gapa

Don´t sell yourself short. There are people with UG GPA below 3.0 at top 10 departments. Rectifying graduate performance, great SOP and possibly contacts with professors are the key.

For what it is worth, I got into a top 5 program with an UGPA under 3.00, GGPA close to 4.0 and similar GRE scores as yours. I am a foreign applicant and did a lot to compensate for the possible UGPA defficiency.

Here is an interesting table with MBA admission and yield statistics. It would be useful for future applicants if such thing existested for PolySci. But apparently schools are reluctant to post such data on their web. Perhaps it could be inferred from admission/rejection e-mails? Any takers? http://adam-markus.blogspot.com/2008/06/top-20-mba-programs-ranked-by.html

I was wonderig whether someone has a clear idea how are the annual numbers for Total PolSci applicants / Total admitted / Admitted to top10 programs / Completing degree / R1 tenure track openings ?

Fit is not an issue at best programs, which are the biggest ones as well. These can fit most people, as long as their profile is strong, their interests reasonable (and perhaps tweak their SOP here and there). Fit becomes important at lesser schools with fewer faculty, which need to specialize. Plus Political Science seems to be less competitive than Economics, resulting in reduced influence of luck for best candidates.

So is anyone considering Yale? Going to the Open House? What are your other options? It seems to me that most people here who got into Yale have also other admissions from top schools they rather prefer.

I claim the "too young to vote" post :-) The fact is that I am not US citizen and cannot vote for that reason, so this entry seemed closest. I am rather old (32) for the record :-)

With your acceptances so far, did you experience upward or downward mobility (your grad department ranking compared to undergrad department)? And do you think this reflects your relative position in your undergrad class (say top students experience upward mobility, while not so top students downward? And another unrelated question: what percentage of PhDs are from the top10 departments out of the total pool of PhDs?