Thompson

I bet I'm not the only person going, "Wow, every school that I didn't apply to is notifying right now..."

You could probably do a small test using UCSD's published admissions statistics.

Don't feel nervous! They like you. They are strongly considering admitting you. They would like to talk to you to learn more. You're ahead of probably 85% of the people who submitted applications at this point. Be confident!

Can anyone explain to me in general what the formal program of these events in general looks like? I was a little surprised when I heard that UC Davis's event spanned portions of three days (Late Wednesday, all day Thursday, early Friday). My vision of these events before that was of a 3 or 4 hour meet-and-greet, lunch, and short presentation, followed maybe by a short tour.

I will say that at 27, I am feeling quite a lot of personal pressure to get the academic career rolling. It gets a lot harder to move away from roots that you've planted after awhile. I don't regret for one second working in politics for the past 5 years, but I do acknowledge that I am delaying other important things that will happen in my life. I won't be able to put down any serious roots again until my mid-30s, and possibly even later, depending on the job market. I also am not crazy about returning to the semi-impoverished life of a student, after finally finding financial security. If I have to move away from DC, I will dearly miss my condo.

I can second everything people here have said about life changing dramatically by spending your early 20s outside of academia. I don't have much to add there. I will add that even professionally, the benefits can be enormous. I have developed considerable general skills over the last five years that will benefit me substantially for the rest of my life. My personal network is much stronger, including contacts that will be useful for research down the line. My work habits have improved. My ability to work under pressure, interpersonal skills (as simple as making a professional phone call or writing a professional email) and general discipline have improved tremendously since I left college. But most importantly, my intuitive understandings of how campaigns, politics, legislating, and advocacy work have been completely reshaped by actively participating in those worlds.

+1

UC Davis visitation on March 5, 6, 7.

Thanks for this. Looks like February 12-13 was crazy town for notifications last year. UC Davis is 3 weeks ahead of schedule relative to last year.

One of those UC-Davis acceptances is me. Just a form email with a congratulations. I'm assuming something more substantial (either an email or a call) is coming soon, with more information. Super psyched though. Waiting on the rest of my applications is so much easier when the first one is a win. For those that have done it before: What's the protocol after acceptances? I'm assuming I'll get funding information / etc pretty soon, invitation to a accepted students weekend, and a deadline for decision?

Taking the advice from people on this forum, I am applying to a fairly large number of schools. My hope was to ease my recommenders by using Interfolio to send recommendations. I sent out four early deadline sets of recommendations this weekend. Three bounced back from Interfolio, due to supplemental forms. With a whole lot more deadlines coming in mid-December, I'm a little bit concerned. I feel comfortable asking my recommenders to fill out a few forms, but not 75% of the number of schools that I was planning on applying to. So, I have two questions that I'd love some advice on: 1) Is Interfolio going to continue to have a 25% success rate? Or are these early-deadline schools (UT-Austin, Harvard, GMU) just different? 2) Is it unusual to ask a professor to write a large number of recommendations? Huge thanks in advance!

jwstay: I understand where you are coming from. I'm in your boat as well: I'd rather not spent $1500 or more on the application process alone, not to mention other expenses and opportunity costs involved. Unfortunately, we suffer from certain information asymmetries. We don't know how programs are going to value our applications. For this reason, we need to play the odds. I intend to apply to a broad range of schools - ranging from top-5 to outside the top-30, as a result. You should too. Decisions that impact what departments we end up at will inevitably be some of the most important in our professional lives. Applying to 5 schools or applying to 15 schools is a $1000 decision. I sense that you're still in college, so that seems like a lot of money. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't. Bite the bullet, find the money, and apply to as many schools as you can. The difference between a tenure-track job and one of the other options listed above is worth a whole lot more than $1000.

Quigley: I'm curious about how different programs view real world work experience in their selection process. My understanding has always been that while most departments/individuals on committees do not place much weight on it, some do. At that point, I can start to recognize that I'm not trying to appeal to 100% of admissions committees, but rather the minority whose values line up with my strengths. Also, I don't intend for it to substitute for having a good command of the literature, writing ability, ability to handle academic rigor, etc. Right now, the SOP strategy that I'm hoping to follow is to mention my work experience, and then use it as a segue into talking about my research interests and some literature which has influenced me. I've actually used a decent amount of political science research on the job over the last four years, with a surprising amount of success. I don't intend for this SOP to look like a cover letter for a new job.

The username is a pseudonym, and I'm generally fine with an admissions committee linking my posts on this site to my application, but point taken.

Hey everyone: I recently discovered this forum, and although its killing my productivity at work, the forum has done wonders to structure my search and contradict a lot of my false assumptions about the application process. Thank you everyone for providing valuable information to people like me. I'm going to apply broadly to most of the top programs, and a few select ones in the 25-50 range. I am four years out of undergrad and two years out of graduate school, where I earned an MPP from a mid-ranked Public Policy school in DC. The nice thing about the Masters program was that classes were at night, so I spent those two years working a combination of part time jobs in DC and internships. For just over two years so far, I've been working at a fairly influential research and advocacy NGO in a lobbying/communications role. I've always wanted to teach at the college level, and that remains my primary end goal. Ideally, I would like to pursue a job at a small liberal arts college with a 3/3 or occasional 3/2 load, allowing some time for research. I'm narrowing my research interests into a more focused research question right now, but broadly I'm interested in lobbying, party networks, and interest groups, and how they inform and guide the policy process. I also have a strong interest in political corruption at the state and local levels. Right now, I'm narrowing down a universe of about 30 or so schools into about 15 schools that I will apply to. So far, I have particular interest in Brandeis, UNC-Chapel Hill, UCSD, UCLA, Michigan and Maryland, but schools are being added to that list every day. I just took the GREs, and pulled in a 169 V, 158 Q. I think that if I worked very hard, I could pull that Q score up to 165 or so. I'm going to see how August goes, and if I'll be able to get that study time in. My undergrad GPA (generic New England small liberal arts Catholic school) sucked: under 3.5. This concerns me quite a bit, even with a much better high-3s in the MPP program. I'm counting on a strong SOP and the DC work experience to carry me a little bit. And, hopefully, the hard work to make each of 15 SOPs feel purposeful and unique.