Penelope Higgins
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Posts posted by Penelope Higgins
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11 hours ago, cooperstreet said:
At Michigan?
Yes.
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I believe that Emory traditionally flies people in for interviews.
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Princeton announces searches in every subfield every year. Does not mean they will hire in all of them.
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This post is obviously very biased and nowhere near the truth. It can easily be ignored. The MA in Pol Sci at NYU is an excellent place to get academic training. It has excellent substantive courses in all of the areas of political science as well as courses in quantitative analysis, game theory, and formal modeling. Just this semester alone an MA student can choose to enroll in any of 7 courses that are both MA/PhD level classes, just check out http://politics.as.nyu.edu/object/ma.scheduleSpring2015
What this means is that you can get somewhat of a PhD level education at the MA level if you choose to enroll in the right classes. The NYU MA thus does an excellent job at preparing you for PhD study. It is likely the best option from your list.
Look, I've got no dog in this fight. NYU may indeed be the best option on the list. I don't know. But the earlier post saying that because NYU is a top-15 department it is the best option was, I believe, misleading because of the separation between the MA and the PhD program. I've found that when I see applications to my PhD program from students coming out of the NYU MA program, they don't in general seem to have letters from people I would like to see or the training I would expect from the NYU political science department, and I want to make sure that the person making this decision has that information up front, since I know people who have gone there for that purpose and have been disappointed. The list of classes you posted suggested that some of this may have changed in the last couple of years. That's great. On the other hand, here is the list of PhD courses for the same semester: http://politics.as.nyu.edu/object/phd.scheduleSpring2015and so the person who started this thread and anyone else interested can see the full picture for themselves.
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A full ride to SIS is a great way to get a master's degree for use in policy and professional applications, but if you're interested in academia, then you're far better off by attending NYU, which is a top-15 school in terms of academic preparation.
That's not to impugn SIS at all - again, it's a great professional program - it's simply to point out that academic training is different than policy-oriented training.
You certainly shouldn't withdraw your application ... why on earth would you do that? If they've given you an offer, then they understand that you are likely waiting for other schools. See where else you get in. If NYU takes you, then you should pick NYU for academic training. Only when you've seen all your offers should you withdraw.
The MA in Political Science at NYU is not a good place to get academic training. I can't compare it to the other options, which I don't know as well, but at NYU (as discussed on here before) the MA is a separate program from the PhD. Students do not normally take classes with the main political science faculty or with PhD students, and it does not prepare you well for PhD programs. Again, I can't offer advice as to how to choose among these options, but the NYU program is not as good a pre-PhD option as the name of the school would suggest.
Here is a post from last year that discusses the NYU MA program in some detail:
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My advice here, and in general for situations in which the candidate needs to explain a serious problem with their file, is to consider letting a letter writer do so. This requires finding a letter writer you trust, confiding in them about the situation, and explicitly asking them to address it. They will know how to contextualize the situation, and it sounds less like an excuse or justification coming from them than it does coming from the applicant.
I obtained lower MA grades than I would have liked due to some life events and poor response to those events, but more importantly because I have bipolar disorder and did not realize or receive (some) treatment until after immediately after my MA. What do you recommend for situations where a problem that led to decreases in performance in the past has been somewhat addressed but could well affect the PhD experience, i.e. how should applicants and their letter-writers address this? My concern would be that by providing that context for the performance it might cause enormous concern by admissions over my ability to finish the program.
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Yes, lots of people in my (also top 5) program were as you described. However, I'd think that someone failing a somewhat basic math class would be evaluated much more negatively than someone who just hadn't taken any math at all.
But perhaps I'm mistaken?
Yeah, fair enough. I was responding less to the original post and more to the general tone of this and other threads, which seem to me to be over-emphasizing math courses as the core preparation for PhD admission. Failing a course is not going to look good on your file. But I'm not sure that the specific course (basic or upper level) or what subject area makes a difference in how it will be seen. The problem here is a failed course, not a failed math course.
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Folks, I sit on an admissions committee at my university most years. I have had students admitted to top 5 departments in empirical political science in the last 5 years who had little to no math background since high school, no programming skills, and certainly little beyond intro calculus. So I just want to point out that there's a bit of exaggeration about the math background needed going on in this conversation. Applicants should simply seek to show that they are smart and able to build the needed skills once admitted.
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I've posted this on here before, but it is only one data point. My department's admissions spreadsheet doesn't even have a column for the writing score from the GRE. Everyone knows it is a ridiculous test, and nobody takes it seriously.
