guest56436

Yeah, not going to happen

Can I ask why people apply to programs that 'aren't great fits?'

Political science undergraduate majors are highly disconnected from grad school. I reckon that programs don't want to alienate potential majors by making it methodologically strenuous. Virtually any poli sci major can get through by only having to take one vague 'empirical methods' course. You may have to take a quantitative requirement to get your degree as a university-wide requirement but these are rarely very specific. The only ones who have any training are those who actively sought it out. That being said, I really don't think you need a lot to really prepare yourself for graduate studies in poli sci...differential and integral calculus, intro to stats, and maybe linear algebra + discrete math would be ample to have a good foundation going in.

Well, with those lower ranked programs there is a decent chance of getting off the waiting list

Berkeley is one of those programs that is pretty much clockwork every year they send out acceptances at the same time around the first week of February.

^ Not that I care about the results section at this point, but that's the official name of Stanford.

I wouldn't trust any of the results tbh...the chances of Berkeley sending out acceptances in Jan during a holiday are essentially zero. You're getting trolled.

Deadline has already passed.

More than I want to quantify specifically.

No they don't. Always in Feb.

Depends if the department states if it is required or not.

I'll just keep this short: While having an adviser that cares, provides feedback, and generally goes to bat for you is nice...graduate school is also a time to learn how to be independent. No one is going to hold your hand anymore, you need to figure a lot of stuff out on your own - put something together that shows hard work and polish - and ask for feedback and rinse and repeat. No one - even the best advisers - are going to provide the details or nuances of academic work at this stage.

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. I'm through the first book (it's two parts). It is seriously a mind fuck but it's pretty damn good.

Western Europe qualitative work? You are pretty much fighting perhaps the largest uphill battle in getting a TT job outside of political theory.

12 Ph.D.

Any professor worth their salt will stand up for their TAs and always delegate the first line of defense regarding grades to the TA. So yes, it can be frustrating...but as fuzzy pointed out, it's not always cut and dry they are trying to 'game the system.' Don't worry about it, doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Honestly, I think the best approach is to go to work. Although, this may be easier for those of us still currently in bachelor's/master's programs. Personally, I have a master's thesis to complete by the spring and I have a lot of work to do on that. Also applying to APSA for this upcoming deadline while working on my working paper that is stemming from my thesis work. In turn, for me...'waiting' is not really that stressful because, well, I am not actually waiting. I have too many things to do to sit there and wait. We also have to keep in mind that for most of us (there are a handful of programs that give results in late Jan. but not many), we probably aren't going to hear back anything until Feb. So there is no point in stressing about it. Sure, we will all be thinking about it, it's inevitable, but we can limit our stress by just accepting that there isn't much value in really focusing on it until results actually start coming in. And for the love of god, stop looking over your application materials; there is nothing to be gained there and if you worked hard enough on the front end you should be comfortable with them and be proud of what you did.

Calm down. 161 is a good quant score.

I am a bit confused. Are you asking whether professors can send LORs to multiple applications? Of course. My three letter writers each sent letters to 12 different applications. No one expects you to find a different letter writer for each application.

All 12 applications in, feels good.

Does anyone hate actually submitting the applications? I mean, I have been working on these for months now and every thing is up to my own personal standards...but the process of actually pressing submit is horrible.

I scored 162V, 153Q, 6.0AW the first time and recently 159V, 158Q, 6.0AW. Do you guys think I should just send both of the scores? The upside is that it's nice to show that I can hit the 90th percentile in verbal and it shows some growth in math skills. The downside is that it tells them that I did score only 50th percentile on math once (two years ago).