victorydance

No. I don't think there is much funding available for international students. Although I am fairly certain I can secure an RA position so I am not really that concerned about it. I am technically "in review" still as well but got unofficially accepted from the LAS department. Don't know what that means for your application?

I study comparative Latin American politics. I am an international student. I got accepted to UT Austin. Also applied to UChicago and am waiting for a response but can't justify going there over the former. I applied to some other programs in political science but will probably accept the UT Austin admit.

I just check it once every morning. I don't see the point of continually checking it.

What's a good time to start looking for apartments in Austin? Do a lot of leases start on July 1st due to the large student population?

Trying to book an airline ticket to go to an open house and I can't purchase it online from their website. In what 21st century world does a national airline not have a functioning website? Jesus Christ. It wouldn't normally be a big deal because I would just purchase a ticket from a different airline but this airline has prices that are about half the price of the others.

I was accepted last week and my status still hasn't changed from "in review" so I wouldn't bother watching that, just wait for the email.

Also, professors often list which Ph.D. students they have advised on their CVs, you can manually search where these people have ended up.

Some departments list their Ph.D. placements, some don't publicly list them. Here's an example of Cornell's: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/undergrad/cscareers/PlacementReport/2013PlacementReport

If you want to get an idea of how important institution prestige is in your field, go to the top institutions and check their placement records then work your way down. What you are going to see is after a certain point, Ph.D programs will start placing people in lower rung places or not at all. Also, keep in mind that just because a university placed some person in X good school, doesn't mean that much if you don't factor in who their adviser was. If you look deeper, you will see that some advisers are placing students in really good departments, and other advisers from the same university are not. This is due to their name recognition, their networks, and their skill as a mentor.

Oh man, why the hell would anyone EVER put anything like that in their SOP.

First things first: while it is nice to have a grander plan, you shouldn't be counting your chickens before you hatch. It's hard to gauge whether grad school is right for until you get a few years of undergrad in you and especially get some research experience under your belt. Focus on doing your best during your undergrad while keeping your options open, but don't get ahead of yourself. Before anything, it goes without say that you should shoot for a 3.5+ GPA. The higher the better but it does't have to be perfect. First piece of advice: get your foundation in order (micro, macro) + statistics/quant methods done as soon as possible. Economics is a social science, but it is probably the most heavy math focused social science out there. You need to take some introductory statistics classes, then move to more complex math courses like linear algebra. Then, once you get your foundation down, transfer out of Saginaw, to ideally, University of Michigan. There is a couple of reasons for this: 1) your chances of getting research experience at Saginaw is limited, and 2) for better or worse, getting a BA from a prestigious university does matter. Actually, starting off and getting intro course done at small public or community colleges can be better; its nice to ease into the undergrad level (especially since you haven't been a student for so long) + the class sizes are smaller and you can actually learn more. Once you get to a higher level of school, the key is research experience above all else. This is what separates the cream from the crop. Having at least 6 months of RA experience is going to give you a huge leg up on competition. You don't have to be an RA to get research experience, but it's the best form of it. Other ways are honours theses, independent reading and research courses, or research seminars. How do you get an RA position? Well, a few things to watch out for...look for, especially, junior professors (assistant professors who haven't gotten tenure yet) that are doing research + looking for students to help them with their research. Get in their classes, go to their office hours and build a relationship with them, do well in their classes, then ask if you can help in some way. If you prove to them you are a capable student and you work hard, they might give you a RA position (keep in mind these are where the best letters of recommendation are garnered from as well). The rest is complete window dressing. Build foundation, lots of math/stats and economics fundamentals > transfer > try to get research experience. That would be the general path of an advanced undergrad in economics in your position.

PM me, I got a bunch of pdfs if you want them.

You interested in working with Huber and Stephens?

I think there is good arguments on both sides. Bottom line. the academic market for political science Ph.D. holders is brutal. You are looking at spending 5-7 years preparing for a job that in most likelihood you will never get. This is especially true for people who go to universities outside the top 10. Even for places like Stanford, you can have years where only a couple people out of 10 get placed in TT jobs. That's pretty ridiculous. On the other hand, what people don't seem to factor in is there are a lot of ABD and Ph.D. holders that really aren't that good. Lots have crappy dissertations and some don't even get anything published. Then they wonder why they are not getting offers. Ridiculous. There are also a lot of advisers out there, whether from top R1 schools or not, that don't really even give a crap about you. They don't help you network, they don't teach you how to publish, and you can sometimes be stuck out there alone on an island. On one hand, I see why there is disillusionment among Ph.D. students and grads. On the other, there seems to be a lot "grass is greener" mentality as well. People who have failed in the academic market seem to think that life would be all rosy if they didn't do a Ph.D. and used those years to gain a foot in the job market. Or may be they are frustrated that they spent the better part of their 20s not getting laid, staring at a computer screen doing regressions, and not enjoying their life. They then use this opportunity to shit on the whole industry and put out "facts" towards grad students. There are also a lot of wannabe academics who are obsessed with social recognition, that are extremely elitist and think that anything besides TT at a R1 is below their standards, a waste of time, and a knock on their ego; this is ridiculous. The question becomes what you want for your life. The vast majority of people who graduate with political science BAs (or most social science degrees) will amount to jack squat in the private sector. This means working average jobs, doing things you may not like, making extremely average salaries, and probably being in debt like the typical consumer in North America. But of course a lot of doctoral grads will have allusions about them being the top 2% and making their life so wonderful if only they didn't do a Ph.D. If you are dead set on academia you have to live with the fact that you probably might end up unemployed and disillusioned. You have to ask yourself...what are you looking for in life? Do you value money and job security? Are you more driven by your work than what your work affords you in your lifestyle? I really think your personal priorities are the crux of the matter in this debate, not what TT stats are, not what attrition rates are, not what unemployment is, or whatever.

