ajaxp91

I would say: It is not inappropriate, but it is also not necessary at all. People who contacted faculty members and got good results tend to say that it helped, and those who contacted them and didn't get good results tend to say it doesn't help. I personally don't think it is something you should worry about. Unless you really do have a question, or have something meaningful to say, the e-mail exchanges (if you got a reply that is) do not amount to anything. 
 
a brief post by Penelope on this topic, a faculty member who writes in this forum.

I certainly wouldn't. Most of the top-tier think tanks in Washington require a Ph.D. for full research positions. And many of the top political appointees (especially in IR) are coming from those think tanks and have PhDs. Don't do a MPP unless you want to be a bureaucrat. 
 
To answer the OP, I think it's somewhat taboo to admit, which is why nobody here is going to speak up. But on one of my visits to a T-5 program last week, this notion was openly discussed and there was a sense that working at a think tank would put your PhD to good use.
 
Not sure what else you're looking for in an answer here. 

Claiming Chapel Hill post. First admission, seccond cycle! American subfield. Thanks to everyone who has been suportive throughout the process!

I've advised students who have transferred for a variety of reasons, including opting for better funding, a better ranked program, and a group of faculty that better suited their interests. I've got no hard feelings about it at all. If they're happier, I'm happy. More relevant than my own personal views is the fact that I've seen job applications that include letters of recommendation from two different departments because the applicant has transferred in the course of their graduate training while keeping a close relationship with faculty at the school they left. So while people may have different views about this personally, I think the disciplinary norms are not as strong as some posters on here suggest.

I don't agree. In any given year, there are going to be hundreds of applicants for TT jobs who have just as good work and resumes as you do. You could write a bomb dissertation and publish two articles in AJPS during grad school, but at the end of the day, so did a bunch of other people.
 
It's a combination of where you studied, who you studied under, your work, and luck. But the first two are what really matters in the end.

In general, professors don't care about you, and certainly not in the first few years. They don't care enough to be "extremely angry." If you are important enough to them (as a co-author, for example) they will understand a well-reasoned argument for leaving. Admissions committees at higher-ranked schools see this regularly, and know how to evaluate applicants in this situation (according to their own criteria).
 
But it is much easier just to start at the highest/best place you can. Even putting it off for a year if you only get into low-ranked/poor placement programs.

House Hunters and Property Brothers on HGTV (home and garden channel)

Just got a phone call from the DGS at Pittsburgh (top choice!). Admitted off the waitlist! One of the best days of my life! 

... just because I cried like a baby :-(
 

...Someone be spamming and jelly.

Happy to report that I've been offered a tenure-track position in my parents' basement! 

I claim a Harvard

And this marks the end of my cycle. It's truly been a wild ride. Thanks, Gradcafe, for making it a little more bearable.

Good luck to everyone still waiting for results, and to everyone on waitlist.

I hope to see you guys at admit weekends

In at UPenn. I'm at a loss for words. I'm hoping everyone else who has been shut out so far receives some good news soon (hopefully a few more today who also get into Penn).

Just throwing this one in here, too. This is another APSA report, addressing placement directly: http://www.apsanet.org/media/dsp/Snapshot%20Placement%202009%202012.UPDATED%2019%20JUNE.pdf
 
That is the short report from last year, though there is a longer version locked to APSA members.

I don't know what anecdotal evidence you are working with here, but I've spent the past 7 years around a top-3 program and a top-10 program, and I can tell you that PhD students at both were working their a**es off. I've never heard any PhD student at a T-5 say they aren't working hard.
 
FWIW, I spoke to my POI at a T-3 yesterday, and she commented that in her opinion, outside of Stanford, there is not a big difference in job placement for any of the T-15 schools (at least in IR; I can't speak for other subfields). She said Stanford is really the only place that is consistently getting its graduates into reputable departments (though by looking here, you'll see that even at Stanford, they're scattered everywhere: http://politicalscience.stanford.edu/graduate-program/prospective-students/placement-record). She noted that especially within the top-5, besides Stanford it is a complete tossup vis-a-vis placement, with many factors coming into play that you cannot control as a prospective student (for example, what faculty will still be there 5 years later).  
 
I was a little surprised by that, as I'd always heard Stanford, Harvard and Princeton named as the "must attends." She really didn't seem to think so, even as a Princeton faculty member. 
 
Again, can't speak for other subfields, but I think the general consensus is that for the most part, the job market is out-of-your control and even if you're at Stanford, you need to be producing great research under committed faculty to even have a shot. 

This thread really demonstrates why I love gradcafe. It was like a race to see who could help first! Such a helpful group here. Wish I could attend a doctoral program with all of you! =D 

Got a call from Yale thirty minutes ago.

Well. 
 
Happy to announce that, as someone on here mentioned earlier, hope dies last.
 
1st acceptance of the cycle. To Yale. Just sent up a prayer for everyone still waiting for good news. 
 
Specifics: IR subfield. Received an email from Susan Hyde. I don't remember mentioning her in my SOP (though I've since changed computers so don't have it easily accessible to check!). My guess is that she's sending notifications out for all in the IR subfield.

INTJ, but I can tell you from experience, if you know any of these sorts of tests you can make it say whatever you want.
on that note I can tell you :
This happens in part because many INTJs do not readily grasp the social rituals; for instance, they tend to have little patience and less understanding of such things as small talk and flirtation (which most types consider half the fun of a relationship). To complicate matters, INTJs are usually extremely private people, and can often be naturally impassive as well, which makes them easy to misread and misunderstand. Perhaps the most fundamental problem, however, is that INTJs really want people to make sense. :-) This sometimes results in a peculiar naivete', paralleling that of many Fs -- only instead of expecting inexhaustible affection and empathy from a romantic relationship, the INTJ will expect inexhaustible reasonability and directness.
Describes me perfectly

Not to mention that for some people like international applicants and US students whose lives and careers have been shaped by structural inequities, those "better" schools are simply not an option. If you got into a better-ranked program, good for you. Why belittle both your own choice of applying to the school to begin with and the people who go there?

There's a Harvard acceptance from March of last year with the comment "Only acceptance of this cycle! Don't lose hope at any time!" When my first few decisions were all rejections, I read that comment over and over.
 
Sending warm wishes for Yale, MIT, and Chicago MA acceptances your way...

Regardless of the intentions, a basic rule of thum(per) we should all follow:
 

It's more of a system of categorization than a personality test of the sort that tells you your spirit animal or hogwarts house or whatever. It's just a tool. It is often misused and misunderstood; it is supposed to outline how you think based on you, not tell you how you ought to think. Similar to how we examine species physically and genetically to place them on a phylogenetic tree; we don't say that echidnas and hedgehogs are clearly closely related because they look alike. Instead we examine each separately and come to independent conclusions about where they belong in the tree.
 
In the same way, MBTI examines each person individually and classifies them under a type. Each type only broadly outlines how that person's thought processes may work; it doesn't dictate how each person has to think based on outside impressions. And all the stereotypes that come along with it- INTJs as evil geniuses, ENFPs as bubbly airheads, what have you- are just stereotypes and should not be given much attention.
 
It's not something I live my life by. Everyone is an individual, and there are more than 16 kinds of people in the world. Still, I don't think it's entirely unfounded when you strip away the layers of bs that people have flippantly piled onto it, and it definitely helps me communicate with people who are very different from me. If nothing else, it's a good window for introspection.

This is a really rough cycle given that Hogwarts rejection... Still, I hear the DADA Department there has had a hard time keeping good faculty, so it may not be the best bet for the near future.
 
Highlight of my obsessive results checking day.