polscimajor

I asked a similar question in this thread and got very useful answers. Hope this helps!

Thank you all for your comments!!! You guys just saved an introvert from blacking out in a potential advisor's office

Hi all, I decided to go on a couple school visits, just to take a look around the school and get a sense of the graduate atmosphere. I am also interested in meeting my prospective cohort and other grad students who are already enrolled in the program. The problem though, is about the one-on-one sessions with the faculty members. I have no idea what I'll be talking about for thirty minutes with each of them, I mean I can't ask them outright how much effort they are willing to put into graduate students, or if someone is going to receive tenure. So my question is, what kind of questions are appropriate to ask during visits (especially when meeting personally with faculty)? Any kind of help would be appreciated! Thank you!

Received a call from Stanford POI at around 5 PM (Pacific)!!!!!! I probably sounded really dumb over the phone; I'm still recovering from the shock lol I was staring into a lot of rejections before this, so everyone keep your hopes up! You never know when good news is going to come...

How do schools choose their shortlist? By shortlist do you typically mean the list chosen with GRE GPA or the list that has actually considered your SOPs and LORs?

Oh don't even talk about the diversity statements!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! cry cry

Oh wow thank you so much. My recommender was saying the same thing too! She said that there would be no problem with the late LORs, and I guess she's right but I was getting worried nonetheless. You saved me from biting off the rest of my nails =) Thanks!

Hi all, One of my recommenders hasn't submitted her LOR yet for a program that was due on the 1st of Dec. She says she'll do it by the end of this week (which is rapidly approaching), and I'm starting to get worried that the LOR might arrive too late after the adcom has started reviewing the applications. Anybody know how big of a problem this can be? If this seems serious I might try calling her tomorrow even though it's a Saturday....

Yes I agree with @resDQ Mention them!

Wow. Thank you so much! this is really helpful

Hey all, I am COMPLETELY at loss as to what I should write in my "diversity" statement. Have I had any unusual educational, social, cultural, economic barriers to my education? No, not really. Have I ever worked as an activitist for minority groups? Not really. Am I the only one lacking this experience? Or is there another way to write this statement? I don't know what I should be writing in that one page, and while I've seen many examples of SOPs in the Grad Cafe, I haven't seen diversity statement examples yet. Can anyone please help me out? Thanks in advance.

Oh my bad for not seeing it. Thanks!

Hi @Determinedandnervous, would it be possible for you to tell us your basic profile and which schools you got into? I'm sorry if I'm asking something too personal-- you can always say no =) Thanks.

Well the errors you mention don't seem to be that critical. Don't worry too much about it =) And I sincerely do envy you for being able to go back to your normal life!

Wow you submitted the applications already??? I'm also preparing for the applications in political science 2017 and still haven't finished writing the SOP/ filling out application details...

Thank you @bhr for your reply. Yes what you say is exactly what I was worried about. I am listing a couple professors just to be sure, but my primary choice tends to be the assistant professors. As you say, this may be a problem in graduate school and perhaps during the application process, but I don't know how to solve this problem. I mean, I can't just change around my research interests and the whole SOP just because the best fitting professors don't have tenure. Is the best solution just to list one or two more professors, or do you have any other suggestions? Thanks

Hi all, I was fitting my SOP to the schools I wanted to go to, and noticed that my research interests mostly overlapped with assistant professors who do not yet have tenure. Is this a potential problem? Thanks in advance.

Great! Thanks!!

Hi, thank you all for your replies. @fuzzylogician, yes I did do most of the work on the paper, and my professor has promised to serve as my LOR writer. I'm quite sure that she will attest to the fact that I was the main writer for the article, but I get your point. I guess a co-authored paper will receive many (unnecessary) doubtful looks from the committee-- it's probably a safer bet to submit the single authored one then, right? And @ultraultra wow, it's sad to hear that they don't pay much attention to your writing sample lol. Especially considering the amount of work I put into it! Ha. Thanks again for the candid advice.

Hi, I'm curious about which paper I should submit as a writing sample I currently have two candidates: one is a published article that was co-authored with a professor (I am the first author, but the journal is non-American, albeit pretty well-known in my country. I did hear though that American schools tend to discriminate against non-American journals...), and the other one is a paper that I am currently writing, solo-authored. The first one is, needless to say, of slightly better quality. And the perk is that it's already a published one (although non-American) so it feels like I've had some real experience in research. However, what worries me is that the article is co-authored, so maybe the adcom could attribute the work to the professor instead of me (which would really suck). Should I then just submit the solo-authored working paper? What's the pros and cons? I would really appreciate some help here. Thanks..

I'm applying to political science. Yes, A LOT of other things would count, not to say that they would be more important, but I was just wondering how much leverage an external funding would give me.

Hmm okay, Thanks a lot for the answer. No, I'm not trying to get into the same school with a partner or anything of that sort, but just getting queasy as the application season closes in =)

Hey all, I'm planning to apply to top graduate schools this fall and am wondering how much an external scholarship funding would help me. I'm an international student and just received a five year full funding offer by my government; how much does that raise my odds of being accepted to top PhD programs? I mean, scholarships wouldn't hurt my chances, but I'm not sure if they help out enough so that I can go straight for some of my dream schools (the top ten) instead of rigorously writing applications to some twenty, thirty schools. Thanks.