Ella Simmons

PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution: Selective private non-Ivy research institution
Major(s)/Minor(s): International affairs 
Undergrad GPA: 3.98
Type of Grad: UK masters
Grad GPA: Distinction
GRE: 170 V / 163 Q / 5.5
Any Special Courses: Masters was in area studies with a focus on politics. Some econ in undergrad and masters.
Letters of Recommendation: 1 undergrad professor, 1 grad professor, current supervisor (with a PhD but not working in academia)
Research Experience: undergrad research for a prof, undergrad and masters theses, current work is a research position 
Teaching Experience: n/a
Subfield/Research Interests: Comparative politics, authoritarianism, political economy, area studies
Other:

RESULTS:
Acceptances($$ or no $$): 8 all with full five-year $$. 6 of the 8 are top-10 schools.
Waitlists: none
Rejections: 2 
Pending:
Going to: TBD
 
LESSONS LEARNED:
My biggest piece of advice that might be useful for some to hear: I am so, so, so glad that I waited as long as I did to apply to PhD programs and did other things first. I graduated undergrad in 2009. I feel more mature and confident than I have in any prior year, I know what I want to study and why, I know what I do NOT want to study and why, I have many more ideas for interesting questions to research, I have more highly developed professional skills, and I have such a better grasp of how the "real world" works than I would have if I had gone into a PhD earlier. There's still tons I know that I don't know, but I know a hell of a lot more than I did when I was 22. I also hope that it means that if I decide a few years in that academia is not for me (though I am pretty sure that it is), I will not see switching out of grad school into some other track as a failure--just a change of plans.    My biggest concerns entering the process: Weak quant background. Far and away my biggest worry. My quant GRE score was fine but not exceptional. I took college-level stats and calculus in high school, but I basically have not taken math since then (10 years ago!) I took several econ courses in college, but not econometrics. Writing sample that did not demonstrate quantitative analysis--because I have not done research that uses quant analysis before. Basically, my application screamed "QUALITATIVE." And I wasn't sure how many places would be into that. Apparently enough! My biggest strengths going in (either objectively, or things that I think helped): Strong stats and already highly developed area knowledge and language skills (going into CP) Prestigious scholarships on my CV and a history of finding and going after money to make my own research possible 3 strong LORs--people who knew me well and/or had worked closely with me and who are impressive themselves An SOP that made clear why I want to go into political science and how my past experience has prepped me for what I want to study Best advice I got / most helpful things I did as I prepared my applications: **Number one most helpful thing I did: set aside a day or two to read the abstracts of every. single. article. that has been published in the top 2-3 poli sci journals and/or journals in my subfield in the past 5 years. That will give you a sense of the current hot topics, how people are framing things, etc. From that you will find a handful of articles whose lit review sections and bibliographies you can mine for pieces to cite/draw from in your SOP. I cannot overstate how helpful this was. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to say in my SOP, but going through this process allowed me to articulate it in relation to recent literature and in the proper vocabulary. This was especially helpful since I had been out of school for a few years. (especially in CP): Frame your SOP in conceptual terms, not regional terms. Your region is what offers up cases to study conceptual issues. Show that you have broader interests than just the region or policy area you have focused on. Show that you know you will be spending a lot of time learning and using math, and indicate that that is one reason why you want to do a political science PhD. Your SOP is not about why you want to go to grad school. It is about what areas you are intellectually interested in broadly, what question you want to research, and why you are prepared to enter a PhD program to start researching it. You need to sound confident, but not arrogant. And you have to demonstrate that you know what political science research is all about. This is a common piece of advice, but worth repeating: write early, write often, and run your SOP by lots of people. I started in July and had a piece of shit SOP until it got ripped by a couple of people in October and I re-did the whole thing in response. When I rewrote it and it got good, I knew. What I would do differently / what surprised me: Not apply to as many schools. One of the schools I got rejected from, I shouldn't have applied to. It was not a good fit. But it was a top school so I applied anyway. That was a waste of money. On the other hand, I applied to schools that I thought might be a terrible fit, and they ended up taking me, so clearly they knew something I did not.  SOP: Not sharing with anonymous people on the internet, sorry.

Would really appreciate it!!

Try the NOVA GRE Prep Course.  Great for Math!

Don't forget Kmart!

Study something you love and do well!

That's great!  Shows you the importance of being persistent.

Couldn't agree more.  You'll never know if you don't give it a shot!

At some point soon, you might find yourself with offers at Yale and some other set of schools, and then a bunch of non-Yale people will say, "Don't go to Yale" (especially if you are in American politics), and you will need to balance their words against the enticing siren song of Yale.  If your next-best offer is Wisconsin or Cornell or something, then perhaps you should go to Yale.  But if you are looking at a Michigan or Berkeley or MIT, then you probably shouldn't, and here's a reason why that no one else will mention.
  Forget for the moment all the concerns about faculty exodus (though for what it's worth, a fellow prospective student said he met with Alan Gerber and Gerber said, "don't count on me being around in a couple years").  The administrative side of things is a disaster.  The head administrative assistant doesn't answer her emails or phone (or sometimes responds six weeks after an email).  The flyout visit itself was a mess, where she was nowhere to be seen and poor Greg Huber seemed to be trying to hold the whole PhD program together himself.  It took ten weeks to get my expense reimbursement check--with the city misspelled and the ZIP code wrong--which was a lot of money at over $500 because I shared a rental car with a couple other prospective students.  (Other programs--check in hand two and a half weeks after forms sent in, all of them).  Then, after I deposited the check, I got another check a week later that was lower by $7.50.  Mystified, I set it aside, but then this morning my bank called to say that Yale actually stopped payment on the first check and that the bank had to charge a $10 returned check fee!  No warning from Yale that they had made a mistake with the first check and were stopping payment.
 
