victorydance

Princeton is widely regarded as a top 3 political science department in the world. In fact, recent placements from Princeton are significantly better than Stanford.

First things first, comparative politics and American politics is basically the same thing; so as far as your "degree name" it's not really a big deal. Furthermore, a masters in political science is a masters in political science, it's not really that big of a deal what your major is, more so the skills you acquired from studying the subject. Secondly, I would look at getting into a independent reading and research class with a professor. It's pretty easy at McGill all you really need to do is approach a professor about it and with a specific topic/preliminary reading list. You can basically sit down and design a course together and it's also nice because it cuts down on your actual in-class time during the semester. I'm sure someone like Prof. Waller would be open to doing an American politics course with you 1 on 1. He's also a pretty nice guy as well. Lastly, I wouldn't do a Ph.D., particularly in American politics, in Canada. Go to the US and shoot for the best programs if you want to increase your chances of working in academia with a TT position.

^ Not really. It's more of a transaction than couch surfing. You pay for the room/apartment and that's the deal. Couchsurfing is more like "do you have a place for me to sleep?" You also have the choice of renting a whole apartment on airbnb.

I prefer someone who isn't a graduate student/academic. I have plenty of people to talk about my research interests I prefer to have my significant other to be someone I can just have fun and enjoy my free time with.

That's correct. The vast majority of TT track hires (whether ABD or otherwise) are 30-40 years old.

Make your own chili paste. It's so easy. First heat up some water, put in some dried chiles (I recommend ancho and arbol chiles) into it, let them soak for 15-20 minutes, then strain them. Grab a blender or processor, put in the chiles, a bunch of garlic, and a little water and grind it up. Then saute the paste for about an hour in oil in a frying pan. Put it in the fridge and it will last about a month or so. Chili paste is the base of countless Asian recipes.

Look at community colleges.

JHU has a pretty brutal placement record: http://politicalscience.jhu.edu/graduate/placement And be careful with reading that as well...they seem to be considering adjunct jobs as "placements" which is pretty dishonest. For example, the two Yale "placements" ended up at some random LAC a few years later.

Nope. Went to college at 20 years old knowing exactly what I wanted to study.

^ Not for probably two weeks or so.

Well, if you don't like it you probably won't like spending hours collecting data and running regressions as part of your research. That's all. Yes, I suggest you wait. There is no rush on when to apply, it's better to be sure of it then spend a lot of time and money on applications, furthermore perhaps accept an offer of acceptance hastily. You said you are interested in "IR, CP, and American" sub-fields but that is basically the whole field of political science. This is a problem that I was a bit concerned about and it has been reinforced. You are not ready yet. Think about it, you would be competing with applicants such as myself who already have research experience and have clearly defined research interests in a particularly sub-field and sub-sub-fields. So I agree with others you need to read some literature, actually a lot of literature. Check out the syllabuses of some graduate classes, both in IR and comparative (American politics is basically just comparative politics but only focusing on the US). Read canon literature in the sub-fields (for comparative politics look at books like Political Order and Changing Societies (Huntington), Patterns of Democracy (Ljiphart), Political Man (Lipset), The Civic Culture (Almond and Verba), Polyarchy (Dahl), Patterns of Democratic Consolidation (Linz and Stepan), Building Democratic Institutions (Mainwaring and Scully)). I also strongly advise you enroll in a quantitative methods class. If you can't hack it or you don't like these types of classes there is no point whatsoever in applying to graduate schools because your coursework and research will heavily draw on these methods and techniques.

Well political science is a heavy math field (unless you go into theory - but there are no jobs for that), so if you don't like math then you will not like political science. I really urge you to tread with caution. Judging by your posts, you haven't really had any real research experience. You probably have a much different idea what the discipline is than what political science actually is in reality. My advice? Forget the Ph.D. applications, or any applications for that matter, and do the independent research, do an honours thesis, maybe try to get an RA position, maybe take some methods classes, and read a lot of literature before you graduate. There is no rush and I think you should learn what political science is really about before you go ahead and start applying to programs.

Well, to be fair, Harvard isn't the best university out there for sociology contrary to many other disciplines.

None of this matters....you are in or not.

Kicking myself for not applying to Fulbright last fall...

