GopherGrad

I read this thread with a little concern and wanted to add my own perspective. I am presently in my fourth year, recently defended my dissertation prospectus, and am preparing to start gathering data. Prior to my PhD program, I worked as an attorney and taught practical courses at two law schools. In this thread, I’ve seen three related, basic concerns: job prospects, strategies for maximizing job prospects, and the work load. Take my advice as a current student with a grain of salt, but be aware that the path to success in this field is idiosyncratic enough to doubt that tenured faculty know how it works, either.
Job Prospects
BigTen is right here, and the attempt to rose-tint the job market issue by noting that an important number of tenure track positions at research universities are held by graduates from 10-25 ranked schools ignores the struggles faced by the vast majority of student from those programs. It is frankly unconscionable that faculty at 50+ ranked schools encourage graduate students to attend. I truly believe the emerging consensus that a number of graduate programs exist to fill the egotistical and labor needs of the department rather than because they provide reasonable employment opportunities to graduates. Evaluating job prospects and placements by reading placement boards provides some information. Watching your colleagues graduate and fight for positions provides another.
Attending a PhD program outside the top 10-12 is a real gamble. Most students in this range seem to place at universities or outside jobs that at least provide standard of living and a reasonable connection to the questions and research that drew you to study social science in the first place. But the plight of Visiting Assistant Professors who make minimum wage is real, and in most cases the PhD does little outside the academic/think tank world other than convince employers with no idea about the academic job market that you’d leave. After the 12-14 rank, most graduates have fewer tenure opportunities, period. They certainly face uncomfortable constraints on the region and pay they must accept for any measure of job security.
If your passion or self-assurance prompts to take the risk of attending a program outside this range, do yourself a favor and pay special attention to the advice in the following section.
Securing a Stable Job
Publishing: Ask yourself an important question over and over again (and ask your advisors): can some part of the questions that animate me be answered in a compelling, novel way with data that exists on the internet? If the answer is yes, you need to work on publishing. If the answer is no, then you need to focus on generating compelling research and data collection designs. When you graduate, hiring committees will have an opinion about whether it should have been possible to publish on your question during school, and often times the answer is. Often times (especially in comparative politics), the more promising candidates are the ones that generated awesome data sets.
Networking: I promise you this works. Every week during your first three years of graduate school, find two non-academic employers that have jobs you think you might like and be qualified for, then email a person that has 5-10 years experience in one of those jobs asking for advice. Ideally, you would get 15 minutes to speak with them about their own day-to-day (like you’re interviewing them about whether you want the job) and what skills the job takes (as though you are preparing to interview for it).
This means you send out 300 networking emails in three years. You’ll get maybe 40 people willing to speak with you and 10 that like you. Find excuses to stay in touch with those people, and 1 or 2 will have a job for you when you graduate. This job worked for young law school students I mentored and seems to be working for MA candidates I work with now.
