Tirapol2526

Hi everyone, what do you think about mentioning in your SoP the profs you intend to work with when you get admitted to grad school? I have seen this advise often in SoP books but I am a bit skeptical because if this professor will go to another university, has not got a tenure track position, is on absence soon, retires, or simply doesn't like your application it might weaken your application. Secondly, if you apply to top schools I am also not so sure if you should give reasons (though this too is recommended) because it should be pretty obvious why you apply at, say, Harvard and Stanford (because they are the best) and given particular reasons might even sound a bit insulting to such high-ranked places. What do you think?

Hi everyone, just a general question about rational choice: Which faculties do you think put a considerable emphasis on rational choice theory? From my expression I would say Stanford and Chicago. Moreover, do you think that rational choice is a "real cleavage" among faculties, for example if you get your PhD from a rational choice school, is it unlikely to get a job at a place without this focus? Thanks for your answers :-).

Do you think it's okay to use other "tricks" to cut it down like: using a somewhat smaller font size and convert some arguments into footnotes? And another question: My writing paper exceeds the page requirement when I add the literature list. Do you think only the writing part counts for the limitation or the whole essay including literature list?

Hi all, I am working like most of you on my application for PolSci grad school and preparing my writing sample right now. Since I intend to apply for comparative politics, I would like to ask you what you think would be the better approach: At the moment, I want to construct the paper that after the introduction I present a concise survey of the specific literature, then how it relates to a country, present country specific hypotheses and then test it with empirical data and write an analysis/conclusion in which I want to draw a short analogy to other countries. Then in my SoP, I will say that I want to do a similar research later in grad school for other countries as well. Or do you think, it would be better to write a paper in which I compare 2 countries - after I have introduced the problem - according to the comparative method? I am asking because my paper outline would look like the first one but I could connect it to my intended research in my SoP, so do you think it actually matters a lot that I will not use the comparative method with at least 2 countries? Thank you very much for your thoughts and good luck for your applications! Best wishes from Thailand!