guest56436

Don't go to one where the MA students take different classes than the Ph.D. students. Honestly, some of the best options are different fields. Economics MA or Statistics for the methods. Area studies at a top school if you do comparative, because there is funding for these types of programs.

Well what is the point of these plans? What do you want to do? If you want to do a Ph.D. I am not sure any of these options are going to improve your chances significantly. Also, I don't necessarily think going straight into a MPP type program is going to help you professionally. All these options seem to be potentially extremely costly with little reward.

What are you waiting for?

Yeah, but think of it this way: why would anyone hire you when there are plenty of people with actual computer science skills and background?

Always had been interested in a certain region then I started spending time traveling and living there and it kind of just moulded into my substantive interests while I was an undergrad.

This thread is highly amusing.

Well, I mean...depends what you qualify as 'reasonable.' Because there are ways to significantly reduce your estimates: Food: $60 per day is pretty excessive. Eating two meals at low-end or mid priced restaurants should only run you about $30 a day. Even then, there are definitely ways to cut this down (buy some things from the grocery store to have a continental breakfast for $5 for example). There's always ways to score free food at conferences as well. Lodging: In any major city, you should be able to airbnb for under $50 a night at a reasonable distance from the conference. Ground transportation: virtually every major airport has public transportation options, which shouldn't run you more than $5-10 both ways. Those things are going to cut your costs down dramatically. For example, I was able to do 5 nights in New York City at a conference last spring for $600. I only received $400 in funding, but $200 isn't much to offset personally.

There's another problem though: as you get down the rankings, the difference between programs gets compressed. For example, you might have a .2 difference between 10-20 spots. What this means is that if - say - three or four of the respondents gave a certain low-ranking program a significantly different grade than it has gotten in the past then it could really change their place in the standings. The rankings are averaged with the previous editions - and while this reduces excessive variation for most of the rankings, it doesn't have the same effect for the bottom 50s. That being said you are right - big jumps usually signify something dramatic is happening. Or, they could have lost/gained someone prominent within a small faculty. I think the NRC rankings are the longest running - but they are done really infrequently. I think these are the 1995 ones (which as you notice, has lots of interesting change from today): https://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area39.html

That's because some of my suggestions were longer term than the past rankings. For example, Chicago used to be a powerhouse top 5-10 program. It then bled out a huge amount of senior faculty in the late 90s and 00s and dropped pretty hard in the rankings. Wisconsin has been gutted financially and only seems to place well for comparative these days - no one considers it a top program anymore despite its lack of falling in the rankings. MIT was never a traditional political science strength but it has gradually worked its way into the top 10 over the years.

Is it international? $1500 seems high even if you had to go to Europe. I can guarantee there is a way to bring those costs down. Also, department is not the only source of conference funding. As TakeruK pointed out, graduate student organization or graduate school provide some. Also, look at various interdisciplinary research centers at your university, they often provide some.

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/polisci/news/department-hires-7-new-professors (Plus some other good hires in recent years). And they are placing well, especially in IR. Most of the jumpers in the rankings this year had made a bunch of hires (especially senior lines). The ranking methodology favors perceptions of faculties and prestige over actual graduate training.

It was 28th or something like that.

Duke, WUSTL, MIT, UC Davis, UPenn, NYU, Emory, Vanderbilt, AU, USC.

Notre Dame, UCLA, George Mason, Wisconsin, Chicago, Northwestern.

How exactly did you frame your experience in your SOP and/or CV? What was your writing sample? Some people make a crucial mistake when applying to doctoral programs in academic fields: these are academic programs and adcomms only really care about your academic potential and experience. Someone who has 5+ years of policy experience and government positions is not necessarily a better candidate than a straight-from-undergrad student who has worked for three months as a RA. Some people choose to blend in how their work experience impacted their perspective on politics or something briefly along those lines...however, every single thing in your profile should be pointing towards your academic experience and potential because at the end of the day that's all that matters for a Ph.D. in political science.

There are not many people who apply to public policy programs on this subforum.

These rankings shouldn't really determine anything besides the classic 'top 5, top 10, top 20' groupings that are virtually the same as before. I am finding them a bit weird to be honest. It seems many of the 'jumpers' have had pretty poor placement records in the last few years. Places like Duke, UC Davis, UT Austin, UNC have gone up when it doesn't really seem like they have done much to deserve the bump... Of course, these rankings suffer from low response rates, a select few individuals doing the surveys, and a lack of information from those filling out the surveys. Reputation is sticky and it seems that departments making a number of hires - especially of senior faculty - are able to move up in the rankings. It's probable that survey respondents are able to see changes in faculty at a finer rate than changes or trends in placement. I still remain skeptical about how good many of these state schools are in comparison to smaller programs. For the life of me, cannot figure out why UNC is higher ranked than NYU or Chicago for example.

U of T's MA program is essentially take a few classes, pay some money, and get out.

FYI, there are are very few current grad students that frequent this site, much less that are at the job market stage. And also...I agree with the other poster, you really shouldn't be seriously considering Vanderbilt with the other options. You just need to figure out which of UCSD or MIT is a better fit and how they have placed students in your subfield. Another nice thing about the location of MIT is that you have access to a lot of other professors and academics in the Boston area and can take courses at Harvard. Also keep in mind that MIT is more of a boutique program - small faculty and small cohorts - than UCSD (or UCLA). This comes with its positives and negatives but you need to consider which environment would be a better fit for you.

I think it was pretty obvious what I was disputing considering what I quoted. The following statements in particular: You are saying that PSU has better quantitative training everywhere including Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Columbia, NYU, Michigan, Yale, Princeton, and Chicago? No, sorry, it does not. Some of those places actually train and place methodologists every cycle. PSU has good methods, particularly for a top 30ish department...but let's not post misinformation here. It doesn't even compete with the high end of programs in the US.

I'm sorry, but this is a crock of shit. Completely false.

Chicago is pretty obnoxious to be honest.

This is where you have to be careful about being diligent about 'placement' lists. The vast majority of people on McGill's list are 'current' positions. I counted 3 that actually got placed as TT positions in the US since 1995 (over 20 years!) either as ABD or post- postdoc. That would qualify as extremely rare. Secondly, some of the things are misleading...no one got placed at the University of Wisconsin - it's actually the University of Wisconsin - Whitewater (huge difference). A lot of the 'American' schools are just foreign wings located in other countries. A large number of the 'placements' spent 10-15 years working various positions before finally getting a TT/adjunct position at a US school. Don't take these lists as gospel.

Canadian universities rarely - if ever - place in the US markets in political science.