dnexon

Want to underscore poliscipls plea but at a general level. If you know you're not going to go to one or more of the schools that accepted you, you should really decline the offer(s) ASAP. It benefits no one to hold off, and it generates some modicum of goodwill to be a 'good citizen' of the profession, i.e., to facilitate moving down the waitlist(s). Keep in mind that as an incoming PhD student, let alone a possible future academic, you're dealing with people are going to be your peers and colleagues. (And we may not be talking about in terms of "the invisible college." I'm old enough to have interviewed, discussed the papers of, & helped out people who got accepted at Georgetown but went elsewhere – almost always for totally legit reasons; if you've dealt with me you may know that I'll tell prospective students to go elsewhere when it's in their interests to do so).

So I decide to check on this website and... anyway, our process is almost done – the step I referenced is the penultimate stage before we start informally contacting admitted & waitlisted students. "The tweets above are from the Georgetown IR subfield chair. He is the one who recommends the list of acceptances. He said he has done the recommendations to the DGS." That's not how it works. While field chairs (at least this year) are automatically on the committee, all the PhD decisions are done by the field committees and then the whole committee together. I'm sure that some places might be more hierarchical. I've never thought to ask. (anyway, if it helps anyone I'm signing off here but I'll try to check in on the thread that Bear used to post on)

Have you still not received anything?

It would depend on the specifics of the case, but I imagine different schools have different systems and constraints.

In truth, I'm pleased that it is being assigned. I know the article is dense, but I think we're right about the philosophy of science as (mis)applied to IR. I hope more come on. My sense is that more information is generally better for everyone. But a lot of what we offer boils down to anecdote, hearsay, and the product of our own biases. It would be nice if we spent more time systematically studying processes such as the so-called "job market" -- and if schools were more transparent such that we could gather better data about them.

Sure. No better or worse than any other reputation-based survey. At some point I'll post some thoughts on how I think this stuff should be parsed.

University of Maryland is also very strong. The major difference is that Iowa is in the Peace Studies network, while GU and GWU are more aligned with Security Studies. Methodological convergence makes the differences less pronounced than they once were -- and there are people who straddle both communities -- but the two arenas remain, for lack of a better term, different "communities of discourse" and this has implications for where their modal placements go.

I'm not a neutral party here, but let me say that these are all strong programs. Now, having said that, you should remember that you are not locked into a subfield. You can go to UVA and do CP or GWU and IR. Also, although all four schools now provide a solid-to-excellent methodological foundation, the kind of IR or CP you would do at, say, Iowa, is very different from what you would do at GU or GWU. Not better or worse, just different. And that will have downstream influences on career trajectory.

We've had serious SNAFUs with confirming rejections. In general, if you haven't heard from us, you're not in :-(.* However, we've had a few additional admissions over the last few days, and that might be what this is referring to. Again, if you want info, feel free to email me <<dhn2 @ my school's email>>. *Have I mentioned how much I don't enjoy this job? It isn't fun to tell interesting -- and often qualified -- students that they've been rejected.

Because they use different methodologies. I'd ignore NRC and use USNWR as a rough guide to the status hierarchy in the discipline.

I'm not sure I agree entirely. I think an MA at the LSE carries weight with some programs. But US institutions with strong political-science departments are more traditional "feeders" for US PhD programs.

Another quick point: if you aggregate what I, BFB, and Irfan have said you might recognize a pattern: it is very difficult for an applicant to predict the quality of letters. The assistant professor who worked closely with you might put ten minutes of effort into a form letter. That big name might write you a personalized letter of the sort that opens plenty of doors. Yes, you should be smart about picking writers; you should not be afraid to have a frank discussion with professors and/or employers before making a final decision about who writes your letters. But you should also recognize that there's a lot about this process that you cannot control. And, to be honest, a lot of what stinks about this process -- lack of control, lots of rejections, being at the mercy of idiosyncratic evaluators, and so forth -- pretty much applies to the entirety of academic life.

