Penelope Higgins

Someone has a political theory paper due, I suspect...

A couple of things: first and most importantly, Marxist-critical approaches are not common in political science except in some parts of political theory. Are you sure you want to be in political science rather than another social science (sociology? anthro?) where they are more common? Second, if you want a decent chance at a teaching position somewhere you're willing to live for the rest of your career - which will last a LOT longer than six years - you would be well served to be flexible on the geography front. Third, your list of schools above doesn't make much sense to me. None of your reaches (as RWBG notes) are places that have a real concentration of people doing the kind of work you describe, nor do many of the big ten schools you list (to my knowledge).

A couple of things: first and most importantly, Marxist-critical approaches are not common in political science except in some parts of political theory. Are you sure you want to be in political science rather than another social science (sociology? anthro?) where they are more common? Second, if you want a decent chance at a teaching position somewhere you're willing to live for the rest of your career - which will last a LOT longer than six years - you would be well served to be flexible on the geography front. Third, your list of schools above doesn't make much sense to me. None of your reaches (as RWBG notes) are places that have a real concentration of people doing the kind of work you describe, nor do many of the big ten schools you list (to my knowledge).

A couple of things: first and most importantly, Marxist-critical approaches are not common in political science except in some parts of political theory. Are you sure you want to be in political science rather than another social science (sociology? anthro?) where they are more common? Second, if you want a decent chance at a teaching position somewhere you're willing to live for the rest of your career - which will last a LOT longer than six years - you would be well served to be flexible on the geography front. Third, your list of schools above doesn't make much sense to me. None of your reaches (as RWBG notes) are places that have a real concentration of people doing the kind of work you describe, nor do many of the big ten schools you list (to my knowledge).

I'm not sure my opinion is worth much on this question since I don't see this situation very often, but here's my two cents, and two related concerns that crop up more often in my experience reading applications.
ON EMERITUS AND ADJUNCT FACULTY
I would not be too worried about listing an emeritus faculty if their research interests match yours and you have the sense that they are still research active, but I would not list them first and I would make sure to identify at least 2-3 other people who might be of interest to you. By contrast, I would NOT list an adjunct. Here's why: emeritus faculty have served for a long time with tenure in the department, which shows that their colleagues (who are judging your application) see some value in their research and have seen them work with grad students in the past. Adjuncts, by contrast, are at a given institution (usually temporarily) purely to teach undergrads (or in some cases methods courses for grad students). They are not considered part of the permanent faculty, are not evaluated on their research accomplishments, and are often completely disengaged from the graduate student experience.
TWO OTHER CONCERNS
Here's another set of issues to watch out for: my department, for example, has a graduate faculty that is a subset of the regular faculty. People not on the graduate faculty are adjuncts/lecturers, and faculty who have been here for a long time and have not published in decades. The latter category, though tenured, are not research-active. Listing them as your proposed advisor would tell me that you just read about their interests on our website rather than actually knowing anything about them.

And finally, you should make sure that you are actually confident that the people you list as potential advisors still work on the area of interest to you. For example, don't apply to Harvard to work with Theda Skocpol on revolutions - she has not touched that stuff in 20 years. Just because someone wrote the best book on a subject at some point doesn't mean they still have any interest in it.

Methodology as a field goes far beyond enjoying statistical analysis. If you do methods as a field, you'll be trying to develop new statistical techniques to address the problems with existing ones in studying certain questions. Look at the work of King (Harvard), Imai (Princeton), Mebane (Michigan) or Brady (Berkeley) to get a sense of what this implies. And if you want to study methods as a field, that's not a bad list of departments to look at, along with Stanford, Stanford GSB, Caltech, and Rochester. Without calculus, your chances of getting admitted to focus on methods are going to be slim - you'll need calculus, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra at a bare minimum to even understand the math these folks do.

Methodology as a field goes far beyond enjoying statistical analysis. If you do methods as a field, you'll be trying to develop new statistical techniques to address the problems with existing ones in studying certain questions. Look at the work of King (Harvard), Imai (Princeton), Mebane (Michigan) or Brady (Berkeley) to get a sense of what this implies. And if you want to study methods as a field, that's not a bad list of departments to look at, along with Stanford, Stanford GSB, Caltech, and Rochester. Without calculus, your chances of getting admitted to focus on methods are going to be slim - you'll need calculus, multivariable calculus, and linear algebra at a bare minimum to even understand the math these folks do.

For comparative politics in the developing world, the top non-region specific journals are usually thought to be the list below. I can't speak to Asia-specific journals, but most people seem to aim to publish in these.

World Politics
Comparative Political Studies
Comparative Politics
Studies in Comparative International Development

If you are not a native English speaker, you definitely do not need to retake the exam because of the AW score - you are submitting a TOEFL score, which will substitute. Even if you are a native English speaker, we pay far more attention to your actual writing than the score on some standardized test. To be blunt, the grad admissions spreadsheet in my department does not even have a column for the AW score. We completely ignore it.

First, I want to encourage you (and everyone looking at schools) to let the specific research question drive the methods you choose to use rather than limiting applications based on a perception of methods preferred that is often hard to get from outside the department.

Second, any department will only have 1-2 faculty that specialize in any geographic area. You also need to have a substantive area of interest within comparative, and to look for departments with strengths in that area.

Third, and without knowing your substantive area of interest, a few suggestions in answer to your question about regional strength, with the names of a few relevant faculty off the top of my head.
Berkeley (Chaudhry)
Penn (Kapur, Lustick)
Princeton (Kohli, Jamal)
Yale (Wilkinson, Lawrence)
Harvard (Singh for India; trying to hire a Middle East person this year)
Texas (Brownlee for Middle East, has an India center)

First, I want to encourage you (and everyone looking at schools) to let the specific research question drive the methods you choose to use rather than limiting applications based on a perception of methods preferred that is often hard to get from outside the department.

