alphazeta

I don't think that using mostly qualitative methodology compromises your potential field if you do it well and if you make a strong case that you're matching your methods appropriately to your questions. On the other hand, it's definitely true that having strong skills in statistical methods can give you a leg up. Just look at a few job ads, and you'll see how many jobs listed in the substantive subfields mention a preference for a candidate who can teach statistics. There were losers in the methods war, but it wasn't the qualitative methodologists. What is no longer possible in the discipline is the sort of sweeping, macrohistorical approach that you find in Barrington Moore or Sam Huntington - that is conclusions drawn from cross-national comparisons that sweep decades or centuries of history into a few dozen pages relying on the author's sweeping conclusions about large-scale patterns. By the same token, the broadly similar style of, say, J. David Singer (huge, time series crosssectional regressions that throw in the kitchen sink) in quantitative methods has also fallen very much out of favor. Particularly in comparative politics, we're witnessing the triumph of detailed, context-dependent work on both the qualitative and quantitative front. There's not much reward to quantitative scholars who just run regressions on off-the-shelf datasets and there's not much reward to qualitative scholars who just write up conclusions based on a reading of off-the-shelf historical sources. Rewards today accrue to people who go out and gather new information directly relevant to their specific question (whether in field experiments or elite interviews; intensive efforts to gather/code quantitative data or intensive ethnography). If it's actually the right method for your question, I can only think of a handful of places that would object to a primarily qualitative approach and they've been mentioned above (WashU, Rochester, Cal Tech, etc.). Now, I'm assuming above that you're interested in qualitative but also broadly positivist approach. This very much changes if you're not broadly interested in a positivist, empirical research program.

1) Based on your description, you have a really strong profile with just a single flaw in the form of an utterly abysmal quant score (and probably the largest discrepancy I've ever seen between quant and verbal). You should consider a retake. Bump up that quant score and you'd be competitive at top programs. 2) A 3.98 GPA goes a long way towards offsetting the quant score, especially if it's from a well-regarded university. 3) With good letters and statements, I don't think the quant score will wreck your chances at any of the places you list. From what I hear, it's genuinely true that most places actually review the full file and don't use rigid cutoffs on GRE or GPA. 4) As general advice, I say it's better to shoot high and miss than shoot low. As specific advice, I've seen a number of students over the years come into grad programs saying that they want to get a non-academic job, teach at a community college, etc. Even if that's truly what you want, graduate school socializes you into wanting an R1 academic job. A lot of people change their aspirations and become frustrated about choices they made earlier on that have made that path more difficult. So think carefully about what your goals really are.

APSA posts a fair amount of data about this sort of stuff at: http://www.apsanet.org/RESOURCES/Data-on-the-Profession. You'll want to look under the "Employment Data" tab. One of the statistics they collect is the number of students on the market in each subfield and the number of them that get jobs. Going back as far as the data go (unfortunately, the data pool TT on non-TT jobs together as "academic" jobs) For the Americanists: 2009-2010: 178 on the market of whom 135 placed in "academic" jobs (76.3%) 2010-2011: 214 on the market of whom 133 placed in "academic jobs" (62.1%) 2011-2012: 210 on the market of whom 127 placed in "academic jobs" (65.5%) 2012-2013: 257 on the market of whom 156 placed in "academic" jobs (60.9%) 2013-2014: 218 on the market of whom 96 placed in TT jobs (44%) and 45 placed in non-TT academic jobs (20.6%) 2014-2015: 265 on the market of whom 93 placed in TT jobs (35.4%) and 69 placed in non-TT academic jobs (26.2%) For the comparativists: 2009-2010: 290 on the market of whom 184 placed in "academic" jobs (63.4%) 2010-2011: 341 on the market of whom 219 placed in "academic" jobs (64.2%) 2011-2012: 276 on the market of whom 140 placed in "academic" jobs (59.1%) 2012-2013: 275 on the market of whom 153 placed in "academic jobs" (55.6%) 2013-2014: 239 on the market of whom 64 placed in TT jobs (26.8%) and 45 placed in non-TT academic jobs (18.8%) 2014-2015: 286 on the market of whom 97 placed in TT jobs (34.3%) and 44 placed in non-TT academic jobs (15.5%) Obviously, this is noisy data, but I think the general picture is fairly and corresponds to the take of everyone I know - the job market for Americanists is generally better than the job market for comparativists. It's worth noting that region matters a great deal within CP. People studying China or the Middle East have by far the best prospects. People studying Europe have, frankly, abysmal prospects. That said - you shouldn't really let this influence you too much. You need to follow your passion - things don't tend to work out for people who select their field of study too "tactically". If you don't actually love it, you won't succeed.

