betteryear

sadly what you end up doing for the rest of your life depending on these subtle distinctions between where you end up being within that top 60.

MIT is a crazy crazy place. Just the general idea that if something works, no need to change it. It's weird that there's noone in the poli sci department you can write to to check the status of your application. They should look at the applications of some of the other schools

some hope for NYU applicants... according to Zoya (senior assistant director), NYU is still reviewing applications. but then she is from enrollment services and might not know what is going on in the politics department?

i heard from a MIT prof that they are in the last stage of selections...my guess is that we will probably have something from them by next week. ...still waiting for my first acceptance, losing heart now.

congrats to all the Princeton admits! big week

backstreets, on 16 February 2010 - 10:57 PM, said: maybe i'm being too optimistic, but i've got a feeling that penn is staggering its decisions. i talked with the department yesterday and they said they added something to my file that afternoon. i don't think they'd have done that if they could tell i'm on the "no" list... fingers crossed! do you think NYU might be doing the same? they asked for my transcripts last week, after they had already announced results (going by this forum). i guess im being needlessly optimistic given they announced all acceptance in early feb last year and all rejections (again together) in march.

did anyone apply to political economy programs? any idea when stanford gsb is announcing their results?

thanks so much guys, this is very encouraging! i might be able to sleep a little more peacefully now i agree with you about the fit, it's all about finding a professor who could use your research. having been part of admissions committees before, i saw that lots of really good students don't make it because faculty were looking for a specific language/analysis skill in the applicant pool (sometimes some students would get pulled up from 50+ in the pre-screen process to top 5...it just seemed so unfair at the time). stanford and michigan were not great fits for me, but i was more hopeful about yale (i wonder if this faculty never saw my application...i know he was abroad for fieldwork last month). ipsqq: quant is not my strong point (most of my work so far has been qualitative) but i took some advanced econometrics classes in grad school (sadly never got a chance to use it much for my own research). my work reco guy has a PhD in Public Finance from an Ivy and most of my work was close to pure research (in fact i treated my masters as a research degree too - lots of methods and theory classes...part of the reason why a real world job is so frustrating right now). but I didnt know a political scientist very well, their reco i thought would be very lukewarm (i regret that now). my other letters are from a policy prof and a economics (political econ) prof...one is so so, one is famous in her field. but i wonder if anyone knows about outside of their teeny tiny research world. i just hope they are open to reading an application from an outsider. thanks again for listening. good luck to everyone!

Dear fellow poli sci applicants I have been following this forum for many weeks now, it's been a great source of support. i am finally writing now because im in a state of panic...rejected at 3 (possible 4 schools) so far and beginning to wondering if this PhD thing is going to work out for me. maybe someone can help me figure out my chances (so i can start working on Plan ? applied: MIT, Harvard, Brown, Stanford, Yale, WashU, Michigan, NYU (and a couple of policy/political econ programs) rejected: Stanford, Yale, Michigan, NYU (?) GRE: V580, Q770, A5...bad verbal, so took it again - V730, Q720, A5 (hoping they consider higher scores in each section) GPA (masters): 3.6 (Ivy, in Policy), lots of field research experience. 3 publications. 2+ yrs work-ex in multilateral agency in DC. GPA (ug): Top of my class, distinction (foreign school) - policy Recos: Two letters from policy profs from grad school, one work reco. I wonder if my non poli sci background is a problem. Or if my research interest is too narrow and I should have contacted faculty first...or maybe there's still time to write to the remaining schools? Thanks so much!