tskinner

I personally know of none that have rolling admissions (do they exist, possibly). If they do, they will clearly state it. If they don't then submit only after you've looked over everything 10 or 12 times.

Well, that's the highest I'll ever get! First year of my grad program starts next week!

If you're going to open with a narrative, it needs to be concise. Keep it to three or four sentences. I would not recommend devoting a whole paragraph to it, unless it is done in a way that demonstrates your knowledge of the field. Here's how mine went: Only the first three sentences are pure narrative. The rest extrapolates on how it affected my career decision and analyzing it. If it's just story telling without relevant commentary, then the reader isn't going to be that interested. It's difficult to strike a balance (and I'm in no way saying that even I did it successfully), but it does need to be balanced, IMHO. Good luck!

Yeah, people were terribly scared last year too, but UCSD, for example, was able to offer tuition remission and all fees paid to all students plus $26k a year for five years.

Maybe you could put in something like, "having spoken with so-and-so, I am interested his/her research on blah-blah-buzzword and would look forward to working with him/her" ...and then the adcomm could ask the professor if they care. Then again, I never contacted professors, so I'm just guessing here.

Woah! Calm down, everyone! I was just trying making things clearer! I never said what you had posted was wrong/not what he wanted, just that it was what it was.

Note, however, that these are more for Masters in Public Policy and foreign policy in general than International Relations PhDs. Just read all the descriptions, and they talk about MPPs and masters more than PhDs. Or at least, that's how I've always understood FPA's rankings.

1 Princeton University Princeton, NJ 1 Stanford University Stanford, CA 3 Harvard University Cambridge, MA 4 Columbia University New York, NY 5 University of Michigan--Ann Arbor Ann Arbor, MI 6 University of California--San Diego La Jolla, CA 7 University of Chicago Chicago, IL 8 University of California--Berkeley Berkeley, CA 9 Yale University New Haven, CT 10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, MA 10 New York University New York, NY http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-political-science-schools/international-politics

My $0.02: If you're applying for a masters, get two editors and one professor. If you're applying for a PhD, get two professors and one editor.

I don't know much about the programs, but I do know that sometimes a one-year masters can have some issues. I know Tufts Fletcher School doesn't admit PhD students who don't have a two year masters. This is also the only school I've seen that has this requirement, so take it with a grain of salt.

I don't know much about the programs, but I do know that sometimes a one-year masters can have some issues. I know Tufts Fletcher School doesn't admit PhD students who don't have a two year masters. This is also the only school I've seen that has this requirement, so take it with a grain of salt.

Take her advice:

student union

Oops, try again. http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/73-statement-of-purpose-personal-history-diversity/