There's a wealth of information in the Department's self review: http://www.senate.ucla.edu/programreview/documents/SelfReview_003.pdf

Your objectives matter a great deal here. If you think you'll need to pursue a second masters from HKS, then why go to either in the first place? It just seems like a waste of time. If that's really your end goal, I think you should just go to Columbia and waste one year instead of two. If you want to go on to a PhD, then your objective while in the masters program should be to take PhD courses. I don't the details of either of these programs, but if one of them will let you take the political science PhD courses, that's a very big plus. Given you're fully funded, there are probably some advantages to the two year program for PhD apps (e.g., you can apply in the fall of your second year, taking advantages of the networks you've built on campus more easily than in the one year case where you'll no longer be a student when applying). On balance, though, I don't think it really matters. Doing well at either will position you strongly for PhD applications so I'd just decide on the personal merits.

1) To be clear, there's no such thing as PhD transferring in a sense comparable to transferring in undergrad. Rather, high-performing students at lower-ranked places often apply to higher-ranked places. Your application is evaluated in the same pool and you'll be required to substantially start over. You'll often be able to count some of your previous coursework towards requirements, but you still enter the new program as a "first year." 2) Yes the graduate school GPA should be helpful. Like posters above, I do think that your application should be (should have been?) competitive for top 30 places. A 3.47 undergrad isn't doing you any favors, but it's not horrible either. I need to say this again because it's important: Don't pay for a masters degree at Brandeis. It's a waste of your money.

No. Don't do it. Do not do it. 20k in tuition is a lot, and I'm assuming you'd also have to finance your living costs, which will not be cheap at Brandeis. So you're either taking on what I'd imagine is 35k+ in debt or depleting savings by a comparable amount. After that, you're off to grad school for 5+ years, where you'll make, optimistically, $20k. That means you're not paying down that debt. While it's possible that you'll be a star and graduate straight into a TT position at a top-10 where you'll make real money, the modal outcome is another year or two in a post-doc or VAP where, you'll make, say, $40k, so some or all of that debt is still hanging over you. With a GRE retake, a strong SOP, and the right letters of rec (particularly if they speak to any extenuating circumstances with respect to the GPA), the GPA won't disqualify you. The grad school GPA will help some. Give the PhD applications a shot. If the best place that accepts you (with funding) is below what you're shooting for, go anyway and work your butt off for the first two years, then apply to the Top-X again. There's nothing wrong with doing this and I've known people who have made it work. At least you won't be taking on debt.

I'm not sure exactly what the situation is at UCLA right now, but they're historically had problems with funding for grad students (admitting a number without funding, forcing students to compete for funding, etc.). I wouldn't bank on Rogowski - he actually spends half his year at NYU-Abu Dhabi. Michael Ross is, so far as I now, a pretty solid guy but I'm not sure he's the right advisor for a project on international finance. I wouldn't be putting UCLA so high on my list if I were you. Honestly, I'm not that familiar with the program at Michigan. On reputation, Franzese would probably make a good advisor for this sort of thing and there are some good junior IPE people. Relative to its standing in other subfields, Michigan is rather weak in IR though.

