guest56436

Well, I haven't even heard of half of these universities (there's a couple of good placements, though). They have 15 faculty members. It's a tiny program. They don't have a methods sequence from the looks of their course catalog. Not that surprising really? Eva Bellin's work is pretty cool though...

There's a great deal of variation. For example, NYU has no teaching requirements and students get paid extra on top of their funding to TA. Most private (and some public) programs have some combination of X years fellowship and X years TA responsibilities, but they vary in those combinations (some programs you may not have to TA at all, some programs only one year, some a couple of years, others multiple or all). Usually, when you have X amount of years of TA service, you don't get paid any differently than the fellowship years, but again, every program is different. RA work has no real logic to it. It can be supplemental, can be funded through the professor's grant, or could replace TA responsibilities.

Simply put, it's enough, but not especially comfortable. The bigger issue with public stipends - but this doesn't necessarily apply to all public programs - is that not only are the stipends low, but they are tied to service. Many public programs require you to TA every semester. This is a major drag on your ability to compete research productivity wise with people who hold internal fellowships for multiple years at private universities.

They are always later in February or even early March.

^ Seek professional help. That goes for anyone that is expressing significant depression symptoms, and definitely suicidal thoughts. Your mental health is way more important than god damn grad school applications. And that goes for people that have received acceptances as well, trust me, get your mental health in order because grad school will destroy you if you are not of a sound mind.

There is a strong chance, yes. I mean it obviously depends how many, and how quickly, people accept their offers. But most waitlisters don't get informed of acceptance/rejection until a couple of days before April 15th.

Fair enough. But what you 'need' and outcomes are different things of course.

Here's my opinion: Sure, some people will argue that you should have language skills, programming skills (probably not all that important unless you are applying at a methods major), stats, ect. Okay, maybe these are important, maybe they are not (depends on your personal situation). I'm also not sure why you can't pick those up along the way. It takes a couple of days to learn functional latex for example; more to learn R, but it's not particularly challenging if you put in the effort either (but you'll have plenty of problem sets and term papers to practice it with anyways). There are also risks. You could spend a whole summer learning elementary Chinese and then decide you'd rather study SE Asian politics. You could also spend all year trying to learn calculus independently and figure out by the time you get to math camp that you've basically learned nothing. Hopefully the program you go to has a good quant training (hint: you shouldn't go to one that doesn't - unless you're a theorist). You want to know, in my opinion, the bar none number one skill you should hone before and during grad school? Learn how to write academic papers. You get jobs based on publications. All your major requirements (prospectus, dissertation) are just versions of academic papers. Yet, no one teaches you how to write them. And trust me, it's a god damn process. I spent the better part of two years in my masters trying to write my first publishable political science paper and stumbling like a drunken fool through it (I eventually got there though, with a lot of hard work and guidance from my adviser). So how do you learn how to write an academic paper? Well..you write one. But of course, that's not that great of advice, so here's the actual advice: - Take the best political science paper/thesis/project/dataset/whatever you have ever done and turn it into a real paper. - Take a published paper close to your project that you pour through every word and how they frame, section, build the argument, how they support it. That means you look at how they wrote the intro and introduced the topic. You learn how they define their concepts and show the variation in the dependent variable that they are trying to explain. That means you learn how they drew from the literature - to both knock down and take pieces of it to build their own theory. Then you look at how they built their own theory. Then how they proved it - both methodologically and analytically. Then you breakdown how many words they spent on each section. Then you emulate and copy it. - Then revise it. - Then send it to your advisers. - Then revise it. - Then you'll probably need to fix how you coded your cases/quantification/your model/your process tracing or whatever. - Then revise it. - Send it to anyone who will read it. - Then revise it. You do this (and take it seriously) and you'll achieve four things: 1) You'll learn a lot in how to write an academic paper. 2) You'll have a working paper the first day you enter a program (very nice thing to have). 3) The first one is the hardest...and it gets easier each time. I can produce a new working paper in a fraction of the time I spent on my first one. 4) You will realize where your weaknesses lay. Was it especially challenging synthesizing the existing literature? What about building your own novel theory? What about your methods? Did it take you forever to collect and code your data? Does your writing just in general suck? Knowing your weaknesses, and accepting them, makes you a better grad student because you know what to improve and spend time on (when your time is ridiculously finite).

