guest789

Honestly, no one knows. Really - no news is good news in the sense that it could go either way.

Why? Unless they're being more stringent with the culling process - e.g. not looking at apps below a high GPA threshold - this doesn't make much sense if apps have generally doubled. Having said that, UCLA required the GRE this year, so maybe their apps haven't doubled.

UCLA seems very, very early to me! Hmm... Not sure what to think. If they are sending out rejections, I guess we'll find out soon enough.

This! Plus you're also admitted to the department, not to work with a specific faculty member. They fully expect our research interests - perhaps even our subfields, like AP or CP - to change once we're in a PhD program, so they don't put much stock into who we're going to work with. I think they want to see that we can connect a research question or agenda to a faculty member, but I don't think they expect us to actually work on that question or agenda... If that makes sense.

Agreed. I suspect we'll see some results from the 25th onwards.

I think this one is slightly better - it captures Politics, Political science, Government and removes the LSE posts: https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=(politic*|gov)+-london

I also don't think having a Masters matters much. So long as you can signal that you know what political science research is and you have some good ideas, you should be fine. Some people can do this right out of undergrad, maybe other people undertake a Masters degree in a related field (e.g. public policy, statistics, comp sci, etc.). Others work - I did and I don't regret it. It's nice to earn $$$, save up, learn valuable project management skills (and in my case, valuable stats and computing skills as I work in data science). Of course, you may never go back and get a PhD if you go into industry first - but that's not a bad thing, is it? The opportunity cost of leaving well-paid work (especially right now) is huge and it's one that I am thinking very seriously about... So pros and cons for both sides, I think.

Well I don't know how the process works for Wisconsin, either! It could be that they interview everyone on the short list - who knows, really. I wouldn't count yourself out until you get a letter either way.

Or you could be a slam dunk and they don’t need to interview you to be convinced of that. The admissions officer from OSU said a couple of years ago that they usually interview people who are borderline - the obvious rejects won’t be interviewed but also the slam dunks aren’t either. I didn’t apply to Madison, but unless you know everyone will be interviewed, I wouldn’t infer anything from it.

If anyone applies next year and wants another way to torture themselves while waiting for admissions results, may I suggest creating a website and turning on Google Analytics? You can get city-level data.

I'm honestly surprised that he wants his name attached to his grad cafe account, LOL.

I don't think anyone genuinely has a safe option - in my opinion that concept works well for undergraduate admissions, but not PhD programs. ETA: Maybe if you go to Harvard and you have assurances from your advisor that you're in, but I don't think those people are hanging out on grad cafe. Edited (again) to add: in general, I would be careful about announcing which schools are your "safeties". You never know who is reading this forum and if that's the one school you get into, you don't want any enemies from the get-go (before you're even on campus!), be that other grad students or faculty...

Here's another thread that might help: These threads go back to ~2012, I think.

Wow, I really wish I had reached out to various professors now.

One of my LORs (who regularly serves on admissions committees at a CHYMPS school) says it's usually not an issue if letters are late - they won't look at application packets until January and the department administrative staff will still be sorting through the applications and preparing them for faculty review in early January. I also think they will be more lenient due to COVID as well - this has been a hellish semester for professors and a lot of things have fallen by the wayside, particularly if they're not bound by urgent deadlines like grades or R&R submission deadlines.

I don't know how this works across all departments, but don't political theory students, in general, take the core methods sequence along with the other students in their cohort?

Why stress yourself out now that applications are in... Grades aren't everything. Stony Brook will probably love your profile and I'm sure a few others will as well.

I am only an applicant (in AP/methods, but I've been working in data science for years), but I agree - learn R. It's useful as a computing tool, but for applicants it also serves as signal that we know what research in political science involves. This signal is likely compounded by writing your writing sample and CV in R Markdown. If you have time and you want to learn more, start coding your own things and create R packages related to what you research. They don't have to end up on CRAN, but if they do it counts as a statistical software publication and should go on your CV. Knowledge of R should go in the technical skills section as well.

True - I should qualify what I meant by 'all the time'. I meant that there are a few applicants per year who are admitted to decent political science programs with weaker GPAs. We see this in the results thread on this forum (assuming these results are 100% true). It is likely that you will probably need to stand out in other ways though, be that by publication, a really good working paper, exceptional LORs from famous scholars, or a strong statistics or computing background. The point is that this is entirely doable. It is free to learn R, for example, and if you have time (which you do), you can get really good at it. This kind of stuff helps come application time as you can signal that you will be a good RA, right off the bat. Look into Essex for a MA - they hire a lot of Americans who are still well connected in American political science.

I'm only an applicant, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, but I think you'll be fine. Maybe apply to a few PhD programs as well and see what happens. People get into PhD programs with "bad" grades all the time - someone was accepted into Princeton last year with a 3.2 (it's in the results thread). Notably, they had a strong stats/CS background. I would not pursue a second masters - you might not even need one! Graduate admissions committees are well aware that other countries actively practice grade deflation as well - so you have that working for you. The main issue, in my opinion, is that people with low GPAs - actually, most applicants regardless of grades - cannot convince the admissions committees that they know what research is about or that they're committed to furthering current, exciting avenues of research. In other words, do not apply and say you want to study a substantive topic using a method that was hashed out and is now considered old - or worse, debunked - in the late 1990s. Read APSR, AJPS, CP, whatever - look at what is being published now and talk about how your research contributes to or furthers current research agendas. Look at the working papers of current ABDs and junior profs. If your writing sample can look sort of like this work, great, you're solid. There are obviously constraints - you won't be able to get original data, for example - but you can certainly structure your paper so that it looks like working paper, with a lit review, methods, results and so on. You have some time, so you can do this. Make it clear you know what you're getting into. Increase the number of positive signals in your application - for example, if you're in a quant field write your CV in LaTeX. Learn R, particularly the tidyverse. It probably won't count for much, but it won't hurt. These are weak signs, sure, but there are things you can do that will signal that you know what training in political science entails...

For what it's worth, I highly doubt the admissions committee will read our applications before January.

I think you should apply! For what it's worth, I think applicants from Sri Lanka are probably pretty rare, so assuming you have a decent application I would apply everywhere you want to.

I would include the title at least once, preferably all times -- check out all of the tweets today on academic twitter regarding the WSJ oped on Dr Biden. Professors (particularly women in the professoriate) do not take kindly to others dismissing titles when they should not be dismissed, and for good reason. I think once you're accepted, it's fine to call them by the first name, but a SOP is a fairly professional document. It is probably not the end of the world if you don't do it, but it is somewhat of a touchy topic...

TBH I think that's it for Michigan. That has been their general reputation going back to the Michigan and Columbia schools of thought. Converse was a professor there as well. If you're talking about other departments... Hm.. That would be a good thread, I think. Rochester is obviously known for their formal theory focus, but historically that wasn't the case - they were more empirically-minded with faculty like Niemi and Powell. Anyway, the historical focus only matters if the department is still that way today. Michigan certainly is, so I'd mention something about that if it fits with your interests. Having said that.. They (and all departments) accept students from all subfields so I don't think it's a necessary condition for admission, it's probably just a nice-to-have thing to mention if you do survey research.