Given a decent performance on the GRE, this is a very competitive profile. In particular, if you have letters of recommendation that describe your thesis as "one of the best we've ever seen," that will be a huge, huge positive absolutely anywhere. Harvard would be strong for your interests and you should apply there. Not only does Jeff Frieden work on exactly this, he's one of the more committed advisors in the profession. I'm guessing your Canadian background sways you towards Canadian universities, but you'll be better off in the U.S. The TRIP survey of IR faculty, for example, shows that Canadian faculty believe US PhDs are more marketable in Canada than Canadian ones. When asked to rank PhD programs worldwide, Canadian faculty put universities in both the UK and US in the top 10 but none from Canada. If you ultimately decide to go for a job in the US, there's an even stronger preference for US PhDs. I think Harvard is probably the best place for this. I'd rank UCSD above your other bolded programs. Honestly I'd take McGill off the list. Some skepticism about Berkeley is probably warranted. I imagine you want to work with Barry Eichengreen and I don't think he's very involved in political science. Princeton is also strong and you should consider it, particularly if your interests have a CPE component (Helen Milner, Carles Boix, Andrew Moravcsik, Bob Keohane but he's getting older, Christina Davis). I think most people see Penn as an up-and-comer, but there's no one there to act as an advisor on par with Frieden/Lake/Milner and I don't see them as having particular strength in IPE. Columbia has a good political economy group, but not really on the IPE side, if you're trying to limit the number of applications to 5-7 (which isn't necessarily a great idea), I'd cut them in favor of Harvard/Princeton. I also wouldn't bother with Toronto. NYU is a reasonable choice. So far as a "safety school" goes, I'd move UVA from the "looking at" to replace USC/Waterloo, maybe GW as well.

Fit has several components: 1) Topic: Are there faculty in the department actively researching the topics that you want to study? 2) Methodological/Theoretical Orientation: Is the department open to the types of methodological and theoretical approaches that you anticipate employing? That is, even if the people are studying exactly the topics you want to study, you don't "fit" if they do formal modeling and you want to do ethnography. I don't know enough about urban studies to comment on it, but in some research areas there are also theoretical fault lines that it's difficult to work across. 3) Fit with Department: This is a bit more complicated, but are you planning to work with faculty who are in the mainstream of the department? This can be hard to know, but you won't fit well if your proposed advisors are black sheep within the department. Partly, this is about assessing whether you see a match between yourself and other faculty. 4) Fit with Orthodoxy: This is largely a combination of #2 and #3 but you assess it differently. Do you like you will do the kind of research that the department wants to promote? Mostly, this means do you look like the grad students coming out of the program? There are, for example, senior scholars who do mostly qualitative research but who expect their students to do mostly quantitative research. Check out the webpages of recent graduates/job market candidates. Does the work they are doing look like the work you want to be doing?

I want to return to what several of us have said above (and what I think is honestly the most important point in this thread): Do not worry about trying to impress people. You're already in. They're sold. Now it's their turn to sell you. It's not really even necessary to "prepare" for these meetings. You'll probably want to ask what people are working on (and this is useful information to have), but reading recent publications won't really do much for that conversation. Just ask about it and then listen to the answer. If it seems appropriate, ask about opportunities for collaboration (not in the sense of "hire me now as your RA" though). Be prepared to talk about your interests in a general way. You're not being quizzed - you don't need to be impressive, but sharing your general research interests will help faculty POIs tell you about relevant resources, etc. Ask about training, especially methods training, as appropriate. Feel free to ask about culture. With potential advisors, feel free to ask if they have any plans to leave in the foreseeable future. These are casual conversations. In general, expect the faculty member to do the vast majority of the talking but make sure to ask any questions you need answered.

Feel free to PM if you'd like to have a more specific decision. It sounds like P1 is probably a better choice. 1) It's not necessary to have advisors whose interests are "extremely" related to yours. It can, in some cases, even be detrimental (if you're ultimately perceived as being too derivative on their work). Honestly, in my opinion, "kind of" related is better (depending on what you mean by kind of). By the end of your dissertation, you will be the expert on your specific research area. You need an advisor with sufficient expertise to guide you along the way, but it's often useful if this person is at some remove from the specific topic. This makes it easier to get advice on the broader framing/relevance, to get advice that helps you see things differently, etc. 2) Don't underestimate rank and placement history, particularly if the difference is large. These are very imperfect signals about how you can expect to fare in the future (and I wouldn't encourage you to think of them that way), but they're good indicators of what kind of peers you can expect to have and how your department is regarded by outsiders. Both of these are important. 3) I wouldn't equate smaller department with "closer relationship with advisors". That's something to feel out on the visit weekends. 4) Money matters, but be careful in considering it. You're not going to grad school for the money (and a small placement difference will more than wash out any difference in grad school earnings). That said - you'll be more productive and happier if you're not struggling financially. You're going to spend 5-7 years in this place. Much the same holds for location. 5) You haven't discussed training. Is this to imply that its equal at the two departments? In particular, do they offer similar opportunities to acquire methods skills that you will need for your research?

