victorydance

^ Agreed.

Three things: 1) Read their recent work, especially any working papers they may have currently. You should understand the basic methods behind the research and what they are trying to accomplish with it. But also more of the nuanced things behind the theory. The better you know it, the easier it will be to improvise on questions/discuss it 1 on 1. 2) Relax. Most of these things are super informal (although it depends on the prof). Think of this as kind of like a coffee date or something; they are going to ask you who you are, what you study, then transition to research/what kind of position is available. Just be yourself, and show that you are interested in doing research. Chances are, as a second year undergrad, you are probably just going to be doing a shit load of lit reviews at first (depending on what discipline you are in), so there isn't a crazy screening process if you show that you are interested/understand research as a good level for your status. 3) I agree to bring a notepad, but I disagree to take notes/and or read questions. You are talking to someone 1 on 1, this isn't a lecture. Make eye contact and be expressive and positive. A second year undergrad that comes in and starts reading notes and jotting down a bunch of things is so stereotypical it's not funny. Be prepared with questions sure, but make it seem natural. This is good preparation for interacting with profs in general, you want to make office hours a time where it is an actual conversation not an extension of a lecture.

^ What are you talking about? Trinity Western University is one of the best universities in the world, didn't you know? I am kidding.

I know that this change is part of a bigger change that many departments at UT Austin are making. I know that the political science department is drastically reducing their incoming class this upcoming cycle than years past. In the past many people got accepted without guaranteed funding, it won't be the case this year. Whether this is part of a bigger funding issue or moving towards a more guaranteed funding structure, I am not sure.

I think there is three types of POIs in the application process: the ones who align with your research interests very well, people who do work in your sub-field but don't necessarily align with your specific research interests, and people who uses methods similar to the ones you are interested in employing. This may depend on your discipline, but in my prospective SOPs I focus extensively on the former. These are the people where I actually specifically mention their work and tie it to mine in the SOP. The other two, I might mention, but don't go into detail about their work in the SOP. Something along the lines of "of course, Professors X, Y, and Z, offer a breadth of opportunities for blah blah blah" or "Professors X, Y, and Z provide substantive knowledge in sub-field X." Obviously you don't have the space to divulge into the intricacies of every somewhat relevant professor in the department. And even if you did, I am not sure it's the best approach anyways. You want the readers to logically agree with your targets, if they don't see that logical connection of why you are really interested in POI X, it might come off as name-dropping or lack of research. Ideally, you should have at least 1, preferably 2 or more, that can logically be connected to your research statement/line of inquiry. This should be the bread and butter and almost full extent of your "fit paragraph." It should be surgical and completely targeted. But that's my opinion.

^ What exactly is "studying so hard?"

^ There is an argument to made that there is no downside to contacting POIs. In fact, one of my LORs made this argument. Basically, if you email all of your POIs, perhaps one of those emails will lead to someone going to bat for you during the admissions process. At worst you get ignores or their replies are either meaningless or have no effect. The thing you need to weigh is (1) if the time and effort is worth it, or could be put to better use and (2) whether your discipline works in your favour or not (in my case, it doesn't).

^ That's good advice about talking to your profs about profs in your field. One of my LORs advised me that you should look for that "sweet spot" for POIs which is basically right about tenure time to 10-15 years after tenure. If you are targeting older profs that don't do much research/don't chair anymore, or freshly hired then that's a bit of a bad recipe. Profs are most productive in the 35-45 range, and hitting the people that are in that sweet spot and are publishing substantial work is really desirable. I talked to my profs about quite a few POIs, especially the ones that are at their ph.d. granting institutions. It can be quite valuable information.

^ I think I would do something similar if it was a different discipline, but for political science it seems rather useless because profs (outside of being on the actual committee) have absolutely no say in the admission process.

Coming from small LAC can actually have a major advantage: it is much easier to cultivate meaningful relationships with your profs. Of course, it's up to you to make that happen and if you don't then it might hurt you in the end game when compared to other applicants from better schools.

I think for me, I already know the work of most of my POIs just from my research projects beforehand. My honours thesis had 160+ citations on my potential research topic so I have already read a lot of their work beforehand. It wasn't a process of finding POIs then reading their work, it was more a process of already knowing who is in my field/sub-field and identifying departments that had other people that connect to that. I have a folder of all my POIs and a handful of their publications that fit with my research interests. Most of these were just imputed from my endnote library but some of them were done by scratch. I think there is only 2 or 3 (out of around 14 schools or so) that I had never read their work beforehand.

I think I have decided to not contact any profs in my upcoming cycle. If I was in a more science/lab related discipline, that might be different. I have contacted random profs before for data and potential indicators and both times I received great data sets that weren't public and very nice responses. So yeah I agree, it can be done, but I am the same way where I won't just send them random messages for admission purposes only tangible reasons. One time I did email a very recognized prof that is on the verge of retirement to ask if they are still chairing dissertations, they kindly replied and said they weren't sole chairing anymore (as well as her husband), so I can see that as being a somewhat simple way of contacting professors beforehand. But to ask "blah blah I am interested in your work, and am I a good fit, would you like to be my adviser?" That just makes me feel awkward and a waste of time.

