Penelope Higgins

Well, yes and no. There are lots of terminal MA programs in political science, at places like Purdue, Temple, Virginia Tech, etc. Essentially none of them are at top departments. They are useful for people who went to really no-name undergrad institutions or performed very badly there to show that they can do graduate work and move up the food chain to PhD programs. I teach at a place with both terminal MA and PhD programs. I don't think an MA program like ours would help the OP, but it might be relevant to some people.

I'm not a South Asia scholar so I can't generate a meaningful list of scholars for you. But I want to urge you to consider that you want a department that not only has a South Asia scholar or two (and perhaps an area studies program at the university with scholars from other disciplines who work on the region) but also has faculty who work on your substantive issues of interest, since you'll want them to guide your research as well.

Above comment is exactly right. But remember that 3 faculty you could work with does not equal 3 faculty who work on exactly the country/region/institution you're interested in. You'll find that very few places if you're a comparativist for example. Instead, you want to find 3 people who, together, cover both the substantive issues and the theoretical issues, as well as the broad approach to political science that you prefer. To take an example from the part of the discipline I know best, folks working on Latin America should not only apply to Notre Dame and Texas (places with LOTS of Latin America faculty) but also consider quite seriously the wide range of departments that may also suit their theoretical interests even though they only have 1 or 2 Latin Americanists.

Lots of good points raised above, but one footnote: assistants are more likely to be temporary at top 5-10 departments. Elsewhere, they are hired with the expectation that they will be tenured, and you can be more confident that they will be around for a while (though people do, of course, move...)

Having served on admissions in poli sci programs at 2 universities, I can honestly say that I've never seen the writing score matter. It can't save an application from a bad personal statement and writing sample, and it won't sink a good one. After all, we can read your work quickly rather than relying on some weird exam. In fact, at my current department, our admissions spreadsheet doesn't even include a column for the writing score.

No poli sci grad program will include language study, though many have a requirement of demonstrating command of a particular language. That's because the language is seen as simply an item in your toolkit for scholarship - you either come in with it or acquire it while you are in the program, just like statistical skills. If you really want a program that includes language study (and I'm not sure what is at stake in this) you should look at area studies programs - but even there I think you'll find proficiency requirements rather than coursework requirements. There are area studies programs focused on politics and contemporary issues - perhaps you should seek some of them out.

I actually agree with much of what the previous poster wrote. My point was that the list of schools seemed completely random to me. It is neither a list of top schools (Irvine? Penn? Davis?) nor a list of schools strong in a particular area (unless, for example, Chicago and Rochester have something in common I can't think of), and this suggested to me that the original poster had not yet put enough thought into the application process.

First, nobody on admissions committees looks at the writing score of the GRE. Your scores alone are probably not competitive for top-20 PhD programs, but that's because of the Q and V scores. You've got lots of time to retake the exam before applications are due, so that should be easy to fix. And it sounds like you have research experience (though I would not mention the high school experience in any detail in your application) and potentially strong letters, including one from someone whose opinions I would take seriously were your file to land on my desk. But I wonder how carefully you've constructed your list of schools. Unless there is something I'm missing (which is certainly possible!) the schools you list have nothing in common in terms of ranking overall or in any specialization I can think of in the field of political science. This suggests you've got some work to do in refining your list of departments to apply to - and my sense is that this and the GRE retake should be your focus in the next 4-6 months as applications come due.

I wondered about that, but figured you might know something I was unaware of...

No, the GRE will never be a tie-breaker in selecting among candidates. At least I have never seen such a conversation in my several iterations of doing grad admissions. It is simply used as a way to make a first cut of candidates, then we have conversations about the substance of the file, fit with department/faculty, and balancing the admissions pool over subfields etc.

I would not spend the time taking the GRE again in your situation. Your scores are high enough to be the strongest part of your application as it currently stands (nobody looks at the writing scores, since we have a sample of your writing in the packet), and will get the admissions committee to read your file even in top 20 departments. I would use the time to work on your personal statement of research interests, your writing sample, and finding a third letter writer. Your chances will be significantly hurt if that third writer is not an academic - I would find a professor outside political science to write on your behalf.

As a faculty member with grad admissions experiences at a school much like some of the ones on your list, I think your GRE scores will give you trouble at the first 4-5 schools on your list, which are the most competitive. You should have a decent chance (at the other schools if your letters and personal statement are as strong as you make them sound.

the first list of schools provided by blanket is a good one. But as someone a bit more familiar with the UC system, I would think that Berkeley, San Diego, and Davis are not good fits. Santa Cruz and Irvine are likely better options. I would also add Arizona State to your list.

