changeisgood

My prof is fond of saying "don't ever pay for a PhD...it's a terrible investment".

UVA would have been on my list, except they do not take *any* transfer credit, and I have neither the time nor the patience to start over after just finishing an M.A. Very unfortunate. Sounds like a great program.

I too would like to send out my appreciation for the collegiality on this board. With one exception, it's been very helpful and soaking up all this knowledge and experience helped me improve my own file enough, so that at this point I at least know I'm going somewhere with a good fit! Need the Big 10 schools to start dropping so I can finalize my choices.

Nice, dag! Just ignore that ugly-ass orange and you'll be fine. Oh, and mind the cow poop (and I don't mean the philosophy dept. :P). Seriously, though, congrats. It's a great school. I chose to apply to A&M instead, just personal and academic preference, so you're not competing with me anyway.

Bit of a different email, but I'm not reading anything into it. I didn't participate in the recruitment event, but I'm in a MA program right now and I didn't apply until after Dec. 1.

So...what? Those of us without the ability to go to a top 10 should just give up and teach high school? B.S. I'm right now at an institution that is decidedly *not* top 10 and 2 of our ABDs got TT jobs within the last 2 years. I think people who go to top 10 programs like to tell everyone else that they are the be-all end-all. Must be an ego thing.

Ditto on the idea of trying to do consulting work on the side while in grad school: don't bother. That went out the window for me about 3 weeks into my intro methods course. I shut down my consulting business over the next month and that was it. In my current M.A. program the terminal Masters students take the same courses the PhD students take, with the same requirements, right along side of them. The terminal M.A. is essentially the coursework for a PhD, minus one minor field. So hopefully the culture shock will be a little less for me when I get wherever I'm going this Fall. I'm writing a pretty solid thesis. I never missed the chance to do extra work for a prof if it came along. My family wonders if I've become a mole with an R reference tucked under my arm, but they're supportive. The house could be a little cleaner, but, you know, perspective.

If anyone else applied to Texas A&M, I just got an email from the dept. saying their adcom was now meeting (and my app is in the stack, yay!). Just FYI.

Think of the acronym CHYMPS. Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Michigan, Princeton, Stanford. Those are considered the top schools and they're pretty stable generally. Just about everyone throws Cal Berkeley in there as well. You have the quantitative boutique programs like Rochester and WashU St. Louis, which normally end up in the top 15. Ohio State, Duke, and UNC Chapel Hill have all gone up in stature in recent years and normally get name dropped as well. Beyond that, people generally go off the USNWR rankings.

I'm one of those with a professional degree and a lot of prior work experience as well, and a spouse with a PhD in a different field who probably has more earning potential than I do. I've worked in government, can't say I'm interested in going back, but if it's that or eating, well, I choose eating. Rather be a prof, we'll see if it works out. I'm a pretty optimistic fellow generally speaking. That said, there are some things a person can do to improve their chances of getting a TT job, no matter where you're graduating from. Publish as much as you can while you're in your program, before you become ABD. Even one article co-authored with a faculty member is better than nothing. Use your dissertation to a) line yourself up for a book deal, and b ) if possible, secure a proprietary data set that you can write articles off for the next several years. Have a concrete research agenda from day 1 with a niche that is underrepresented in many departments. Be willing and able to teach methods classes (this is a big one from what I'm told, because many departments want them and don't have them). Be willing and able to do other non-research things like run a pre-law program, coach the debate or mock trial team, etc. These are all things that professors from top programs have told me.

Well, I got one of the early admits, so the tension has been largely released in the house. Mrs. changeisgood particularly, I think it was tougher on her than me. That being said, someone else mentioned being a planner, and that's me too. Now, I want the *rest* of the notifications to come in so I can make a final decision and go forward. Not being able to plan ahead bugs me intensely. Having to get a Masters Thesis written during all of this and prep for a conference (never mind my courses and TA stuff) is around to keep my mind busy, fortunately.

Hmm, Rice seems to be coming in now. I applied but it was by far the weakest fit of any place on my list. I don't anticipate an offer from them. Come on, Big 10 schools!

