thing, sometimes we win. For another, if we preemptively de-admitted all the students who we thought wouldn't come, we'd end up with a significantly higher yield, and we wouldn't be able to afford it.

Thanks for the advice.

A thread for faculty to post about our perspectives and answer prospective students' questions. Topics covered elsewhere, so far: Fit vs rank () () The admissions process: inside the sausage () () Being admitted without funding () Rejecting students because they wouldn't receive funding? () Your place in the overall scheme of things () Should I disclose my admissions results to my schools? () () How can I fix my application / do better next year? () (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946641) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946705) Is visiting schools useful? (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057945706) Rates of completion (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057945757) Does a substantive disconnect between college and grad school hurt me? (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057945829) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057945950) Do top schools not compete for students they think they'll lose? (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946267) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946339) How do faculty read applications? (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946333) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946611) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946691) (http://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/30270-welcome-to-the-2012-2013-cycle/?p=1057946703)

I'm hesitant to say, in general, since (I assume!) I'm not familiar with your file. Doing these things might or might not compensate for some existing problem; at the same time, you might be reading too much into rejections, which (as we've pointed out) are not as informative as most of you take them to be. To complicate things further, some committees won't care whether you do X, while others may value it highly. The people who would be better able to answer these questions are the people who read your files at the universities to which you applied. Especially given that your outcomes are so at odds with your expectations, I'd urge you to contact them and ask them what you could have done differently, and to ask them to be candid in their response. The answer might sting, a lot. But if you really want to improve your odds, you can't do it in a vacuum.

IMO recs are complicated. You do get some so-so letters (very few) and some over-the-top rock-star letters (also very few). We don't generally send either signal lightly, so those are informative. Otherwise, though, they're generally pretty formulaic, and no one really wants to write anything bad. At the same time, some professors are Panglossian, while others are pretty meticulous about giving very candid reviews. As a result, variation across professors can be greater than variation across students; in other words, the noise can swamp the signal. Well put, on statements and writing samples. I use them as indicators of professionalization first and best guesses as to direction second.

Confirmed, in spades. Not pursuing top applicants is a great way to ensure that you won't get them. I also believe, very seriously, in fit over rank, even for a pretty big gap in rank.

My condolences. I'd agree completely, especially with the last sentence. I've seen different people weight different parts of a file very differently, without much rhyme or reason. Having a different direction in UG than the one you want to take in grad school strikes me as no big deal for most people, but a disqualification for that one committee member who had a student just like that twenty years ago and that student lingered for a decade and never did finish and spent lots of time in my office and get off my lawn.... That sort of thing. But I suspect most of the time, on most committees, it wouldn't be a big deal.

In fact, yes. Bottom of the page.

That's just Drezner, really.

That's actually not true. If you weren't good enough, you wouldn't be on the wait list at all. It may or may not mean that you're a lower priority for the Department than people who were accepted outright: as I've discussed above, some programs can't control funding as much as they'd like, and as you've just noted, fit is a huge deal. But it definitely doesn't mean you're not good enough.

How does being waitlisted at top-20 programs constitute a less than stellar performance?

Not necessarily. From your sig, it looks as though you're shooting pretty high. That's great (never undervalue yourself!), but it also means you're putting yourself up against some of the toughest competition in the country. For a given subfield, most programs admit in the low double digits (in our case, about 12 per subfield). So... things get tight. When people are hammering out a final list, a low GPA from a non-great undergrad school and a cheap MA can count more in some minds than in others. That said, the journal publication is a big gold star. I would be very hesitant, myself, to pass on a profile like that. If you're really puzzled by your outcomes, I'd write to one or two DGSes and ask why it didn't work out. I get two or three emails like that every year. They're one of the sadder parts of the job, but if someone is brave enough to ask me for an honest answer, I do my best to give it without being hurtful. One of our current admits was unsuccessful last year, wrote to ask what could have been improved, improved it, and got in. One BIG caveat: We cannot comment on your letters. It's hard even to say "I can't comment on your letters" because that makes it sound like they're bad. So no comment means no comment, period. And letters matter a lot. So I might get stuck in a nightmare scenario in which one of my colleagues has written a meh (or worse) letter for an otherwise exemplary file, and I am legally obligated not to mention that fact.

Yes.

