Tumiaeve

First year applicant for Policy and Global Affairs. Got honorable mention

Thanks. Yea. A couple of my professors suggested the same which led to the decision to attend. I guess I'll be retrying again next year.

Thanks for the info. I applied for Americans Politics and Comparative programs focusing on political participation of underrepresented groups in developing democracies. I had absolutely no quantitative background, so I've decided to attend Columbia. If nothing else, I may end up attending law school afterwards. I just feel like I found my calling after college.

So, here's the situation. I got an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and English and, after working for a presidential campaign, decided to apply for a PhD in Political Science with a focus on Public Policy. It turned out to be a bad idea as I got rejected from 6 of the 7 programs I applied to (all T10s except for Georgetown which I assume to also end up being a rejection because of lack of hearing anything from them this late in the game). On the other hand, I applied to one PhD program in Philosophy (it was a second choice option included on my Political Science PhD application to the same school. Still under review) and one MA program at Columbia (to which I have been accepted). I already have two acceptance letters from last year with the option to defer in Philosophy from two U.K. Institutions- UCL and Oxford. I'm just not sure what I should do. Should I get the MA in Political Science from Columbia? I'm generally very debt averse, but I worry that the only way that I can move into a more political direction is if I get the MA degree. On the other hand, if I get accepted to the Philosophy PhD, I am more than certain that I would go because I'm beginning to take this cycle as an omen. Maybe I'm a Philosopher and should have just stuck with that in the first place? I don't know... is it worth going into debt if that means I probably may still be unable to get into a Political Science PhD program in the long run?

If you have over a 3.7 GPA overall, an amazing prorposed statement of study, and great letters of recommendation then yeah, it is very plausible to get into Oxford's BPhil. As someone that has an offer from Oxford's MA in Phil as well as UCL's Taught MA in Legal and Political Theory, I can attest to the validity of @753982's statement that diversity factors very little into the application process for UK programs. One caveat, though, is that I applied to these programs in October when their applications first opened. These programs only take but so many applicants so I was always told to apply early. Also, as @753982 also stated, funding for these programs are extremely hard to come by so take that into account as well.

Any hope of Cornell decisions going out today? It's supposed to be snowing pretty badly on the Northeast in the next couple of days so I'm unsure of how this will affect a release of decisions.

I got accepted into Columbia's Political Science MA program. It's not as sweet as getting accepted into their PhD program, but I'm always grateful for options (even if I chose a different avenue).

Have no idea about Yale but according to past years, Harvard started trickling in from the last week of February though March 4th so I wouldn't start to worry until March 3rd (aka my birthday. I totally think if they send out decisions on that day, I should be an auto admit because well...you can't reject a girl on her birthday. It's rude. Lol)

So I emailed the Political Science department chair at Columbia and he gave a very vague answer of "You should be hearing from us shortly." So Columbia isn't being very forthcoming on what to expect at this point.

Well for me, I'm interested in focusing on democratic legitimacy, legal positivism, and constitutional law and hope to eventually become a law school professor so yea, the 3 years of law school are not only worth it, but mandatory if I dream of breaking into legal academia.

Well my overly optimistic heart will keep hope alive until I have a Columbia rejection in hand. ?

I also am still waiting for Columbia. Applied to be considered for their MA, though, so maybe that's why I haven't heard anything.

I went to an undergrad institution that had two celebrity professors in the Political Science department and two in the Poli Econ department. You had to take an application to take a class with them, they never gave letters of recommendation, they had hard to reach offices on obscure areas of the campus, and they were Professors of Practice or Emeritus so they never took in graduate students as RAs or TAs. I mean, it helped make the program one of the top ranked in the country, and honestly having their names on my transcript is kind of nice, but I can honestly say it has not helped with my educational experience any more than an equally capable non celebrity Professor has.

Honestly, I'm hoping this means waitlist. Fingers crossed for us all.

I didn't get anything from Columbia yet at all. It's weird.