GopherGrad

Anyone else get the FLAS email from Columbia? I swear, the twiddling my thumbs and waiting by the phone is one thing. The sudden uptick in telemarketer calls and random non-admission related administrative emails are quite another.

Automated. Probably just a reminder. The timing really got my hopes up, though. To my understanding, work experience really only helps your application to the extent it lowers the perception of your personal attrition risk. Which points to the real reason your professors probably (and I certainly) advise waiting: it gives you perspective about your future, your career and your passion. Many people go to graduate and professional schools only to find that they don't like the work they were groomed to do. Often, a little work experience could have prevented this by providing some insight into the types of quality-of-life priotities that can and should help determine what career you want to pursue.

Hardly. Whippersnapper.

In other news, I just got an email from Duke asking me to set up my student account so I can check my status and, of course, no decision has been made.

Blanketing the top ten is a bad idea because it means you're applying to schools without much thought about how you fit into programs. You should choose schools to apply to based on how well they fit your research interest. Targeting schools based on how their placement performance matches your career expectations is not a bad idea, but I would caution against using the "top ten" as a metric for evaluating that for a couple of reasons. First, plenty of schools outside the top ten can reliably place you in respectable work teaching in small LACs or public universities that don't have big research budgets (for example). If this type of a job is preferable to you over your other likely options, you should apply to schools that will admit you and can supply that kind of work. Second, "the top ten" is hardly the limit for getting a research-oriented faculty position. There are schools (UW-Madison, Minnesota, Duke, UNC, UC-San Diego, and a dozen others) that have long records placing some portion of their students in tenure track postions at research universities or large LACs that encourage and support some research. For what it's worth, I say this as someone who could be accused of blanketing the top ten; I didn't apply anywhere outside the top twenty.

This is right. I know I've posted something similar before, but anyone who's had a job knows that dreams get crushed in the working world. The PSJR board loves to use the "snowflake" trope. Ironically, all that crying and whining about how hard it is to be a grad student is just them failing to recognize that disappointment is not unique to social science PhDs. Guess what? You're not going to make partner at Sidley Austin or chief surgical resident at Cedar Sinai or be Daniel Day-Lewis's talent agent or the CEO of Coca-Cola, either. There aren't very many jobs at the top of any field. The market is soft for everyone. The reality of being ambitious is that at some point you hit your ceiling. That's never easy and the worst of PSJR is one graceless way to react to it. For those of you that haven't worked or otherwise don't understand (from experience) what I'm talking about, remember this when you hit a wall: You can always drop out and manage a Starbuck's or become a lawyer if that's what you prefer to teaching at some forsaken LAC in western Kentucky. Seriously. Just know that no one is going to drop a ladder from the clouds for you there, either. The question, really, is whether, the consequence of reaching and falling short is worse than the consequence of not trying. It seems like it was news to some PSJR posters that not everyone gets a TT offer at Harvard. Hopefully that's not the case here.

That's an easy fix. Log in here once a day and someone will let you know. Depends on the school, and in some cases the candidate. More to your point, Berkeley, Princeton, Yale, Northwestern and Chicago are all dark so far as I know.

I'll keep that in mind for when he calls. Actually, I expect it to be Wienstein, anyway. I think I checked at some point and saw that Stanford send out results last year in second week of Feb. Not really holding my breath, I think it's more likely the neighbor kid will walk on the moon.

Well, good. Now in addition to checking my email 40 times a day and rejecting phone calls from my parents to keep the line free for James Fearon I can start checking all my application websites on a rotating basis.

In general, it's best to take the results board with a grain of salt unless a somewhat trustworthy poster claims the result here. Specific to Columbia, Max breaks it down well. It looks like the bulk of acceptances last year were late February and the reasons for this timing have not changed much.

"What is your dream school? Not like, where you want to go--I'm talking fantasy grad school. If you could combine the program of your choice, the professors of your choice, the city of your choice, the campus of your choice, etc., what would that school look like?" Funny. 1) If the south bay were cheaper I couldn't think of any way to make Stanford more perfect. Or transfer a handful of Stanford faculty to Berkeley. I can swing a side-by-side duplex with a backyard for the mutt in Hercules. 2) Combine Yale and Nothwestern's faculty on Columbia's campus, but substitute the intellectual community of Boston and the prices around Duke. "Several weeks just to match up the scores? I feel sorry for those of you who applied. It seems like Columbia in general isn't the best when it comes to administration and graduate applications." I'm generally disinclined to defend Columbia's shambolic process, but they generally admit on a timeline only a couple weeks longer than most schools (application deadline of Dec. 1; last year's admits were early March). Stanford explicitly says it will consider applications without official score reports, but requires them to make offers. I'd guess that some applicants flipped about the verbage used on Columbia's site when an app hasn't been matched with the score so they sent an email explaining it. It probably doesn't hold up the evaluation. Although I didn't get this email, so that makes me a little curious...

OOOF, Your scores are almost exactly mine and no one has ever suggested to me that they do anything but support my application at top programs.

