GopherGrad

"Everything I've read about the process states that it's very hard, ironically, for such applicants to be admitted to PhD programs -- supposedly because their academic skills may have atrophied, their recommendation letters will be hazier, there's a sense that their commitment may be questionable because they already chose a different professional route, etc. Is this right?" No. Two challenges, both related to the idea that you need to prove yourself to be a capable academic researcher (not just smart, motivated or interesting, even if those things don't hurt): 1) At LEAST two letters of rec. should come from academic sources, so if you have not kept up with professors, try to get back in touch. You need people to vouch for your academic talents. Being a great employee simply doesn't count for much, unless your job involves academic-style research. 2) You will need to demonstrate a grasp of the SCHOLARLY debate you want to tackle in your research during the PhD. This mean that unless through work or interest in your free time you have been reading academic journals, you will need to do some good research to write a decent personal statement. Framing up your puzzles and interests in terms of the practical or policy problems you have faced in your career will not work. Even if the problems are substantively interesting and relevant, a failure to discuss them in the vocabulary of current academics may sink your attempt to prove that you can dive right in to research. Do not underestimate how hard it can be for a professional to get in touch with the world of scholars. Do not assume that you're there. This second point of advice very much comes from my own experience. The best research statements are drawing from dozens of books and maybe over a hundred articles triangulating on the point of interest. The difference between my statement two years ago and the draft this round is immense, even though the meat of my interests hasn't changed much. If (and only if) you can establish your research potential and that you are in touch with scholarly debate, your work and life experience will, up to a point, work in your favor. Good luck,

People don't like doing "what are my chances" posts because it's all such a crap-shoot. I don't know much about Sciences Po. You quant score maybe raises an eyebrow, but if your letters of rec and grades in econ and stats are good I should think you're competitive for AU. Don't sweat your lack of development experience.

In my opinion, you're misreading the purpose of the financial aid question. My (perhaps incorrect) understanding is that a student who says "no" is assumed to have outside scholarships. I really doubt anyone would see you as ungrateful and the sense that you are supported by outside money makes you appear both less burdensome and more qualified. That being said, if you do not have outside support, you want to be considered for the money. Almost no one is going to refuse, and certainly not on the grounds that they are happy to take out loans or spend down savings. Your altruistic desire to letting scholarships go to those who need it more is sweet, but you need to keep in mind the purpose of merit-based aid. This money isn't used to help make sure everyone gets a good education. It's an enticement offered to students who may succeed in a way the school can use to attract more and higher quality applicants in the future. It attracts you to the program and allows you to focus on your studies. It isn't charity; it's more like getting a job offer in a field you'd be willing to volunteer in. In that sense, the best way to be gracious and conscientious about a merit award is to treat your education seriously and succeed in your job search/PhD applications afterward. You earn your money (seriously) by doing the job the school hired you to do: be a great student and give them something to brag about when you finish.

If you have reason to believe that your publication history, writing sample, statement and letters will rehabilitate your relatively low GPA, finish with the best grades you can and apply to several PhD programs that fit your long range goals the upward trend in your GPA counts for something. In the same period, identify and apply to a few MA programs you think might help you achieve better results next time. As you consider MA programs, keep in mind the following: - MA grading curves are very generous and you will need to be close to perfect to impress a committee at a great PhD program. - Prestigious MA programs are often crowded with talented students who are competing with PhD candidates for faculty attention. Sometimes they are only one year and often they provide very little financial support. Getting great letters out of these programs is extremely challenging. It can be an expensive way to improve your application only slightly. - Less prestigous MA programs may provide you with grants and a department that allows you to thrive and generate interesting scholarship only to have the achievement overlooked by admissions committees because Directional State U is not Princetanford. It can be a time intesive way to improve your application only slightly. Chart your course between this Scylla and Charybdis cautiously. One more piece of (unsolicited( advice: get a job when you finish college and spend some time being a 20-something with some money and focus on living. I'm old and I have a lot of friends who have done grad school at a lot of different stages in their lives and careers. Going straight through is heaps riskier than waiting a few years in terms of long-run happiness. As a bonus, if you have a working gap between undergrad and your 4.0, all-star MA performance it looks a lot more like you've changed into a real scholar. "I was an occasional screw up that went into the real world and got some perspective that made me a rock god" is a lot more convincing story than "sorry I screwed up those two econ classes, look I can hack it, I promise".

I have a story similar to the OP's. I would echo the advice given so far and add that you should strongly consider less well-known schools, especially at universities that do not offer PhDs. Of course you can and should apply to Chicago and Columbia if those programs seem attractive, but being a bigger fish in a smaller pond has its advantages. In my case, I received full funding and I've had tremendous access to faculty who will rank me among the top students they have worked with. Is this enough to overcome the prestige factor of the MAs consistently suggested on this site? Time will tell, I'm firing up my applications now.