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I've sat on the admissions committee about every other year for a while now at two departments that sit in different places on the academic food chain. I can guarantee you that It makes NO difference at all when you apply as long as your application is in before the deadline, and your letters of recommendation arrive within a week or two after the deadline. The committee does not even see the files for a couple of weeks after the deadline since an administrator has to organize them and upload them to the server we use to view them.
The only exception is one that arises at departments that do not fund all students. These are mostly lower-ranked departments but include many of the schools under discussion by various applicants here. At these schools, departments can nominate their best applicants (or more accurately the best applicants they think are likely to attend, since the funding rolls down to a university-wide waiting list rather than to the next nominee of that department) for university funding, and deadlines for department nominations often fall earlier than the department deadline for applicants to turn in their materials. These deadlines are usually listed on department websites with language like "for best consideration for funding, apply by X date."
But with that exception aside, you should not be concerned about getting your materials in early. Simply meet the deadlines and your file will get full consideration. Note that the same thing is NOT true when you apply for academic jobs, but that is a completely separate discussion.
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One name comes to mind off the top of my head: Jeff Colgan, who I think is moving to Brown. He got his PHD only a couple of years ago, so rather than planning to work with him, you might look at where he studied and who he studied with.
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You can find a lot of the info you seek on department websites. I suggest you do some research of your own.
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This is not my field, but my sense is that some departments that are strong in the intelligence area include Harvard (Rosen), Penn (Horowitz), and Princeton (Shapiro and Yerhi-Milho).
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For analytic style work in political theory of the kind you seem to describe, Princeton and Oxford are the strongest departments. Other good places in the US besides some of the places you mention include Harvard, NYU and Brown. I don't see Chicago or Columbia as being places to do this sort of work. Outside the US, the LSE has a strong group. And more generally, most departments in England except Cambridge do analytic work in political theory. In Canada, Magill might also be a very good option; perhaps better for the style of work you're interested in than the other Canadian options you list.
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I've advised students who have transferred for a variety of reasons, including opting for better funding, a better ranked program, and a group of faculty that better suited their interests. I've got no hard feelings about it at all. If they're happier, I'm happy. More relevant than my own personal views is the fact that I've seen job applications that include letters of recommendation from two different departments because the applicant has transferred in the course of their graduate training while keeping a close relationship with faculty at the school they left. So while people may have different views about this personally, I think the disciplinary norms are not as strong as some posters on here suggest.
- roprisko, ajaxp91, Zahar Berkut and 3 others
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I am a master's student at NYU. My experience is that most of the things you have said are right:
- MA program is not staffed by the faculty from the PhD program.
- Courses are offered separately and most of them are more policy-oriented courses than academic-oriented.
- Admission to PhD courses is not granted at all (I know some experiences of professors rejecting MA students from their classes).
Therefore, do not expect the MA at NYU to be an easy way to a high-ranked PhD program. In fact, if you go to the program, take all the classes from the MA program itself, have no contact with full-time faculty and no publications at all, then it is absolutely out of the world of the possibilities to get into a top25 program when you finish the program.
However... when you get into the dep. of politics at NYU, it is all in your hands. The MA program is not staffed by the faculty from the PhD program, courses are offered separately and admission is not granted, but:
- Access to PhD courses in the MA courses list is very possible if you show certain academic or research background or just an interest in the topic and so convincing PhD professors that you can take the course is not very hard.
- Access to PhD courses not listed as optional for MA students is not impossible either. It is always up to the professor so there are chances that you can convince the professor that you are good enough to take the course and he/she can let you in.
- Access to courses outside the department at MA / PhD level is totally feasible. For instance, you can take any of these courses to improve your methods courses and research training http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/humsocsci/interdepartmental. They are open to all graduate students at NYU.
In this line, it is not very unusual to have LOR's from NYU full-time faculty after the MA, which will improve your chances of admission for a PhD. But, again, this is an easy path, but you have to work hard and choose the right courses.
I don't have sufficient information to provide you with a full list of destinations after the MA, but I know there are some people that were accepted into top10 and top25 PhD programs (including NYU itself) [you can see my list of acceptances to have an idea, although let me warn you that there has been people doing slightly better than me and many more people doing much worse].
Hope it helps! With this I don't mean you should get into debt (I would personally not do it), but just give more info about the pros and cons of the MA at NYU.