I'm not sure we're even disagreeing on point 2, so much as emphasizing things differently. On #1, I don't think I implied that attrition should be highest at top departments. Rather, I meant that comparing attrition from a top department to attrition from a lower department will tend to make the top department look worse in comparison than it should. That is, in the counterfactual where Stanford and Low-Ranked U admit the same students, I would imagine a much higher attrition rate at Low-Ranked U relative to what we observe at present. But more fundamentally, there are students for whom attrition is a good outcome. That is, these students are better off personally leaving academically than staying in it for any number of reasons. A nudge out the door does these students a favor. To repeat a point above, the absolute worst thing a department can do is string these students along until they finish and then condemn them to years of adjuncting/VAPing. Some departments (mostly in the low-ranked U category) do everything they can to keep students, who the department knows will not succeed, in the program in order to report lower attrition to the administration and keep a pool of TAs available.

Going unfunded is never a good idea. Step 1 is to get in touch with the department. Say you're delighted to be accepted, would love to come, etc., but that you don't have any resources to come unfunded. It's possible that they will be able to do something for you, such as unofficially wait-listing you for funding if enough funded offers are declined. I was actually accepted somewhere unfunded in somewhat different circumstances. After contacting the DGS, I learned that I'd been accepted without funding because they thought I wasn't likely to come to the department in question. He told me that if they were actually one of my top choices, they could make funding happen (ultimately they were not, so I did not pursue this to the conclusion).

The general rule of thumb: If you like a senior person's work, try to work with them. If you like a junior person's work, try to work with their (former) advisors. It's always better to work with more senior/established people. At many universities, you actually must have a tenured chair (you can skirt this if you use the junior person as a de facto chair while a senior person is the de jure chair, but that can have problems). As notcoachrjc points out, a junior person will usually not have the same networks and reputation, which is possibly detrimental. Further, a letter from a senior scholar saying "X is one of the best students I have ever worked with" is a much stronger signal than a letter from a junior scholar saying the same thing. At this stage in the process, I assume you're choosing between concrete alternatives. I would recommend against going somewhere to work with a junior scholar if that's the only draw for the department in question. I have observed that people often dramatically overestimate how important it is to "match" with an advisor's interests. This doesn't need to be a very precise match. Bob Keohane, for example, who is essentially a scholar of international organization/global governance (perhaps best known as the father of so-called neoliberalism) has advised students in much the same mold (e.g., Moravcsik), but some of his notable advisees include J. Ann Tickner (noted feminist IR scholar), Gwyneth McClendon (comparative politics scholar, specializing in Africa and ethnic politics), Eddy Malesky (comparativist specializing in Vietnam, although also known for some work in IPE), Terry Karl (comparativist specializing in petro-politics, especially in Latin America), etc. He's advised students who work on both security issues (John Owen, Page Fortna) and IPE (Lisa Martin, Randy Stone) and much much more. He's a brilliant scholar, but by no means an expert in those areas. Obviously, the point of an advisor is to have someone with relevant expertise, but that doesn't need to be defined narrowly.

