guest56436

So it looks like today is a dud..not surprising, I feel like the mid and end of the week is usually when the action occurs.

It is ALWAYS worth it to wait to see all your options.

Haha, oops, looks like I stumbled into this forum by accident, not you. Or maybe it was moved?

Honestly, most of us aren't very in tune with professional programs and industry standards, this is a sub forum for academic programs.

They're not good enough to be ranked.

A pretty big factor...but not just necessarily how famous they are. It matters how well they are placing students, how supportive they are, and what current/past grad students speak of their advising. In my opinion, program usually trumps advisor...people usually get placed based on the training they received from their program and the brand name (and of course their record of pubs/research). When comparing similarily ranked programs, you take the advisor...if there is a huge gap, probably should take program. That being said, it is relatively rare that many super famous advisors are at low ranking programs. Also, you have to think about forming a whole committee, it's rarely just one person that should be swaying your opinion.

US news is the authoritative ranking of graduate programs in political science. Overall rankings of universities are meaningless when deciding on grad programs. You decide between acceptances by their ranking, who you want to work with the most, funding and scholarly support, and placement.

I don't think it makes you crazy...but a waste of time? Yes.

Like I said a couple of pages ago, I'm expecting Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, and now I just realized probably Duke as well by the end of the next week/early the week after. I'm sure there are others as well, but none that I applied to so I haven't been following them for past result timeframes.

No reason, but I am sure all subfields fluctuate (a bit) each cycle.

That would be the hope, yes. But of course, this place is not a representative sample of the applicant pool.

Just curious, how many of you applied for their first subfield as comparative politics? Doesn't seem like there are a lot that are actively posting...

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/06/northwestern-bans-professor-campus-and-faculty-members-split-whether-move-justified

I wouldn't be surprised if less people applied to NW this year considering the rumors of infighting and dysfunction. I know that's why I didn't apply there (and because it's too qualitative).

There's a lot of variation: - Some programs send out all acceptances on one day. Then send rejections out later. Some send rejections and acceptances all together. - Some are staggered, acceptances kind of roll in over the course of a couple days or a week (we just saw that with OSU and UT). - Some send out in waves by field or some other metric (a bunch one day, then another bunch a couple of days later) - Some you don't hear anything in way of a waitlist or rejection until a month later. - Some don't even notify rejections. - Then of course there is the variable of waitlists, which can be done in a variety of ways as well. Impossible to tell, which kind of makes it annoying really. Best thing obviously is just to look if you got an acceptance or not then move on...no news does not necessarily mean bad news, but good news is what really counts. If that makes sense.

So, late next week I am guessing we hear from Chicago, Berkeley, and Princeton. It's nice to know that some of the bigger programs are going to start dropping.

Yeah, one week is definitely 'soon.'

If I had to guess, Berkeley will be late next week. Almost always early Feb.

The committee met last night but it's usually staggered for notifying acceptances. Which means there will probably be more over the next few days.

If anyone wants to learn more about UT's program (both the good and the bad), PM me.

Guys/girls, I would really recommend not calling departments about results...easiest way to piss off administrators. Also, I think a better policy is just not to look at the results board at all...it's largely irrelevant at this stage. You either get an email or you don't.

No, it really has no relevance. Although it is another soft indicator that OSU results are coming soon.

Anyone starting to get pretty anxious? I was really good through the holidays and most of January [honestly didn't spent much time thinking about the applications at all] but now it feels like it's starting to get close to crunch time here and I'm pretty nervous about it.

I'm sure every school (and even every adcom) does things a little differently.

Yeah but that's the easy part. They'll be done in early to mid February just like every year.