FuzzyDunlop

You are essentially a comparativist that will do some work close to the comparative/IR line. Even if want to do a lot of quantitative cross-national work, you should signal a region of interest for your qualitative work and try to show that you know something about that region or can pose your interests in terms of some countries in that region. To win admission, you need somebody on the faculty to fight for you and generally what happens is that the Africa CP faculty will look at the Africanist candidates and make a priority list, the East Asia CP faculty will do the same, etc. So if you don't fall naturally into one of these groups and you don't stand out so much in some other way that the general admissions committee decides you are a must-admit, then you may end up being shit out of luck.

Lots of people recently have gotten good comparative jobs working on only one country. And just because you are looking at just one country, this does not mean that you can't have a large-n research design. There is a trend in the field toward more focus on statistical methods, but one should not assume that this means a trend of increasing rewards to big cross-national studies. That seemed to happen for a while. But as more emphasis has been put on doing statistics well (not just doing statistics at all) - using more cutting edge techniques with better data sources - a bit of a backlash has begun against those big cross-national research designs. The hottest people on the comparative job market tend to be those who combine case knowledge with sophisticated quantitative methods and good data, and a lot of times they are only working on one country.

Not true at all what the previous poster said about China. Lots of people do research primarily on one country - scholars who have had great success really only studying Brazil, India, Russia, Japan, or China are all pretty common in comparative. The area studies versus generalist distinction is a false one. What is area studies? Is the study of American politics nothing more than area studies? What does generalism entail? Does it mean that you have to compare across world regions, even if the comparison is stupid or entails using really weak statistical techniques? Why can't you develop theories primarily out of one context and still be a "generalist?"

Not that I know of, but this is not my subfield so I am not necessarily that plugged in.

Berkeley is a great place to do this specific topic - Jacob Hacker, Paul Pierson, Jonah Levy if you want a European perspective. Hard to think of a better group specifically for APD-like approaches to social policy and welfare state issues, especially if one of your cases will be the United States.

ep, all else equal, i would pick yale or stanford. in recent years, no department has done better placing its candidates than stanford, and they have very good people in the ethnic conflict/violence nexus. i wouldn't go in expecting to work that closely with blaydes, just bc she is very junior and for people at that level at that kind of institution priorities 1, 2, 3, and 4 are getting tenure, not working with grad students. yale also has a great team in terms of ethnic conflict and violence, and also has lust-okar in middle east, who would probably be in a better position to help you (make sure she is staying though). it is also significantly more diverse methodologically. you can definitely do some qualitative work at stanford as part of your dissertation, but if you go there and want to work with fearon/laitin you will also be expected to do some formal modeling and/or stats. nothing wrong with that, just not everybody's cup of tea. in the end, both would be excellent choices, stanford probably has a better placement record but yale may be a better fit methodologically for you.

Not my field, but Rutgers does seem to have strength in gender politics, with quite a few people there studying that subject from various angles. That could make it a good fit. However, be forewarned (somewhat ironic given this strength)... http://chronicle.com/jobs/blogs/onhirin ... al-science

***Disclaimer*** I am a Berkeley student, so take the rest of this for what its worth. Berkeley - Pradeep Chhibber is a really good scholar and a very attentive adviser. He has organized a regular working group for South Asianists to present work and give each other feedback, which sounds very useful. I think from a principle adviser standpoint in this field and with this particular interest, there is really nobody better. Comparative is one of Berkeley's strengths in general. Yale - Obviously a great school, although comparative has not been one of their strongest subfields historically. Steve Wilkinson may move there, which for your needs would make this a great choice as well. Columbia - I'm not sure they have somebody who studies South Asia, which while not an absolute prerequisite will make your life a lot harder as a South Asianist. The comparative group seems mostly oriented toward political economy, which could be good for you given your interest in that. NYU - Kanchan Chandra is there. From what I have heard from a couple people, and this is purely hearsay so take it with a grain of salt, she is a very difficult person to work with. As a whole the program is very much oriented toward formal theory and statistical analysis, which may or may not be your cup of tea. But take that into account when thinking about things. Overall, this is pretty clearly the weakest school of the four. All else equal, Berkeley does seem like the best fit for your research interests (note my conflict of interest though), but I think Yale would also be an excellent option if Wilkinson ends up there. If strong personal incentives are pulling you toward the New York schools, try to really dig a bit deeper in your research about the two departments.