I don't want to start a flamewar here, but. On #1: Of course the decision to leave academia can be related to department culture, etc. On the other hand, it often isn't. In my own cohort, we experienced our first attrition on day 3 of classes. If it were true that propensity to leave academia were distributed evenly across departments, then it would be valid to compare attrition across departments in an effort to measure toxic culture, etc. This is not the case, though, where the most important out of a large number of confounds is the fact that some departments admit students with much better outside options. Some departments also do a better job of guiding the (substantial number of) students who would actually be best off outside academia onto another path. The worst outcome for a student is to spend 5-7 years, finish the degree, fail to place academically, and end up in either serial VAPs or a non-academic job that they could have gone into years ago. On #2: I never said your advisor doesn't matter. Of course your advisor matters. Anyone at the dissertation stage spends 95+% of their time working independently (aside from whatever TA/RA responsibilities they might have). Your advisor doesn't write your dissertation, you do. What matters is the quality of this product and any additional publications. Networking can give you a leg up, but: 1) The advantages of networking, having your advisors make calls, etc. function as a multiplier. A well-networked advisor who makes calls on your behalf can convince people to read your file and consider it; that is, they can get you on the "long shortlist."* The rest is up to you - if people look at your file and it's crap, no advisor can save you. 2) Publications, publications, publications. There are a handful of advisors who do genuinely "place" unpublished students. That is, they have enough of a track record and are prominent enough that search committees will believe them when they say someone has star potential (but the committee has to agree with this take when actually reading the material). But publications are the coin of the realm. An ABD with a solo top publication is far better off than an unpublished Gary King student. 3) There are a handful of truly selfless advisors in this profession. That is, advisors who work hard on behalf of every one of their students. This isn't the norm. Advising a student is an investment. If you're a good investment (i.e., someone who's work is good), your advisor will invest a lot more in you. That is, there are some advisors that are just lazy/bad advisors but a dysfunctional advising relationship generally says as much about the student as the advisor. *Footnote: For those unfamiliar with the process, academic hiring proceeds roughly as follows. An ad is posted, hundreds of applicants send in files. Your file consists of a cover letter, CV, 3-4 letters of recommendation (of which the most important is the one from your advisor), and 1-3 writing samples (published/publishable papers or dissertation chapters). Most committees make a very quick first pass over the files (i.e., in the range of 60 seconds per application). This is generally just a look at the CV - at many programs, applicants who don't have either publications or pedigree (which is a function of department + committee) are tossed. From here, a slightly more intensive winnowing begins, during which you might expect search committee members to read the letters and skim the writing samples. Eventually, this gets you to a "long shortlist" of about a dozen top candidates. At your average department, every member of the committee will review all of the files on the long shortlist in detail (including reading some or all of the writing samples). From here, they narrow down to a list of candidates who are brought to fly out (usually 3-5 candidates). The flyout consists of a series of one-on-one meetings and interviews and a job talk (1.5 hour presentation of your best paper) after which a final selection is made.

I think you must have meant methods and American? Public opinion/political behavior are not part of political theory. These are all good choices. I'd caution that one of the major factors in the rise of methods at MIT was Jens Hainmueller, who has left for Stanford.

I may have put my point too strongly. Yes, advisors matter a great deal. They are one of the most important resources available to you, but your fate is still largely in your own hands. More importantly, while I agree that some advisors are better than others, there's also a dyadic component. That is, the person who would be my ideal advisor probably wouldn't be your ideal advisor.

I think we can all agree placement is important (but this hardly means that placement data is the most important thing to ask for). Some cautions though. 1) Attrition data is not very useful. Many people decide they don't actually want a PhD or an academic job and quit. That's not indicative of any departmental failings or problems. Further, the "outside options" for students are generally best at the best departments, which means that non-academic careers are much more attractive to these people. Any inference drawn from attrition is terribly confounded. 2) People talk about departments/advisors "placing" their students. This isn't how it happens. You get a job based on what you do (and a healthy margin of luck). Your outcome is a function of your effort, the resources available to you, and how you use those resources. Different people need different resources and will tend to flourish in different environments. Placement data is useful because it tells you how similarly-positioned people have fared, but a narrow focus on placement should never supplant consideration of the actual resources. Everyone seems to understand this at the subfield level, but it's even more specific than that. Obviously, it's a red flag if placements are very poor from a department where your evaluation is that the resources available are very good (the reverse is also a red flag), but you always need to consider both. 3) Students fail when they ignore the things they know about themselves. A friend of mine was accepted to a number of departments; he attended the same one as me because it had the highest ranking/best placement. Even then, he knew that his interests weren't a good fit for the department. He also hated the location. He was in our department for four years, was very unhappy, and very unproductive. He then transferred to another department with lower rank/worse average placement (where in essence he had to start from scratch). He's happy now; he's also productive. Ultimately, he will place much better out of department #2. He could, should, and almost did recognize this initially, but a narrow focus on placement led him to waste four unhappy years of his life.* *Footnote: You have to do this evaluation carefully. As a general rule, attending the higher-ranked department is a good choice (especially if the difference in rank is large). I've talked to a lot of people who overweight fit in their decision (and think they can evaluate fit more accurately than is actually the case). It's a balancing act. The whole point of my comment here is that you need to strike a balance.

