Mearsheimer's Minion

UCSD is out.

Email.

If you have two reasonable offers from schools in the same tier, it's time to start informing the other schools that you won't be going to there. For example, if you are in at Rochester and NYU, you should formally decline Davis's offer and withdraw your application from UT. Taking your name off of places you've already gotten into frees up funding for people on the waitlist, and withdrawing from the process allows more people to get in to those schools. It is the "right" thing to do.

I am claiming it.

NYU is out.

I think you should email them back specifically asking them for year by year placement. It's fair. And it will be funny when you get back a bunch of BS about how they don't keep a running list. Bigger concern: forget about placement for a second. What is their definition of "the past few years," and how many of those positions were TT? Call their bluff on this one. I dare you. The results will be hilarious. Remember: for a rare moment, we have the bargaining leverage over the schools.

The weird part is that my GPA and GRE scores were the weakest part of my application, or at least I felt that was the case up until two hours ago. Duke and I would have been a good fit.

Something's strange at Duke, because this describes me as well. And I'm Mearsheimer's Minion! Don't they know who they are messing with!?

You were not the only one. However, I suspect this was a subfield thing, not a who's-better-than-whom game.

If you go to UCSD, you become a rational choice theorists. You learn from the Lakes, Gartzkes, and Slantchevs of the world. If you go to Minnesota, you become a social constructivist. You learn from whoever gave Alexander Wendt's, umm, forefathers. Both are among the best at what they do, but they are day vs. night, penis vs. vagina, gay vs. straight, Mearsheimer* vs. Keohane different. It's hard to see how you could have them ranked 1 and 2 currently.** *FTW. **In other words, I do not believe I can express your preferences using a von Neumann and Morgenstern expected utility function.

Are you bicurious? The methodologies of UCSD and Minnesota are entirely incompatible.