FuzzyDunlop

For quality of life, Cambridge wins hands down over Palo Alto, which is basically a yuppie suburb with nothing to do. They are both great programs and you are mostly in a no lose situation. Harvard's department is much bigger and much less cohesive - people are spread out physically across many buildings, there are substantial divisions within the department, etc. Stanford is smaller and, in comparative politics at least, seems to have a more close-knit feel. With both of these schools, be careful about putting weight on the presence of specific professors at the junior level. Its very difficult to get tenure at both schools, so there is a lot of movement. PM me with more info about what you will be studying if you want more specific feedback. Its really impossible to say much more without at least knowing your regional interest.

"As far as my research (possibly best described as "national security via identification systems/privacy/civil liberties/surveillance with some communitarianism thrown in for flavor"), the exact field I belong in seems to confuse everyone (which may be part of the problem), even though TO ME it sounds definitely like public policy/political science. " I would echo some of Eve's advice. If you are thinking about these issues in terms of how to balance different rights in the crafting of policy, then a policy school may be the best choice. If you are thinking about them in terms of the rich ethical and theoretical questions they evoke, then you should be looking at either a sociology program or la way to study this within the political theory subfield. The only way that you should be looking to do this in terms of comparative politics is if you are intent on framing the question along the lines Eve mentioned (the effect of X variable on your outcome of interest) or along the lines of "Country A and Country B are similar in many respects, but have implemented far different approaches to national ID systems, with attendant important substantive differences emerging in the civil liberties of citizens. Why this difference?" If those don't sound like framings of your question that interest you, then you should look outside of comparative politics.

Working part time while in grad school is no problem. In the end, most grad students do this anyway as TAs or RAs. If you are in a PhD program, however, I would be wary about working more than about 15 hours a week. There is no point in getting a PhD unless you are going to really put in the effort to excel to the best of your abilities. That's hard to do under the best of circumstances, and much more difficult if you are working all the time. Like it or not, you will be competing against other grad students at your school and elsewhere who won't be working so much. Take out a loan if need be.

5th year grad student here. In my experience, realist's advice is very sound, as much as some of you don't want to hear it. The definition of a decent career in this discipline is of course contested. But there is virtually nobody who believes that being off the tenure track fits the bill - you are miserably paid, often in a constant state of insecurity about your future, and often (reprehensibly) treated like a second-class citizen by your coworkers. Basically, its a really bad outcome, especially given the opportunity costs of getting a PhD. Given that being off the tenure track is not a good future, the question you should be asking involves the chance of you landing on the tenure track while coming from different tiers of schools. That some good LACs or R1s have people with PhDs out of the Top 25 is basically meaningless. We're dealing with probabilities here. I'm not saying that means nobody should go to a school outside the Top 25, but you should definitely think long and hard about it. More than anything, if you're in that position you need to be brutally honest with yourself. What are your true life and career goals and how well do they match the likely outcomes here? That goes not just for people trying to figure out whether their school can give them a tenure track job but also for those who (perhaps secretly) will not be happy unless a bunch of other criteria are met. Will you be disappointed if you don't land in a cosmopolitan city on one of the coasts? Forget top 25, you better be going to a top ten program. I also think realist's advice about advisers is very sound. Don't pick a school because of a single person, who may move or turn out to be unhelpful. Pick the school that is strongest across the board, gives you the most support, and has the methodological approach that best fits your interest. Somebody downthread asked about advice for graduate school, so here is one general thought: Understand that its all about self-motivation and maintaining focus on long term goals. There is a tendency among some people to treat the first few years of grad school like an extension of undergrad, with the idea that classwork basically encapsulates your responsibilities. No, no, no. Don't think about your coursework as defining the parameters of what you need to do on a regular basis. What you need to do is absorb what the discipline is about, what the debates are, and how scholarship is produced and then get to churning out your own scholarship as quickly as possible. Don't take the undergraduate attitude that, "Ok, well what I have on my plate at this point is reading these 200 pages for the one class and then writing that response paper by the end of the week for the other." Rather, think about those tasks as part of a loose set of guidelines set up by the program. Clear those hurdles, but always keep your focus on the question of how scholarship is produced and on the goal of getting there yourself. This is easier said than done.