At my school, its basically the following. A couple arranged meetings with professors in your subfield, at which they will answer your questions and try to sell you on the school; a few optional group activities in the area for all the prospectives plus some profs, which are supposed to showcase the area and give you some time to bond and whatever; at night, individual parties organized by sufields, usually at a grad student house, that are pretty low key and mostly consist of grad students hanging out, drinking a little, and answering your questions. There is somewhat of a selection effect in terms of which grad students actually go to these parties or show up at other events, so be wary about how you draw judgments about grad student life. You're more likely to meet people who are largely content and engaged with the department than people who are somewhat dissatisfied and distanced. And you're also perhaps a bit more likely to meet people with nothing better to do.

I agree with Penelope. I don't think NYU's placement record in comparative is particularly strong (certainly not "one of the best"), and they have a very pronounced methodological orientation. If you definitely want to do formal modeling and/or a lot of statistics, it could be a good choice but its not a great fit for everyone and don't kid yourself about it being competitive with the very top schools overall in terms of placement. Yale's comparative program has traditionally been seen as lagging somewhat behind other subfields there, but they have hired some very good people recently. Its an especially good place if you want to study violence/civil war.

It really depends on your department and how this process works. Do they give you a list? Do you make your own list? Is it oral or written? What kinds of topics does your department specialize in? The list you gave seems very oriented toward the classics of comparative historical analysis, which is fine as long as that is what is expected of you. Broadly speaking, there are also very few recent books on here. I would just make sure that you are not so classics focused that you will wind up taking the exam and looking like you are not in touch with trends and developments in recent scholarship. There are a lot of topics, some hot, that really aren't represented in your list. Assuming that the kind of stuff you are listing is properly the focus of what you should be preparing for, I would also recommend for edited volumes: Thelen and Steinmo - Structuring Politics Thelen and Streek - Beyond Continuity (at least intro) Hall and Soskice - Varieties of Capitalism (at least intro) Bates and Grief - Analytic Narratives

Outside the top 6-8 schools, rankings get arbitrary and "global rankings" of comparative politics are not very useful. You should judge the programs based upon the quality of the faculty in your regional subfield of interest and in terms of whether the program as a whole can give you good training and support in the methodology toward which you are inclined.

Listen to flatcoat. Just by committing to a PhD program in political theory or critical theory, you are walking down a perilous road in terms of future employment and earnings. Interdisciplinary departments, especially ones that are not widely known, are notoriously bad at placement. Only go to Minnesota if you can look yourself in the mirror and honestly say that afterward you really wouldn't mind either being a long-term adjunct/VAP, a TT with a 4/4 load in bumfuck nowhere, or leaving academia and doing something else. Because those scenarios are very likely. Seriously, don't just put your head in the sand and tell yourself that things will work out in some other way, because they probably won't. If you wouldn't be happy in those situations, go to Northwestern (or law school!).

It depends what your criteria for "Top Ten" is I suppose. These places (GSB too) do well in placement because they are highly specialized and do a good job training a small number of students to attack one specific corner of the discipline. CalTech is not even a political science department. If your criteria is a bit broader, focusing not just on placement but the impact of research done at the department on political science as a whole, then I have a hard time seeing how these places would crowd out other departments like UCLA, UCSD, or Duke that are frequently mentioned as making up the rest of the Top Ten.

Well, if you are geographically limited and in theory, the probability of you getting a TT job in a university or college in that area really does approach 0. I know you say that this kind of TT job is not important to you, which is fine, just make sure that is really true. Don't make part of your decision "And maybe it will work out, which would be really sweet!" under these circumstances, because it is a pipe dream. However, getting a TT job (yes, they do have TT) in a community college in your area is considerably more likely, although not guaranteed by any means. Have you spent time in a community college before? Those jobs are great for some people, not so much for others. If that's what you are thinking of doing, just make sure that you really know exactly what you are getting into - that you want to teach a lot, and teach that particular student population. Ultimately, I wouldn't do it unless you are hoping to go into academia, whether the standard university/college route or the community college route. Your ability to jump back into the legal field or some other job will be greatly hampered by being effectively out of the real workforce for 6-7 years. The opportunity costs to take 6-7 years off work are also very high. So, basically, figure out if you really, really want to be a community college professor. If you do, go for it. If not, don't.