Grants: Winning a grant is easier said than done, but it can be very beneficial. Winning a grant that pays you to research frees you from needing to work and sends a signal to future grantors and employers that you are promising and talented. Winning grants for research activities achieves the latter. 
I have not won any of the general work-replacement grants, but those I know who have burst ahead of the rest of us. They have zero distraction. This is part of why students from private schools like Harvard and Stanford outperform equally talented students at Michigan or UCLA. They work less.
I have been fortunate enough to win a couple of small but prestigious-sounding grants to fund research. It has completely altered the way senior colleagues view my work and promise.
Work Load
I think the gallows humor about reading in the shower is part of what makes for bad graduate students. It is absolutely true that you cannot read enough to stop feeling behind your classmates or (heaven forfend) the faculty teaching you. So why bother?
First the saccharine advice: if you are an interesting and curious enough person to attend a decent PhD program, there is very little in the world, and nothing at school, worth the sacrifice of five to seven years of your personal growth and exploration. I don’t care if you end up teaching at fucking Harvard, your colleagues will never look at you with the wonder your friends do when you serve them a perfectly seared scallop or play them Fur Elise on the piano after you eat someone else’s scallops. They won’t know you like your mother or your husband or your son.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: 90% of you want to go to grad school in large part because you want to feel smart. Your colleagues will rarely make you feel smart, even though you are. The whole enterprise is about identifying flaws in even the best work (in order to improve it) and on some level, this is miserable. Don’t believe me? Ask students at the schools you were admitted to how they felt about the process of drafting and defending their prospectus.**
But your friends and family will make you feel smart, especially if you turn your substantial talent to excelling in at least one thing they can relate to. You want to feel proud and useful and cherished and special? Learn to give people something that gives them instinctual pleasure. (Usually not an AJPS article.)
Now for the professional advice you won’t ignore: You will have plenty of pressure to read deeply and critically and to learn method. I don’t suggest ignoring this. But the best ideas and the best careers don’t seem based on picking apart the causal identification of a key article. Great insight requires time to rest and percolate, and inspiration comes from wondering why people haven’t solved real world problems more often than it comes from replication data.
Models don’t provide insight. They describe it.
Good ideas require some amount of travel and art and philosophy and debate and REST and EXPERIENCE and EXPOSURE. If you want to have any hope of avoiding the scholarly lament that “my research and my life talk to twelve other people” you have to set aside some time to be out of the literature and out of the methods.
I’m not suggesting you spend every Saturday smoking weed and reading Batman comics. Maybe baseball games and 30 Rock marathons are rare indulgences now. But don’t cancel your subscription to the New Yorker or stop seeing your friends, because politics is about real life and on some level no one trusts that the academic without work experience, without family, without friends, without hobbies, has any insight about what animates actual people. 
Good luck with everything.
**Setting aside the problems with political science as a science, while this process of critique and revise makes everyone feel stupid and insecure, it does help you eventually feel proud of and defend your work. But to scratch the itch of feeling competent, you’d be better off having kids and teaching them to camp or make great spaghetti sauce or something.