No. To get into Princeton - as well as the top 6 in general - requires a lot of things but it's fairly straight-forward: you need a rock solid application across virtually every facet. That means a great SOP with an interesting project; excellent letters (esp. from well-known scholars); (probably) a good undergrad pedigree; good stats (GRE + GPA); a stellar writing sample that shows some theoretical chops and empirical skills; some research experience (RA + thesis); and some quant skills. It's not rocket science. You can be weaker in one of those, but you can't be weak in multiple. The applicant pool is too competitive. Whether you got a perfect GRE doesn't matter for jack shit unless the rest of your application lines up as well.

Strong across the board, just like all the other top 6 (except maybe Michigan). Great placement, strong faculty, good methods training. Funding is a little low in comparison to the rest of the top 6 (especially when taking into account living costs), but it still has very competitive packages and plenty of internal funding resources to tap into.

Hard to negotiate with public universities. Not much flexibility in stipend or TA allocation.

I'd say it's dropped out of the top 10. Comparative is weak there. They aren't losing some blood, they already have lost blood. Chicago used to have one of the best comparative facilities in the country. Now it's a shadow of its former self. That being said, it's still an excellent program. They have a great mix between qualitative, quantitative, and formal. I'd say their funding and placement are better than places like UCLA, UNC, and UCSD. Their placement is better than Duke. So yeah, it gets fuzzy in that 7-12 range, it doesn't really matter if it's 'top 10' or not.

Princeton always sends them out in waves altogether. Safe to say if you don't get one in the next hour or so, you didnt get accepted.

I am bit confused, is your plan to apply to only one Ph.D. program? If it is...that's a horrible idea.

Mondays were often quiet last cycle. Probably because final committee meetings don't take place over the weekend.

I would expect to see a lot of publics come out during this week - think Berkeley, UCLA, UCSD, UT. The California universities typically operate on the same schedule (sometimes even releasing results on the same day - like last year, where UCSD and UCLA were within hours of each other). I would be willing to bet you won't see the top privates until Feb. Princeton last year was a bit of an anomaly.

Remain hopeful. 2/10 doesn't necessarily set a trend (it could, but it might not too). You only need one good acceptance. Rejections suck; besides an early acceptance to a program I didn't really want to attend I got something like 8 rejections in a row. It's early. And this goes for everyone, it's not over until it's over. A few years back there was an applicant that got rejected over and over and over again. Then he got admitted to one program at the end of the cycle - and it was Harvard. Granted, this is highly unusual. But it speaks to the possible hope that everyone should have. And if it does go miserably, there is always next year. We are all capable of dusting each other off, getting up, and trying again (and coming back with an even better application).

I'm sorry to hear you didn't get into Wisconsin, as that was a good fit for you. What a lot of applicants don't realize is that these programs (especially top 20 and up) are so competitive, you really have to be strong across all facets of your application to get in. There can be weaknesses, but there certainly cannot be weaknesses across multiple application materials. Because every single cycle there are 20-30 applicants that essentially have rock solid applications in all categories. Then it comes down to a numbers game (some schools may only admit one Russian comparativist for example, and someone might be better than you and take that spot). We also have a tendency to think that weak GRE scores or GPA is the reason our application got sunk and reluctant to criticize more personal things, like our writing samples and SOPs. But people get in with average/weak GRE scores get into programs (even top ones) all the time; I know this is true because I got into 3 top 20 programs on the back of a pretty average quant score (something around 75th percentile). My personal anecdote. I had a good application but I had three weaknesses: my UGPA wasn't great, my GRE wasn't great, and my writing sample wasn't as good as it could have been. There were two other Latin Americanist applicants that did extremely well (think both of them got into combined every single top 10 place, and almost no rejections). By all accounts, both of them had nearly perfect applications. How was I supposed to compete with them when there were often 1-2 spaces MAX for LA comparativists? I couldn't. They took the spots. Was I perhaps in contention for one, or a couple, of those top 10 places? Sure, probably. But at the end of the day they have better applications than I did. We have to look at these things holistically, all facets of your application matter. Weaknesses can be overcome, but the margin of error is extremely small. We shouldn't be so quick to assume that our GRE or GPA sunk us, but also introspectively look at other components of our application (LORs, hard to do, but you can probably guess, SOP, writing samples, ect) that may also be weak compared to the top applicants.

