cooperstreet

Can I ask why you would want to pay for a MA at a mediocre school in political theory?

Well ask yourself this: what IR people have a regional specialty?

incorrect yes it doesn't seem like youre a theorist. however having a regional focus in IR is problematic for admissions. don't get pigeonholed.

meaning rutgers is a state school and can't fund all their students.

In political science? they are rare. Rutgers is the best. Why not take a short drive from bethlehem to new brunswick and try and talk to some profs? also beware that Rutgers has funding issues.

Depending on where you go, there's a pretty big gap between these two fields.

With the number of posts like this, I'm getting very worried about the reading ability of our future diplomatic corps.

best bet is to check out the personal websites of people whose work you like or who know publish in top journals. They almost always will host pdfs of their work.

you probably need to go to a different forum. This is for political science graduate school. the international/govt affairs are a different forum on grad cafe.

I believe most require that the papers are not coauthored.

FWIW I didn't mention any of my non school related work, which amounted to a decade. However, I didn't do anything interesting, just had a job that paid the bills and gave me flexibility while I fed my addiction (academia). In my program now there people who have done some cool things before their PhD, like been in the army or did fieldwork abroad or whatever.

I want study variance can I go to osu

you're fine. kill the GREs and read journals. try and get one good rec letter from a political scientist.

short answer: yes you can switch fields. I took ONE political science course before I got into a CHYMPS. 2 questions: what's your math background? what's your language background? the best way to signal your committment and knowledge is to be commited and knowelable--read tons of shit in poltiical science journals on the area you want to study. you need to know the debates methods issues in the field, that way when you write your SOP you show that you know what you are talking about.

yes you can 'switch' do you want to do theory?

all other things equal, do you want to do a senior thesis?

101 is the number indicating an introductory level course, so diplomacy 102 would be the next class up from that. google 101. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_(number)#In_education

Its not well regarded. I just looked up the CVs of their IR faculty. Its underwhelming. Only go if you are getting paid and you enjoy it and dont want a job in academia.

has been officially accepted by a peer-reviewed journal of the University of Chicago Press is it a good journal? in your field? do people read it? care about it? People generally don't care about student run journals. but everything helps esp. if it shows you can do the work. Everyone has a chance, but from what I understand it is VERY difficult to get into a top program in the US from china if you have no education in the states. Be sure to apply to the MA programs of these departments if it doesn't cost you extra.

higher is better. I think those scores would be on the lower end of those accepted, but not the lower end of those that applied.

to answer your question thought, MA political science admissions are not competitive because why would they be. who wants to pay for them?

for many of us a practical political science degree is a contradiction in terms.

no i mean why a ma in poli sci and not a ma from one of those professional schools like SIPA or SAIS. Seems kinda silly to drop a hundred grand on a degree that doesn't qualify you for much.

why do you want a ma in poli sci

crossing subfields isn't interdisciplinary. don't worry too much about subfield, some things of study like conflict are on the cp/ir divide and thats ok