cooperstreet

Columbia sent out their acceptance students/recruitment weekend email, so I'm willing to bet they are done with acceptances.

Thank you.

FWIW, If you check off that you would like to be considered for the MA program at Columbia it will take A LONG DAMN TIME to get an official rejection.

Got a near perfect GPA. Presented at APSA and ISA-NE. Reworked and re-tailored my SOP to each school, got less shy and asked for more input for more people. I did not mention that I reapplied, I asked committees how to improve but that was futile. One school mentioned my low undergrad GPA, which I can't change, plus I'm 30 and that was over 10 years ago. Yes I was not a good student when I was 18. Also, got back on the horse. That helped. Sucks getting rejected but you only need ONE fully funded offer.

I haven't heard anything from Penn, but FYI Philly was hit hard by the snow, and closed down a lot during the past couple of weeks.

I had a low UGPA, but a 3.85 in my MA. I took the GRE 3 times--but over 11 years.

I did!

Also, I got in to two programs over the years, but they weren't funded.

To be fair, 15 of those were History Phd programs, that I applied to before I switch to PS, although studying similar fields. I also only applied to the most selective programs, and for the past two years I was regionally restricted to between Philadelphia and NYC.

Yeah, I'm IR and I heard from Columbia.

That was me. I've applied for 4 rounds. Finally.

I suggest you find a program that has people who study Turkey--you will be in a much better position. and FYI, if you say you want to study the comparative political economy of the ME in your application to Penn you wont make it past the first round because they don't have anyone there who studies that.

That verbal score is quite low. You say you want to study comparative political economy with a focus on the Middle East, which suggests a quantitative approach. So scratch Penn of your list because there is no one there that does that. Hows your Arabic or Turkish or Hebrew?

I second what JoeW92 says. How many IR scholars are there who do IR and speak Arabic? I literally cannot think of any.

As you may know, getting anywhere useful with Arabic will take 5 years or so. If you're at the elementary stage, does that mean that you took one year at Temple? Keep in mind that is equivalent to about one semester at most other schools.

wut

Do you want to do quant? If so, do you have math classes on your transcripts. Either way, you're fine.

anything more specific? what type of methods would you like to use?

What are your interests?

I'm fuckin outta here once my apps are submitted.

Before the great Bear jumps in here, I would quickly add that I don't think many people will have extensive formal models in their writing sample, at least compared to more general statistical analysis. I think its really hard to write models before you have a lot of game theory/micro coursework. It doesn't take THAT much skills to run some regressions (takes a lot to do it right).

GRE writing scores are useless, right?

I published something in a British journal, and they automatically changed all the spellings from American to British, so there's that.

I took the GREs twice, once in 2009 and once this year. 2009 scores: 750V, 710Q, 5.5AW 2013 scores: 167V, 168Q, 4.0AW Should I send both? Will the 4.0 AW hurt me? Seriously, that section sucks. Does anyone care?

You're fine.