I read this thread with a little concern and wanted to add my own perspective. I am presently in my fourth year, recently defended my dissertation prospectus, and am preparing to start gathering data. Prior to my PhD program, I worked as an attorney and taught practical courses at two law schools. In this thread, I’ve seen three related, basic concerns: job prospects, strategies for maximizing job prospects, and the work load. Take my advice as a current student with a grain of salt, but be aware that the path to success in this field is idiosyncratic enough to doubt that tenured faculty know how it works, either.
Job Prospects
BigTen is right here, and the attempt to rose-tint the job market issue by noting that an important number of tenure track positions at research universities are held by graduates from 10-25 ranked schools ignores the struggles faced by the vast majority of student from those programs. It is frankly unconscionable that faculty at 50+ ranked schools encourage graduate students to attend. I truly believe the emerging consensus that a number of graduate programs exist to fill the egotistical and labor needs of the department rather than because they provide reasonable employment opportunities to graduates. Evaluating job prospects and placements by reading placement boards provides some information. Watching your colleagues graduate and fight for positions provides another.
Attending a PhD program outside the top 10-12 is a real gamble. Most students in this range seem to place at universities or outside jobs that at least provide standard of living and a reasonable connection to the questions and research that drew you to study social science in the first place. But the plight of Visiting Assistant Professors who make minimum wage is real, and in most cases the PhD does little outside the academic/think tank world other than convince employers with no idea about the academic job market that you’d leave. After the 12-14 rank, most graduates have fewer tenure opportunities, period. They certainly face uncomfortable constraints on the region and pay they must accept for any measure of job security.
If your passion or self-assurance prompts to take the risk of attending a program outside this range, do yourself a favor and pay special attention to the advice in the following section.
Securing a Stable Job
Publishing: Ask yourself an important question over and over again (and ask your advisors): can some part of the questions that animate me be answered in a compelling, novel way with data that exists on the internet? If the answer is yes, you need to work on publishing. If the answer is no, then you need to focus on generating compelling research and data collection designs. When you graduate, hiring committees will have an opinion about whether it should have been possible to publish on your question during school, and often times the answer is. Often times (especially in comparative politics), the more promising candidates are the ones that generated awesome data sets.
Networking: I promise you this works. Every week during your first three years of graduate school, find two non-academic employers that have jobs you think you might like and be qualified for, then email a person that has 5-10 years experience in one of those jobs asking for advice. Ideally, you would get 15 minutes to speak with them about their own day-to-day (like you’re interviewing them about whether you want the job) and what skills the job takes (as though you are preparing to interview for it).
This means you send out 300 networking emails in three years. You’ll get maybe 40 people willing to speak with you and 10 that like you. Find excuses to stay in touch with those people, and 1 or 2 will have a job for you when you graduate. This job worked for young law school students I mentored and seems to be working for MA candidates I work with now.
Grants: Winning a grant is easier said than done, but it can be very beneficial. Winning a grant that pays you to research frees you from needing to work and sends a signal to future grantors and employers that you are promising and talented. Winning grants for research activities achieves the latter. 
I have not won any of the general work-replacement grants, but those I know who have burst ahead of the rest of us. They have zero distraction. This is part of why students from private schools like Harvard and Stanford outperform equally talented students at Michigan or UCLA. They work less.
I have been fortunate enough to win a couple of small but prestigious-sounding grants to fund research. It has completely altered the way senior colleagues view my work and promise.
Work Load
I think the gallows humor about reading in the shower is part of what makes for bad graduate students. It is absolutely true that you cannot read enough to stop feeling behind your classmates or (heaven forfend) the faculty teaching you. So why bother?
First the saccharine advice: if you are an interesting and curious enough person to attend a decent PhD program, there is very little in the world, and nothing at school, worth the sacrifice of five to seven years of your personal growth and exploration. I don’t care if you end up teaching at fucking Harvard, your colleagues will never look at you with the wonder your friends do when you serve them a perfectly seared scallop or play them Fur Elise on the piano after you eat someone else’s scallops. They won’t know you like your mother or your husband or your son.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: 90% of you want to go to grad school in large part because you want to feel smart. Your colleagues will rarely make you feel smart, even though you are. The whole enterprise is about identifying flaws in even the best work (in order to improve it) and on some level, this is miserable. Don’t believe me? Ask students at the schools you were admitted to how they felt about the process of drafting and defending their prospectus.**
But your friends and family will make you feel smart, especially if you turn your substantial talent to excelling in at least one thing they can relate to. You want to feel proud and useful and cherished and special? Learn to give people something that gives them instinctual pleasure. (Usually not an AJPS article.)
Now for the professional advice you won’t ignore: You will have plenty of pressure to read deeply and critically and to learn method. I don’t suggest ignoring this. But the best ideas and the best careers don’t seem based on picking apart the causal identification of a key article. Great insight requires time to rest and percolate, and inspiration comes from wondering why people haven’t solved real world problems more often than it comes from replication data.
Models don’t provide insight. They describe it.
Good ideas require some amount of travel and art and philosophy and debate and REST and EXPERIENCE and EXPOSURE. If you want to have any hope of avoiding the scholarly lament that “my research and my life talk to twelve other people” you have to set aside some time to be out of the literature and out of the methods.
I’m not suggesting you spend every Saturday smoking weed and reading Batman comics. Maybe baseball games and 30 Rock marathons are rare indulgences now. But don’t cancel your subscription to the New Yorker or stop seeing your friends, because politics is about real life and on some level no one trusts that the academic without work experience, without family, without friends, without hobbies, has any insight about what animates actual people. 
Good luck with everything.
**Setting aside the problems with political science as a science, while this process of critique and revise makes everyone feel stupid and insecure, it does help you eventually feel proud of and defend your work. But to scratch the itch of feeling competent, you’d be better off having kids and teaching them to camp or make great spaghetti sauce or something.

