oasis

Take it to PSJR

Grats. IIRC Berkeley was 6th on the Chingos placement ranking.

Dude, that is BADASS. I'd bet that you'll be hearing some good news very soon.

1. There will probably be a fall 2011 results thread with profiles (including quant coursework) around March/April. You could also look at last year's results thread. 2. I'm not sure that this ordinal ranking of topics by difficulty makes sense.

There's also MAPSS and QMSS, if you're so inclined.

First, its still early, and there's still hope. You might find that fate has something special in store for you soon. Second, it's good that you're thinking of contingencies this early. Fortunately, you still have lots of time to prepare one: AFAIK terminal MA app deadlines are mostly in April, so you should know your app outcomes by then. Between another BA and an MA, without more information on your background and preferences, it's hard to say for certain. It could have been your letters or your grades, or it could have been scores, pubs, SOP, fit... Another degree, whichever it is, may only impact the latter indirectly. My two cents is that another BA after your JD is highly unconventional and may raise red flags. Another, less costly option is to work in a traditional feeder job: think tanks, IGO/NGOs, polling, risk consulting. Preferably one related to your research agenda. I'm sure you're more than qualified for the typical entry-level research analyst position with a JD. It would pay, you'd have relevant work experience, and time to improve your profile. If you have some savings to live on, you could even trade off income for prestige and get something unpaid but otherwise awesome - like being a staffer on the hill or a UN intern. If you were willing to pay tuition for paper qualifications, you should also be willing to pay living expenses for resume padding.

Free riding on others' full disclosures? Tsk tsk

My interpretation is that there isn't rejection per se, but that each applicant gets ranked, and the offers go to their top choices. As the top choices decline, they move to the next candidates. So there's no reason to reject a candidate this early, when that would preclude making him an offer if the next guy says no. Besides, isn't it better to still consider yourself in the running?

As a fun exercise, treat G as one's position among the applicant pool, and account for differences in selectivity. Give your answer as code for an R function. My opinion is that this whole notion of an objective selection process based on perceived quality is wrong. Whatever objective criteria probably get swamped by all the random stuff in the error term: the psychological state of the readers, the carelessness of grad admissions department staff (and/or USPS, ETS etc), whether your file was read at the start or at the end, the current state of intradepartmental politics, blah blah blah. Fate, fortune, chance...

Congratulations! Your subfields are very interesting since they're not traditional substantive subfields (it sounds more like an econ program)... I take it you're a political economy applicant?

I would think that this varies from person to person.

Congratulations! Would that I had heard the same good news. Has anyone figured out Plan B yet? It has weighed heavily on my mind of late.

I've always thought this to be a strange heuristic. If someone were to post something false on the results page, why wouldn't he also "claim it here" in the subforum?

Also best to avoid Gradcafe until April.

Is it common for graduate students to be involved in grad admissions? My department doesn't operate that way.

I'm glad that you're so optimistic about being admitted - that is the operating assumption in having a "pre-admission" reading list, no? I wish I shared your optimism, but at this point it would be like counting my chickens.

Well, assuming that you did the courses purely for signaling your abilities, at ~400 a credit, that's a bargain. At least you got your signaling at a relatively low cost. But I am of the opinion that courses in econ, stats etc are worthwhile things to learn even if they add no value to your apps.

Hope you sent in a good writing sample. Not to be snarky, but at least your AW score reflects your composition. Very odd, since V and AW are usually highly correlated, but I suppose its easier to train V.

I'm just wondering how you managed to spend $6000 on applications, given that each application costs around $100-150, that would be 40-60 schools you applied to.

do you seriously anticipate competing with those people? they tend to sort into econ.

offhand, michigan, rochester, wustl, caltech, nyu come to mind.

I think they would understand that your grades reflect the difficulty of upper division math/stat dept courses and the abilities of those who self-select into those courses. The median math major or engineer has a higher quant ability that the median social science major. You have a number of options. 1) Ace the grad level methods class so they can see where you lie on the polisci population ability distribution - probably 99th percentile. 2) Take the stat or econ dept grad econometrics sequence instead, more rigorous. will be a challenge, but you're an applied math major and can handle it.

Are you good enough to be competitive? Maybe. Your legal background might compensate for any gaps in quantitative classes. That said, it sounds like you are a bit late to the game: I don't know how flexible your program is, but if you were to tech up your coursework right now, you might not have grades in time for the Fall 2012 app cycle. If you did, I would retool for game theory. The other question is whether you have space to take substantive polisci courses _and_ methods classes (possibly in econ, math, compsci) when both would be electives in a law program. Coursework aside, I would focus on getting something decent published in your subfield. Are your chances "good"? The reality is that admissions outcomes for the top 10 programs can be very random, and you should be aware that many "perfect" applicants get turned away every year. I would also consider substantive fit very carefully.

I wouldn't count on this. You'd need a very good reason to justify jumping ship, and this field is just too small for you to burn bridges unnecessarily.

Everyone I have talked to has said that even the best prepared candidates, with perfect paper records, can find themselves horribly disappointed. You seem like you have enough to be given a fair chance, but even then, its a crapshoot.