This is a great post. Thanks for providing a fuller picture to complement my impressionistic sense of things. I would add that this advice applies much more broadly than just at NYU. The payoffs of an MA in applying to PhD programs depend largely on how you use it.
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Thanks for everyone's advice. Sorry, I did not speak to my profile. I'm currently working full-time outside of an academic environment, so I don't have the opportunity to produce research and my GRE scores are within the competitive range for the programs i applied for. So yes, I would say that my UG GPA is the weakest part of my application profile and one area that I can't improve. It looks like enrolling in NYU's MA program is my only option for improving my profile the next possible application cycle without having to wait another year and apply for different master's programs. I get nauseous just thinking about how much in loans I have to take out.
My impression is that the NYU MA program is not a great stepping stone to PhD programs, for the reason I spell out below. Others should feel free to correct me on this issue, and of course my comments here should not influence your choices unduly.
Based on what I know about the MA program, it is not staffed by the faculty from the PhD program, and courses are offered separately. See, for example, this list: http://politics.as.nyu.edu/object/ma.scheduleFall2014 of courses for Fall 2014. None of the folks teaching MA only courses, except Cohen, are regular faculty. Other courses are open to MA students only by permission, and many of the PhD courses are not even listed here as options for MA students. Students in this program won't interact much with the NYU Politics faculty, won't get letters from them for re-applying, and won't get NYU training.
All that said, NYU may be the best option for you. But I wanted to put my impressions forward in the interest of starting a conversation that might help you and others make a more informed decision about the program.
- TheGnome, Display_Name, qeta and 1 other
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In nearly every case (read: every case I have seen), waitlists are not ordered. They consist of a small group of students, all of whom we would be happy to admit, who can be used to balance the cohort as those who are admitted inform us about whether they plan to attend. This balance can be by sub-field, within subfields, or by gender or other ascriptive characteristics. Because there isn't much comparison that I have seen among students on the wait list, there isn't anything you can do except express interest, and given that that expression is not a costly signal it isn't clear how much it does at all.
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At the department where I used to teach, where a lot of you have applied, each subfield was given the files for its candidates, and came up with a ranking. Sometimes that entailed broad input, sometimes one person read the files and made their decisions.
At my current department, the admissions committee is 4 faculty but in practice the DGS does nearly everything. He or she reads the files (we don't get very many) and decides which ones are 'above the bar' before sending them to representatives of each subfield for ranking.
General similarities, but lots of minor variation. Sometimes there are grad students on the committee but in practice they have no influence on the outcome, at least in my experience.
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So long as you can convince an admissions committee of people who specialize in areas other than your own that your research is relevant to broad questions in political science (like the ones you mention; democratization and political stability) your background shouldn't hurt you. To the extent that your finance background translates into quant skills, it should in fact help you. Lots of applicants to PhD programs in poli sci have limited poli sci training in their background. You're in good company.
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A couple of thoughts on the rarity of European PhDs in teaching posts in American universities. This is a general statement that should be read as a description of reality that is neither an endorsement, nor without exceptions.
There are few recent PhDs from non-US schools teaching at US universities. Of those, the vast majority come from Canada and England. This is largely a result of the fact that American political science is quite different from political science in Europe. Different research questions, different standards for qhat makes good research, different emphases of methods, etc. The result is the emergence of two largely separate communities. These overlap to some extent in studies of European politics, and in some parts of the political theory subfield, but otherwise they largely exist independently of one another. US universities tend not to consider hiring European PhDs partly because of the lack of network connections between the two, but largely because they are concerned that PhDs trained in Europe are not equipped to teach classes or train graduate students in ways that reflect the American version of the political science discipline.
I have co-chaired a dissertation with someone at a prominent university in a non-England European country, and discovered that we had completely different expectations, not only in terms of the formal dissertation requirements but in terms of what constituted good research. These are the sorts of bridges that are hard to cross. And that, in my view, is why doing a PhD in most places in Europe, in most areas of study within political science, will limit your access to jobs in the US.
- ajaxp91, gradcafe26, PoliSwede and 6 others
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It does happen. But without other information, I wouldn't read too much into a faculty member being on leave for a semester or a year.
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At US institutions, leaves are only very rarely a signal that someone is moving to a different university. In nearly every case, they are sabbatical or fellowship leaves.
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I could be wrong about Chiozza; I've heard that rumor but it might not be true. In any case, there are at most 2 IR faculty at Vandy these days.
University of Pennsylvania PhD Political Science
in Political Science Forum
Posted
As far as I know, Gray has left Penn for LSE.