Berkeley grad student here... Like most of the Top 10, the department really isn't that specialized, at least not any more. The most specialized places tend to fall somewhere in the 10-30 range, with those schools generally looking to establish a real comparative advantage in one thing or another. That said, Berkeley was long known for being the most oriented toward qualitative research of the Top 10 and that still might be true, although the department has been changing significantly. Comparative - There is a strong impulse toward regional specialization and really knowing your cases here. That doesn't necessarily mean not doing quantitative research, but often means using mixed-methods within a narrower group of countries in which people also do fieldwork. People here would definitely reject the idea that regional specialization constitutes "area studies." Is American politics simply area studies? On the substantive side, Berkeley is very oriented toward topics like political economy, party systems, regimes, social movements, and political behavior. There is not much in the way of civil war or legislative institutions, for example. American - We pretty much cover the gamut, but with the strongest presences in behavior and, with recent hires, in APD. IR - Definitely more focused on IPE than on conflict/security, although this may change. Methods - Berkeley has been trying to position itself as adopting a particularly "pluralist" approach. There are courses in topics that are commonly seen as "qualitative" (although they really transcend that distinction) such as conceptualization and measurement. But there is now also a formal theory sequence/subfield and a beefed up set of statistical courses, with a particular focus on problems of causal inference. There is a more laissez-faire attitude toward what grad students do than at other comparable programs. Some people get really deeply into certain methods, others do not. There isn't really a set regimen of methodological training that everybody goes through.

I deferred for a year and it was very simple and non-controversial. I certainly don't think withdrawing will hurt you with other schools and, even if you don't get the deferral, it probably wouldn't hurt you with Illinois as long as you explain that you have a serious family issue. Sorry to hear about the bad news.

A lot has to come together for somebody to become a full on, Iggy Pop circa 1974 rockstar. But here are a few suggestions that I think are just good practice for anybody: 1. Take methods seriously. You don't have to be a methodologist or be extremely teched up. You don't even necessarily need to know much of anything about formal theory (although that's one route to go down). But definitely build some statistical skills, learn about research design and the idea of causal inference, and cover some basic methodological issues that are often thought of as "qualitative" but really transcend the the qual/quant distinction - like what is a concept, what is a measure, etc. You can do this stuff in classes, in summer institutes, or - with appropriate motivation - on your own. 2. Don't burn bridges or crap needlessly on other peoples' work. Scholarship is hard, and its a lot easier to be a critic than to be a producer. While being critical is obviously fundamental to improving on extant scholarship, keep your focus on what you're doing rather than criticizing others just for its own sake and when you are critical, do it respectfully. That goes not just for conversational interactions but especially when discussing other work in papers. 3. Get empirical as quickly as you can. Don't just write a lit review for that class paper, see if there's a dataset out there that might allow you to shine some light on the problem. Even if the paper you write isn't for publication, its important to start experimenting with the analysis of actual evidence. If you are doing comparative or some IR projects, use a summer after one of your first two years to take a brief trip into the field to poke around a bit. 4. Try to maintain somewhat of an even keel. Its easy to blow things way out of proportion that aren't very important in the big picture. An unsatisfying interaction with an adviser might just be because that person had a ton of other stuff on their mind that day. A class grade lower than you wanted really doesn't matter that much. Understand too that you will probably go through a long series of failed or semi-failed dissertation ideas. The great idea you have one day will sometimes seem stupid three months later. Or you'll come up with an idea only to realize later that somebody else has already covered that ground. Its a gradual process of slowing working your way towards an interesting, original, and tractable problem to explore. Really good dissertation topics don't just fall from the sky. 5. Work hard.

The job market is really bad in theory, without a doubt. I would recommend that anybody applying for theory take a look at the relevant threads on the theory job market blog. In particular, there is a whole thread devoted to questions from prospective grad students that may be interesting. Interspersed among this and the various job market threads, there are also several quite candid discussions about the job market and whether it is responsible for people in the profession to encourage students to go to schools that don't have great placement records. Just go in with your eyes open. http://politicaltheoryrumormill.blogspot.com/

