ladedodaday

With all due respect, it is demonstrably false that you need above a 700 (or 750) to be competitive at schools that have mandatory quant courses. As seen in the average scores posted on the Fall 2010 thread, no schools even have an average score of 750, nevermind having 750 as a minimum. Some top 20 schools (like Duke, Chicago and Minnesota), actually have average (not minimum) quant scores below 700! Honestly, I wish that 750s were required! I'd be a lot less worried about admissions (because my scores were fine), but unfortunately, I will not automatically gain acceptance over those who "only" (note the sarcasm!) got a 680. Please, let's stop the foolishness. It's true, anything below a 600 is too low for many/most "top" programs, but 750? That's empirically false. Maybe I misunderstood plisar's post, and he/she was concurring with natofone (because of score averages), but this does seem to be a common misperception. And as a last point, we should definitely take anything posted on PSJR with a huge dose of skepticism (or at least, anything from before registration was required).

You'll certainly get lots of different opinions on this, but you seem to have applied to reasonable schools. If you were able to bump your GRE quant score over 600, you'd have certainly been competitive at higher ranked schools, but as is, your schools seem like good choices (and aren't exactly easy to get into). As for whether you are wasting your time getting a PhD from a non-elite school, it depends. If you are hoping to be a professor at Harvard or Stanford, you probably are out of luck, but if you are looking for a career in government or as a professor at a liberal arts college, that's quite feasible. But, if you want to work in academia, it's a good idea to look at placement records. For example, a school like New Mexico, which is unranked by USNWR, has managed to place people at top 20 programs because of certain professors. All in all, attending a higher ranked school would obviously help your job prospects (as with undergrad), but if you are great at what you do, you'll usually get a job.

Yeah, I think that's the big thing to understand about all the scores; they get your application read, but not much more. One of my professors, who had been on a top-10 graduate admissions committee, told me that he didn't even look at GRE scores unless the applicant came from a lower-ranked school (just to check whether his/her grades were a fluke). I guess the average scores above just prove how important the recommendations/SOPs are. Haha, although I'm not sure if that's comforting or not!

I'd agree with many of the comments about the LSE. It has a fantastic reputation that might get you something, but as a school, it is not spectacular. Regardless, I think the bigger question is: what exactly are you looking to do? A Msc in SocPol/Dev is an entirely different degree than an MBA and will push you in a different direction.

Personally, I don't think specific rankings make that much of a difference, and I'd prefer to retain a little bit of privacy. For example, if someone says they went to " an elite liberal arts school," there might be a little bit of debate about what that means, but most people have an idea of what schools fall in that category. For example, I would feel equally knowledgeable about your application if you had said that you went to a top liberal arts school, did research at a top ivy league school, and received a masters from one of the top 3 schools in England. I can't see an admissions committee caring that much about whether those schools were Swarthmore, Yale, and the LSE; or Amherst, Columbia, and Oxford. Also, with so many other unknowns (recommendations, SOP, writing sample), these posts aren't particularly instructive anyways. I'd be more curious to know what you mean when you say that you "briefly studied at Yale." But anyhow, that's just my opinion. If other people want to share where they went to school, I'd certainly be curious (in a voyeuristic way), but I don't think it's really that useful. And with that, I am off to mail the last of my applications! Oh, but as a last note: Does anybody really take the Hix rankings seriously? Anything that puts Michigan St at 11 and Duke at 51 seems ridiculous. There are an enormous amount of problems with his approach. And talking about grad school admissions specifically: Is an admissions committee really going to favor an applicant from Florida State (24) over one from Brown (124)? It seems like the general strength of an undergrad institution would be more important than its specific departments. Rant over :-)

Ah, that'd make a lot more sense. And it would also explain why they rejected so many applicants with high scores (because they applied to the PhD program), while letting in people with lower ones (masters applicants). Now if only there was a way to figure out how Duke's average GPA for accepted students was 3.4.

Ah, I was looking at the wrong number (the number of enrolled students, silly me), but still, they let in more students/a higher percentage of applicants than Notre Dame. Also, their average gpa was 3.5 and gres were 606v 628q, which is hardly daunting, and a bit lower than Notre Dame. Ah, and at least I was right about UCSD (a top 10 school!), where 24% and 25% were accepted the past two years! So I guess the point remains: it is hard to call any school a safety, since they all seem to take very different things into account. Ah, but as I was looking those numbers over again, a strange thing popped out at me. At UNC, the average GPA/GREs of students who were denied admission is actually higher than those who got in. I guess I should have spent a little more time on that personal statement

I'd be careful about using Notre Dame as a safety. Their admissions are actually more competitive than some of the "top" schools (in terms of test scores). For example, their medians (700V, 720Q) are about 100 points higher for each one than UNC! Also, UNC (and others like UCSD) accept 25% of their applicants, while Notre Dame accepts less than 10%! Just saying :-)

Ah, I think you might have misunderstood me a little bit. The background in comparative politics is certainly important, but comparative politics does not always mean comparing different countries. So for the OP, either writing sample would work.

Hey all! This is my second year applying to grad schools, but first year with PhD programs! I graduated this past year and am looking to study comparative politics (with a regional focus). My quant and verbal GREs are within the 700-760 range and I have a 5.0-5.5 on the writing. I graduated with a high 3.9 from a flagship public in a small state and my recommendations are solid, but from lesser known professors. I have a couple of other things going for me (study abroad/awards/some languages), but let's be honest, it's a bit of a crapshoot :-) Oh, and last year, I applied/was accepted to the MPhil in Politics at Oxford (the only school I applied to), but didn't attend because of finances. I'm probably applying to far too many programs (10-12ish), but seeing as most of them are top 20-25, I'm just hoping to get into one of them! And as a last word of encouragement to everyone, applications have actually been declining to PhD programs over the past 4-5 years or so. Many schools (like Duke, UCSD, Minnesota, UNC) keep public statistics on admissions, and the average number of applicants/GRE scores have been declining recently, so your chances are probably better than you think. Good luck to everyone and I'm glad to see this board getting a little bit of life. I definitely read through the entirety of last year's posts while preparing my applications!

This might seem like a little bit of a no-brainer, but comparative politics does not really mean that you are comparing different countries. In many cases it does, but there has also been lots of groundbreaking work that focuses solely on one country (like Putnam's work on social capital in Italy). You should just use whatever you feel is your best work, not whichever one you think is more "comparative." Also, the writing sample is a very minor part of your application; admissions committee members usually just skim it!