You're not going to find any poli sci departments with a "strong focus" on SE Asia because few if any departments will have more than one scholar working on the region. You should instead be looking for departments with one good SE Asia person as well as some people who do work you find interesting on your substantive areas of interest. Off the top of my head, in addition to the departments you list, tenured faculty doing work on Southeast Asia at PhD granting departments include Dan Slater (Chicago) Richard Doner (Emory) Tuong Vu (Oregon) and Ben Smith (Florida).

That's a good list. I would also add that a lot of the top departments (including Harvard, Princeton and Yale), depending on who you work with, are good places to do qualitative work. This, of course, varies by subfield: all the folks listed below are CP, so the departments you consider might be different if you are in IR or in American (which would imply that you are doing APD work). I would advise you, however, not to choose your methods because of some predilection, but because they are the best set of tools for answering the questions you care about.

You look like a strong candidate for the schools mentioned, but one quick note: Meunier does not work with students at Princeton since she is not a regular faculty member. She holds a research-only position. Listing her on your application will not help your chances. Likewise, Keohane, while still teaching a bit, does not work with many students either since he is about to retire. Don't expect to get to work with either of these folks, and realize that Princeton is much more heavily quantitative among its broader faculty and in its departmental culture than are the faculty you list.

Don't know exactly where the line between top 15 and 15-30 is, but I'd make sure to look at Cornell, Ohio State, Texas, Northwestern, Wisconsin, and University of Washington given your substantive and regional interests. These are all programs I would think of as falling more-or-less into the range you describe, and as far as I know they fund all admits (I could be wrong about this).

The biggest obstacle you face is not the lack of academic experience in political science, but the lack of academic letters. Letters from scholars in any discipline that can attest to your intellectual ability and motivation are necessary for admission to any PhD program. Is there any way you can contact your former teachers to ask for letters? At least here in the US, my colleagues and I often get such requests from students with whom we have lost touch for years - it may take a bit of effort and a bit of work to remind the teachers who you are and how well you did in their classes, but it is going to be absolutely necessary for your application to have any chance at all.

Just a note of caution here: presidential and university fellowships are a different creature from standard funding. The department nominates applicants for a competition across departments within the university. Because nominees in political science are competing with those in art history (for example) the main criterion is GRE scores. If a recipient of this sort of scholarship turns it down, the waiting list is comprised of students drawn from many departments, not from within a single department. My department, for example, had our recipient of this fellowship turn us down to go elsewhere. We simply lost the funded offer to another department as a result.

My comment is not meant to single out the previous post, and it drifts away from the topic of the thread, but I think it is crucial to correct one common and serious error: we should always let the questions we develop drive the methods we choose, rather than the other way around. Build a toolkit of methods skills, develop a question of interest, and add to that toolkit as needed - it is a real shame to foreclose some options because of a disinterest in particular research skills.

Costlier, yes. Harder? Not necessarily. Some journals seem to be publishing nothing but experimental work; some have no interest in it. Don't make decisions about your research based on perceived sexiness of method or ease of publication. Do work that you find interesting and do it well. Nothing else matters, whether in grad school or beyond.

Once you have grad coursework on your record, undergrad GPA becomes MUCH less important. This is particularly true if you can get some new letters from faculty at your current grad program. As for the timing of the transfer, nearly every department that takes you will require you to complete their coursework, and all will require you to pass their qualifying exams, so while you might get a degree from your current institution, it won't make a difference in the institution you will be entering.

A note of caution - in political science and communications programs faculty don't take individual students. Instead admissions is handled by the department as a whole (or in most cases by a committee to which decision-making is delegated). Individual faculty are MUCH less vested in the admissions process and much less receptive to being contacted by, let alone taking the time to meet with, prospective students. Information about our research interests, teaching, etc. is online; we don't have information about funding or admissions, which are handled at the department level. Don't take a lack of response to your emails personally, nor let it deter you from applying to a department. [signed by someone who would rather get fewer emails from prospective applicants, but is very happy to work with students once they are admitted]

I don't know whether this is true in Canada, but in the US there is a very strong norm that no school can make you decide before April 15th. So I suppose this comment isn't a response to your particular issue but a more general statement that those facing decisions from US schools should not feel pressed to decide for several more weeks. In your particular situation, I echo the suggestion to call McGill and inform them about your situation. They should be able to give you a sense of where you stand both in terms of your chances and in terms of their timeline.

As I and others have suggested to other students in similar situations, you should strongly consider going to the best program that admits and funds you, doing an MA, and improving your file to re-apply to PhD programs in two years. A department like UMSL should know that students do this sort of thing; nobody will object to it.