hupr

Thanks! And: صباح الحرية لمصر

I'll claim a Northwestern acceptance.

And last year, I understand that there were something like 475 applicants. I'd assume a similar number this year.

Admission and enrollment stats: http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/stats/p40ph_adm_enr.pdf The rest of Northwestern's stats: http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/pgm_stats/

For what it's worth, I have never taken a university-level math course. I took calculus in high school, and in undergrad, I took a research design/stats course as part of my psychology degree and a course in symbolic logic as part of my philosophy degree and my grad degrees were in the humanities. So far, I'm 1 for 2: in at Madison but not at Michigan. But I'm also into a much more historical/area studies approach with mixed or qualitative methods in comparative politics.

For me, summer funding is one of the most important questions. Also important for me are: whether insurance covers spouse and kids, whether it has dental, whether they have a day care subsidy and whether teaching load is flexible and mandatory.

I applied mostly to poli sci programs but also applied to MEIS at NYU and MESAAS at Columbia. Anyone hear anything about either?

They just sent it, but I'd mentioned a couple weeks before that the Middle East isn't exactly known for its reliable postal service.

From what I understand, sometimes it's several weeks. I had a friend who'd already accepted a package at NYU who didn't hear back form Columbia until mid- to late-March. I especially don't understand that for schools who only admit one batch and don't do waitlists...

Thanks, man. I still haven't heard anything from UCLA, which makes me think that I'm not going to...

I got an email with a scanned copy of an acceptance letter from UW Madison late last night, which is late afternoon over there. I'm hoping that there will be a weekend at a similar time for other universities so that they can all pitch in to fly me out. Are you going to their weekend?

So you got an acceptance letter but your status still says pending? I live in the Middle East, and not only does mail rarely get here in from the US in a timely manner, sometimes it doesn't arrive at all...

For anyone who received a letter from Madison: Is the decision also on the my.wisc.edu site?

Yeah, last year the decisions look like they went out by post (problematic for me since I don't live in the US), but I don't know if it's the graduate school or the department that notifies. I do know that they seem to have a lot of things centralized in the my.wisc.edu system, but I don't know if that also applies to acceptances...

Any idea on what the deal is with Madison? Did anyone claim those early phone acceptances? Has anyone heard anything?

My screen name is the title of a book by Elias Canetti, whose work I really appreciate. The avatar is some graffiti from here in Beirut. It's not really funny unless you know Arabic pop culture, but it's a stencil of the diva Umm Kalthoum sing the lyrics from a trashy pop song by Haifa Wehbe.

I'm all ears.

Hmm. I for one would like to see those numbers...

This guy clearly insists on being obtuse. I'm not sure why everyone here keeps engaging him. Let' s just let this thread die...

I think it may have turned into that, but I don't think that's how it was started, and I think it's also the name that throws me off too. SIPA, SAIS and Fletcher, along with other programs like them, all have more generalized names, whereas I think the IR department actually was a whole department for IR. Or again, maybe I'm misunderstanding and just letting the name hang me up.

Yeah, we definitely agree about that. Hate the game, not the playa, and all that. By the by, though, where did you find Brown placement records? I can't seem to find them on the site, which may not be a good sign.

That's the thing about law school rankings: once you're in the system, it's really hard to break out of it. By falsely inflating employment stats, you increase the school's ranking which makes the school's graduates more employable. It's like perfomative ranking. Saying it's better makes it so. Obviously, law school is different from poli sci departments, but I think the principle is comparable. But that does pose the question of how to judge independently of the various rankings (which vary quite a bit, I'll say). So let's say one has offers at 1. a school that's ranked 20th but seems like a really good fit with people you'd really like to work with and who'd really like to work with you and 2. a school that's specialized in a methodology that you're not crazy about and doesn't have as many people working in your area of interest, but is ranked 3rd or 5th. Assuming that funding is about the same, do you let the ranking make the decision? Or putting aside schools like Boston that are unranked but generally considered good schools, what about other schools that have lower rankings but feel like a good fit with people with very similar research interests? In my case, take Brown. Brown has a couple of really good people whose work is really relevant to what I'd like to work on, like Varshney (who used to be at Harvard and Michigan) and Cammett (who got her PhD from Berkeley). But the school has a ranking of 46, so where should that put it on a list of possibilities? Does that mean that if I were to work with these people at this "Ivy" then I would have made a poor choice because its US News and World Report ranking is low? And ironically, many of the lower ranked departments that people are turning their noses up at are actually more competitive than many higher ranked departments, so even if I apply to a lower ranked school like Brown, there's a good chance of being rejected. I guess the main point I'm getting at is as to whether, professionally speaking, the name brand is really the most important take-away from the whole experience of a doctoral program.

Let's try another approach: You're totally right, man. You win: J.D.'s should definitely be teaching in Poli Sci departments, and maybe in many others as well. I guess this thread is over. Why don't we just all walk away slowly...

Well, for better or worse, I guess I don't judge the quality of a school purely on its placement. For instance, a school that has lots of international students would suffer in the way that most of the people here look at placement, since many of the international students are likely to return to their home countries, for academic, professional or governmental careers. So a Turkish graduate returning to join the ministry of foreign affairs or a Colombian student returning to Bogota to teach at the Universidad Nacional would be negative points for placement. That said, I'm not really sure how, exactly, I would judge a program, but I'm pretty sure that the fanaticism about the nebulous "ranking" (which no one seems to entirely agree about) might not be the best way of judging an education. As way of an example, check out this article on the ranking system that drives opinions about law school and how these schools are guilty of routinely juking the stats, as it were: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/business/09law.html