That being said, I think how much studying time you put into the GRE is all relative to how much free time you have and how much you want/need it. I don't have a job, am done my undergrad, and live in a foreign country for kicks. I spend about 20-30 hours a week on a strict 6 month schedule. Why? Because I can, and at the end of the day I know it is only going to help me. My math skills have improved two-fold in the last 3 months or so. I was good at math in high school but haven't really touched it since besides a relatively simple quantitative measure in my honours thesis. I scored a 148 two years ago on the quant section, I need at least a 160 to jump through the hoop for my applications. I have time and am willing to put in the work. Right now I am scoring in the 155 range after putting in 3 months of work. I have another 3 months to get it to where I want. I have a pretty solid application, but my GPA isn't fabulous and I am applying to very competitive schools. If I can get a decent GRE score, then I am as competitive as anyone else who is applying.

Magoosh questions are screwed up. I usually get 90% on the easy and medium questions, but the hard and very hard questions destroy me. And it seems like there are twice as many of them as the easy and medium ones.

Do you have any research experience? Did you do an honours thesis? You didn't mention any research experience and that would be a major weakness. Screw the Persian, a year of Persian at university isn't going to give you nothing but very rudimentary skills. I would say take as much poli sci as possible. I don't think your major matters too much either way (a benefit or hindrance). Regional expertise might be more helpful for a comparativist rather than a prospective IR. However, ultimately what matters is how well you can show you know (1) what your research interests and prospective lines of inquiry and (2) you have a firm knowledge of the subfield and can express that in a pithy way on your SOP. I would stay away from any LORs from language teachers. They don't mean squat to political science admission committees.

A 164Q is a bit scary for a statistics doctoral application. I would take it again even if you don't study for it. You obviously have the math skills, you just need to perform better on test day.

I advise to always focus on two categories for the GRE math: 1) Algebra and operations with radicals and fractions. 2) Integers and number properties. Why? Because algebra and operations are at the core of 95% of GRE math questions. If you don't have your algebra down pat, you will not break 160. It is as simple as that. The GRE isn't hard math, but they try to trick you. One of the ways they trick you is simplification, rearranging, or factoring variables/radicals/fractions/ect. You need to have the mind for this, not just memorize techniques. You will only perfect this by drilling it and doing a lot of algebra questions. The GRE loves integer and number properties questions. Counting/combinations, prime factorization, GCD, LCM, multiples, ect. These questions are everywhere. I wouldn't spend much time focusing on geometry. Geometry is basic if you know your algebra and your basic geometric tricks.

Seriously? Michigan and Berkeley are fantastic schools for political science. UCLA and OSU are also solid schools.

Almost universally, private universities rank higher than public state schools. However, there are plenty of exceptions. The UC system, University of Minnesota, University of Michigian, UT Austin, OSU, and University of North Carolina can all be top schools depending on interests. That being said, out of the top 20 political science Ph.D. programs, private schools dominate. Ivy league schools are actually hit or miss in political science. Obviously Princeton, Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, and Yale are all great schools. But UPenn, Dartmouth, and Brown are actually relatively poor ranking schools in political science.

Unless you double major in math/stats and sometime relevant, I don't think they really give a crap.

Find out who the best people in your region are, and who matches your research interests, then apply there.

Find out who the best people in your region are, and who matches your research interests, then apply there.

Are you tied to your current city in some way? This could be a good opportunity to get rid of everything, move to a foreign country that is cheap to live in and apply for schools during that time.

I am not going to argue against that in a net sense, hosting these tournaments means countries'/cities lose money. However, one thing I think almost everyone overlooks is the improvement of infrastructure as a result of these games. Better infrastructure improves efficiency in the market in countries. I am going to use Brazil's world cup and olympics as an example because it's probably the country I know best in the world. Some of the projects that have been done/in process because of these games: - Up to 31 airports nationally have been upgraded/expanded, and if anyone had been through airports like Rio, Manaus, and Salvador they would understand how dire these upgrades were needed. - Many highways, particularly the additions of toll highways from Rio to Sao Paulo/Belo Horizonte/Curtibia/Porto Alegre have been either constructed or improved. - Rio's downtown shoreline (Porto Maravilha Project) is being gentrified (sewage, roads, development, drainage/treatment), this area was a MESS when I was there last. - Construction of a bullet train system from Rio to Sao Paulo. - Over 10,000 kilometers of railways are being upgraded and expanded (this is a big one because transportation infrastructure for Brazil's economy is terribly inefficient). - Light rail has been greatly expanded, both the metro in Rio and three major rapid bus lines have been introduced. Those are just some examples of greatly needed infrastructure projects for Brazil and Rio. Bringing in these games have actually enabled the government to push for more private contracts and bids in this process than they otherwise would have been able to garner. Many economists have argued that Brazil's recent economic slowdown is partly caused to faulty infrastructure in the country which causes inefficiencies. Dilma started her administration with the Programa de Aceleracao do Crescimento (PAC) which was a project designed to improve the country's infrastructure, it has been renewed as PAC II. ------ Unfortunately, every protest/argument against these types of games uses faulty logic like spending X dollars on stadiums or venues that are not of use, the money could be spent on other things blah blah blah. I NEVER see anyone take a logical position that shows that many of the infrastructure projects behind these two events will greatly improve the Brazilian economy in the long run. So in sum, yes Olympics/World Cups can be very costly and be a net-negative in terms of money spent vs. money brought in. However, this is not a zero-sum equation and I wish people would look a little deeper at what the governments are actually spending money on for World Cup 2012/Rio Olympics 2014 that is going to greatly help Brazil in the future and is badly needed.

I don't even have a copy of my HS diploma or BA. Never got one.