BigTenPoliSci

It varies. In my cycle a few years ago Pitt put me on an official wait list, while two others schools stayed silent long after their waves of acceptances and rejections went out. I am pretty sure that the latter two were unofficial wait lists. P. S. None of those turned into offers later. The percentage of people getting plucked off of wait lists seems to be pretty low.

My main piece of advice would be to enjoy it. My master's degree was interesting and not unreasonably challenging. Everyone else in my PhD program cohort with MA's had a similar experience. PhD programs are brutal slogs. Master's degrees are fun.

Nearly everyone considers both Duke and UT-Austin to be well above the 25-50 tier.

I would never go anywhere unfunded. Job prospects at the end of a PhD, no matter where you go, are so uncertain that taking on debt to do it is a bad bet.

Professors move around all the time, and for all kinds of reasons. The more tactful way to ask about it is, "What brought you here?" instead of, "What chased you out of there?" Also, don't assume that the tenure clock was reset or that it is a bad thing if it was.

I think it worth remembering that the single most important part of placement is you, the candidate. Attending a #4 program versus a #12 has a marginal effect on your job prospects, but the effect isn't as strong as a peer-reviewed publication and a really good dissertation.

Coming out of any top 20 should ensure that your job file will at least be read. After that, it's all up to you.

I have never heard of anyone getting a larger stipend from the department. I have seen people get more total dollars because of an outside fellowship or scholarship, though.

I don't know who does political psychology work that is explicity comparative, but there are lots of folks that take a comparative perspective to the study of public opinion. Offhand, there is James Druckman and Dennis Chong at Northwestern, Alan Gerber and Gregory Huber at Yale, Christopher Wlezien and Robert Luskin at UT-Austin. That is nowhere near an exhaustive list.

You're welcome. It was getting difficult to watch the lengthy discussion about your question that ignored directly answering your question.

Back to your original question, they are similar in terms of American behavior quality. Visit them both and go to the place that gives you a better vibe.

You and AmericanQuant are exactly right on this one. Keep up your friendships inside the Beltway, but talking about the private sector as early as visitation weekend would be a deadly mistake. Our program has gotten better about embracing some students' desires to move into private work, but that varies a lot by advisor. If I told my advisor I want to do private work it wouldn't be a problem at all, and my advisor would be very supportive. Many other students' advisors would write them off and might even drop them as advisees.

Don't be scared of the interview just because I botched it a few years ago. You don't know much yet, and they don't expect you to. I think they care about if you have the right kind of curiosity. They'll train you in the skills after you get there.

I had a Vanderbilt interview in my cycle. The adcom seems to do interviews to whittle down their short list. The questions were mostly follow ups on my stated research interests. Just be prepared to talk in a sensible way about what interests you in political science and don't try to talk above your actual expertise. I completely blew this interview. The second I hung up I knew I was toast at Vandy. Cindy Kam probably still thinks I am mentally challenged. I got lucky and got an offer from a better option a week later.

I think the jury is still out on Vanderbilt. They historically have a poor placement record, but the big recent hires like Lewis are just now starting to put their Vanderbilt students on the market. Those students might do very well. Bartels is there, and that's clearly a big deal, but is he closely involved with grad students at this point? I don't go to Vanderbilt, so this is all baseless speculation from an outsider with no special info.

If you are interested in parties and Congress, Duke is great with Aldrich, Rhode, and McCubbins.

Wisconsin Northwestern North Carolina UCSD Georgetown Penn Virginia

Getting a job at a well-regraded R1 is at least possible coming out of a top 10. It is very unlikely for those of us in the 11-25 range, but it does happen. If your PhD is from anything ranked lower it's just not too realistic.

There just isn't a standard for this info. If a student defends her dissertation, bounces around through two post-docs, then lands a tenure-track job at a Middle Wyoming State University, most programs will update their info after those two years and call that a tenure track placement. Is that a tenure-track placement? Sort of. When another student defends and takes a political consulting job that only required a bachelor's degree, that is often called a placement. In the defense of programs' propensity to get qualitative in these discussions, placement is a slippery concept. The best way to get the true picture is to ask that POI on visitation weekend, "Tell me about each one of your advisees in the past five years." Some of those stories might not end in a tenure-track job, but still be very cool outcomes.

