BFB

Internal "clout" isn't the first answer I'd give. My very strong preference is for the committee to resolve such disagreements as a whole. If we end up deadlocked, I'll cast the deciding vote just to keep things moving, but I prefer not to do that. And no, that has little to do with internal "clout": admin position aside, I'd probably come out close to last in that competition. My point is that a lot of what you perceive as randomness really isn't. If we decide in the end that you're not a great fit, or that Snodgrass already has too many students, that's not random: those are systematic factors that make this a less suitable place for you to be than you probably realize.

I'm afraid Neocon is right: the answers to all of these vary a lot from place to place. They may well vary from year to year. At OSU, for example, I've made the structure a lot more decentralized just in the past year or two in order to get more relevant feedback from people who are better able to assess your SOPs. I read every file and committee members read all files within their subfields, so most files get read by three people. If we want more input, we may pass files along to fourth (and, rarely, fifth) readers who aren't on the committee. Then we come together to try to resolve all of the conflicting pressures that you mention. This person has a great GPA, that one has great GREs, this other one has a great statement of purpose. How much do you weight them? It just depends. You look for tiebreakers. This one would be a great fit with Professor Snodgrass. That one seems especially likely to come. This other one studies X and we're short on people who study X. It's definitely not the case that we rank the candidates and then just take the top however-many candidates. If you're in the top ten, the odds are very good that we'll take you. If you're in the thirties, it's hit or miss, depending on things like whether Snodgrass has enough people working with him or whether lots of the other top applicants study what you do. But again, I cannot speak for the process in other departments at all.

For applications to the circus, absolutely….

I would like to amend this statement. Single-spaced 9-point Arial Narrow with half-inch margins is a bit much.

What? ETA: Reported as spam. Confirmed. Stand down red alert.

I get the sentiment, and in principle I agree—for a few individual visits. When you have nearly as many people visiting individually as collectively, though, as we did last year, it becomes considerably more difficult to provide the red-carpet treatment that you hope to be able to extend to everyone.

You might, depending on the school.

Correct. I've never been or seen a grad student on a grad admissions committee, fwiw. Nor do we, except with time off.

Sadly, not many. I have this other job….

Absolutely. It's always hard to assess fit. When a faculty member says "I want this person," that gets a whole lot easier.

Heavens. You people really do do your homework. Though this is probably more immediately relevant.

Not an unusual caveat. That said, I've gotten emails from POIs that say "I want this person." YMMV.

Richard Olney's Simple French Food is a terrific book, by the way. Some of the best food in the world was devised by people who were hard up. There's a recipe for a potato daube in there (potatoes, garlic, water, olive oil… that's it) that shouldn't be missed.

Depending on whether or not this is a family situation, you might also be eligible for a diversity fellowship. Depends on the university and whether or not people know to submit your name. Might be worth asking your DGSes.

Thanks to all of you. The answers and the reasoning are quite helpful. And Gnome, polling our admits is probably a better idea, you're right—but we need to set a date as early as possible to ensure that as many faculty as possible are in town

Now it's my turn to ask advice from all of you. We are thinking about when to have our prospective student visit. We used to be on the quarter system, so our spring break was earlier, and we did our visitation weekends in mid-March. Now, though, our weekends look like this: March 6-8: Beginning of spring break, people may be traveling March 13-15: Spring break March 20-22: Available March 27-29: ISA April 3-5: Midwest Looks like March 20-22 is the obvious choice, right? Well, what we discovered last year was that it's the obvious choice for a lot of schools. We ended up having far fewer people visit than we had in the past. We tried to be accommodating, and in the end we had nearly as many individual off-weekend visits as we did regular ones, which was pretty chaotic and didn't give people a sense of one of the most important things about grad school—their cohort. In the end, we had a significantly lower yield than in previous years. Now. One school of thought holds that putting the visiting weekend on the same weekend as those of other schools forces students to choose, and that choice is a good indicator of where they'll end up, so it helps us plan. A different school of thought holds that the visitation weekend is crucial, and that a fair number of fence-sitters have been won over by an awesome potential cohort, a surprisingly cool town, etc., etc. So we face the same choice again this year. Would you rather we a. keep the visitation weekend on March 20-22, knowing that it's likely to be very busy; b. set the visit for (say) March 18-20, Tu-Th., so that more people could visit but would probably have to take more time off of work/jobs; c. set the visit for late February (Feb. 27-March 1)—not my favorite, since February in Columbus is pretty unrepresentative, weather-wise; or d. fill in the blank? And why? Thanks in advance for feedback on this.

I don't see why not. I'd make it a quick note, though: Hello, I'm a potential applicant trying to assess my fit with your department, I'd just like to know whether you would envision working with me on ______. Thanks, me.

Useful stuff. I'd mostly agree. As far as the "fit paragraph" is concerned, it probably doesn't matter much one way or the other. It can be a little reassuring if you've got your POIs' research interests pegged, it can be a little troubling if you're off the mark, but mostly, no big bad, no big good. The really key part, I think, is what he writes about the statement of purpose. Realize that you're writing for nerds, and nothing excites us like another nerd.

2. You're welcome :-) 1. Different departments might react differently. My own sense was that, if you've lined up a formal theorist who's willing to study electoral behavior and an electoral behavior person who's happy to supervise a project that involves formal theory, you'd be in good shape, fit-wise.

Seriously, don't sweat it. In the grand scheme of things, the number of people you mention, the number of pages, the font, etc., etc., will probably make zero difference. I mostly answer these questions because you folks ask them … not because the answers are make-or-break.

I should add—speaking only for myself!—that additional persons of interest don't really do much for me if they're not a solid fit. I care whether you've correctly identified a primary advisor who's a good fit for you. Beyond that, I'd rather read more statement of purpose than read an increasingly tenuous story about how the entire subfield consists of persons of interest.

Hmm. That depends. As a primary advisor—unwise. But if you make it clear that you want your work to benefit from a wide range of perspectives, and Professor Mearwaltzenschweller would be an ideal person to force you to do the best work you can possibly do, I'd buy it. I actually think that's a really smart strategy in general.

This would be absolutely delightful.

You'd be surprised. I think people assume that a nameless, faceless administrator is reading their essays, rather than the person they've just named as being perfect to oversee a dissertation on topic X. It's a pretty substantial minus when that person has never written a word on topic X.

This.