I read this thread with a little concern and wanted to add my own perspective. I am presently in my fourth year, recently defended my dissertation prospectus, and am preparing to start gathering data. Prior to my PhD program, I worked as an attorney and taught practical courses at two law schools. In this thread, I’ve seen three related, basic concerns: job prospects, strategies for maximizing job prospects, and the work load. Take my advice as a current student with a grain of salt, but be aware that the path to success in this field is idiosyncratic enough to doubt that tenured faculty know how it works, either.
Job Prospects
BigTen is right here, and the attempt to rose-tint the job market issue by noting that an important number of tenure track positions at research universities are held by graduates from 10-25 ranked schools ignores the struggles faced by the vast majority of student from those programs. It is frankly unconscionable that faculty at 50+ ranked schools encourage graduate students to attend. I truly believe the emerging consensus that a number of graduate programs exist to fill the egotistical and labor needs of the department rather than because they provide reasonable employment opportunities to graduates. Evaluating job prospects and placements by reading placement boards provides some information. Watching your colleagues graduate and fight for positions provides another.
Attending a PhD program outside the top 10-12 is a real gamble. Most students in this range seem to place at universities or outside jobs that at least provide standard of living and a reasonable connection to the questions and research that drew you to study social science in the first place. But the plight of Visiting Assistant Professors who make minimum wage is real, and in most cases the PhD does little outside the academic/think tank world other than convince employers with no idea about the academic job market that you’d leave. After the 12-14 rank, most graduates have fewer tenure opportunities, period. They certainly face uncomfortable constraints on the region and pay they must accept for any measure of job security.
If your passion or self-assurance prompts to take the risk of attending a program outside this range, do yourself a favor and pay special attention to the advice in the following section.
Securing a Stable Job
Publishing: Ask yourself an important question over and over again (and ask your advisors): can some part of the questions that animate me be answered in a compelling, novel way with data that exists on the internet? If the answer is yes, you need to work on publishing. If the answer is no, then you need to focus on generating compelling research and data collection designs. When you graduate, hiring committees will have an opinion about whether it should have been possible to publish on your question during school, and often times the answer is. Often times (especially in comparative politics), the more promising candidates are the ones that generated awesome data sets.
Networking: I promise you this works. Every week during your first three years of graduate school, find two non-academic employers that have jobs you think you might like and be qualified for, then email a person that has 5-10 years experience in one of those jobs asking for advice. Ideally, you would get 15 minutes to speak with them about their own day-to-day (like you’re interviewing them about whether you want the job) and what skills the job takes (as though you are preparing to interview for it).
This means you send out 300 networking emails in three years. You’ll get maybe 40 people willing to speak with you and 10 that like you. Find excuses to stay in touch with those people, and 1 or 2 will have a job for you when you graduate. This job worked for young law school students I mentored and seems to be working for MA candidates I work with now.
Grants: Winning a grant is easier said than done, but it can be very beneficial. Winning a grant that pays you to research frees you from needing to work and sends a signal to future grantors and employers that you are promising and talented. Winning grants for research activities achieves the latter. 
I have not won any of the general work-replacement grants, but those I know who have burst ahead of the rest of us. They have zero distraction. This is part of why students from private schools like Harvard and Stanford outperform equally talented students at Michigan or UCLA. They work less.
I have been fortunate enough to win a couple of small but prestigious-sounding grants to fund research. It has completely altered the way senior colleagues view my work and promise.
Work Load
I think the gallows humor about reading in the shower is part of what makes for bad graduate students. It is absolutely true that you cannot read enough to stop feeling behind your classmates or (heaven forfend) the faculty teaching you. So why bother?
First the saccharine advice: if you are an interesting and curious enough person to attend a decent PhD program, there is very little in the world, and nothing at school, worth the sacrifice of five to seven years of your personal growth and exploration. I don’t care if you end up teaching at fucking Harvard, your colleagues will never look at you with the wonder your friends do when you serve them a perfectly seared scallop or play them Fur Elise on the piano after you eat someone else’s scallops. They won’t know you like your mother or your husband or your son.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: 90% of you want to go to grad school in large part because you want to feel smart. Your colleagues will rarely make you feel smart, even though you are. The whole enterprise is about identifying flaws in even the best work (in order to improve it) and on some level, this is miserable. Don’t believe me? Ask students at the schools you were admitted to how they felt about the process of drafting and defending their prospectus.**
But your friends and family will make you feel smart, especially if you turn your substantial talent to excelling in at least one thing they can relate to. You want to feel proud and useful and cherished and special? Learn to give people something that gives them instinctual pleasure. (Usually not an AJPS article.)
Now for the professional advice you won’t ignore: You will have plenty of pressure to read deeply and critically and to learn method. I don’t suggest ignoring this. But the best ideas and the best careers don’t seem based on picking apart the causal identification of a key article. Great insight requires time to rest and percolate, and inspiration comes from wondering why people haven’t solved real world problems more often than it comes from replication data.
Models don’t provide insight. They describe it.
Good ideas require some amount of travel and art and philosophy and debate and REST and EXPERIENCE and EXPOSURE. If you want to have any hope of avoiding the scholarly lament that “my research and my life talk to twelve other people” you have to set aside some time to be out of the literature and out of the methods.
I’m not suggesting you spend every Saturday smoking weed and reading Batman comics. Maybe baseball games and 30 Rock marathons are rare indulgences now. But don’t cancel your subscription to the New Yorker or stop seeing your friends, because politics is about real life and on some level no one trusts that the academic without work experience, without family, without friends, without hobbies, has any insight about what animates actual people. 
Good luck with everything.
**Setting aside the problems with political science as a science, while this process of critique and revise makes everyone feel stupid and insecure, it does help you eventually feel proud of and defend your work. But to scratch the itch of feeling competent, you’d be better off having kids and teaching them to camp or make great spaghetti sauce or something.