These are all fair points, but they mostly suggest you shouldn't bother majoring in political science in the first place. This guy has dropped four years and untold thousands for the love of the game already, and hopes to forgo employment opportunity for another six for a shot at teaching. I guess the additional $2K in application fees really tips the scales, though. Maybe I'm saying this because I'm old, but three thousand dollars for the chance to see where you stand in terms of chasing your dream is, in the long run, a pretty good deal and not even close to the largest risk you're likely to take. Pennington, You strategy should be to define your interests and use your professors to find schools with an excellent match to your interests. Examine the schools individually to assess whether they offer you a decent chance at teaching (or whatever you want to do) and apply everywhere the answer is yes. Put together your best application and let yourself dream a little. Don't apply blindly to the top 30, but don't let low statistical chances of success dissuade you, per se. Most people from the last admissions cycle, even the people that got into Harvard, will tell you that they has a low batting average. I knew a kid in law school who dreamed of attending my alma mater, but after a good academic career, dropped a deuce on the LSAT. He literally set fire to his application in frustration. When the smoke cleared, he asked what he really had to lose, applied anyway and was admitted. How much time do you really want to spend wondering if what stood between and your dream school was another $80? Is money really the issue? Don't let it be. You're a junior. If you really, really want this, get a second job this summer, skip some nights at the bar and bank an extra thousand bucks toward applications. Your grades make things tough. Your shot at top schools is limited and your future from lower-ranked schools is uncertain. You are likely to be forced to make some hard decisions that balance your goals with reality. But absolutely no one on this site, especially the students, really understand what it takes to get in. We can't rate your intangibles, so don't let us limit how high you aim.

That seems remarkably short-sighted. Three grand really isn't much money especially considering what's on the line, how much you've already invested and how much more you'd plan to invest.

You don't need political science course work, but your personal statement will be better if it speaks in terms political scientists use. Your school might not be familiar to admissions committee members and they may not be sure how much to trust your achievement there. Academic letters of recommendation are really important. I think these are the three biggest challenges you face. It's not clear to me how you solve these issues; you can read articles on the topics that interest you and you can contact old professors. One way to address them all, although expensive and time consuming, is to sit for a Master's degree at a school well known in your target market.

You wouldn't spend three thousand dollars to get into three T30 schools? I would cut that check this fucking second.

1) You should go to the boards at collegeconfidential.com. Their polisci/IR board is much more focused on grad school for practitioners, so you are more likely to get a varied response from people that share (or are living) your goals. We are more academically focused, so the density of applicable advice is not as high. 2) There are kids from Columbia and Johns Hopkins graduating right into jobs at Starbucks. IR is very competitive and its not clear that ANYONE gets a job without knowing someone, but if those people exist, they at SFS and SIPA. You will not be able to trade on the name of your school. You will only be able to trade on your own. The first question you need to ask is: "What am I willing and able to do to stick my face-parts in front of every poor soul who might ever have a job opening in my field?". Once you have answered that question honestly and completely, then ask what Fresno can do to help get you there. If the combination of those two answers doesn't spell out "j-o-b" ... walk away.* Never look back. I will be attending a not-super-prestigious MA program myself this fall. I don't know if I will continue to a PhD or enter the workforce, but I can tell you this: Every single week I will be in the offices of the faculty currently teaching my courses, the professor I RA for and the faculty I have established good relationships with. I will discuss my research and my future. I will ask them how I can do better and how they can help me. Halfway through my second year, God help me, I will have spoken with every single person these faculty members know that might be valuable to network. Every. Single. Person. And I will milk those introductions for more introductions. Etc. On graduation day I am going to bust out the doors like a motherfucking steamroller or a starving bear-shark or an adolescent girl whose mom just took away her iPhone. Something really angry and focused, one way or the other. My point in telling you this? Others are going to be hungry to succeed. You know your school's name puts you at a disadvantage. If you go in thinking of yourself like a grad student, you're going to get run over. You need to go in feeling like an NFL linebacker. Then get in there and sack the shit out of that handsome Johnny Quarterback. Or however that analogy should end. Good luck fierce Anteater, and godspeed. *Unless you're on a great scholarship and have nothing better to do with your time. In that case, crack that tall boy and enjoy yourself some stalling.