Have you looked at OAS?

1) It's not necessary for your adviser to be working on something exactly what you want for him or her to be a good adviser, although it is preferable. All that matters is they have some expertise in whatever intended research you want to do. 2) If a professor isn't on the grad committee, he or she has virtually no say in whether you get accepted or not. 3) Most professors won't give you any real information you couldn't have found out on your own. I see a point in certain circumstances...like say if a POI is up there in age and you want to see if they are still advising grad students and what their deal is (I did this with two professors), or emailing a prof you might have met or got data off before somewhere down the line (I also did this). However, for the most part it's a waste of time. There is an argument to be made that it doesn't hurt you therefore it's not a bad thing to do, but it's definitely not a mistake to not mass email a bunch of POIs by any means.

It's incredibly easy to find how to fit into a program by looking at CVs. There is conflicting advice about reaching out, enough to suggest that doing/not doing it isn't a wrong choice by any means.

I think this is fair and I agree.

See this is the problem. Opportunity cost is more tied to the extrinsic value of what you forgo than the intrinsic value. Do you really think that someone who is interested in research would prefer to spend 5 or 6 years working in retail over doing a doctorate? Or similarly, do you think that a marginal level of increased monetary value is going to make you more happy? Speaking from personal experience, this has no relevance to my situation. I already have a passive income + savings worth 2-3 years of salary in an average job. I already live abroad without working at the moment and could continue to do so if I wanted. So what am I foregoing exactly by doing a Ph.D.? Theoretically if all the stars aligned, I could follow my passion of political science research + earn a salary (internal + external funding + passive income + accrued savings) that makes more than the average salary of someone in the US.

My country's federal government actively recruits masters and Ph.D. students without formal work experience for policy analyst positions. If you have a Ph.D. from a top 25 university in the US there would be no trouble getting an entry level (approx. 60K salary) policy analyst job in my country. 1) Look to my other post in this thread, when people say opportunity cost I don't really understand what that means. Depends what you are foregoing rather than some broad generalization of opportunity cost. The average person isn't really foregoing anything that meaningful by getting a Ph.D. 2) Firstly, you are making the assumption that I (or the other person) doesn't want to go to academia, we never said that. Secondly, do you honestly think I really care if people think I am a 'failure?' 3) This is condescending. I probably have just as much of an idea of what political science research is and isn't as you do. I know for a fact that my research is incredibly applicable to policy. So what if part of my research is theoretical? The meat and potatoes and underlying research of what I do is incredibly applicable to a number of more professional settings.

This is identical to my reasoning as well.

See, I think it is a bit doomsday. For the reason that going to grad school is a 'waste of life.' What exactly about going to grad school is a waste of life? As opposed to what, working in a typical job 40+ hours a week that you may or may not like? To me, that's a false dilemma. That's the problem with a lot of these arguments for me. It's like, for the vast majority of people in the world; they spend most of their life working in completely average jobs, working to live. So what exactly are most people sacrificing here?

^ lol

I mean, most rankings in Canada are going to go like this: U of T McGill UBC ---- The rest. Not to say that the others are not good schools, but the top 3 are a cut above everyone else in practically every discipline. There are some exceptions, for example, the University of Waterloo is actually one of the best schools for engineering in the country (in fact, among the best in the world) despite it being relatively lower ranked in other disciplines. However, speaking generally, UBC, UofT, and McGill pull in the most money, usually have the highest quality and depth of faculty, and have much larger cohorts than the rest of the schools; they also place grad students the best as well. As far as a Canadian degree being worth less than an American one; this is not true. Take some third tier state school student and a graduate from UofT and the quality of education isn't even comparable.

I'll just copy and paste: How Women and Men Help Their Friends: Several articles and books focus on how people help their friends in real-life settings. These studies often find that womean are more helpful (Belansky & Boggiano, 1994; D. George et al. 1998, S. E Taylor 2002). The survey was done by the private-sector, a company called DYMO. Regardless, I spent about 5 seconds googling to get those two links.