polscimajor

Miracles happen. FINALLY got my Georgetown rejection. 

Oxford's rejections are out. 

Read their most recently published papers I'll never forget the awkwardness of sitting in Stathis Kalyvas' office after failing to recall the punch line of his most recent article. To be fair though this might be a Kalyvas specific problem and I never ended up working with him but with ego-driven profs it's definitely worth brushing up on their work before one-on-one meetings.

I'm not a super chatty person and I was also a little worried, but actually pretty much all my meetings went very well, in a nice atmosphere. The faculty may have a bunch of questions too, and set the tone of the talk. Feel free to ask questions, also about the students they have been advising. When it comes to some matters like tenure or advising, you may prefer to talk about that with current grad students, or DGS, if this is of concern to you. You can talk about what research you have been doing so far (likely not much at this point, but still). Ask professors about it too, you can't always tell by their publications what are they really working on these days. Ask general questions about the department, etc. Get to know them, get a sense of whether these are the kind of people you would enjoy working with in the future. And remember, people may come and go, but there is this more general things as a department atmosphere too, try to sense it, see if you fit in. And totally feel free to be honest about what other schools you are considering and what your concerns are, what are the questions marks with regard to that particular school. But don't waste people's time if you are not seriously considering that school.

Yeah, don't ask those questions. They will probably ask you about your interests, and you'll give the same spiel that you'll give 50 other times. They may ask what other schools you're considering and give you some opinion of those places (hopefully positive and constructive), bur anyway don't be surprised if that happens. You could ask them what they have been working on recently, or what they've been teaching (e.g. what seminar topics, what other classes). You can ask them how often they meet with students. You can ask what their philosophy is on helping students find research topics. You can ask if they publish with students or if students publish with other students. You can ask if/how often students go to conferences and what their take is on when that should happen, and how much funding there is for that. You might ask what they think about you being a visiting student elsewhere for a semester/year, if that's something you might be interested in. You might ask about what people do over the summer and what kind of opportunities there are on/off campus. You might just chat about the town or school, where you can get good coffee around town, how easy it is to commute to [large cite/airport/other nearby university, etc], you might ask about labs and resources, or libraries; or if you know they studied at a school you know anything about or come from a city you know, you might chat about that.. these conversations are usually very relaxed and friendly, you don't really have to prep too much. 

In the end I said something like -
Thank you so much for the offer, but I will not be able to accept. I'm still very interested in your work and look forward to reading your XYZ (usually an upcoming book or something) and hope that our paths cross. 
I kept it a bit vague, mostly because I thought it best to keep it short.  This is what I sent to POIs I had contacted while preparing applications or who had sent me emails after I'd been accepted saying they looked forward to working with me. Obviously the exact words were more polished
For the one school I got into that sent me a generic acceptance from the DGS, I sent the above email but without specific reference to the person's research.
Hope this helps!

Warmest of congratulations! 

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... 

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... 

Thank you so much for checking. Glad I missed all of this drama. 

Lol don't worry friends, you'll get all my rejection updates first, straight from the horses mouth! 

Dang, thank you for sharing. A really helpful reminder to go with the many others out there who have a similar message: "if you are coming into this with any naïveté, check it against reality"
I've read and spoke with many folks in this similar vein, and it definitely has shaped my expectations (and strategies) for this application and discernment process. Basically, the way I'm making sense of it all is that it's a big risk. So I'm (trying to) not putting myself in precarious financial or social situations if I do get an acceptance, and realizing that I may bust my ass for 5-7 years and come out basically where I started. Holding loosely any plans I have about where I think this will take me is helping, too. It also helps I already have a professional grad degree and a wife with a very stable career.
But all that said, @BigTenPoliSci, I don't think people can hear these cautions enough. It's a cold world out there, and most of us don't get where we planned to go. Think it through, y'all.

:\
I have not. Phone call with MIT was awkward enough. Someone else can do it. 

You should be completely fine. I'm a current PhD student and one of my recommenders didn't send them until the end of December. He was the DGS at my undergrad school and was very reassuring that most programs are very lenient on LORs coming in late since that's probably out of your control most of the time.
 
 Also I applied last cycle and I ended up choosing Berkeley so if anyone has any questions about the program or grad school in general I'm happy to help out! ☺️
 

Yes I agree with  @resDQ Mention them!

When I could submit one, I did. I grew up in an area that, even in a developed country, had visible inequality. As a white, native English speaker, my family lived in an incredibly diverse community to the point where were were far from the visible majority. My public school was poorly funded and as a girl, there were no after school sports programs organized. There simply wasn't any money for it (or interest on the part of teachers). At 13 I moved and the school district was the complete reverse, as was the demographic of people attending (strong white majority, all upper middle class/upper class) and it was pretty startling. I transitioned to a high school that then had a huge disparity in income across students - a lot of people were wealthy, and a lot were poorer, with very few in the middle. All of this impacted how I viewed social policy, as well as economic issues. This experience inspired me to pursue a university education - something I wouldn't have ever considered had I never moved when I was 13 (where I grew up, people rarely went to university, let alone reputable competitive programs). I didn't exactly have it rough myself (my parents were very fortunate that when money was tight, nothing bad happened and my Dad secured a very stable job) but I was very aware of what was going on around me, as well as my position as a girl throughout it all. I faced a lot of sexual harassment while working in high school so I also reflected on that, as well as my general desire to give back to communities and demographics like the one I grew up in. Gender is usually the only bit of 'diversity' I can contribute as a girl, but I focused on my socio-economic experience as a whole and surprisingly had a lot to say. I was also applying as an international student to US programs.
This experience, is of course, very personal. But if you reflect on how you grew up, and how that influenced you, you might have more to provide than you would expect (as I did). I think it was helpful when I could articulate it, because it provided my application with a bit more depth than would otherwise have been the case (none of my mentors knew anything about my background before university).

I think the best thing to do is to be honest in the CV that it is under review and email the DGS with an updated CV whether the news is positive or negative. Every single academic has experienced rejection. It will not hurt your file. It will show that you are trying and that is a part of the game. 

You list who you need to list based on your interests. And then you hope like hell that if you go to that school, those people get tenure.

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...
 

Yeah, the single-authored paper seems like a much safer bet. Your LOR writer will mention the other one in her letter, so if anyone wants to find and read it, they can go ahead and do that, too, but I would leave it up to them to look it up if they choose. 

You will see many people with external funding at top ranked universities---in my program, it's something like 1 out of 3 students will hold some sort of external award at some point in their grad career, and maybe around 20% enter with such an award. However, I think it would be naive to say that the awards made a big difference in their admission.
The reason, I think, is that winning a significant external award usually means you are already going to be a very desirable candidate for graduate programs. So I wouldn't say that winning these awards helped those candidates get into top programs, but rather, it's not a coincidence that someone who wins an external award would also be selected for graduate programs!
In addition, while saving the school a ton of money would be nice, at top programs, money is not the only limiting resource. My school is trying to fundraise a ton of money so that every single graduate student will be on an (internal) fellowship and will be "free" to each department. But this doesn't mean we are going to double our graduate student population. This is because the other limiting resource is time/energy of the faculty to supervise and train the graduate student. 
I don't know what the norm is in your field. But I think 20-30 schools is way too many to apply to (unless you are trying to do something like get into the same school with a partner or limiting yourself to certain areas only etc.).