ARealDowner

And I'm in at Ohio State as well! What a relief just having a single acceptance. Congratulations everyone who got accepted, hopefully we'll start hearing from other schools soon as well.

I know from the results pages that of my schools, Ohio State and Vanderbilt have had interviews in recent years.

Hello letsgo2015! I hope some more of the lurkers come out of hiding, I always see a few guests reading the forum; The waiting/commiserating/celebrating's going to be better if we have more people involved.

Then again, the guests could always just be the adcoms trying to match the files with the users!

Hello letsgo2015! I hope some more of the lurkers come out of hiding, I always see a few guests reading the forum; The waiting/commiserating/celebrating's going to be better if we have more people involved.

Then again, the guests could always just be the adcoms trying to match the files with the users!

Hello letsgo2015! I hope some more of the lurkers come out of hiding, I always see a few guests reading the forum; The waiting/commiserating/celebrating's going to be better if we have more people involved.

Then again, the guests could always just be the adcoms trying to match the files with the users!

I was going to be nerdy and put together a spreadsheet for my schools results timing, looking at the past three years. Perhaps I can do that as a Google spreadsheet, and share it with anyone who would be interested/want to contribute some schools of their own. Make it more of a communal effort rather than make everyone who was going to do something along those lines do it separately.

I was going to be nerdy and put together a spreadsheet for my schools results timing, looking at the past three years. Perhaps I can do that as a Google spreadsheet, and share it with anyone who would be interested/want to contribute some schools of their own. Make it more of a communal effort rather than make everyone who was going to do something along those lines do it separately.

I'm merely a fellow applicant, so take what I say with a grain of salt. From what I've gathered on here and elsewhere about the admissions process, I think that anything outside of academics (the aforementioned GPA, GRE, research, throw in letters of rec from professors), while it may help you slightly, will have only a marginal effect on the outcome. That said, ceteris paribus I think coming from a military background (especially special forces of some type) would both make you a more interesting candidate as well as send strong signals about your discipline and work ethic. So while I don't think that's going to get your app thrown in the accept pile at an elite school if it wouldn't be there otherwise, if it's coming down to you and a similar applicant without it, I think it would give you the boost over that person. Just my two cents worth.

Though I definitely have sympathy for those who are more qualitatively oriented. Particularly on subjects such as religion, the idea that a statistics- or mathematical modeling-based approach is the best for understanding that type of phenomenon seems a little too unconnected to reality for me. The subtleties and interpretive difficulties for things like that make me feel that something is lost if we assume quantitative research is the only way to conduct political science...

With the number of posts like this, I'm getting very worried about the reading ability of our future diplomatic corps.

Sage advice for future appliers (2011-2012 forum post). If I wouldnt have read this, I am sure I would have completely struck out:
 
Hello all,

After four months' hiatus, I'm back for another cycle - good to see some old faces (handles?) around. To my knowledge, no applications are open for business yet, but with Yale's coming online Monday, I thought now would be a good time to wish everyone good luck. More importantly, to all the new applicants this year, I'm going to try and give some unsolicited advice. Here goes:

Last year, I went into applications humble yet confident. I had a 3.90 at a top-10 national university with a reputation for difficulty, research experience, was doing a master's at Cambridge, had worked in government for 9 months in addition to various internships, was awarded Phi Beta Kappa and other honors, had 3 good recommendations from tenured professors, submitted a capstone paper for a sample, and had a 1570 GRE.

I went 0 for 7.

So this year, I'm focusing on what actually matters: the personal statement. It is the single most important part of the application. Never mind what the departmental websites say about holistic approaches and solid backgrounds; that all matters, but only as an initial check on the candidate before the real admitting and rejecting happens based on the PS.

Focus on matching your research interests to specific professors, and write why they will want to supervise you and why your research will benefit from them. And spend some words doing so: I've been told about 40% of the PS should be discussing this (last year, I used about 15%). Don't just look at their subfield ("comparative politics") and confirm that their area focus ("Africa") matches yours. Read their bios, but then analyze their CVs. Find recent articles and/or books. Then read the works themselves. Quickly, you'll find the professor you thought was a perfect match is actually only tangentially related to your research.

Which is the second most important thing: have your research absolutely sorted out. Have a research question. Make sure you could explain to your grandmother it in 100 words or fill 10,000 words discussing its intricacies, because you'll have to do both at some point. They won't take you on interest ("I want to look at political violence") and credentials ("I have an MPhil from Cambridge") alone. They want to know that you can formulate and articulate a proper scholarly inquiry. This should also take up about 40% of the PS, according to academic advisors with whom I've spoken (last year, I spent about 25% on this).

Maybe these things were obvious to other first-time applicants and I just lost my way, or stupidly ignored it. But I certainly wish someone had drilled this into me before I started work on my applications. Perhaps I would have got an offer last year. Perhaps not. Either way, my personal statement was concise and well-written but completely useless for my application. I deserved my rejections. And so will you if you don't take this advice.

Best of luck.