rwillh11

I would go to Brown over BU...neither of them place well though, so be aware of that. Mark Blyth seems pretty awesome, so that would be a draw for me. This doesn't necessarily mean don't go, it just means being aware that a tenure track job at a research university or top liberal arts college is extremely unlikely when you finish.

What are/do you have other options? Hard to give any thoughts without context

What do you want to do at Pitt? They have some real strengths in comparative, in which the seem to place much better than ~40. Also, do you think that you can spend the next year improving your portfolio, to have a good shot at getting into a top-15? If you think you can put yourself into a real good position to do that, and you don't think Pitt is great on fit, then you may want to consider it.

Pretty much exactly what I have done. If you have developed any support of rapport with any professors at the school you are declining, I would send them a little personal note too, thanking them for your help and expressing regret that you won't be working with them

Never mind, not sure why I bothered. If this isn't a troll, this is just sad.

This. I did my quant training at a community college while I worked after graduating. I picked up a language on the side through self training + being lucky enough to work with a bunch of native speakers. I did some research for free for a professor which continue after graduating. I lived at home after graduating, and worked two (sometimes 3) jobs to save money so I could do a Master's, because I knew without it I wouldn't have a shot at a good program. Among people looking at getting PhDs, that is typical, not exceptional. It involves a lot of financial and personal sacrifice. This is why a lot of the responses in here directed at you have been blunt. You are dismissive of people telling you that you need to put in the effort, and you seem to think you are entitled to further education and funding, rather than need to work for it. There are a lot of people who have gone through the application process in here trying to give you good advice, and your responses have often been dismissive and condescending, which is entirely uncalled for. First-you need to figure out what you want to do. If you want to do grad school, cultivate relationships with professors. See who would write you a letter. Read up more on the discipline and the current work being done. Check out the methods-"quant" is a broad brush that covers all sorts of techniques. If you really hate math, take a look at other disciplines. Also, if you don't want to work as an academic, I'm not really sure who else hires Poli Sci PhDs...there may be other jobs you could get, but this would not be the most direct route. And most of them would be very quanty (for example, if the government is going to hire a PhD to do analysis, you better believe its going to be number crunching.) Secondly-You do not have to figure this all at once. Take a year or two working. If you can live at home to save for a bit, do so. Think about what kind of career path would interest you. Don't do grad school for the sake of another degree. You already did undergrad. Learning for the sake of learning is awesome. Most of us love to learn, and are actually in general open to different perspectives and methodologies. But, grad school is a means to an end (a career), not a high minded pursuit of knowledge.

If you are not willing to those things-A PhD is not for you. An MA is probably not for you (I did one of those, and you certainly have to work long hours, sacrifice sleep and social live). Grad School is a job....you get paid for it at the PhD level. If you don't want to work long hours, sacrifice sleep or social life, try to find a 40 hr/wk job in retail or something....any job that isn't absolutely mindless takes a ton of work to get to, and will come at the cost of sleep, long hours and social life. Maybe that's not how the work SHOULD work, but it is how the world IS.

There is so much noise in the rankings that anywhere in the top 10 is probably comprable to anywhere else in the top 10. They all have their own strengths and weaknesses. I mean, Harvard is Harvard, but the difference between Berkeley, Yale, MIT and Columbia is pretty marginal. I'm pretty sure reasonable arguments could be made for more or less any ordered ranking of those 4. No school places everyone at R1 TT positions; you are going to need to excel wherever you end up. But if you excel at a top 10 school, your odds of a good placement aren't so bad.

Sounds like a wait-list, but maybe not a particularly promising one...?

This too...I know you say there are no jobs in that field. But take a real solid look at the job market in our field. If you want a feel for how tough it can be, go read Poli Sci Rumors. While the job market for Poli Sci may be (a bit) better than for History PhDs, it is still not good. And for someone who doesn't want to do heavy quant, its 100x worse. Also, a funded PhD in History >>> an unfunded PhD in Political Science.

Unless, due to personal circumstances, money is not going to be an issue for you, YES. There is no guarantee at all of finding TT positions after graduating, even from top schools. You could look at getting a UK PhD, or a continental European one, but funding is super limited. (basically the LSE or Oxford might fund you,but no one else has any money). You should not put yourself $100,000+ in debt to enter a very tough job market. That would be financially ruinous for most people. Look at the costs of tuition for grad programs. Its just not realistic to do it without funding....unless you have the money. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have the money, go for it. Many of us wish we could be so lucky as to disregard the funding and job market and just follow our hearts to the school that suits us best. If you have the resources to cover the cost, you might as well do it. But the only way I would advise considering that path is if you are lucky enough to already have the resources to pay for the school. Do not go into tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt to pursue a PhD. Also, if you cannot find someone to find you, you may want to take that as a signal about how your research interests might fair on the job market. We certainly need more heterodox research...but its not going to make finding a job in 5-7 years any easier.

I was told during the process that they fully fund everyone (I think they are the only UK school to do so), but no mention of that in my letter....so who knows???

Yes, Emailed an acceptance from the LSE this morning. Frankly, I have no idea how to weight it against the US schools. I did my master's there, and I love it, but not sure how it stacks up against a US program.

That data is 11 years old now. As someone trying to choose between Princeton and another top-10 (and 2 top 20s, depending upon who does the rankings), its interesting, but looking at Princeton's more recent placements, they definitely do a good deal better than 13th. Not to say they are a surefire top 3 or not, but definitely solidly top 10.

I accidentally left all of my clothing at home (more specifically, I forgot to take my suitcase out of my car, and realized this while on the shuttle to the airport) for my UT-A visit, and basically had jeans and a sweater over a t-shirt. It was fine-I was probably one of the more casually dressed, but not so much so that I think anyone noticed.

Not Fatal, but if you can take more, do so. All else equal, its always better to have another quant class. And if you have never done calculus before, I would highly recommend that.

this for me as well. I would have been hopeless applying without having done an MA first. If you can find a way to pay for it, its absolutely worth it.

Can't quite shake the suspicious feeling that this is exactly what has happened to me, and they just haven't informed me yet.

got a mass rejection email from them today, it seems like they have notified all the rejections.

Me too!

I did the LSE MSc in Comp Pol. I thought it was fantastic, I received excellent training, had good access to the faculty, and have been lucky enough to be admitted to top PhD programs in the US that I would not have had a shot at without the LSE. They also may give you some financial assistance if you need it. If you want more info on it, shoot me a PM. I can also put you in touch with people who did it with a focus on Asia.

it was a personalized email; so they may be going out in batches.

This. If you've spent a few years working a job you hate, or searching for a job in the real world (I've done both), risking the academic job market doesn't look all that bad.

On the first point, given that there are only ~100 schools granting political science PhDs, you definitely wouldn't want to do a program ranked towards 100, especially given your solid stats. If its more towards a top-50 program, might be worth going for it. Look at the placement history of the program-if they seem to do a good job getting recent grads into tenure track positions, its probably worth going for it. If not, I'd look elsewhere. And don't assume you won't get into top programs, if there is a good fit, you would be really competitive.

define "poor". I've heard on funding from two, and neither package is phenomenal, but they are kind of in line with expectations (15-20). Especially since neither is in or near a major city.