GRE is important, but it only gets you into the door, it does not get you accepted anywhere. There's a huge contingent of applicants for every program that have excellent scores and another contingent that has decent or good ones with otherwise stellar applications.

Latin Americanist?

For the record, GPA is probably the weakest indicator of acceptance there is. There's a lot of variation.

Don't play coy, you know exactly what you and all the others are doing: you are deliberately mischaracterizing my position in order to make my position sound more abhorrent than it is. I have repeatedly stated I prefer to date girls aged 18-26 yet you and others have continually made statements suggesting otherwise. I have dated girls in all age ranges. Yes, I dated a 19 year old when I was 29. That doesn't mean I 'like to date teenagers.' I use girl to signify young women all the time, just as many other people do. No different than calling a man a 'guy.' Poor argument. You do know that every individual's brain develops different right? Some people have full development at 20 and others at 30. We also have no idea what brain development stage someone is at unless they are tested. Suggesting that people throughout their twenties should only date people of the same age is ridiculous. I personally think the fact you are calling people well into their late teens, early twenties, and mid twenties children is fucking embarrassing personally. This type of mentality is why universities today are glorified daycares and extensions of childhood as opposed to serious teaching institutions. An 18 year old is an adult. Full stop. They are capable of being independent, making rational decisions, and achieving profound things. They are not children and should not be treated as such.

Firstly, for Christ sakes, can you people stop skewing the representation of my position by using the term 'teenagers' and making statements like 'prefer to date 18 year olds.' To answer the question...I highly doubt I'll have much in common with 18-26 year olds when I'm 50 or 60, so no, probably not. I also don't see why an attractive young woman would date such an old man anyways...they should have plenty of suitors of higher value.

How exactly is someone's power inherently magnified in a relationship with an age difference? You keep stating this position but have done nothing to back it up. The bold, was what I put in bold text, was your silly claim that because I chose to date younger women I am entering into relationships for the purpose of controlling my counterpart. And no, I wouldn't be racist, lol. So debating a topic on a discussion board with a woman is now mansplaining? Here we go with the victim complex again... Because we set a threshold (which, of course, is arbitrary) of what constitutes a reasonable age to which we believe that an individual is capable of making serious decisions like entering into romantic partnerships with people. It's not perfect by any means...but we as a society decided that 17 or 18 is a reasonable age of consent. This isn't that complicated. Incorrect. Averages across the world range from 2 years to 7. Furthermore, in the US roughly 32% of married couples are where a man is at least 4 years or older than the woman. Over 15% of those are of an age gap between 6 and 14 years. This is not as uncommon as you are claiming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_disparity_in_sexual_relationships Lastly, the bold is a complete mischaracterization. I never said I 'sought' to date ''teenagers.' I said I prefer to date women in the range of 18-26.

Wow. A little word of advice...buying into the myth that most men are predators or not to be trusted is not going to bring happiness to your life. Most neuroscientists believe that brain development doesn't conclude until roughly the mid-20s. Are you suggesting that people shouldn't date until their mid-20s? Because that would be a completely asinine position. This argument is problematic. While it may be true that this could occur, it is not inherent. But your argument becomes more problematic when you extend it. You are essentially arguing that anyone that is dependent on some type of individual or group of individuals is not capable of being in a relationship. You are aware that much of the world women do not leave home until they are actively courted by, or married to, a man. Your argument would suggest that every single one of these arrangements are problematic. Furthermore, what about someone who has a disability that otherwise prevents them from being independent, are they not capable of being in a relationship? Secondly, broadly speaking 'dependence' is not necessarily a situational trait - it's a personality/emotional trait. There is no inherent connection to a young adult being any more or less emotionally dependent on a potential partner than someone much older. I completely disagree. I also think it's highly problematic to portray young adults that way, for myriad of reasons.