MissingVandyCandy

I really want to know where these letters/e-mails are... I haven't heard anyone else having gotten notice and decisions were made last Friday. Where are the e-mails? Seriously how long does it take to send the word, "No." to 250 e-mail addresses and "Yes, more info forthcoming" to 35 addresses? If they really did make decisions last Friday this is taking a long azz time. :x

Nice, congrats. WUSTL is a great program with an excellent placement history!

"No Thanks" from 110 North Hall as well. Damn Madison looked like a great place to spend 6 years. At least I won't have to watch lousy Big 10 Football for 6 years. SEC SEC SEC

And ladies and gentlemen I get the distinct privilege to reply to my own post to inform our small forum that I too got my rejection from 110 North Hall...This is not a proposition that recommends itself... Damn and I thought I had a shot there and it was one of my top 4 choices. Well, 7 life lines left. Regis? Regis? I'd like to use a lifeline at UT-Austin...

So I've heard from someone on the board that UW-Madison has sent out letters. This individual's was a rejection (I am sure mine is coming). Has anyone else heard from UW. If you could post the decision (Y/N), how and when you heard, and where you are located... that would be great. Thanks everyone.

Ha... i hope my comments were not offensive. They weren't intended to be - just a lame attempt at academic humor. I think my own personal biases against moving the discipline further away from historical, interpretive and APD approaches probably causes me to look down at the number crunchers who think they can predict judicial behavior via the Larry Baum Antonin Scalia Judicial Insensitivity equation LB + AS/Clarence Thomas - Alito = the end of Abortion Rights. Though I confess I know nothing on the comparative side. I do get scared of people who think they can use numbers to predict global volatility and wars. I mean is it helpful sure. But as someone who never even took calc, color me an ignorant skeptic but i just happen to be a contrarian within Poli Sci who thinks human behavior is a little to contextual to use equations to deconstruct it with any accuracy. But I do hope you get into your schools. I hope to be one of those posers period one day who can make his own schedule and teach 2 courses a semester.

Honestly now that you filled me in with this detail, I think you're fine. You have a great GRE score and the difference between intro Calc courses at the undergrad level and AP Calc is really not much. To which schools did you apply (assuming you're comfortable sharing). BTW 610 Verbal isn't horrible. That would be in the 80s percentile wise right? Nothing to be ashamed of. And when it comes to math, a lot of these poli sci guys are posers. Sure they can get up there at the lecturn and run on and on about methods and statistical significance but that's mostly due to years of using SASS and Probit and Stata, whoppee dee do. If you had a real mathematician in the room they could make intellectual mincemeat of these guys. If Alan Krueger at Princeton started to question/scrutinize half of these behavioralists in their methods there would be blood flowing out of the tower and it would no longer be ivory but pink.

I know several of you have already gotten in somewhere. Congrats. As competitive as PhD programs are some of us will not get in anywhere. I imagine most of you, like me, are utterly convinced that the prospect of a career outside of college teaching and academia is really a tough/bitter pill to swallow. I know the idea of a 9-5 would probably put me into long term depression (many of you might be in the same position). I don't hate my job, but it isn't my passion and I am the sort of person that can't compartmentalize my job from my passion. I am convinced that academia is the only career that allows one to tie their job to perpetual learning for oneself. Anyway blah blah blah.. My point/question is this... I have no reason to despair yet (haven't been rejected), but that said, it is possible... so I want to poll everyone: What will you do? Will you try again. Will you go into depression? Will you quit your job and sulk? LOL... points for creativity.

It's really hard to say and the answer to your query is probably not generalizable but rather on a program by program basis. Some schools I applied to directly asked on a supplement form the highest level of math/quantitative courses I had taken. Generally the Big 10 schools are very empirical. Despite the fact that I am anti-behavioralist myself and very much an APD prospective graduate student who really wants to take the bear minimum, I applied to some of those Big 10 schools (hey maybe diversity will work in my favor). Again some programs may worship at the altar of the GRE Q portion, but I think that really isn't the case. It depends on what you want to study. I wouldn't expect to get into Ohio State to study judicial politics with Laurance Baum if you're a self-professed qualitative and historical Americanist. Baum would want to see that you took Calculus and probably scored 700 and up on the Q section. But for comparative it depends what programs you applied to and whether you were able to identify a prospective mentor who was open to a diversity of methods and not wedded to numbers crunching.

I kind of think the whole undergrad major thing is a little bit of a misnomer. Political Science really isn't much of a squared discipline despite the use of subfields to try and define it, it's purely a diaspora... I mean methods and public administration are much more closely related to undergrad majors in organizations, mathematic modeling and even economics. On the other end of the spectrum (or diaspora) of Political Science you have theory and American Political Development which are actually not even close to the "science" in Political Science in that they are anti-behavioralist. Instead this segment of the diaspora is much closer to an undergrad major in History or Sociology. The point is simply that Poli Sci is an enormous discipline that isn't well defined even by its standard bearers (attend an APSA conference and you will know what I mean). So my entire point here is simply to those of you who didn't major in "Political Science" it really bears no relation to your preparedness or what admissions committees will think about you. If you were a math major and now want to apply to Stanford's Political Science department to study methods and formal modeling you're probably going to be more of what they want than the applicant who earned their B.A. in Politics and wrote a thesis on campaigns and elections at Harvard... At this high level specialization is the name of the game. Just my 2Cents... Anyone else just itching to get some decisions? I've had none yet and anticipate the majority will be coming in late March. Sucks waiting when you have mentally moved on from your job and ready to figure out where you will be laying roots.

I wouldn't give up too much on not hearing via e-mail today. The graduate coordinators aren't as a whole always spot on in their accuracy and with today's holiday she could have just said Monday without thinking it through when she said that last Friday. That said, the University was open for business today. I don't think e-mailing is in poor form at all. I've had several friendly back and fourths with MM their Coordinator and she's always been happy to give me the latest info and very gracious in doing so. Again, her e-mail to me was open to interpretation. She said letters would start to go out Monday, and that e-mails would go out to everyone as well. But she didn't say that the e-mails would go out Monday, just that they would go out as well. Who knows. We'll know by the end of this week though.

I was told by the Graduate Department Coordinator that the admissions committee met this past Friday at 10 AM to make final decisions. She further told me that e-mails and letters would go out Monday, February 18th (today). I have not received any word yet - probably a bad sign (perhaps only the e-mail notification goes to the 20-40 acceptances and the rest just get a letter later this week. In any event, I thought this info would be useful for others who have applied to UT's PhD program in Government....