Quigley, As one of the posters that made the distinction between what MA and PhD essays need to communicate, I should stress my agreement with those who argue that there is no archetype format that works for everyone. If you reworked your statement and sought criticism, and turned in an SoP that you and your advisors felt was strong, then it probably matched your application well. Because we all have different experiences, our Statements of Purpose all have different work to do in fleshing out who we are. The average statement for a PhD should be different than the average MA essays, but that doesn't offer binding guidance to individuals. "That said, as somebody who was rejected from every PhD program I applied to the first time, it is good to be aware that it can happen." Due to what I can only assume is commendable humility, an important piece of information is missing here: Adaptations got results like a boss on the second go-round. No one on this board is out of time to improve themselves if they fall short of their hopes during this process. No one here is out of opportunities to distinguish themselves. These applications are one moment in the development of one facet of your life. You just never know how the world is going to surprise you, and as we all sit around compulsively checking our emails and accidentally garnishing our double whiskeys with freshly chewed fingernails it is important to remember that the challenges and hopes that animate us two, five, twenty years from now will often not resemble in the slightest the things that are so crucial today. For the types of people that haunt boards like this one, climbing for a brass ring is more important than grabbing it. Big successes and big failures offer dramatic but fleeting moments of reckoning. As long as we have some of each, I suspect they will each have relatively little impact on how we judge our own lives later on.

With the exception of #6, that sounds pretty similar to my (unlikely to be deployed) plan. It's weird, but I don't intend to tell anyone for awhile. I'll obsess quietly about how my new life will look instead.

"Should I state that I hope to use the MA as groundwork for a PhD or will they just wonder why I didn't apply for a PhD again?" My opinion is that you'd need to be a bit more specific, yes. The MA is an opportunity to develop a skill previously lacking or rehabilitate some crap credential (again, just my opnion). I think that being able to articulate clearly why an MA is likely to move you up the candidacy ladder is kind of important. "I've had the same problem with Columbia. I think its just their system, since everywhere else I applied has registered that they received my scores." This is my second time watching these forums as I apply and no school gets more complaints about its admin process than Columbia. They figure it out eventually.

I don't know that I agree about the difference in importance, but the focus part is exactly what I would have said. An SoP at the PhD level is supposed to spend most of its time articulating a question or two, discussing the extent to which it has been answered and connecting the study of those questions and answers to the target department. A personal statement, which I think is more appropriate for an MA, should in some ways be more like a cover letter for a job application. It should discuss some of the past experiences that led you to want to study political science and link your past achievements to your preparation for graduate study. If you are applying for an academic MA, you might want to spend a little time on why you didn't choose a PhD program. (I am pursuing an academic MA right now, and explained in my statement that I did not study political science as an undergrad and wanted to test my interest and develop more sophisticated understandings before applying for PhDs.) In my opinion, you want to do both things in both types of statements, but you frame the overall essays very differently. The PhD version explains your interest using some examples of your past achievement, the MA version explains your qualifications to study the questions that animate you. If that makes sense.

Perfect example of why I shouldn't visit this site. I was perfectly content to wait until late Feb. Now I have to start stressing already. Gross.

"On the other hand, programs are looking at my applications!" academia.edu keeps track of the search terms that draw people to click through to your profile and I've had a handful of searches for just my name in the last week. Iiiiiiiinteresting.

Wow. My first news two years ago came in mid-March. But then, I got rejected everywhere!

Man, all this talk about 4 weeks is just going to get you all geared up. It's going to be six at least, right?

Seems pretty marginal to me. Not that we should fail to proofread our essays, but I doubt anyone considers themselves infallible in this regard and I find it hard to believe that judgment will rain down to harshly over this. If it really bothers you, contact the admissions coordinator and ask if you can replace a draft to correct an error.

No. They will consider your application with the available materials. What's more, they will merge the letter with you file when it arrives. If that happens soo, your application will suffer little or no prejudice. You'll notice, for example, that the email said that applications missing official GRE scores will be considered, but that admissions offers will not be made on the basis of unofficial scores. Obviously, admission at schools like Stanford is a game of inches for the most qualified candidates, and missing a letter is certainly not going to reflect well on your application. You have every right to be frustrated and demanding with your recommender. But if the letter gets in soon I'd spend zero more time worrying about it. These adcomms know that it's beyond your direct control and have little to gain by affirmatively disqualifying someone whose major sin was relying on an absent-minded or inconsiderate academic. Remember this panic when it's your students.

"Honestly, I am thinking that if i dont get into any phd's I can atleast get a MA with some funding to rebrand myself as a good applicant." Wake Forest and Marquette both have good MA programs that offer a fair number of students money. They are academic in focus (rather than professional) and there are no PhDs to condend with. You should look into them as good "rebranding" options.

Both longer posts are good advice. You should have realistic expectations. But I think something of a corrective is in order. As a 30-something with a decade in a decent professional career under my belt, my response to the "you will not get a tenure track job!" sentiment is: Meh. Guess what? By the same logic, you're not going to make partner at Sidley Austin or chief surgical resident at Cedar Sinai or be Daniel Day-Lewis's talent agent or the CEO of Coca-Cola, either. Go to the law school boards, etc., and you'll see traffick in the same sentiments. There aren't very many jobs at the top. There aren't any top-heavy fields. The market is soft for everyone. These "harsh truths" are about being an adult, not political science. If you value your career and have a legitimate reason to think you have talent, at some point you're going to have to chose between taking the risk and wondering 'what if'. That's not an easy choice, but it's ultimately not one you get to avoid.

1) Lots of application forms ask explicitly if you have communicated with any program faculty. 2) Considering this, I would only move beyond "I would like to work with X" to "I have communicated with X" if that communication has somehow been fruitful; i.e., if you have received advice or feedback that affected your research in some way. Maybe it's just me, but "I wrote to this prof I love about your program because I love it" could come off a bit ... creepy, for lack of a better word.