SuddenlyParanoid

Very interesting. I planned on American/methods but if I take on another subfield, I'm not sure what it will be. Probably IR since picking up a language would take so much time.

Works for me too.

Yale should be out soon. There were a fair number of rejections on Friday.

Princeton should be this week. I hope Harvard is too. I know their physics decisions have started coming out so how far behind can we be?

How are people checking their Yale status? Mine still just says application submitted on the ApplyYourself page.

Thanks everyone. Fuzzy that is a great model!

What's your second choice?

I've made some preliminary cuts of programs and need to know how to word my emails to them. For the form letters it's easy to respond to, but how do I write back to individual professors who have contacted me and say I'm not picking their school? I want to let them know as soon as possible but I don't want to hurt their feelings or burn bridges for the future?

I think some of the reason that some schools with very good placement are not ranked as high in US News is that they are more focused programs. Rochester is one of the three main boutiques (along with CalTech and Stanford GSB). All Rochester students take formal and methods work, if I'm not mistaken, and tend to place very well. However, when faculty judge the reputation of a program they probably look at its strengths in all the subfields even if the school doesn't place much emphasis on them. Similarly, I assume Chicage's cohorts has a lot more theorists than the average. Since Chicago is awesome at that, their students do well but the raters take into account Chicago's strength across everything without "weighting" the subfields by emphasis. As for me, I looked at the Chingos study, schools' placement that they place online (although many are incomplete, and US News rank. For outside of academia, say consulting, the government, or think tanks, does the brand name of the school matter? So a lower ranked Ivy would look better than higher ranked publics or less well known privates? I would guess that it does plus the name brand adds status at cocktail parties and high school reunions where people aren't up on poli sci.

Good news from Texas day! What's your top choice so far?

I'm not sure. I'm trying to weigh placement, fit with department and possible advisors, and how much fun life at each school/city would be. I won't have time to visit everywhere probably so I'm going to have to make some cuts. And I'm still waiting for a few decisions.

Sadly, I wouldn't trust any results that weren't also claimed on this thread. There are enough of us posting on this thread here that one of us should be rejected/accepted when decisions go out.

Silent on my end too.

Congratulations! Austin is a great city!

I'm surprised that so many people have specific ideas on their dissertation already! It seems like a lot of people know exactly what they're going to do, while I only have it narrowed it down a little.

Last year they started acceptances on Feb. 15 but a there were a scattering of acceptances and waitlists from them after that until mid-March.

There have been several hoaxes and they seem to be concentrated on the ivies (although there were two Berkeley's at the start of January) so I'd take any results not claimed by at least one person on the thread with a grain of salt.

In at UCSD. Hope I can visit, need to finish thesis!

Congratulations! It would be awesome to live in NYC. Put me down as another Berkeley admit.

I'm hoping so! Thanks for the vote of confidence

Go Berkeley people! Great school!

Princeton receptionist said admit weekend would be March 21-23. Haven't gotten ahold of anyone at Harvard yet.

Of course.

Agreed. I'm going to call them today and find out when their admit weekend is, just in case. If I get in, I definitely am going to visit.

I switched school names and faculty names. The sentence about why I was applying to a specific school, I changed depending on the strength of the program. I played up my interest in Congress and downplayed interest in formal for Duke, and played up interest in formal for WashU and Rochester. So basically very few changes. As to the length, I felt I ran out of things I wanted to say. I talked about my current research, training, general areas of interest, and none of that took up very much space. I did not talk about my personality at all or hobbies. Was I supposed to? How much did you adjust your SOPs?