polisciguy

you would do the first--as your broad interest, then have the second as your regional focus within the broader research agenda and focus on Islamic culture perhaps as one of your independent variables--my guess is you'll spend the first year or two--maybe more on figuring out how you're going to operationalize "culture"---perhaps you should check out the World Values Survey. Anyways, just my opinion.

Don't get me wrong, the schools do definitely matter--but the brightest and best students will for the most part end up getting the top jobs--regardless of which tier 1 program they go to (Michigan for example just hired someone from Emory and has one from WUSTL).

This article about rankings (based on hiring of new faculty and placement records) is only up to 2002, but is food for thought--perhaps a much better ranking methodology: http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/social_networks_in_political_science.pdf Also, if you end up choosing Yale's MA program, you don't necessarily have to wait until your second year to re-apply--can you apply next December and see what happens--given that there's a huge stochastic component to the whole admissions process anyways. Good luck!