I read this thread with a little concern and wanted to add my own perspective. I am presently in my fourth year, recently defended my dissertation prospectus, and am preparing to start gathering data. Prior to my PhD program, I worked as an attorney and taught practical courses at two law schools. In this thread, I’ve seen three related, basic concerns: job prospects, strategies for maximizing job prospects, and the work load. Take my advice as a current student with a grain of salt, but be aware that the path to success in this field is idiosyncratic enough to doubt that tenured faculty know how it works, either.
Job Prospects
BigTen is right here, and the attempt to rose-tint the job market issue by noting that an important number of tenure track positions at research universities are held by graduates from 10-25 ranked schools ignores the struggles faced by the vast majority of student from those programs. It is frankly unconscionable that faculty at 50+ ranked schools encourage graduate students to attend. I truly believe the emerging consensus that a number of graduate programs exist to fill the egotistical and labor needs of the department rather than because they provide reasonable employment opportunities to graduates. Evaluating job prospects and placements by reading placement boards provides some information. Watching your colleagues graduate and fight for positions provides another.
Attending a PhD program outside the top 10-12 is a real gamble. Most students in this range seem to place at universities or outside jobs that at least provide standard of living and a reasonable connection to the questions and research that drew you to study social science in the first place. But the plight of Visiting Assistant Professors who make minimum wage is real, and in most cases the PhD does little outside the academic/think tank world other than convince employers with no idea about the academic job market that you’d leave. After the 12-14 rank, most graduates have fewer tenure opportunities, period. They certainly face uncomfortable constraints on the region and pay they must accept for any measure of job security.
If your passion or self-assurance prompts to take the risk of attending a program outside this range, do yourself a favor and pay special attention to the advice in the following section.
Securing a Stable Job
Publishing: Ask yourself an important question over and over again (and ask your advisors): can some part of the questions that animate me be answered in a compelling, novel way with data that exists on the internet? If the answer is yes, you need to work on publishing. If the answer is no, then you need to focus on generating compelling research and data collection designs. When you graduate, hiring committees will have an opinion about whether it should have been possible to publish on your question during school, and often times the answer is. Often times (especially in comparative politics), the more promising candidates are the ones that generated awesome data sets.
Networking: I promise you this works. Every week during your first three years of graduate school, find two non-academic employers that have jobs you think you might like and be qualified for, then email a person that has 5-10 years experience in one of those jobs asking for advice. Ideally, you would get 15 minutes to speak with them about their own day-to-day (like you’re interviewing them about whether you want the job) and what skills the job takes (as though you are preparing to interview for it).
This means you send out 300 networking emails in three years. You’ll get maybe 40 people willing to speak with you and 10 that like you. Find excuses to stay in touch with those people, and 1 or 2 will have a job for you when you graduate. This job worked for young law school students I mentored and seems to be working for MA candidates I work with now.
Grants: Winning a grant is easier said than done, but it can be very beneficial. Winning a grant that pays you to research frees you from needing to work and sends a signal to future grantors and employers that you are promising and talented. Winning grants for research activities achieves the latter. 
I have not won any of the general work-replacement grants, but those I know who have burst ahead of the rest of us. They have zero distraction. This is part of why students from private schools like Harvard and Stanford outperform equally talented students at Michigan or UCLA. They work less.
I have been fortunate enough to win a couple of small but prestigious-sounding grants to fund research. It has completely altered the way senior colleagues view my work and promise.
Work Load
I think the gallows humor about reading in the shower is part of what makes for bad graduate students. It is absolutely true that you cannot read enough to stop feeling behind your classmates or (heaven forfend) the faculty teaching you. So why bother?
First the saccharine advice: if you are an interesting and curious enough person to attend a decent PhD program, there is very little in the world, and nothing at school, worth the sacrifice of five to seven years of your personal growth and exploration. I don’t care if you end up teaching at fucking Harvard, your colleagues will never look at you with the wonder your friends do when you serve them a perfectly seared scallop or play them Fur Elise on the piano after you eat someone else’s scallops. They won’t know you like your mother or your husband or your son.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: 90% of you want to go to grad school in large part because you want to feel smart. Your colleagues will rarely make you feel smart, even though you are. The whole enterprise is about identifying flaws in even the best work (in order to improve it) and on some level, this is miserable. Don’t believe me? Ask students at the schools you were admitted to how they felt about the process of drafting and defending their prospectus.**
But your friends and family will make you feel smart, especially if you turn your substantial talent to excelling in at least one thing they can relate to. You want to feel proud and useful and cherished and special? Learn to give people something that gives them instinctual pleasure. (Usually not an AJPS article.)
Now for the professional advice you won’t ignore: You will have plenty of pressure to read deeply and critically and to learn method. I don’t suggest ignoring this. But the best ideas and the best careers don’t seem based on picking apart the causal identification of a key article. Great insight requires time to rest and percolate, and inspiration comes from wondering why people haven’t solved real world problems more often than it comes from replication data.
Models don’t provide insight. They describe it.
Good ideas require some amount of travel and art and philosophy and debate and REST and EXPERIENCE and EXPOSURE. If you want to have any hope of avoiding the scholarly lament that “my research and my life talk to twelve other people” you have to set aside some time to be out of the literature and out of the methods.
I’m not suggesting you spend every Saturday smoking weed and reading Batman comics. Maybe baseball games and 30 Rock marathons are rare indulgences now. But don’t cancel your subscription to the New Yorker or stop seeing your friends, because politics is about real life and on some level no one trusts that the academic without work experience, without family, without friends, without hobbies, has any insight about what animates actual people. 
Good luck with everything.
**Setting aside the problems with political science as a science, while this process of critique and revise makes everyone feel stupid and insecure, it does help you eventually feel proud of and defend your work. But to scratch the itch of feeling competent, you’d be better off having kids and teaching them to camp or make great spaghetti sauce or something.