If this sounds petty and irrelevant, keep this in mind.  Yale Political Science doesn't have its own placement officer.  The position was eliminated due to budget cutbacks.  The same administrators who put together the visit and process reimbursements are the ones who will handle your job applications when you are on the market.  So if you don't mind them going out seven weeks late and with errors, go to Yale.

Nope!  You need to go to the Government Affairs forum.

This isn't really the correct forum for this question, try reposting this in Government Affairs.

That is just such a meaningless response.  It's like saying "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion!"  A completely empty statement that totally ignores the substance of what I was arguing.  If you had thought about what I wrote, you might conclude that this thread does a disservice to everyone; I am sorry that you don't care about the collective good of the rest of the users on this forum.

Sorry, I fail to see the usefulness of this thread.  Whereas posts about admissions communicate information about when schools have started announcing, posts about offer declination say nothing more than that people are declining offers, which is a foregone conclusion.  On one side, it's an opportunity to show off (hey, I'm declining all these great schools, I'm so awesome!) and on the other side, it's a desperate and misplaced attempt to mollify people who have been wait-listed.  While I am sure you had good intentions, the implicit point of this thread seems to be to pressure people to hurry up and dump their offers.  I think that everyone who has earned multiple offers should take all the time they need to make an informed choice, as I plan on doing.

That is just such a meaningless response.  It's like saying "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion!"  A completely empty statement that totally ignores the substance of what I was arguing.  If you had thought about what I wrote, you might conclude that this thread does a disservice to everyone; I am sorry that you don't care about the collective good of the rest of the users on this forum.

Sorry, I fail to see the usefulness of this thread.  Whereas posts about admissions communicate information about when schools have started announcing, posts about offer declination say nothing more than that people are declining offers, which is a foregone conclusion.  On one side, it's an opportunity to show off (hey, I'm declining all these great schools, I'm so awesome!) and on the other side, it's a desperate and misplaced attempt to mollify people who have been wait-listed.  While I am sure you had good intentions, the implicit point of this thread seems to be to pressure people to hurry up and dump their offers.  I think that everyone who has earned multiple offers should take all the time they need to make an informed choice, as I plan on doing.

I am!

I am definitely giving Michigan full consideration and am going to the flyout, but it seemed to have the lowest concentration of POIs for me--maybe I need to look at the faculty again.  Perhaps when I visit we can have a lively chat about the program!
 
And, I will say, this is exactly the kind of thing that I would hope to get out of this thread and forum--information I hadn't considered, lists of professors I somehow missed.  Thanks very much for your reply!

I am definitely giving Michigan full consideration and am going to the flyout, but it seemed to have the lowest concentration of POIs for me--maybe I need to look at the faculty again.  Perhaps when I visit we can have a lively chat about the program!
 
And, I will say, this is exactly the kind of thing that I would hope to get out of this thread and forum--information I hadn't considered, lists of professors I somehow missed.  Thanks very much for your reply!

There was another thread somewhere where someone wrote out a long list of suggested questions for visit days, but I can't seem to find it.  Does anyone else know where it is?  Thanks!
 
Edit: Found it!    The rest of the thread is good too.

That is just such a meaningless response.  It's like saying "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion!"  A completely empty statement that totally ignores the substance of what I was arguing.  If you had thought about what I wrote, you might conclude that this thread does a disservice to everyone; I am sorry that you don't care about the collective good of the rest of the users on this forum.

Got a call from Yale thirty minutes ago.

Got a call from Yale thirty minutes ago.

Sorry, I fail to see the usefulness of this thread.  Whereas posts about admissions communicate information about when schools have started announcing, posts about offer declination say nothing more than that people are declining offers, which is a foregone conclusion.  On one side, it's an opportunity to show off (hey, I'm declining all these great schools, I'm so awesome!) and on the other side, it's a desperate and misplaced attempt to mollify people who have been wait-listed.  While I am sure you had good intentions, the implicit point of this thread seems to be to pressure people to hurry up and dump their offers.  I think that everyone who has earned multiple offers should take all the time they need to make an informed choice, as I plan on doing.

Sorry, I just don't see how learning that someone declined an offer is useful or informative.  Tons of people get offers, inevitably some decline them, maybe they are members of this forum, maybe not.  Frankly, the school has probably already anticipated that many of its offers will be declined, and upon declination, a new offer probably doesn't even go out to a wait-list candidate.  The school will only go to the wait-list if the actual rate of declinations is greater then the expected rate of declinations--good luck trying to estimate that from the postings in this thread. So if anything this is just contributing to unnecessary anxiety and offering false hope.

That is just such a meaningless response.  It's like saying "Everyone's entitled to their own opinion!"  A completely empty statement that totally ignores the substance of what I was arguing.  If you had thought about what I wrote, you might conclude that this thread does a disservice to everyone; I am sorry that you don't care about the collective good of the rest of the users on this forum.

Based on my preferences and results, it's looking increasingly likely that I will be in the Bay Area.  Assuming this happens, I am facing a choice of what to do with my car.  First, I need to decide whether to sell it or to bring it.  If I sell it, I can buy another one in California or I can go without.  If I bring it, I can drive it across the country or I can ship it.  Personally, I am leaning toward bringing it and driving it across the country, as this is something that I have always wanted to do, but is this somehow unwise or unnecessary?  If I did do it, the trip would be much easier and more enjoyable with a traveling companion.  Would it be weird to try to see if any members of my incoming cohort also need to go from East to West and want to go on an amazing road trip?  I am actually from New York, so the trip would start there.