GopherGrad

Kal- One school that seemed like a decent fit for me has a Jan. 15 deadline. One other school to which I applied had a Dec. 31 deadline. If my writer gets the letter in immediately, I doubt my applications for either of those schools will be prejudiced. I am working under the assumption, though, that he won't ever complete the letter. I would be delighted to get into either program. As I have long represented to this board, however, I applied to quite a few schools because I think my total profile will seem risky and I thought only wide exposure of a complete application that really detailed my strengths would give me a fighting chance at admission. Getting cut from 13 applications to 2 would still be distressing. oasis- A great price is still a waste if it's not a product you can use. Paying that much for a signal is fine, but someone else has effectively cut the power. I understand that learning is never without value. If it's just down to a quest for knowledge, though, I'm confident that I could have taught myself freshmen level macro from the book for a fraction of the cost. (In fact, considering I took the course through the university's distance learning program, that's essentially what I did.) In any event, time is finite and I could have chosen any number of subjects more useful to my current career or more fun as distraction from it. The fact of the matter is that this missing letter undermines a significant amount of investment I put into this process, both mental and financial. No amount of bizarre nitpicking is going to change that. This is a rant on an anonymous chat board, fer chrissake, not an APSA article.

I took 12 credits worth of courses at part-time student prices solely for the purpose of establishing to adcomms that I understood methodology and economics. That accounts for about $5000. I did apply to quite a few schools, as well, and incurred probably $1400 in direct expenses.

I sent the original writer a terse letter and have forwarded the "your file is incomplete" emails to him as they arrived. I presume that "extremely irresponsible" is dead-on. He is a good professor, but I think tends to prioritize his research over his students. At the time I took his course, he had little time for most students but believed, apparently, that I was destined to teach. Out of sight, out of mind. I have few relationships with other faculty that would lead to strong letters. I have contacted a professor who admired my work in his class, but with whom I had no personal relationship. I can't expect him (or anyone else) to drop everything for my emergency, but you never know. He struck me as caring about his students and diligent in general. The letters are important to my file. I have applied to programs with average GPAs well above mine and I have few completed credits in courses with political science titles. Some of my less important indicators (GRE, a T20 law degree) would combine with strong letters and a top-notch writing sample to indicate that my performance in my theatre BFA 12 years ago has little to say about my abilities today. But if the record is incomplete, what else can they judge? Anyway, your optimism is heartening. Reading your contribution to this site, I know that you are knowledgeable and realistic. Between your advice and the other posts, I have sloughed off (most of) the helpless feeling and am trying to problem solve. My application process has been so duct-taped and shoestring that it almost seems like I should get in somewhere. Maybe I've just watched Rudy too many times.

I did take it four years ago. I'm sure that with enough prep, I could get back to my old score. I didn't study math in college, so preparing for that portion of it was tough. I hope you're right about deadlines; the letter from that one department (U Chicago) really rocked my sense that even six weeks late was not too bad. Still, if schools aren't interested in reviewing before the semester starts, why do some set deadlines in very early December? Oh, well. I wrote one of my old law profs that taught a famously hard course I got an A in. He won't remember me, so I just asked for a pro forma letter detailing how challenging the course and program were and concluding that getting an A requires some grit and half a brain. He is a very well respected legal scholar, so hopefully the name alone carries a little weight. You know, if he agrees.

BR, You're right that I should try for someone else. You're also very right about the costs being a small long-run investment. Edit: and about crying.

If he were to get the letter in on Jan. 10th, I think there are still a couple schools that would review my full application. I would say half of my schools had deadlines of Dec 10 or earlier, including the department claiming that review has started. It's based on that department's representation that I figure 75% of my applications will be a lost cause by Jan. 10. As for next year, I think I'll need to take some time to decide. I will have to re-take the GRE, risking my awesome score. I have been out of school for awhile, so I would need to find a new recommender. I didn't really spend the last five years keeping in touch with faculty. Also, I turn 30 next month and I'm starting to think that at some point I need to stop dreaming. Maybe it's the disappointment talking, but I have a sense that in both academic and practical terms, this year was my best shot.

Well, my third LoR still isn't in at schools with a December 1st deadline. I recently received a message from another department (Dec. 10 deadline) letting me know that the review has started and without the letter my application is at a "competitive disadvantage". Given my low-ish stats, that's pretty much a death knell. I have emailed the professor a half dozen times in the last week, forwarding "Application Incomplete" messages and the like, but have received no response since his promise three weeks ago to have all letters submitted by Christmas Eve Day. I finally called his office this morning only to hear that the his department (at a European uni) is closed through January 10. I can only assume from the emails so far that most adcomms will meet before then. So glad that I took all those night classes in polisci and econ, spent all that time researching schools, filled out all those applications, wrote all those essays and paid all that tuition and all those application fees in order to have the process essentially scuppered for the lack of one letter. I cringe to think of the vacation I could have taken with that money. I cringe deeper to think where I would be if I'd spent all that time finding a job. Or learning Chinese. Or the piano. Or watching Who's the Boss? repeats.