Minimizing your student loan debt balance is crucial and requires (1) open, frank appraisals of future earning capacity against debt loads and (2) academic performance and networking strategies that afford the graduate a broad range of choices to evaluate at the end of each stage of education. It is easier to ask these questions in a systematic way than you might think. Before you choose, do two things: I. Understand your costs. You are essentially wrestling with four distinct tiers of costs: UG, UG+PHD, UG+MA, UG+MA+PHD. ("UG+MA" could mean either working after the MA or continuing to a funded PhD.) It should be easy to get a handle on these costs. Create a sample budget (SB), add the costs of tuition at the average target institution (T), multiply by the number of years you plan to spend unfunded (Y) and add 30% for inflation and inevitable cost overruns. Y(SB + T) * 1.3 This provides a worst case scenario of your total exposure. You may win scholarships, get jobs or get late funding, but deal with that once you've chosen a path. You should use this number to estimate your monthly payments in each potential future, which will give you and understanding of what type of wage you need to pull down to service the debt and stay comfortable. II. Examine your opportunities. The OP's opportunity tiers are much the same, with two major exceptions. One, at any point she could decide between academic careers or professional careers. Second, assuming she chooses an academic path after the MA, her PhD maybe funded or unfunded. Using these pivot points as a guide, map and evaluate your available outcomes, discounting less likely alternatives. You should gather information on these outcomes from two places. First, examine the target school's placement record and ask faculty and students about the range of occupations graduates aim for and achieve. For MAs, look at percentages that get funded offers. Second, research the futures revealed by your investigations into placement. Network aggressively with people that hold the jobs you discovered during step one. Find out what those career paths look like financially. Now you have the information you need to link each cost point with a set of tangible outcomes. How much income will you make? When will you start making it? What opportunities stay open down each path and which close off? While you will like some outcomes better that others for non-financial reasons, don't count any of them out unless they are clearly not financially viable. Keep an open mind to a wide variety of careers after you: III. Make your choice and plan for success. Whether you choose academic or professional life right off the bat, keep in mind that quantitative performance is only half the battle. Networking is extremely important to later success. I will tailor my advice for academic paths, but there are obvious corollaries in the professional world. Remember all that networking and investigation you did about possible career paths? While you were investigating the financials, you should also have asked about what skills and achievements those employers look for in potential hires. Develop those skills. As many as you can. Give yourself the opportunity to to appeal to a diverse set of employers and don't give that up until success is really assured in one arena or another. Make and maintain relationships with people that can help you. Professors can and do network eager students in both academia and industry. Your classmates will disperse and work places that will be of interest to your career. The professionals who told you about their careers can continue to advise you and might one day be the hiring manager or internal champion you need to get your foot in the door and firmly planted.

I tend to believe you shouldn't mention it. I don't see a great risk for harm, but it's hard to imagine why the admissions committees would care. They want promising researchers before interesting or broadly promising students. On the other hand: A 40 year old Marine with a Naval postgraduate degree and an interest in a polisci PhD? Seems to me like you probably have some rich material that would be relevant AND interesting your should spend your precious 1000 words on.

As an admitted student, you should be able to demand placement information from Columbia. Their responsiveness and the completeness of their data will tell you a lot about the program's attitude toward assuring the success of students on an individual level. Be aware, though, that most schools who present survey-level data of class results jigger the surveys or results in ways that may deceptively oversell the success of graduates. Not all graduates respond to these surveys. Does Columbia reveal what percentage did not? What do you suppose those students are doing?

Thanks! I was admitted to Marquette's MA program with a full tuition waiver, a very small living stipend and an RA position. I'm going to visit this weekend, but I am pretty sure that I'll accept.

Animal, There are two threads ("Do the MA or Wait it Out?" and "How to Get into a PhD from an MA Program") just a couple lines below this one that should help you out. In fact, one of them regards an NYU consolation Master's.

I plan to do a little preparation, since I have very little polisci background. Mostly, though, I'll probably work and drink my way through The Bartender's Bible.

I'd second that and expand: It is also important to note how much tuition is left after the scholarship. OP now says that the scholarship is $32K, but that's basically meaningless to us. A $20K scholarship to a school that costs $25K is "better" than a $32K scholarship at a school that costs $45K. I will also add to the consensus that it is not a good idea to compare MA funding to PhD offers. In my field (political science), decent funding for MAs is really hard to come by.

Good news everyone! I finally heard back from Marquette. I was admitted with a research assistantship. The RA position covers 2/3 of tuition and provides a modest living stipend. It is the best package Marquette offers. I feel relieved.

