BigTenPoliSci

I never used to watch mindless TV, but now I understand the comfort of watching a cartoon show after an awful day.

As grad students we love to debate the merits of R versus Stata (and it's quite fashionable to use R to "signal" how teched up you are), but it is a mostly pointless and nauseating discussion. If you have a clear hypothesis and you know how to properly specify and estimate a model of that hypothesis, that is what really matters. More importantly, BFB is right - you'll need to adopt whatever program(s) your various methods professors prefer anyway. Just knowing what R is in the first place at least shows that you have a pretty good idea what grad school will be like. That's probably worth something.

Although my application season was a few years ago, I remember getting admission decision emails from a few places on Saturdays. Even so, go out on the trail. Nothing you get via email today can't wait a few hours.

In the last two years there has been a new trend of grad students here taking out loans to cover living expenses. That's worrying given our grim job prospects in academia, but it is increasingly common for our graduates to find careers in the private sector.

I would caution people that most Big 10 schools have much lower stipends than these (in the range of $13K to $18K). Midwestern schools also have much lower costs of living, but it can still be a challenge to make ends meet.