I see no problem with drunken revelry and fully endorse watching cats play piano after taking in a semi-responsible amount of tequila.

Jim, Just in case, please remember that my missive about work was not meant to malign your ability to analyze your options; it's a human weakness. Costs are dependent upon tuition and living expenses. Tuition you can calculate program to program, but it will be 20K+/year. It is fairly hard to live on less than 15K, and that's if you resign yourself to utter poverty. So $70K minimum. Unless you work, in which case you are distracted from academics. Is an MA worth the money? That's tough calculus. If I could wipe my debt slate clean and ask: would I pay $70K to guarantee a T10 over a T40 I think I'd say yes. But will your MA have that effect? Crap shoot. My bottom line advice: apply for a few Ph.D. programs that really interest you. Investigate placement; I think you will find that T10 is not really necessary to meet your career goals I looked T30). Look for a balance of prestige and fit that is realistic. In the same cycle, apply for a couple MAs. Gauge the response from the doctorate programs and make a judgment call about MAs. MA deadlines are normally later, so you will have time to solicit reactions. If you are close to dream programs "but for" some experience, take the MA. IF not, either seek the qualifications that make you competitive or reconsider law school.

Aaaand, now Friday has come and gone and STILL no letters in. Seriously, my first deadline was FOUR WEEKS ago and I've been dancing with this guy about this for the last two weeks.

I'll leave that to be answered by someone that knows quant.

Jim, The notion of a master's is somewhat at odds with your goal of staying out of debt. Considering your articulated purpose of pursuing a master's (LoRs; publication), you will need to attend a two year institution which will probably not fund you. Bills will rack up to nearly law school proportions and scholarships for MAs are even less abundant than for JDs. Nevertheless, two MA programs that show up on my radar are Marquette and MIT. With respect to the issue of the "toughness of the market"; some words of grizzled wisdom I might expect Jud to agree with: I graduated into one of the best legal markets of all time from a law school with a great national reputation and tons of my classmates became quickly disillusioned with practice. They complained often and loudly about not being able to find work that matched their pre-law expectations. "Tough market" was not the nomenclature of the day, but the gist of the rhetoric was the same: "I came to law school to get job X and now can't find it; WTF happened?". I thought it might be the consequence of attending a T20 instead of a T5, but T5ers have the same issues. Then I thought that might be a legal thing, but doctor friends had the same complaints. I've been reading this board and others like it for years and whether it's Ph.D. students or IR MAs out in the job market the message is the same. This has led me to a startling and revelatory conclusion: Work sucks. Most combinations of jobs and people are not fully satisfactory, and people (pretty much all people) have a hard time developing a realistic sense of what working job X will be like until they are there. The market is certainly tough now and I'm not suggesting anyone totally ignore evidence and opinions about relative toughness. But part of the dynamic here is the disjunct between our ambitions and the reality of working life. You can't completely research or mitigate away the sizable risk that a given job will leave you feeling unsatisfied.

You are certainly not "doomed". I'm not even sure it matters that much if your other math classes can establish your quant ability. As a math major at an Ivy, your quant qualifications will far outstrip most of your peers. Adcomms will probably be broadly aware that the courses were harder based upon their names/listing numbers. Clearly, your application would have been stronger with As in those courses, but it's hard to tell you anything else. Keep getting good grades, demonstrating your polisci interest. If you can't change it now, don't worry about it. A grad level methods class might be nice, but make sure you can dedicate the time to get it right. You will be competing against very smart grad students who will set the standard for A-level work, and there is no point compounding your worry by feeling as though you underperformed in that class as well.

What other job types are available to a Ph.D. in polisci? Edit: You also need to consider that few law schools offer any funding to students whatsoever, so the overall financial exposure of attending law school might be riskier. Working as a barista with a Ph.D. might be humiliating, but it ain't like working as a barista with a J.D. and 120K in debt to service.

I tend to agree with Tufnel, which sucks for people that attend schools that purposefully fight inflation. Yale law school has, I think, done away with grades entirely, whereas my alma mater introduced a new policy that grades in any given class need to average out at 2.8.

Plenty of people do that, but give some thought to putting a year or two in working.