Milo, The advice you're getting is good, even if "hand your assignments in on time" feels a little paternalistic. PhD programs are looking for students who can produce constructive, creative ideas and research in their fields. You are looking to signal that you can. So the prosaic answer is easy. Admissions committees see grades and GREs as reliable indicators of academic promise. Get good grades and score well on the GRE. They also like to see in-depth evaluations of your potential from respected academics. Form relationships with faculty that will lead to strong letters. Similar with your SoP: Spend enough time reading outside class to get a good grasp of the contours of academic debate in your interest area and write a statement that professes a desire to explore some current opportunities for growth in the field. Publishing and conference papers? Most people here will say that they are of marginal value to your application. I plan to try to publish anyway. I can't hurt and, at the very least, I will have a writing sample as close to publishing grade as I'm able to muster. The holistic answer might sound hokey, but it's probably better. Don't focus on the signals as much as you focus on actually becoming a knowledgeable and creative thinker (the signals will take care of themselves). Assess your learning style. What has made you passionate about subject matter in the past? Which classes really influenced you and why? Under what conditions do you quickly learn and become interested the cutting edge of a topic? Now try to re-create those conditions for the courses you take in your MA. As an example, I noticed in law school that I did well in classes I took with a certain group of friends. We had a tendency to go out drinking and argue and discuss the course material. Being challenged by other views and being forced to articulate my own understandings repeatedly was great practice and helped me zero in on areas of controversy for exams and papers. If I end up in an MA program, I plan to find a handful of social students from each of my classes and set up weekly happy hours with them in an attempt to force the same processes.

Adaptations, who had a pretty stellar admissions season, has already counseled against this. I tend to agree with him. For starters, you'd really only have ten weeks of school under your belt before you'd have to start asking for letters of rec and writing your statements. Are you really going to so impress faculty in that time as to see real improvement in those previously tepid letters? Get so much polisci knowledge that your statement will shine from the pile? Second, depending upon when your grades post and how fast you can forward on the new transcript, you will submit one semester's worth of grades as the admissions committees are already meeting. Will they see these grades? If the issue with your application currently is a lack of polisci courses, is that semester going to sway the committee? Third, application forms often ask that you disclose prior application attempts. (Some schools close off applications after three.) I don't know for sure that this is the case, but some ... image problems ... might arise if you apply every year for three years running. It's pretty clear to me that your application will be heaps stronger during your second year of the program than during your first (when, in my opinion, it will only be marginally better than this year's). Further, most predict that program competitiveness (by the numbers at least) peaked this year and will start sliding. I know it's not clear what you have to lose by applying next year right away (besides money and time), but it's really hard to fathom what you would gain, either.

That was part of what I was after in my reference to debt aversion when discussing applications to MA programs next year. EM covered the topic explicitly and well, so I will just say three things: 1) Debt can be a millstone. I second the idea that you should look at your overall debt load and likely monthly payments before making a decision to accrue it. 2) Some MA programs offer funding. It is more rare. Funding is nice to avoid debt. Also, if you receive funding from a school that prides itself in Ph.D. prep, it might be a signal that the faculty will invest more time with you (both because you are perceived as a good hope for a notch in their placement belt, and because you will be working as an RA/TA). 3) Working for a year or so has a lot of advantages. Eat better. Take a vacation. Refresh your wardrobe. Save to defray for school costs. Buy yourself a nice toy to sustain a stress-reliving hobby. Generally get your self in position to better weather a few years of austerity without emergencies or temptations.

I think you're a pretty good candidate for an M.A. program. These are the same factors that have led me to consider it. For other reasons (existing debt) I probably won't unless I get a fair funding offer. Another course you might consider, depending on your age, impatience and debt aversion is to apply next year to Ph.D.s and a wider range of MAs. Before making a decision, you might want to look at a breakdown of NYU's master's class and their placement. If they are all in your boat (seeking Ph.D. admissions after completion), you will face really tough competition for better letters and personal counseling from faculty. Ask NYU how they support future placements. While it's essential that you dedicate yourself to learning, be careful how you frame the service your are buying from NYU. If you had to choose between buying a great political science master's education and buying a great service designed to get you admitted to a Ph.D. program, wouldn't you choose the latter? Assuming that your dedication to learning and placement remains steady, choose the schools that will best support your application.

Yeah, we don't have enough details. What do you want to teach? Where? What are your current qualifications? How do you feel an MA would strengthen your qualifications?

Well, that's not the point, either. You're probably both incredibly focused 22 year olds, but you aren't as focused as you will be in ten years. Look, focus isn't everything, not by a long shot. I hate to harp on soccer analogies, but: Lionel Messi is young. He's cunning, creative and elegant. But he's also a spaz (comparatively). He makes ten runs when two would do. So should Barce trade him for a more experienced forward? Of course not. They already have David Villa to play fisherman, to bring a sense of patience and temperament to the offensive half. Messi's explosiveness (when juxtaposed with Villa and Xavi) is precisely why he's on the team. Barce would be worse without it (and footie fans everywhere would lose at least a half-dozen inspirational moments a week). The flailing, rabid curiosity of a younger intellect is clearly valuable to academic institutions. Spending that period learning course material deeply is not a mistake. It's just easy for older students to feel jealous that they spent such professionally and academically formative years in other pursuits. It's important not to lose sight of how those experiences will advantage your education and the education of your classmates and wider discipline.