Got into UChicago, with a scholarship of approx. 25K. Makes the decision a bit harder... No, I don't have any publications. In political science it's virtually impossible to get anything published as an undergrad. I have been turning my honours thesis into a workable manuscript but I need to add quantitative analysis which I don't have the proper training in for it to be publishable at a decent journal.

Tourist.

What exactly do you want to know about?

That seems foolish to decide on that though...considering the size of the department I would imagine it's fairly easy to get a TA or RA position.

I think this "higher standard for MA applicants" is pretty óverstated. If you look at recent admissions in political science (and I am sure sociology is similar) you are looking at at least half of the incoming cohorts holding MA or graduate degrees of some kind. A good applicant is a good applicant. No one wants a shitty MA applicant in their program sure, but I don't intend on being one anyways. The MA itself isn't necessarily what's attractive to me, it's the resources I have at my disposal from it. Ph.D. programs in political science heavily look at methods and math training in their applicants. If you have a good math foundation you are definitely looked upon more favourably. This could actually be the weakest part of my application so if I manage to go through a year sequence of graduate level quantitative methods than this is a huge plus to my application. I think I would be a lot more favourable just because I will be focusing on improving all my weaknesses. I didn't have an amazing GPA during my undergrad, I am looking to get a 3.8+ GPA. No math and little methods training, looking to do at least 3 graduate methods courses. If I manage to improve those two things + do better on my GRE quant score I am an extremely competitive applicant with virtually no weaknesses in my application. I don't really care about the time thing, for one I already committed to only applying to MA programs this cycle, and two I am already a non-traditional student and not concerned with going through the process at blazing speed. I am not too worried about it, but I am going to the open house so I'll definitely be asking a lot of questions about how flexible the program is and how I can utilize the government department during my studies. I also already have an interview for an RA position by emailing one of the profs, will probably email a few more to see what their response is like. -------------------- I think it also isn't necessarily just about improving my application...it's also about improving my personal skills. I love studying comparative politics and doing a MA in Latin American studies allows me to gain a lot of skills that I wouldn't have time to focus on during a doctoral program. It also allows me to finally assess whether academia is exactly what I want for my future even though I am pretty drawn to it already. Coming out of the program having a lot more substantive knowledge in Latin America, better stats training, better language proficiency, and other research skills honed I will be stronger as a student and have a clearer idea of the path I need to go on in the future.

I've added Uruguay and Ecuador to the list since I started this thread

I am using it as a launch pad to get into (hopefully) a top 10 Ph.D. program in political science. It really depends how you approach it though. For me, I study comparative Latin American politics. UT Austin has seven professors that focus on politics in Latin America (typically even the best departments in the field only employ one or two who study LA politics). The resources available through that program are better than any other MA for me, political science or otherwise. Besides, I can get into any Ph.D. level political science course that I want anyways. I was kind of stuck in this no man's land with regards to applying to graduate programs: too strong for MA applications, a little too weak for top Ph.D. programs. I probably could have gotten an admit to a Ph.D. program, but I decided to do a masters first to really make my application package elite. I also think I am not *totally* ready for a Ph.D. program yet and could definitely use a bunch of methods training beforehand, particularly in statistics. These are my basic goals coming out of the MA: 1) Do a few quantitative and qualitative methods courses in political science. 2) Round out my knowledge in Latin America so that I am not strapped to applying solely to Ph.D. programs that are strong in the area. 3) Improve my language skills, particularly Portuguese. 4) Get some more research experience, already have about 8 months worth of RA work, looking for ~2 years before applying to Ph.D. programs. 5) Get something published. 6) Get a good letter of recommendation from a particular professor that I am targeting for my masters thesis. I could easily get all of those things done in a MA program, except getting something published would be tough of course. So yeah, you need to look at what kind of resources the MA LAS could do for you and make a plan of what you want to get out of the program for it to be really beneficial. Oh, and one of my former professors really pushed me to apply to this program...I might not have if it wasn't for them.

If you are really curious about the process you can do it to yourself. Basically just put your own email in the field and it will email you a prompt and you can see the form and everything that the prof has to fill out. Then just delete that recommender after on the application website.

I think the whole status thing is kind of unreliable. I got accepted to the MA LAS program at UT Austin over two weeks ago and it still hasn't changed from "in review."

Yeah, I knew about this...I'll have to memorize the keys so I know which ones are which. Thanks.