How did you find out about those schools? I've applied at three of them and still have one recommender that has not submitted his letter (he promises Friday and the latest). It terms of killing time, it can be tough if you don't have a job. A new hobby isn't a bad idea. One thing that can easily kill a couple months is to pick your favorite foods you eat at restuarants and perfect your own recipe. Instruments, video games, the gym and road trips are other suggestions. Or, you know, you can pluck your eyebrow hairs one by one in the dark while chanting: "they accept me (ow!) they accept me not (ow!) they accept me..."

Well, given the cost/benefit of applications (a couple months and a thousand bucks against the chance of admission) I'd say you may as well go for it. I can see your worry about the grades. In general, the MA GPAs we see around here are really high. I would do everything possible to raise the GPA in the future. If you are really confident in your class performance, I would consider speaking to the each professor about your grade and see about raising it.

I was vaguely familiar with the begging part of funding. I just hoped that, in total, that funding would be worth more than airfare. I've applied comparative; I'm interested in how criminal organizations compete for authority with states.

Discovery is the worst. It's the perfect example of how attempting to rigidly define a very common sense understanding of fairness can lead to lead to perverse results. The only thing that gains is the balance sheet of the law firms drafting interrogatories. I'm hoping the 90% number is only true for the first two years. The resumes of most 5th year candidates bristle with conference papers and think-tank involvement. I've got to believe that some of that comes with funding or salary. Might not be a bad question for the PSJR board, actually.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure what a person can do about their personal statement, either. I mean, there's obvious crap, and writing a couple drafts will clear that out and help you remain concise. But once I had a statement I was fairly happy with, I shopped it around for advice and absolutely everything I heard clashed.

Well, what ultimately drove me from law was monotony and a lack of a sense of purpose. After a while, most cases start to appear the same and the tension between making billables and steering my clients toward swift resolution got to be too much. I felt like a smart high schooler could have done half my job, and I was in the courtroom from day one. I can't imagine how an associate in a tall building firm would feel. The proximate cause was ethics and the economy. I practiced at a boutique firm that tended to oversell clients on their recovery, play fast and loose with the rules of discovery and eschewed measures that would prevent or settle conflicts. I was looking hard for jobs when the end of the year came and I did not receive a W-2. The partner told me point blank that the firm has withheld money from my check and kept those funds for itself. When I was asked to sign a contract ratifying the decision and provided for the eventual payback of the taxes, I left into the worst legal market in recent history. Since then I started my own company managing non-English language document production and examination, which has helped me pay the loans down a fair amount, but in the slow times I'm still bouncing around contract jobs, sharing a broom closet with 30+ lawyers doing doc review. Not what I see for myself in the long run. I would probably have left legal practice eventually without all the drama and found myself more or less where I am, but five years later. Depending upon how you look at it, I might be lucky for the jump start. I went to a law school that tended toward academic rather than practical training (read: T1) and loved it. I did a lot of independent research on corporate governance and democratization. I've also worked for the State Department and loved that. I'm hoping that a research career would give me something of a combination of those two things. My ideal day involves reading and kicking around ideas (I loved writing heady appellate briefs with policy arguments), and luckily my fascination is with a comparative polisci topic, because I have really enjoyed living and working overseas. In general, I'd say that attrition from legal practice to academia is driven by similar factors. I think practicing law can be uniquely jarring in the sense that all that education and all that honing of tiger-like kill instincts is really only unleashed a few times a year. The rest can be kind of mundane. It's like the hardest boring job in the world. That's aggravated by the economy. If you want to re-invent yourself and get more qualified because you can't find a job, there aren't very many rungs left to climb.

I'd believe that some schools will review applications for the first time prior to the holidays, but I doubt any will issue decisions earlier than February in my field. The earliest deadline was only two weeks ago and they average five or six hundred applications.

I take a little bit of comfort knowing that so many people are having this problem. My guy hasn't even checked in on any of my applications. I emailed this afternoon and was planning to call tomorrow morning, but reading this maybe I'll back off a day or two.

Oh, yeah. I wrote a couple paragraphs about how legal methods are unique analytic tools and about how surviving law school and having a career have matured my temperament, etc. I think those things are valid. It's weird because the existence of a diversity statement seems to imply that diversity is good for it's own sake, but then you're left defending what good your diversity is. For the most part, my heart sinks when I see one of those essays because I'm just another white guy from the 'burbs. But in this case I felt kind of bad for everyone. It's hard to imagine trying to articulate how being a racial minority would impact the learning of a class of comparative politics nerds. I did finish with the line about Matlock.