Don't worry, I won't hold it against you.

I agree with the OSU mafia. A detailed letter that draws meaningful comparisons and speaks to a prospective student's strengths and weaknesses is terrific. Letters can also be extremely helpful when it comes to basic things... like reminding readers that an undergraduate institution does not have significant grade inflation. I'm not sure about how best to approach the larger question. It isn't just that institutions weigh elements differently; individual committee members do as well. And, as Irfan pointed out on a different thread, the structure of fellowship allocation is different -- and in consequential ways -- across different schools. That's why the basic line you'll hear from us is to get your GREs as high as possible, pick writers who will produce personalized and detailed recommendations that speak specifically to your academic potential, and signal your competency to acquire necessary skills -- such as statistical methods, formal theory, languages, etc.

I suppose that I'll add my .02 to the "clustering" discussion here. It is both true that (1) the process is very flawed and that (2) admissions often cluster around the same candidates at many schools. This shouldn't surprise anyone, though. Admissions committee work off of the same information. They deploy similar strategies for coping with the weaknesses of that information. And there's also external pressure to weight the same factors, e.g., GRE scores. It follows that those schools who look for the same kinds of candidates are likely to cluster. Indeed, I've noticed that graduate admissions at my institution are often very sensitive to the particular individuals that sit on our subcommittees. Yet our pool still clusters -- just with a slightly different set of schools!

Soonish. I kept a wall of rejections when I applied to grad school, but I'm not sure what the other good use of the official letter is.

Maths and stats classes -- if you do well -- are definitely a good signal. But I wouldn't put my life on hold with the idea of eventually pursuing a PhD. When you look at the odds of getting into a program (very low) and the state of the current job market (not quite depressing, but definitely a downer).... that suggests, at least, hedging your bets.

Quick note: Georgetown's remaining acceptances went out at COB yesterday. Again, email me if you have any questions.

Interesting. We tend to place much more value on recommendations. For us, the statement of purpose is more a signal of "does this person have any idea what it means to do political science" -- as is the writing sample -- as the correlation between statement of purpose and PhD topic is, shall we say, loose.

This a good question, but it doesn't have a straightforward answer other than YMMV. In general, background and prior studies matter as signals of future performance; students often shift their focus once in graduate school; the distinction between CG and IR is already pretty blurred. I'd think evidence of either language skills -- or the ability to acquire relevant languages -- would be more important than a shift from "US policy toward" to "the region itself." But so much of this process hinges on who happens to be reading your files in a given year that I'd be wary of generalizing.

I should clarify: no, not all of our admits have been notified. When I say "wait list" I mean our "wait list" for funding. We do not have a "wait list" for admissions. Indeed, most of those on our "wait list" for funding have not been notified yet. This should be rectified very shortly. I will make sure that I post here when I have confirmation that everyone has been notified. My apologies for the confusion. Again, if you have any questions, feel free to email me.

These warnings all sound like par for the course. And no, I haven't been lurking for a long time. So, let's make this quick: 1) Yes, we've made our initial decisions; 2) As of this morning, not everyone on our wait list had been notified; 3) I oversee the process, but I don't directly make the decisions -- if you applied to us, there's a good chance that I've never seen your file; 4) As of now, I'm not in a position to tell you your status as it never works out well when I get ahead of our notification procedures; and 5) We've been working with some major adjustments to the way we do things this year, which is why everything is taking so #^!&* long. Sorry. Feel free to contact me if you have specific questions. PS: Thanks for the kind words -- I'll try to get the podcast process back up and running soon.

Faculty alarm? Good idea. We eat brains.

I just want to reiterate this point. The admissions process is a bit of a "salami factory." Committees work in a low-information environment and have to reject most of their pool. Not only can't you take your status personally, but you should always choose the program you want to attend -- regardless of whether you were admitted in the first round or off of a wait list.