Khaari

I got funding info from Penn a few days ago, generous offer. I'll be there for the visiting day!

My story is actually quite similar to the post above. I did my undergrad in a country where research is not encouraged, and debate and dissent is stifled. I went through undergrad without having written or read a single research paper. I was always interested in politics but frustrated that education back home meant only learning stuff out of a textbook and writing exams. I learnt what a bibliography was only when I got to UChicago for my MA. So when I was able to produce my own data for my thesis, I was so fascinated with being able to create content and new information on my own. My trajectory: 3 year BA --> 1 year MA --> one gap year doing survey research, and applied to schools during that gap year for a PhD. And it's worked out! I'm 21 and probably have the least amount of experience here, research and otherwise, so I'm apprehensive about this journey, but more hopeful than anything else

Yup, I'll be there. I'm trying to figure out flights too, it is kinda late and I was planning to go back to my family in India in April so this is just complicating things...

Any of you gonna be attending the UPenn campus day event?

UPenn!

I just got in Penn! After 6 rejections. Phew

Agreed...I discovered this forum late in the admission process but you guys have been so, so helpful. I got on the Chicago waitlist...but given their acceptance rate this time I'm not hopeful

Chicago has already emailed all of its 22 admits. What's not (officially) out yet is the waitlist

I graduated from CIR this year so I'll tell you this: most students in the MAPSS program are PhD rejects, and MAPSS accepts around 150 students a year. CIR, on the other hand, has very few people who were admitted after getting rejected from PhD programs; most in CIR apply directly for an MA (Or at least this was the case with my cohort). Also, the CIR cohort is much smaller than MAPSS ~ 40 candidates. I just got wait listed by Chicago's phd ad comm, so kinda bummed

Regarding the post on the survey page that says UChicago acceptances might be a scam: I just spoke to my POI at Chicago, and he says the decisions were made a couple of days ago, so definitely this is all legit. Also he says they had over 500 applicants and offered only 21 admissions, so seems like ad comm also had a lot of tough choices to make this year...

I picked the top 10 schools that place students well in jobs after, then omitted a few that wouldn't be strong for what I'm interested in (for e.g., Ohio State and MIT are very security-focused, and I don't study IR / security), and then added 2 back up options (slightly lower ranked, but still top 15 or so)

The first one was mine, and it was a backup option for me so pretty crushed right now. Also, they emailed me at 5am on a saturday morning, lol.

Looks like no Berkeley or Stanford either...

Same! Applied to 10 programs, no responses so far. Still nervous about not having heard anything from Northwestern or Berkeley...

What's PSR? Also, can the same user post more than once with the same university name on the survey page? Curious about how legit the Berkeley posts are