Salve

Hey! Don't despair! I've also been out of school for some time, and working outside of the US in a not very related industry. I now have two offers from very good schools. You still have two other schools to announce their decisions, and even if they say 'no', it's not your last chance! You have amazing scores and a great GPA. You can work on polishing other areas of your profile if need be. But then again, you still have other two schools to announce their decisions. Write to me if you need to chat with someone.

It's like a Russian troll farm, only with advanced knowledge in formal theory and in how to structure a grammatically correct insult. In the past few weeks I became convinced it's a rather awful representation of Political Scientists, because it gives you the suspicion that in your own cohort you might be surrounded by people with huge fragile egos, who have zero respect for other people, especially if they don't go to CHYMPS and are women, who are so atomized, they think that spousal hires are fundamentally wrong (I'm not saying that this is indeed the case, just that that particular website gives you such a toxic aftertaste). One can go on, but you get the idea. I hope that you open another thread for this one, because I don't want to contaminate this thread, which was a great support to other people, and to me personally, because of the sense of respect and camaraderie that it afforded. In other words, a total opposite of poliscirumors.

I was also wondering about the same. But since it's going to cost a pretty penny, and I'd have to get a visa, I'm not going to attend. Instead, I'm connecting with professors and grad students at the schools that admitted me. I talked to some international students already, and they said they used the same tactic.

Oh, why the sad face? These are terrific choices! So you have reason to celebrate

Congrats! Great school!

You can check it on the results page. Just type in the search box the name of the university and "political science" or "government": http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/

I wonder the same. I think I'm waiting for a rejection from Princeton, and viewing the acceptances on the results page happens almost in slow motion. I wish they released them without such a lag...

This is funny! Because I avoid it at all costs! Too toxic for my taste

I have to disagree with the point about recommendations. It is not true that LORs are the most important thing only provided that they are from famous scholars or scholars at famous institutions. The reason this is not true is because famous scholars often do not bother to write a nice personalized letter of recommendation. Instead, they opt out for something generic. A letter from a professor who is not famous, but knows you well and can write that you are the best, brightest student she has ever had will be more beneficial for your overall 'package' than a boring letter from a famous scholar.

One of the schools I applied to gave me a campus number a few weeks after I've applied, so I am not sure it is indicative of greater things to come. But I haven't had an email address given to me by that institution, so I don't know...

@cpmethods I heard Harvard doesn't have interviews. Has that changed?

@buckinghamubadger I agree with you. And I wish that rankings weren't as important as they seem to be. Heck, I'm not even from the US, so my university probably ranks 5000th, if not worse. But the post I was referring to did not cite US News rankings. And it was from a professor who sat on committees to hire professors at a non-top10 institution. Of course, it is possible that a person becomes a great scholar attending a formally lower ranked institution. Talent and, more importantly, grit count. But it is an uphill battle in a situation, when the deck is already stacked against us.

I was wondering about the same and found an answer on this forum. I think it makes sense (although still disputable): Realist lists the schools about half page down, and here it is. He also later adds Northwestern to the list. "It concerns me that so many of you are worried about "top 25" or not, and are apparently unaware of what is unambiguously a top 25 department. Here's the best that I can tell of unambiguously top 25 political science PhD programs. These will show up in any list of top programs. Some rankings rank based on faculty productivity, which is not what you're looking for here: you want strength or "reputation" of department, a rather amorphous concept. Notice there are fewer than 25. That's because in any list, numbers 20-25 are really up for dispute. I've grouped them by "type" of school. These are in no way ranked, and I may have forgotten one or two. IVY Harvard Yale Princeton Columbia Cornell IVY-LIKE PRIVATE (these schools, curiously, are often very technical) Stanford Chicago MIT Duke NYU Rochester Emory WashU CALIFORNIA Berkeley UCLA UCSD BIG STATE Michigan Ohio State Wisconsin Are there very very good schools that I've left off, places like Northwestern, UNC, Binghamton, Houston, Rice, Stony Brook, Irvine, Indiana, Georgetown, Iowa, A+M, FSU, etc.? Absolutely. These schools sometimes do place students in good jobs. But it's rare, and you should understand this. I don't think that you should choose such lower ranked schools over any of unambiguous top 25s above. And I'm sure that you should not pay to go to graduate school in these other departments. I hope this helps." Also, keep in mind that he posted it back in 2008, but the general idea is still probably valid...