Second, any department will only have 1-2 faculty that specialize in any geographic area. You also need to have a substantive area of interest within comparative, and to look for departments with strengths in that area.

Third, and without knowing your substantive area of interest, a few suggestions in answer to your question about regional strength, with the names of a few relevant faculty off the top of my head.
Berkeley (Chaudhry)
Penn (Kapur, Lustick)
Princeton (Kohli, Jamal)
Yale (Wilkinson, Lawrence)
Harvard (Singh for India; trying to hire a Middle East person this year)
Texas (Brownlee for Middle East, has an India center)

I don't know much about FSU of Georgetown admissions (other people here can speak to the specifics of those schools), but I do know that as an admissions committee member at a vaguely similar school, a GPA under 3.5 in a MA program would not help your case. In grad classes, grade inflation is extremely high - a B is the minimum grade for students who turn in their work. So to me, that is the weakest part of your file based on the information you've given us.

On the specific schools, here is the little bit I do know:
FSU is very very math-heavy in the way it trains students. If you've got strong grades in methods or grad-level econ courses, or math classes beyond linear algebra, that might help them look past your overall record.
Georgetown gets lots and lots of applications, largely because it is located in DC and has lots of ties into the policy world and policy-relevant coursework. But it funds a very small number of the students it admits. Even with strong GRE scores, you likely won't be competitive for funding even if you do get admitted.
I'm trying to think about what FSU and Georgetown share that makes them both appealing to you, and I confess I can't come up with the shared strength. Maybe if you describe your interests a bit more, we can help you come up with some other schools that would be a good fit.

Here's the view from the other end of the process: individual professors don't "take students" in poli sci programs in the US, since funding comes from departments or the university and not individual faculty members. Contacting us might help you figure out if the department would be a good fit, but unless we happen to be on the admissions committee (which is about 5 faculty members in my department) and happen to remember our interaction when we open your file, it won't make a big difference. So I would not put too much effort into this, nor put too much stock in the responses you get - people can be warm now and not remember you in March, and ignore your email now but find your file appealing in 6 months. I don't say this to be rude, but to inject a dose of realism, and to try to remind folks that in the end, your chances rise and fall based on what you can put on paper by the admissions deadline.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This is just not true. Students should be learning how social scientists think, make arguments, and explain the phenomena they observe. For example, should you teach the facts of the civil rights movement, or instead use it as an opportunity to introduce students to framing, the collective action problem, the relationship between economic and social change, etc? Should you teach the facts of the 1992 LA riots, or use them to introduce theories of ethnic conflict? Should students memorize the political parties behind each president, or understand the theories of political party chance over time?

If most of what you learn in a political science course are substantive facts, either you got very little out of the course, or the professor failed you as a teacher. And THAT is why JDs' role in political science instruction is extremely limited at best.

My vote is for a redo. If you invested in your applications and Northeastern is what you ended up getting in return, I'd say go. But let's be serious, one month of total prep time is not enough for PhD applications. You're spending 5 years at this place, a few months to maximize your options is time well spent.

Read more journal articles in your field. Write a fantastic SOP. Do some research. Invest more time in the GRE.

But those placements Penelope Higgins posted are not very good. You even noted in your first post that most of the profs at Northeastern come from "top Ivies." That should tell you something about what kind of school you need to go to if you want to teach somewhere like Northeastern. Personally, I think a tenure track position at Northeastern is a solid placement for any school. It's a big PhD granting department in a great city filled with tons of great universities (and thus tons of scholars with which one may collaborate). If that's the kind of job you want, I'd say you definitely should take the mulligan.

Here's a list of placements provided by Northwestern:

http://www.polisci.northwestern.edu/graduate/placements.html

A job at Northeastern would be better than half of the placements listed. In addition, that list is likely incomplete. Add to that list a number of PhDs that didn't receive academic jobs and Northeastern becomes an impressive placement.

That's all to say that the job market is rough.

FYI - I am not in a grad program, so treat my thoughts accordingly.

Penelope Higgins is surely more qualified than me to comment on the NRC rankings. However, I'd take them with a grain (or several buckets full) of salt. In my mind, they are more useful when disaggregated. For instance, they contain interesting information about the % of students receiving funding, average GRE Q score, time to completion, etc. But the rankings are based on some questionable assumptions, in my mind.

Additionally, don't confuse departmental strength with strength in graduate training. A few programs to which I applied have great scholars but students who indicate that said scholars aren't interested in training graduates. I'm making my choice based on placement within my subfield. At the end of the day, I just want a decent job. The number of articles published by my adviser doesn't mean anything if he doesn't help his advisees secure decent positions.

This is a pretty good rundown. I would add that like Yale Princeton, in CP and IR, is also a seriously divided place along methodological lines. Harvard is diverse but not divided - more of a big tent place where students can find a home regardless of their interests. Don't go to Stanford to do CP unless you want to do formal and/or quant work.

These are VERY different places if you are a theorist. Since you have not mentioned your subfield it is hard to provide any more information.

Take a stats sequence when you get to grad school. You'll be fine. There are better things to do with the summer before you start. So long as you understand basic statistics (significance, control variables, size of effect) before you start, and so long as you work at it once you start grad school, you'll be able to get up to speed quickly.

And your plan of talking to the grad director is a good one. I would also have a conversation with the faculty you expect to work with to pick their brains about this issue.