tremblay

You'll do just fine with admissions, I think. Some quick thoughts: 1. Choose carefully where you apply, and read up on departments and faculty as much as possible. If you're really into state politics, for example, UNC would be a good fit. There's a good number of options for you in the "top 25" with your general set of interests. 2. Focus on making your summer project and senior thesis as good as you can make them. Ask people for feedback along the way, particularly all of your letter writers - that way, they can mention these projects and provide lots of details. Ask a few people where you should place your summer project, too, if you haven't already. That kind of advice is quite useful in the short term, but it also helps you build up a sense of what kinds of papers go in which journals, which is a good type of knowledge to have. 3. Work as a research assistant if you can. 4. Your first semester grades may matter for some places.

PROFILE: Type of Undergrad Institution: Major Canadian research university Major(s)/Minor(s): Honours in Political Science (like doing 1.5x the coursework for a major, plus an undergrad thesis), Minor in Arabic Language Undergrad GPA: >3.6 overall, >3.8 in Political Science Type of Grad: MA in Political Science, Major Canadian research university (same as undergrad) Grad GPA: 4.0 (midyear) GRE: 730 Verbal, 790 Quantitative, 5.5 Analytical Writing (taken just before the switch to the new test) Any Special Courses: I chose my grad courses based on what I did not expect to have a chance to take them during my PhD - Canadian politics and qualitative methods. No formal coursework in quantitative methods. Letters of Recommendation: One from my MA advisor (and someone I worked for as an RA for consistently over three years), one from my undergrad thesis advisor (and someone I worked as an RA for during undergrad). Both are well-known in Canada as quantitative, political behavior people, and my MA advisor has an audience in the U.S. My third came from a researcher at a think tank. Research Experience: 3+ years in academia doing quantitative research as a research assistant in academia, 2+ in the think tank world. I spent most of this time working between my undergrad and MA studies. Three peer-reviewed publications (two forthcoming co-authored book chapters, one co-authored article), four co-authored policy reports, two undergrad journal publications, several conference presentations. Almost all of these publications and presentations came from good RA relationships with professors I met during undergrad. Teaching Experience: Course grader for an undergrad methods course. Subfield/Research Interests: Comparative Politics - representation, political communication and legislative behavior. Also Public Policy. RESULTS: Acceptances ($$ or no $$): Princeton ($$$), Berkeley ($$$), UBC ($$$), UNC Chapel Hill ($$), UC Davis ($), UT Austin ($). Waitlists: None Rejections: Stanford, Columbia, MIchigan Pending: Harvard (presumed rejection) Going to: Princeton I'd rather not share my SOP, even in private messages. Basically I provided a broad overview of my interests, discussed one consistent project across (almost) all applications (also used for applications to funding agencies), then mentioned faculty and specific resources and research centers in a fit paragraph at the end. My writing sample was an early draft of my MA thesis. It was related to my proposed PhD project, written in LaTeX and shows some sophistication in quantitative methods. I was an odd candidate for a lot of programs because many of the faculty members I was interested in working with are considered Americanists. This may have made things more difficult for me, particularly at certain programs (like Columbia). But my strategy was to attempt to represent myself as accurately as possible in my SOP.

If you want to work in the US, go to a US program. While the top Canadian programs can be quite good, they aren't necessarily viewed the same way in the US as they are in Canada or in other countries. They also tend to have considerably less methods training than top 25 programs in the US, though that's often supplemented with summer schools and informal training through research assistantships. If you want to work in Canada, it depends. If you want to get a job at McGill or UBC or some other top departments in Canada, you'd probably be better off going in the US, as well. A majority of tenure and tenure-track faculty at both places have PhDs from the U.S., at least as of last year. (McGill, in particular, has a predilection for hiring Princeton PhDs.) Otherwise, your best options are (depending on your interests) McGill, Montreal, Toronto, UBC and Queen's. Queen's probably won't be paid much attention to outside Canada but has historically done very well in placement with a small department. Montreal has very good faculty, but it's tended not to do particularly well in placement, save under certain advisors. Part of the issue may be that their language of instruction is French, which restricts the applicant pool and may attract students who want to say in Quebec and work in French, which would limit academic job prospects a fair bit. Toronto accounts for the largest share of tenure/tenure-track Canadian political science professors, but it also has the largest department, and once you adjust for department size other places, like McGill and UBC do better. It varies a bit across subfield, though. (There's also York, if you're into poststructuralist work. They have limited placement options in political science, since Canadian programs tend to be fairly/implicitly positivist, with some exceptions, so York tends to have a bit of an issue with hiring their own students.) If you want to work outside both countries, a Canadian PhD can work, especially if your interest is in working in Australia or New Zealand. My account may be slightly biased from using qualitative information obtained from people at the departments in Montreal, but I have a project in progress on where tenure and tenure-track Canadian political science professors obtain their PhDs, systematically collecting it from every Canadian university website, so this should be a fair description in quantitative terms.

Congrats the NYU admits! I'm glad they sent word about funding - some of the previous places have sent out acceptances and then funding much later. It makes it hard to evaluate just how good the news is without a funding offer attached.

Congrats to the Duke, UCSD and Michigan State admits! Congrats on Colorado - Boulder and making it through to an interview at Emory! No, you should not assume that you have been rejected from UNC if you haven't heard back from them yet. They've only sent out one decision in Political Science, seemingly - and if you look at the whole spreadsheet, not just the Political science results, they've been sending out decisions to only one person in a lot of programs (Religious Studies, History, Computer Science, Education, Chemistry, etc.). Probably their main results won't be for another couple weeks - last year their wave was around February 12.

Congrats to all the Wisconsin admits! The UNC email told me to go to applyyourself.com. My application is still listed as submitted (with the submission date, references, official GRE scores, transcripts, etc.), but there's a new link at the bottom that says "Your application decision is now available online." There seems to be some scattered admits to other Departments. My primary field is Comparative, but I'm definitely not an IR applicant.

Thanks everyone! For those who might be curious, UNC said this about funding: "Decisions about financial support are made through a separate process. If you are selected for such support you will receive an offer directly from the program providing the funding." I'm not sure whether they're sending admits out all at once or updating them over the course of the day. UC Davis clearly scheduled them for a time outside the work day (~6:30 PST on a Sunday), while the UNC email went out during working hours. So it might be that someone is updating the system right now.

Long-time lurker, first-time poster. I'll claim the UNC admit (and one of the UC Davis admits). Thanks for the messages! The admissions letters came from the graduate school. The short version is that the letter suggested for UC Davis was that the department, not the graduate school, would be in touch regarding funding packages. It was the same for UNC, except their letter was even shorter.