I'd go a little farther than this: it can be to your advantage to reveal other offers, no matter who the competition is. If it's an institution that's reasonably close to ours, as Irfan says, we have an incentive to match. If it's an institution that's ranked well above ours, we don't give up—especially if, as is the case with a couple of prospectives this year, we sincerely believe that we're a better fit, and therefore a better choice. We'll find some way to send you a costly signal to that effect. If we're clearly your first choice, we might send a fellowship year from the Graduate School to you so that they pay your salary for another year and we don't—especially if that fellowship year can't be used to fund someone else. In short, no matter what your situation is, there is a justification in our system for throwing more money your way when we're putting together an offer letter. Obviously, we cannot do all of these things simultaneously, and which ones we can do depends on a bizarrely convoluted set of circumstances—it's basically unpredictable a priori, even to us. But none of these incentives—zero—apply to you if we don't know anything at all about your situation.

Sure sounds like him.

Thanks. Very much. I studied under a guy who knows something about the Prisoner's Dilemma. I find that leading with cooperation and playing tit-for-tat, as simple as it sounds, is a really, really good idea. Damn. I wish my chair read these forums. Thanks, again. I'm sorry it didn't work out with us, but it seems you're doing quite well. I hope so. I'm a little nervous at the extent to which the chatter has died down. I really don't want you all to feel at all concerned about reporting acceptances, tracking down rumors, etc. ... like I said, I'm not at all offended that (gasp!) some of you have been applying to other places. Thanks, very much. I do hope there are lots of applications!, but honestly, I hope it's because we have a kick-ass program. As for fighting for applicants: Thank you, but believe me, there's more to it than what I've written. I've got a great committee this year. They're incredibly engaged and active, and when I explained some of the outcomes to them, they were even more outraged than I was. Two of them wrote to me to urge me to petition the Dean, and they wrote a great letter that gave me the ammunition I needed to do it. I've got a chair who backs me up. He even offers to go to meetings and say some really difficult things in my place, since I have to maintain a good working relationship with the same Dean. And I've got an awesome Grad Coordinator who knows the system, has my back all the time, and does a great job of tempering my, um, more intemperate urges into more productive channels. One of the sad things about reading these forums is that you guys underestimate yourselves, pretty consistently. You matter a great deal to a lot of people at a lot of institutions.

I'm going to leave the rest of this post alone—unprofessional to comment, really. But this line struck a nerve. You're not "spending money and time in applying" to a school. You are offering to spend a very significant percentage of your life at a school, studying under the people who work there. The fact that you're offering to do that isn't an inconvenience. It's an honor.

GPA below 3.6: Yes, we would be forced to use a waiver to admit you. The requirement is based on undergraduate GPA only, regardless of time, other degrees, etc. (Let me pause to emphasize that I did not design this system.) Do we ever reject students because they wouldn't receive funding based on waivers? Hmm. We haven't on my watch, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. If we did run out of waivers in the first round, we'd face a hard choice: Do we submit another no-waiver student, or do we accept a student who'll need a waiver in the second round (and surely not be funded in the first)? We get a fair number of waivers—19, if I recall correctly—in the first round, but because it's possible for one student to need more than one waiver (one for GRE, one for GPA, for example), those don't go as far as you'd think. So this sort of calculation, if it did come into play, would matter only in the last few students. But yes, it's conceivable that we'd be forced to forego a prospect we want in favor of one who didn't require a waiver. Rare, but possible. In the second stage, it's more than possible to have a student defunded because of the waiver rule—which, in most cases, amounts to the same thing as rejection, except it comes about a month after the acceptance letter. It's really cruel when that happens. Last year, I took one case to the Dean, and it dragged out long enough that I had to deliver the bad news to the candidate in person, on the visitation weekend. The person in question was impressively gracious; I'm surprised I didn't walk out of that conversation with a black eye. This year, I'm fighting another case, and with a little bit of luck we might just get a different outcome, but I just don't know yet—it's really entirely up to the Dean. How common is a bifurcated funding/admissions setup? I don't know, honestly. I never ran across this sort of situation in other schools, but I was never even on the admissions committee at those places. I suspect it's better in some places and worse in others. It was worse here, actually, before a recent reform gave us some discretionary money: prior to that point, funding was entirely in the hands of the Graduate School.