Listen, it's not defensiveness. It's simply a reaction against some of the alleged factors that go into these rankings, and I'm calling bullshit on them. You don't share my opinion, that's fine. 5 courses is a bit low, yes, but consider where I'm coming from. I'm just about to complete an M.A., so I don't need to repeat a methods sequence or re-take foundations seminars. My subfields (AP and public law) tend to get the shaft at a lot of places anyway. For instance, I just looked at OSU's Spring 2017 offerings, and yeah, they have a dozen or so on the schedule. But of those, there are two, perhaps 3, that would apply to my fields and that I have not already had. Most of them are IR/Comparative, or first-year courses, or "research problems" courses where you just write a conference paper or whatever. A dozen course offerings does me no good if I would only need 2 of them anyway. UGA may have only five or six, but there are the same number of those that I either want or need. I guess what I'm saying is this: the rankings of programs seem to be generated based on how well the program meets the needs of the young 20-something right out of undergrad with no graduate experience whatsoever, but who wants to end up with a TT job at one of the schools in the top 15 of the rankings! It seems like it feeds on itself. That ain't me, and I think it's pointless for faculty search committees to base their expectations for new professors on this type of system. In any case, I'm confident enough in my ability to produce quality publishable research, and in my background, that I expect to land something reasonably good. Heck, not all of us are after a Nobel prize. Some of us just want to write books and teach.

So, just a perusal of the course offerings for the current academic year in just the Poli Sci Dept. reveals the following: MLEs, Rational Choice Theory, Spatial Voting Models, and Machine Learning. Yeah, UGA must be really deficient in methods. Good grief (*eyeroll*)./sarcasm

x3. All of the programs I applied to had at least 2 potential advisors among the faculty, some had 3 or more. There's no point in going somewhere you're not going to be happy just because they're a few points higher on the USNWR rankings.

So far from what I've seen, there are a lot of people doing a lot of heavy duty math in our field, but the ones that do this kind of work often struggle to attach any meaning to what they are doing. Math is nice, math is pretty, but if you're not contributing something to improve behavior outcomes, institutional operation, etc. or whatever your particular flavor is, it's just mental gymnastics for the sake of fiddling around. I can't tell you how many methods articles I've read that end with something like "we really can't say much about the implications of all this, except to say that we need to use this method more often".

I will when I get all my results in, but not yet.

They do, in fact, have a clear methods track, I think you might be looking in the wrong place. As for the course offerings, no, it's not OSU or Michigan, but then again few places are. Not all of us can get into top 15 programs. If you're a rock star, great, go be a good one. But for the rest of us, there are places like UGA that have outstanding faculty that provide a lot of opportunities for research and publishing. UGA's like in the top 10 nationally in NSF grants awarded (that may be SPIA as a whole, not just the Poli Sci program).

Based on student outcomes I think their USNWR ranking is libelous and total crap. No way they should be that low. The chair of our Dept at my current location is a UGA PhD, and my advisor (and our DGS) almost went there. His reasons for deciding on another program had nothing to do with UGA's quality, it was just a matter of timing and a particular professor he wanted to work with somewhere else. There is no reason in my mind why UGA should not be in the top 25.

Well, the UGA DGS told me that the reason they set their cycle earlier than most other programs is for precisely the reason that the OP suggested: getting a foot in the door with the candidates they want, and having the maximum amount of time to convince them to come to UGA. So that they don't get lost in the shuffle if applicants are sifting through multiple offers in a short time period.

This info is from having applied there and met a few of the faculty/grad students. They have a solid methods curriculum (you can comp in it, even, which is unusual). Good for judicial politics and rational choice/game theory. Lots of prominent American scholars. They get a bunch of research grants (NSF, etc.) and always have several projects going on. Along with PA, IA, and policy studies, their Poli Sci dept is in a separate college from the rest of the Arts/Sciences folks. Not sure but it probably makes for some good interaction between the programs. Seems like they fund just about all of their PhD students. If you're just coming out of undergrad, they have a fast-track PhD if your stats are good enough.

Thanks much. You know, it's funny, but I didn't really have a "top choice" when I went into this. Each of the programs I applied to have certain unique advantages. Once I find out how many other offers I get, I'll just have to sift through them and see what rises to the top. Besides the research and faculty strengths in my subfield, there's funding amount and type, location, finding employment for my wife, a school for my kid, etc. So lots to consider.

That would be me. Very nice call from the DGS. Going to have to wait to make a decision for a while though, still have 6 more out there to hear from.

I uploaded a PDF to Rice and apparently they were fine with it. I ended up sending a hard copy to TAMU for the simple reason that their upload system wouldn't accept the double-uber-secure PDF that I got from the clearing house (TAMU requires official transcripts with application). If you have a PDF of your official transcript (signed and sealed by the registrar) that isn't restricted access, they'll probably take it.

Sounds like you and I are in the same boat. Similar GRE but I'll have a M.A. finished in the Spring and I have a few other quantitative bits and bobs in my profile which should help. I narrowed my search down to 7 schools, but the breakdown of rankings is similar. Programs didn't even make the short list if they didn't have at least one prof. doing research in my areas of interest. I know me and I'll be much happier that way. Getting a good job is all about publishing, anyways, and as long as you're focused on doing as much of that as you possibly can, things will work out.