rwillh11

Congrats! Hope its the first of many

I would assume they are all out, since they said in the email to accepted students that they needed to know by the start of next week whether or not we were attending accepted students day. I suppose they could be holding onto a few, but it would seem unlikely. If you are really curious about it, why not send them an email?

awesome! Where?

Comparative, with a European Focus.

I know! Thanks! Pretty overwhelmed, was not expecting to get in to all of these places, but what a great problem to have.

yup; thats me. Email from DGS, got it about an hour ago so they may still be going out.

Hi, Unfortunately I can't think of many areas that are both nice and within that price range that are within 40 minutes of Boston. If you wanted to rent an apartment you could look at Somerville; I know some people who have had luck renting pretty nice apartments there. But I can't imagine there are too many decent houses in the area of under $250,000, although I've never looked to do anything but rent so I could be wrong.

confused-where exactly did you check? The 'My Status' thing, or somewhere else?

Mine as well. Can anyone claim an admit? All I see on the results page here is rejections

Me too! So thrilled!

It says it is from the joint program-so I would think/hope that acceptances for the strictly political science program are yet to come.

In light of all the Berkeley decisions, wondering what hearing nothing means. Checked the portal, and my status is still just "submitted". Anyone else?

Of the schools I am applying to, OSU appears to be the only one that interviews. So I wouldn't worry about not having interviews from your other pgorams, most don't. As far as I can tell, OSU didn't announce one by one..it came up on the website first, I assume for everyone that was in, and then I got a nice email. I am also in at Georgia, and it was the same there; first it was up on the website, then I got an email.

Thanks for the heads up, checked the site and I'm in too!

Glad to help! Happy to send you one of mine if you want to see an example. If so, send me a private message here. Also, if you are looking at the LSE, happy to answer any questions, did my Master's there and I know the department pretty well.

Are you applying to US Schols, UK schools, or continental European Schools? From my experience with the first two, the expectations are quite different. You don't need a "proposal" per se for the US schools, instead you need to write a statement highlighting your past research, your fit with the department and your plans for future research. Going into detail such as the type of regression analysis you are going to use would probably be considered overkill from a US department, because they expect your research interests to change over the course of your study, and they also expect to teach you a good deal of new methodology. On the other hand, it is great to have a research question in mind because it shows the department that you know what you are doing, and gives them a good idea of fit. For UK schools, you need a long proposal. You should explain where you will get your data from (data sets is fine, or field work or w/e depending on sub-field), what your variables are, what your question is and why it is interesting, give a survey of the literature, and explain your methodology. It doesn't have to be insanely in depth from what I can tell (for example, LSE caps it at 3000 words, and when I asked, they said closer to 2000 is better), but you should at least touch on all of those things. You want to convince them that you are worth admitting and funding for several years. Good Luck! Sounds like you have a good start.

Hey, Me too! Obviously no word on funding yet, but a relief to be in somewhere, especially so quick! But yeah, what a weird way to find out.

Trig isn't going to be overly relevant to political science...but a fail is going to look really bad. I mean, if you want to do a PhD, you are really going to want to avoid failing that, its so competitive that you don't want a fail on your transcript. The C in Pre-calc and the B in statistics are also going to really hurt you. Political Science research is really really math heavy at this point-at least at the top programs you would be expected to get through a lot of high level math, so you need to prove you can handle it. If you can manage to get into a calculus class or two, and get A's in them, that would really help.

UCSD? Leaving it a bit late on that question, isn't that due today? I made sure not to rehash the SOP, and instead went into more depth about the course of study I would like to follow, based on what was available at the school. I don't really know how much you can go into for career, beyond "I want to do X with this degree"

I would love some guidance on this as well. I making an academic CV is quite difference from making a resume, but for someone without any publications, how should I format a CV. Do I emphasize my thesis research in the CV for example? I did find that University of Texas has a template: http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/government/_files/pdf/admissions-forms/GOV_application_CV_template.pdf So that is at least some guidance.

I did the MSc in Comp Pol at the LSE, and would definitely recommend it. I didn't take any of the courses on Southeast Asia as its not an area of interest for me, but those who I know who did take it were very happy with it. Regarding fit vs Rep, it depends. If you want to go back to the US for a PhD, I would recommend the LSE. Most UK master's programs don't carry much weight in the US, but it seems like the LSE program is pretty well respected. If you wanted to stick in the UK, I would think either would be a fine choice, but keep in mind there is (almost?) no funding for non-EU students in the UK outside of Oxbridge and LSE.