You wouldn't spend three thousand dollars to get into three T30 schools?

I would cut that check this fucking second.

I will celebrate by re-reading my favorite seminal texts of the political sciences. I will celebrate by attending classes and earning A's, which I will celebrate by reading more seminal texts and I will celebrate the reading of those texts by writing insightfully about them in both a classroom assignment context and in personal notes for later projects.
 
Then I will celebrate by being offered a tenure track employment opportunity at the semi-elite university. I will then take myself to dinner at the Library, which is not a pithy name for a restuarant but an actual Library in which is stored seminal texts of the political science, which I will read over dinner. Then I will publish the thesis Chapter in the semi-elite journal and later stretch it into the book at the semi-elite press and my headstone shall read ALL HAIL GOPHERGRAD WHO ATE THE MOST PIE.
 
Also I will drink the rye whisky.

Hi all, as a current female student at UCSD, this report is troubling!  
 
Assuming the PSR poster is real, I hope she brought this to the attention of someone she feels comfortable with (her hosts, the DGS or the Women in Political Science group); if not, I would encourage her to do so. Obviously, behavior like this is inappropriate and we would hope to prevent it. 
 
Speaking from my own experience (n=1 of course, but I believe I'm modal!), UCSD in an extremely welcoming place where I feel supported and invested in as a scholar, despite the resource challenges that often face public universities. Both faculty and students (male and female) are attentive to and proactively working to address the gender imbalance in academia. Respect and encouragement have been the norm in my interactions with professors, staff, and fellow students. If that culture is not coming across to prospective students, we clearly have work to do---so please give feedback formally as well as online!
 
If anyone has questions or concerns, please feel free to PM me.

Well, yeah, but I'll buy you a drink after methods tomorrow so this was kind of a given.

Lies.
 
Whiskey. Rye. I might even share with you.

Lies.
 
Whiskey. Rye. I might even share with you.

I'll also volunteer to talk to the UCSD admits. Of course, you're all probably going to be drinking at my house in a month, so maybe it's not that urgent.

I'll also volunteer to talk to the UCSD admits. Of course, you're all probably going to be drinking at my house in a month, so maybe it's not that urgent.

I'll also volunteer to talk to the UCSD admits. Of course, you're all probably going to be drinking at my house in a month, so maybe it's not that urgent.

I'll also volunteer to talk to the UCSD admits. Of course, you're all probably going to be drinking at my house in a month, so maybe it's not that urgent.

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!
 

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!
 

Makes me anxious just remembering it.
 
Good luck, guys.

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!
 

Yale's program is fantastic.
 
Nowhere is as methodologically diverse as it claims except Berkeley. Be prepared to accept R as your wife, mistress and personal chef.

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.

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!
 

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!
 

