TheGnome

How about 1,3,X,5,7 ?

I echo what TMCB said. However, if there are other schools that you think are good fits, would be happy to attend, and have the extra money for the application fees, I would go ahead and apply to them as well.

I believe it was either Prof Braumoeller or Prof Nooruddin, who said in another thread that the OSU graduate school required the applicants to fill out that question, and that they did not care about it. That may not necessarily be representative of the application process elsewhere, but my best guess would be that the adcom members in other schools also view this issue the same way.

I feel you, though I think "paranoid applicant" is a tautology.

I imagine this would be a trivial issue, but to me, the safest way to go is to use scanned copies

And when the decisions start to come out in late January... Real fun begins then.

No

None says POLITICAL ECONOMY then?

I think many (most?) people who do Civil War stuff tend to identify with the IR camp, though people from both fields produce good work in that area. Beware of the wrath of the Coach!!!

Whoa! Is that guy for real? That CV is hurting my eyes!! I'll go discuss this in depth with a bottle of something, preferably 80-proof or higher...

+1

I hate that. It always catches you unprepared/under-prepared (yep, I am not a first timer either). Though looking at it from the bright side, it kind of forces you to put together a file early on, so that you have a pretty good start on working on your apps for the other schools.

Penelope Higgins on phd admissions and languages

I don't think what you said about sianover's Q score is necessarily true cooper, unless you have insider knowledge on the admissions process in every one of those schools. Sianover, 158 in Q is not a plus, and you can reasonably expect that to hurt your chances at top programs.There is always the possibility that your file will be weeded out in some places if they have a high GRE cutoff, and if they are very serious about it. However a quick search in the gradcafe forums will reveal that people have been accepted at top institutions with similar GRE scores pretty much every year. If you have a solo peer-reviewed publication, good letters, and a well written SOP, there is no reason why those should not compensate for the low Q score. A last note - Farhad Karzami is an emeritus professor. I am definitely not the authority on this, but I think it is not a great idea to drop an emeritus prof name in your SoP as your primary person of interest.

If I were you I would look at the countless "evaluate my profile" threads on this forum. Keep in mind that there is no set criteria for admissions, and strengths in one part of your application can mitigate the weaknesses in the other parts of your application. I just want to add one note. GWU and George Mason are pretty bad in terms of funding their students from what I hear. Also given their location, their admissions process is said to be more competitive than their peer institutions. This is particularly valid for GWU. So you might want to take that into account when considering these schools.

Hey RLemkin, I just saw your signature. Considering you are interested in neoclassical realism, did you consider applying to Ohio State as well? Randall Schweller is there as far as I know. This was off topic, so I apologize from doctoralgrad23.

I can't really think of any other place that one would pick over the top 5 schools - if there are no personal/family factors weighing on the decision that is.

I smell Rochester

It doesn't work that way in political science, not normally anyway. If you think the fit is good, apply. There is no need to contact professors

I am in a similar boat in terms of having research interests that are different (changed) than some of the stuff on my CV would suggest. I don't talk about those at all in my SOP and focus almost exclusively on elaborating my current research interests and fit. I guess I thought that demonstrating my fit and my familiarity with the discipline and the topics that I am interested in would yield the most benefit, but I would definitely be interested to see if anyone has any comments on that.

That may be so, but you will do that once you get in anyway. They will teach you how to do these things. Also I did not mean to dismiss conference presentations, I think beefing up your resume however you can is a good strategy. My point was that compared to the core components of your application -GRE, GPA, SOP, etc- , the impact of conference presentations is probably minimal, therefore it is not wise to put too much stock into them. Would they help? Sure, but it won't make or break the application. This is, at least, my take on it (i.e. random guy at gradcafe), so take it for whatever it is worth. There is a greater margin of error in interpreting the value of publications. If you have a scholarly, peer reviewed publication, it should definitely be a good signal. If not, well it is good to have it than not I guess but shouldn't be terribly important. Then again, not all peer-reviewed publications are created equal, so it is hard to tell how good a signal that would be. If you propose to do some sort of IPE work in your SOP, and show that you have a piece in Review of International Political Economy that would be a fantastic signal about your academic potential. Then again, even the graduates of top schools often do not have such pubs in their CVs when they go into the job market, so I cant imagine that to be a common situation among PhD applicants.

Oh wow, good luck. There are quite a number of schools in short driving distance to New Haven though. I am sure there should be other options beside Yale, that would work both for your research interests and your relationship.

The deadlines are approaching fast folks. Anyone started freaking out yet? God knows I have...

I would still say the same thing though if you would switch MPSA presentation with APSA presentation, which has a significant rejection rate. My comments were about conference presentations in general, not specifically about MPSA.

Conference presentations are nice but their impact on admissions -I think- is probably trivial in the grand scheme of things. They might matter more if there is a choice to be made between you and someone else with a similar profile. Alternatively they might help offset a perceived weakness in your file. In any case, I wouldn't put too much stock into it. Your profile looks quite good though, so I am sure you will do great.