I have only followed the job market for the last couple years, so my perspective may be limited in this respect. As far as I can see, "superstars" come in various forms but the common denominators are at least two and usually all three of the following: (a) an impressive publication record ( a great dissertation and © coming out of a top program and being heavily pushed by powerful people. Sometimes a candidate is just so heads-and-shoulders above his or her peers in terms of their publication record that their superstardom is obvious. The most absurd example of this that I have seen is a guy from Stanford this year (google Neil Malhotra) who has an astounding thirteen peer-reviewed publications on his CV, including at several top journals. Given that having one or two is often seen as quite impressive, that's a record that is really, really off-the-charts. Other times a candidate might have a CV that is quite impressive but not necessarily heads and shoulders above other high quality candidates, yet this person gets a huge number of interviews and offers. These people probably have very good dissertations and really great letters of recommendation. This is just pure speculation, but to me it also sometimes appears to be the case that top schools coordinate on the same candidates out of the logic that "Hey, Yale and Harvard are interviewing this person and all the chatter is that they are the hot candidate, so since we are XXXX then we should be interviewing him or her too." In the end, just work hard, cultivate relationships with good faculty, don't burn bridges, and try to publish.

One thing to consider about Penn is that it is very heavily qualitative. They have very few people who do quantitative research and don't offer that much instruction in stats or formal theory. That may or may not match your interests. It also might explain why some applicants don't get in who are more oriented toward quantitative projects or have that kind of background.

A few thoughts from somebody who has yet to have the pleasure but is close enough to be a pretty interested observer. 1.Theory is generally perceived as being the worst job market. 2. Among the other three, I think its fair to say that American is the best market right now but, as detroitfan notes, its more a question of the segmentation in the market. There are lots of jobs for Americanists because college students like to classes about American politics - they cover topics that are really close to home and some of those courses are seen as particularly useful professionally for kids that are pre-law or who want to do things like work in Washington or in public policy. These classes are not just numerous, but often Americanist scholars have a certain amount of flexibility in what they can teach, which makes hiring them a bit easier it seems. There are also a lot of jobs for comparativists given that kids, at least in aggregate, have some interest in the rest of the world. But if you study Japan and mostly can teach courses on Japan or East Asia more generally and the department already has two people who specialize in that, you're probably out of luck. That's not the case if you study behavior and the department already has two (or many more) people who do that. 3. If you're worried about comparative, then think more about your region of focus but keep in mind that there is a cyclical nature to this. Right now Middle East, South Asia, and China are very hot, mostly because there are interesting things going on in those regions and because they have been historically underrepresented in departments and understudied by the discipline. Latin America, Western Europe, and the Post-Soviet area seem to have been slower of late. But it wasn't that long ago that Latin America and Post-Soviet were both pretty hot. They may or may not be hot again 6-8 years from now when you are worrying about these things. It does seem, however, that Western Europe might be terminally bad for a while just because it isn't yielding that many new sexy topics and because scholars specializing in Europe are historically very overrepresented in departments due to the historical development of comparative politics as a subfield. 4. One other consideration is that some of the regions that are currently hot present their own professional difficulties. The languages are difficult to learn. The available quantitative data in many of those countries is really bad, which limits some of your options and makes fieldwork vital for most academic projects. That's not such a problem for dissertations when you should be doing fieldwork anyway. But getting back into the field for extended periods is more difficult later in your career, especially with a family, and its nice to study a region for which you can pump out a few papers based on quantitative data. Finally, the topics that are most gripping in those currently hot areas often will have less obvious synergies with people in other subfields. You can write a paper on political behavior or institutions in Latin America or Europe that engages debates among other comparativists and Americanists and that speaks in terms very familiar to many of the powers-that-be that will be deciding your fate on the market and afterwards. Doing that in the Middle East or China is a bit more difficult. 5. In the abstract, picking subjects that cross subfields is not a bad strategy but is often difficult to pull off. Its hard to really mix American with comparative unless you are doing things basically on the turf of Americanists but extending those ideas to other countries (like with behavior and legislatures). There are probably more options at the nexus between IR and comparative. A lot of fairly hot subjects, like civil wars or the effect of trade or aid on domestic political dynamics like regime stability, are really pretty lodged between the two. If you concentrate in both subfields and then develop a project that allows you to sell yourself both ways, there are more jobs that you can potentially apply for and, if you get interviews, you may have more potential allies and advocates as you speak to a broader range of people. Further, in the abstract you may be better positioned as a potential "consensus" candidate. A lot of job searches involve power plays between different groups of faculty and, ceteris paribus, you're better off if hiring you might bridge a divide (this is also another reason to do multimethod research). 6. Given your particular research interest, Quarex, I think trying to bridge comparative and the security studies subfield of IR is not a bad idea. Your countries of interest have big domestic security concerns, but the ways that they approach these concerns seem to be shaped by various institutional and social variables. I'm not that familiar with the relevant IR literature, but it seems like a good fit that would leave you well positioned on the market.