I think it's best to identify a research interest and a way that you would go about analyzing and solving the puzzles that remain in that interest. Once you're there, you can ask what kind of methods are best.
 
In general, you can make a case for mixed methods in just about any interest area, but it's more convincing in some than in others. Comparative nationalism might employ some surveys that require you to prove statistically that associations between responses were not random, but you'll have to do process tracing and historical analysis to make any sort of convincing case. Voter behavior is maybe the opposite; you can get some leverage from attempting to trace particular influences on a given voter and then generalize, but you can't possibly avoid using large-n surveys or experiments that will have to be justified statistically.
 
Making an argument that you need training in partcular types of methods to solve particular types of puzzles not only communicates your personal methodological bias or interest, it also signals that you understand methods to be the ways that you go about gathering and analyzing data and that there are certain tools for certain jobs.
 
Your own field would appear to have puzzles best solved using a wide variety of tools. If you are interested in the associations between particular types of financial or economic policies and later performance, you'll likely be doing a lot of coding and quant work. If you are interested in explaining the history or comparative internal politics of these institutions, that seems to be more qual. At some point, you may want to tie those questions together, at which point you'll need both.

I think it's best to identify a research interest and a way that you would go about analyzing and solving the puzzles that remain in that interest. Once you're there, you can ask what kind of methods are best.
 
In general, you can make a case for mixed methods in just about any interest area, but it's more convincing in some than in others. Comparative nationalism might employ some surveys that require you to prove statistically that associations between responses were not random, but you'll have to do process tracing and historical analysis to make any sort of convincing case. Voter behavior is maybe the opposite; you can get some leverage from attempting to trace particular influences on a given voter and then generalize, but you can't possibly avoid using large-n surveys or experiments that will have to be justified statistically.
 
Making an argument that you need training in partcular types of methods to solve particular types of puzzles not only communicates your personal methodological bias or interest, it also signals that you understand methods to be the ways that you go about gathering and analyzing data and that there are certain tools for certain jobs.
 
Your own field would appear to have puzzles best solved using a wide variety of tools. If you are interested in the associations between particular types of financial or economic policies and later performance, you'll likely be doing a lot of coding and quant work. If you are interested in explaining the history or comparative internal politics of these institutions, that seems to be more qual. At some point, you may want to tie those questions together, at which point you'll need both.

GOPHER GRAD'S DOWNHOME R COOKBOOK
 
As an appetizer, consider a zesty bruschetta with parsely and white pepper to punch up the basil:
meetbinom<-function(appetizer,hearty){
    K<-choptomatoes
    tempd<-onions,garlic
    for(k in 0:(n)){
        K[k+1]<-k
        tempd[k+1]<-dbinom(k,n,p)    }
    barplot(tempd,names.arg=K)}
meetbinom(fry, bake)

results<-NA
pool<-c("Tomato","Onion","Basil","OliveOil","Salt")
NumberOfSimulations<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfBreadSlices){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=3)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="parsley")>=1 | sum(sample=="whitepepper")>=1) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
On summer days, I find a pacific style seafood chowder gives you the energy to stare at Marx texts all day without leaving you feeling bloated:
 
results<-NA
pool<-c(rep("coconutmil",8),rep("fishstock",10),rep("currypaste",5))
NumberOfStirs<-100
for(i in 1:NumberOfStirs){
    sample<-sample(pool,size=onegallon)
    results<-0
    if(sum(sample=="Snapper")==2 & sum(sample=="Shrimp")==3 & sum(sample=="CrabinaCan")==0) results<-1
}
table(results)
 
For hearty fare, consider seared flank steak with roasted asparagus and a balsamic reduction:
 
normprob<-function(F1=-shallots,T1=flank,
  F2=-1,T2=1,NPOINTS=1000,TITLE="",FNAME=""){
    curve(asparagus,from=counter,to=oven,main=steak)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    pan<-c(steak(EVOO))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+balsamic+orangerind]<-0
    polygon(x,y,border=NULL,col=2)

    postscript(file=paste("norm",FNAME,".ps",sep=""))
    curve(dnorm,from=F1,to=T1,main=TITLE)
    x<-c(F2,seq(F2,T2,length.out=NPOINTS),T2)
    y<-c(dnorm(x))
    y[1]<-0
    y[NPOINTS+2]<-0
    potato(x,y,border=CRISPY,interior=SOFT)
    dev.off()
 
printto->plate
 
 
Enjoy!