See? This is why I stayed anonymous. I've spent the past hour portraying DGS's at graduate programs as dishonest snake oil salesmen. Despite all of this, I am happy that I am in graduate school working on a PhD in political science. The work never stops, but it's better than shoveling coal. If I strike out on the academic job market, I still have options.

I don't think that's an unreasonable request. Some places are especially transparent, others aren't. In terms of completion, even though between one third and one half of my cohort won't finish a PhD, that doesn't mean they left graduate school and took up residence in a cardboard box underneath a highway overpass. People leave to care for a close family member got cancer but then they later do something great, they grab great opportunities in the private sector, they take a position in a major political campaign, or their partner got an amazing job in Switzerland, etc... Completing a PhD is mostly a function of events in your life and your choices. As an individual applicant, what you care about is what happens to people in your subfield coming out of that school. Within your subfield, and in the past five years, where are all of their PhD's? If they can't give you an answer then something is wrong. If they honestly don't know that is an alarming signal about their commitment to placement. If they know but they aren't telling you, then they might not be too proud of their true placement record. I suspect that programs are a little evasive about placement with prospective students because prospects often have unrealistic expectations. The odds of an incoming graduate student in a 20-ish ranked program coming out of that program and landing in a tenure track job is well short of 50/50 (and even being in a top 5 program isn't the guarantee it once was, either). There is a disincentive to be honest and appear glum to the prospects when the program down the road is painting a rosy and unrealistic picture.

I should have been more clear. You won't get a bigger stipend - those are usually fixed based on your type of appointment. But you might change a two year TA guarantee into a four year TA guarantee. Or you might bump a four year TA deal to a first year fellowship plus a four year TA. Absolutely play one program against another. A couple people here have especially nice deals because they used the leverage. If Illinois offers you a four year TA package and Minnesota offers you your first two years of fellowship and next two of TA, tell the Director of Graduate Studies at Illinois that Minnesota gave you this better offer. Sometimes the DGS will be able to match it. The worst that can happen is that they do nothing. On the other hand, I wouldn't recommend bluffing. Dishonesty is an especially bad way to start a graduate career. It's not about playing "hardball" or even being all that strategic. Just be honest and direct about what your options are.

My beef with visitation is mostly the evasive discussions of placement. I was accepted at 2 places. I visited both. Both programs that otherwise have a very quantitative focus (particularly in my subfield - American) suddenly became very qualitative when the topic of placement came up. Anecdotes of great placements are quickly recalled, but no one mentions the other great students that didn't get any offers and are now on their second post-doc. The reality when you are in a program like this one (upper teens / low twenties in the rankings) is that about two thirds of a cohort will defend dissertations. Of those, about half will find tenure track jobs. Most importantly, it varies quite a bit by subfield and by advisor. When you visit, ask specific questions about subfield placement. "How many Americanists were on the market last year? How many placed and where?" You might have a very good idea of who your advisor might be. Ask her about her placement record. "Who was your most recent student to finish? Where did he go?" When you are visiting you are in the driver's seat. Ask for more money. Ask for a longer guarantee. Unless you set fire to the building during your visit they won't rescind the admissions offer. After the admission offer and before you accept is the only time for the next six years that you are in the dominant position.

PSR is useful to pick up some info when the job market first heats up in the fall and when offers start going out around now. Otherwise, it's mostly a place for graduate students to say horrible things. I suspect that the whole board might be just the same 15 people talking to each other over and over. Ohio State's recent stumbles have opened up the conference this year. I am a fan of college basketball and I attend a lot of my school's games (rooting against schools that rejected you is fun). Most grad students don't take advantage of student tickets and that's a shame. It's a great perk to being at a school like this. This is going to be a season where everyone beats up on each other in this conference and people might be surprised to see a bunch of 6-seed Big Ten teams going deep in the tournament. Just to be clear, I don't want to tip my hand on where I go in the unlikely event that I end up saying something unflattering about my program (and I have some strong feelings about what programs don't tell you during visitation weekends and when they are recruiting students in general). It's not all sunshine and roses in graduate school, but if I knew then what I know now I would still apply. The reason I am back on this board is that a friend in in this application cycle. He asked me if he should try for grad school and after thinking about it carefully I told him he should take a shot.

The short answer is yes, you are in the kiddie pool, but that's okay. PSR isn't the deep end - it's a neglected jacuzzi with algae in it.