Maybe this discussion is no longer helpful, but let me just add that the opinions of these posters (and they certainly are opinions, not "facts") are really not that inconsistent with each other. What it boils down to is that most people attending lower ranked schools are making a mistake if the goal is a tenure track job with some degree of choice about where you end up geographically, but that doesn't mean that you are necessarily making a mistake. Just understand that you have to work that much harder. Things will not work out that well for most of your peers, but they might work out fine for you. More generally in response to anotherrealist, I should add that I have found at my top ten school that there are plenty of great advisers willing to go above and beyond to help students and that I like my fellow grad students. I am thus skeptical of his or her claim that the quality of advisers and peers increases as you move down the rankings. This seems like an opinion that is ultimately pretty difficult to substantiate. Good people can be found everywhere. Its your job to forge those relationships, wherever you land. I did not go to ICPSR but my friends who went generally had good experiences. The value of these programs is that they help you learn methods. It might be nice to meet some other grad students or professors from other places, but networking in these venues (especially in the first couple years of school) is not that critical in the grand scheme of things. I can't remember which right now, but there is also an English university (Essex?) that runs a similar methods camp over the summer and there is CQRM that runs for a few weeks at Arizona State in January. For anybody who is not a theorist, learning methods is vital in this discipline. You can do that at your own university, at one of these institutes, or some combination thereof. The important thing is to do it. Anybody (non-theorists) reading this who was thinking that they might not learn methods in grad school because they don't like math or find the idea kind of a drag should do some serious reevaluation of that assumption. As far as what to do in your first summer, its not a crucial decision either way. Stats camp is often a useful investment. If a good RA opportunity comes up that might lead to a better relationship with a potential adviser, that is definitely worth considering. Finally, if you are planning to do empirical research in other countries then going abroad for a stretch to poke around a bit and/or polish your language skills is not a bad idea either. One of the most difficult things about finding a good dissertation topic (in comparative at least) is that students often don't actually know enough empirically about the countries they are studying in order to really know what is an intriguing puzzle and what is not. In the end, just do something useful that also gives yourself a little break from the day-to-day grind of the school year. As Quarex noted, there is nobody who can really answer this question for you. Any value in waiting is dependent on whether you think your application will improve by next year. If that's not the case, then you should be deciding between going now or finding another career, and that decision has to be based on an honest assessment of whether you have the skills and determination to excel enough in this lower ranked program (to really, really be at the top) such that things will work out for you in the long run. You also will obviously want to take a closer look at the faculty and placement history in your subfield.

Once you are a few years into your PhD program and not doing regular coursework anymore, living in San Francisco (particularly in the mission or nearby) is easy for Stanford students, especially if you have a car. It is about an hour to drive, less during off peak times, as long as you can jump on the freeway easily. I know many people who have done this. Palo Alto is abominable but if you can put up with it for a few years then you can move to an amazing city.

Quarex, It sounds like comparative politics would be a good fit if that is the way you are approaching things. I don't know much about your topic, but my general advice is that (again, echoing Eve) your general task is to take an issue that is relatively unexplored and contextualize it within larger theoretical debates in the discipline. For example, much of the literature on welfare capitalism tends to group the US and UK together under a "liberal" rubric, with policies in the two countries reflecting more faith in markets to protect citizens from risk than in continental or northern europe. So in some sense I'm not sure the UK fits the "european" orientation that you describe in your post. Yet despite these similarities, you find that approaches differ widely among "liberal" welfare capitalism cases with respect to the regulatory issues with which you are concerned. So what explains that? Different legal traditions? Different pressures in terms of immigration and domestic security threats? Etc. In terms of looking for programs that fit you, another idea is also to look at the research interests of IR scholars. The line between comparative and IR is pretty fuzzy sometimes, and the substance of your research interest may be more up the alley of an IR guy interested in security and terrorism than a comparative guy who studies congressional institutions. It could be that the best fit for you would be a program with a Western Europeanist who could advise you about the cases you are studying and an IR guy who has more substantive interest in the policy issues.