guest56436

For the record, I never drew this distinction so I'm not sure why you distorted my comment like that.

This is masterful trolling.

Well, it is presumably supposed to be. But it's track record of predicting who will last and who won't is not very good. Of course, I don't think anyone should expect it to be perfect. It seems the admissions process is fairly reliable for determining especially strength of applicant/student and potential. You can see that every cycle in these threads. There are a handful of applicants every year that do extremely well across the board. Then there are a handful that get rejected from most or all places. It also does an adequate job of sorting students into the tier of programs that they should probably belong to (not perfect by any means though). But it doesn't seem like a very good indicator for predicting attrition. Attrition rates for most programs - even top ones - are somewhere around 50%. That's extremely high. Now, I don't think attrition rates should be 0% or else your program isn't rigorous enough (and we certainly wouldn't want the potential candidates pool for academic jobs to double which would be a disaster). But I also see an admissions process that looks for the best students rather than potentially the most promising or committed ones. Large emphases on pedigree, GPA, GRE, ect. that really doesn't indicate a whole lot. I did a masters in a program affiliated to a top 25 program and watched attrition closely. Out of a cohort of around 20, 2 or 3 people didn't make it past the first year and a half (one even dropped out after the first semester). Another 2 probably won't even make it to comps. Then a bunch will take the masters and leave. It's crazy how unprepared and unfamiliar these students were with what grad school entails. This is typical across many programs. That being said, I am sure the admissions process is difficult to do. Lots of applicants and lots of noise in the process. But I do think there are a few things these programs could do: 1) It's interesting that there is a real lack of an interview process throughout the discipline. Most sciences programs employ them extensively. Even other humanities/social sciences like sociology and history use them quite a bit as well. One way of weeding out those great students that don't really know what they doing/committed is through interviewing them. 2) Smaller cohorts. I really see no reason why some departments have these massive cohorts. Yeah, they need TAs of course, but there are ways of addressing this. The academic market is saturated as it is...and having smaller cohorts that support their students better would make attrition less likely. 3) Political science as a discipline could make masters programs more prevalent and/or used as breeding grounds for developing good candidates for top programs. Other disciplines and countries do this, not sure why political science doesn't. A student who has been through a rigorous masters program is much less likely to not know what they are getting themselves into.

Yeah and it's frustrating for people that have been preparing for this for like 4 years and have taken a number of grad courses in a reputable program to have these flimsy students take spots.

Standard package at Cornell: 5 years stipend 25,780 4 years summer stipend 5,432 First year is fellowship; TA (15 hours a week) years 2, 3, 4; and 5th is fellowship.

Chicago is most definitely done. They are one of those programs that doesn't send rejections for a long time...although IIRC there were a couple of doctoral admits in previous years with the rejection waves so who knows.

So you would rather trust prospective grad students opinions about something they haven't even experienced before rather than systematic surveys distributed to professors throughout the field? Well all know there are flaws with ranking systems but nonetheless they have been shown to correlate fairly well with placement.

Highly doubt Harvard will come this week.

I doubt programs will give you much of an answer. One thing you could do potentially is ask one of your letter writers to look over everything.

Just would have expected more movement by now.

Yale sure is acting weird.

No, the former is IR.

I wish more programs sent out rejections before admits.

Yeah, Harvard would be the last stand. And at this point - not a chance in hell I'm getting accepted so it would be pretty much over.

So I had mostly calmed down this cycle. But I haven't been this anxious since Berkeley/Princeton day. Desperation is probably setting in.

Seems eerily quiet for a Yale day in here.

Because Columbia is generally a better and more diverse program.

The nice thing about Yale is they send mostly everything in one or two days...so we should know fairly soon.

Canada esp. has a lot of Americanists and undergrads that get interested in the field.

You know what would be real effective trolling? If someone made a bunch of accounts and started claiming admits in the thread.

I have this weird fetish for prompt rejection emails. MIT is good in my books.

There's plenty of internationals that end up in the American subfield.

The trolling is sloppy this time...no stats and all international admits.

Relax. It's not even close to time for Harvard yet.

I would assume so since they already sent out waitlists.