Hello guys! Could you look at this Argument Essay for the GRE? I am not sure whether I fulfilled the requirements of the prompt. Any feedback is welcome! Workers in the small town of Leeville take fewer sick days than workers in the large city of Masonton, 50 miles away. Moreover, relative to population size, the diagnosis of stress-related illness is proportionally much lower in Leeville than in Masonton. According to the Leeville Chamber of Commerce, these facts can be attributed to the health benefits of the relatively relaxed pace of life in Leeville. Write a response in which you discuss what specific evidence is needed to evaluate the argument and explain how the evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument. The argument contains a number of assumptions that require attention before it can be accepted. Specific evidence for the facts provided is required in order to establish the validity of the conclusion. First of all, one of the points used to assert that the health situation in Leeville is indeed better than in Masonton is based on the comparison of sick days taken by workers in the two locations. In order to take this as a reliable metric, one must first be sure that the health of the workers in Leeville and Masonton are both representative of the health of the general population of these two towns. Should this be so, then the evidence is strong to suggest that Leeville has a better health situation than that of Masonton. If there is no way to conclude that the workers’ health represents that of the whole population in either of the locations, then this metric cannot be used to support the argument. In addition, even if the workers’ health situation is a reflection of the population at large, one must also ascertain that workers in two towns take sick leaves when they indeed feel sick – not more, not less. If, for example, workers are not paid for sick leave, they might have an incentive to not ask for a sick day because this might diminish their income. This would mean that the number of days taken for sick leave does not correspond to the workers’ actual health condition, thereby undermining the argument. At the same time, one must be given evidence that everyone who is sick due to stress-related causes can be diagnosed. Since Leeville is a small town, it is possible that there are no nearby clinics in the area that could reliably diagnose its residents with stress-related illness. Or the opposite: residents of the large city of Masonton may have too few doctors for its large population, which would result in the same situation of diagnoses being extended not totaling the actual number of people who suffer from corresponding illnesses. Since diagnoses in Leeville and Masonton are compared only in relation to stress-related illness, it is also crucial to asses whether there are other major causes that might be responsible for health issues in the two towns. If there are no other major causes, or if it can be reliably claimed that stress-related illness is the major cause of health issues in both localities, then this evidence will strengthen the argument. When the necessary evidence is provided and one can conclude that indeed the health situation in Leeville is considerably better than in Masonton, then one should examine whether it is indeed true that the relaxed pace of life is Leeville is responsible for this discrepancy. One should, for example, examine whether a life in the smaller town is more relaxed than in Masonton. In addition, one would also need to examine whether there are any other possible causes for the differences. For example, the location of the town is also important: is Leeville a more suburban area surrounded by greenery or is it located near a big factory with unhealthy production? Since it is mentioned that there are workers living in Leeville, it might be logical to examine the type of production that happens in Leeville. Before such evidence is provided, the argument cannot be accepted. Indeed, there are a number of specific facts that should be made available if the whole argument is to be believed.

Thank you all for sharing! I appreciate this information very much. PoliticalOrder, thank you for showing the difference between qualitative course structure and qualitative faculty. I was looking mostly at faculty, when researching programs and assumed that more qualitative faculty must mean more qualitative courses. Also, to your post and others above, I wasn't implying that I do not intend on taking any quant courses at all. I believe both qual and quant have something to offer. I was just concerned that because I am inclined to using a mostly qualitative methodology, this might compromise my potential success in the field. And looking at your replies, it seems highly likely (publishing, reputation, etc.). PoliticalOrder, I understand what you mean by my name being alarming. And, in fact, I do not have hopes of becoming the next Skocpol or even attempting to do the same work for obvious reasons that the programs in polisci right now are very quantitative. My concerns about methodology and approaches comes just from my epistemological beliefs (and maybe intuition) and not from a fear of quantitative methods. In fact, I finished my undegraduate degree in Mathematics and was among the highest ranked students (among the classes that I took were Calc III, Advanced Linear Algebra and Real Analysis). So I have no problems of doing quant for fear of "numbers". I am seeking advice on how to find a program where I will feel comfortable given my way of thinking about the world. As you mentioned in your last comments, there are subfields which are less quantitaive, including social movements/contentious politics. Incidentally, this is what I am interested in: contentious politics, revolutions and how they relate to different types of inequalities. Comparative politics is a broader umbrella under which I would like to work. In this case, what would be your advice to me for searching appropriate schools? I come from a third world country, so cannot afford to pay for my own education or gamble with something that can prove potentially a life-defining choice. I absolutely have to get into a good school to be able to find a good job and look after my family. Nonetheless, I would want to be at least to some extent happy with what I do. Do you think this is absolutely a clash of goals? Thank you!