I would never even consider attending a department without formal training if you want to formal work. For several reasons: 1) If no game theory is offered in house, this means there's not going to be a formal community. There's a substantial quantitative community in essentially every PhD-granting political science department in the country. The same is not true for formal, and having a community is important. 2) There are very high transaction costs to learning game theory in an economics department. Unlike quantitative methods that are taught as stand-alone tools wherever they're offered, game theory is generally taught as part of a microeconomics sequence in economics departments. That means sitting through general equilibrium theory and irrelevant substantive content. 3) Formal theory is a theoretical tool, whose application is intimately connected to the nature of theoretical debates. This means learning it in the right context is really important. To be clear, I'm really talking here about offering 1 or 2 formal courses. It's perfectly reasonable to expect to go to an econ department for some advanced coursework.

Don't worry too much about making a good impression. You're not really trying to sell yourself to them (you're already in). That said, I've seen some people make a disastrously bad impression that followed them around for years in the program. Most of the time, this is the result of either getting extremely drunk or being extremely arrogant. Don't do those things. Unless you do one of these things, most people will not remember you. What to wear? I'd go business casual. It doesn't really matter, though. Don't look like a slob. General advice: 1) Like reasonablepie said, talk to a good mix of people. It's easy to just talk to the first/second year grad students and even the other prospectives. There's value in this, but these are the people with the narrowest perspective. Talk to the older grad students and, of course, the faculty. 2) Ask about money. It may be uncomfortable, but it's important information. At most departments, your stipend is low but there are opportunities to supplement it with RA work or additional TAing. The actual availability of such money varies considerably both within (i.e., subfield to subfield) and across departments. Don't just bank on being able to get RA/TA money that isn't guaranteed. 3) Ask for summer funding. At most departments, baseline stipend is non-negotiable. If you have other options, though, you may be able to get some amount of guaranteed summer funding by asking politely. Don't treat this like you're buying a used car. Instead, talk to your POI or the DGS and just ask politely if there's any way to get some guaranteed summer/RA/whatever funding. 4) Ask about conference travel funding. Is there money for this? How much? Is it guaranteed? If it isn't, are people having difficulty funding travel to APSA, Midwest, ISA, etc.? 5) Find out about quality of life and cost of living. Where do other grad students live? Are they happy? What about grad student housing? What are the good places to live? Is there a waitlist that you need to sign up for after accepting the offer? 6) Ask everyone you talk to who's on their committee. Ask them why those people. This is a soft way to find out if certain faculty are bad advisors, if the department has rivalries, etc. 7) I think prospectives tend to obsess over faculty. Faculty are just one part of a department. You spend far more time with your peers than with faculty and, in all honesty, you generally learn more from the peers than from your advisors. Beyond people, resources matter. It makes a big difference to have easy access to research money, to have low teaching commitments, etc. Don't myopically focus on faculty.

I guess I'm out of touch with what's happening in MA programs these days, but three 25 page papers sound equivalent to, if not better than, a thesis to me. A fairly common dissertation format is the three paper dissertation, composed of three publishable papers. At standard journal world limits in the 10,000-12,000 range that works out to something like three 35 page papers. There is absolutely no publication market for something that looks like a typical MA thesis. The ones I'm familiar with generally get chopped down into a single article at best (i.e., much of the thesis ends up as wasted effort). It's conceivable, but unlikely, that an MA thesis would eventually evolve into a dissertation and then, many years down the line, a book. On the other hand, if you could write three strong papers that eventually become three published articles, you'd be in fantastic shape career-wise. Obviously, there's absolutely no way that you'll write three publishable papers in the course of an MA program (for many PhD programs, the standard expectation is one publishable-quality paper after two years) but you could make progress in that direction. If it were me, I'd write three papers but placing the majority of my effort on the best idea. I'd try to turn the best paper into my writing sample for applications and aim to have it ready for submission sometime during Year 1 of the PhD. It would be much better to spread the remaining effort across two other papers that can eventually turn into something useful than devoting it to unnecessary elaboration of Paper 1 into the worthless MA thesis format.

There is little doubt that Wisconsin will be experiencing some departures. There is also little reason to believe rumors about specific people. If you have the good fortune of well-connected advisors at present, bring this subject up with them. They will be in a position to actually know such things. If you've been accepted at Wisconsin and you're interested in working with specific people, be sure to talk to them during admit weekend. Any decent person who's planning to leave will let you know that information, particularly if they have concrete plans. Make it clear to these people that you are interested in working with them specifically and that their plans are relevant to your decision. I'm assuming that your concern is the departure of specific faculty relevant to your interests. If your concern is that a general pattern of departures will affect the overall standing of the department and thus your eventual prospects, then I wouldn't worry too much. Reputations change very slowly and many programs have rebounded from significant departures. Some do not, but we're talking now about outcomes over a decade scale, which are not very relevant to someone entering grad school next fall.

As described, these are basically the same thing, but I'd say the percentile is what matters. Most of us have not caught up with the GRE score format change. That is, most people have no idea what a 151 "means" and are purely looking at the percentile to evaluate the score. The 800-point format was around long enough for people to have a grasp of what the scores meant, but it will take a long time for the new scores to have any intuitive resonance.

This is probably the wrong forum for this question at the MA level, but I'll give it a stab. First off, these are not standardized labels. Programs can choose what to call themselves, which is substantially a marketing decision. Many of the pre-eminent programs even go so far as to use labels entirely of their own creation. That said: -Political science indicates an academic discipline, generally housed in a "Department of Political Science" or similar. At the MA level, an MA in political science is usually intended as a credential for someone hoping to gain admission to a PhD program in political science in the future (that's where this forum is best positioned to advise you) -International Relations*: This is the name of a subfield within political science that studies international politics (e.g., issues about war, international trade, global governance, etc.); however, the term can also be used to indicate the interdisciplinary field of study described in my next category. A stand-alone "MA in International Relations" or similar is likely to refer to this interdisciplinary field. -International Affairs/Foreign Affairs/Global Studies/etc.: These and similar labels refer to an interdisciplinary field of study focused on, well, international affairs. Masters degrees at this level are generally designed as terminal degrees that prepare a student for a career in the field (e.g., in US foreign policy community, in international business, in NGOs, etc.). These programs typically feature a curriculum that draws on political science, economics, history, geography, sociology, anthropology and perhaps even a broader net. Precise requirements and emphases vary considerably across programs. It's possible to draw some generalizations about programs that call themselves International Affairs vs. Global Studies, but I'd advise you to just look into the details of the programs that interest you. -Public Administration/Public Affairs/Public Policy: Again, this refers to an interdisciplinary field drawing on many of the disciplines listed in the previous entry. The difference is that these degrees do not tend to (inherently) focus on international issues. Many of these programs also focus more on issues of management/public finance/etc. that you might associate with an MBA. Once again, these are professional degrees intended for people aiming for a career in public policy/administration/etc. (e.g., working at a government agency, large non-profit, think-tank, etc.). I'm assuming your interests are on the IR-side as you asked about those degrees specifically, though. Some public policy programs (e.g., Harvard or Princeton) allow you to pursue an IR-focused public policy degree that is substantially similar to the specifically-IR degree you would receive at, say, Georgetown or Tufts. Others do not. Again, you'll just have to look into the specifics of the programs that interest you.