Hamb

While there are a fair amount of schools how seem to hold interviews, I think right now we're going to see a lot of them since schools that do hold interviews are more likely to hold them mid to late January. That way they have time to discuss the interview and overall application while making final decisions to go out in February.

Congrats on the interview and good luck!

Nice catch on "Deparment", both posts used it so that's a confirmed troll. edit - Princeton result, UGA result, and one of the two OSU results also misspelled "department" (though UGA/OSU this time of year isn't surprising, and cutaway has posted about their interview with OSU). I definitely wouldn't want to discourage everyone from asking about other programs though! In that case, the results board is very useful in indicating that decisions are rolling out, but for the very top schools it's safe to say we have a couple of weeks to go.

There's also 3 Columbia acceptances on the results page, but nobody claiming them either. More than likely still just a troll. The poor grammar in both of the Yale descriptions is eyebrow raising. Personally I think for top 10 schools until someone comes in to claim their result in the thread the standard operating procedure until mid-February should be to ignore them and not even ask for anyone to claim it in these threads. While there is a small chance Yale decided to break the norm for every top 10 program and go a month earlier than previous years somehow, I think it's fairly unlikely. Every time we talk about these more outlandish results on the board we're just feeding the troll more.

Yep, I'm on the lookout as well. Not feeling great about my chance but would be pretty exciting!

Just to add onto the expected results this week, GWU has historically sent out interview invites the Tuesday/Wednesday after MLK day.

I did, and thank you! I'll probably need it given their normal admissions standards, but I'm hopeful regardless.

Really crossing my fingers for a troll, I know last year they had someone who would post 2-4 results sometimes. But that might just be my hopeful optimism, maybe Columbia changed up their procedures this year. Will be interesting to see if anyone claims one tomorrow.

Nice eye. Either Columbia is a month earlier than normal or the Princeton troll strikes again. Nothing in my application portal has changed for Columbia, but who knows.

Agreed on the review point. I managed to find a minor error in my writing sample despite reading it dozens of times and having friends/family read it. How did I never catch that??? One of my LoR writers sent me the letter for review, and while I recommended no changes, it was an odd experience. I think I'm glad to have read it, as it was as nice as most of us hope, but at the same time something about reading it was strange and kind of hard to articulate. I had the same regarding cross discipline professors, though I'm from a more interdisciplinary background than most. Should be interesting to see how it turns out! I can see it hurting at some schools and helping at others, so good luck!

Looking through last years thread, the earliest posts about acceptances and interview requests were during the 3rd week of January. So starting next week it's likely that results start to trickle in. Though I agree, the big wave won't start until late January!

Just throw the name of the University in along with Political Science and it should show. https://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Political+Science Alternatively, if you dig through past years versions of threads like these users typically make others aware that they received notification of their result, so you can check the date.

Since we're on the topic of GRE, just thought I'd share my thoughts. I've had a strange experience with GRE scores throughout the process, I'm interested to hear if anybody feels the same. The scores I received were better than expected on test day (mid 160's V, low 160's Q, 6 AWA), but then over time I can't help but feel as if they're too low. On one hand I know there are applicants who would gladly trade scores. On the other hand I look at those with high 160's V, mid 160's Q, and 6 AWA and think I should have scored there with another week or two of hard prep. Ultimately, I think my scores are fine and will not be what keeps me out of T10/T20 (though will not help me get in either). GRE scores are fickle in the way we attempt to have some sort of quantifiable way to rank ourselves compared to other applicants. We're told by virtually every program and the majority of past advice threads that our GRE scores are one of the least important aspects of an application, and yet they tend to stick out as one of the most tangible things to grasp to when looking at the chance of acceptance given past results. It's borderline cruel how long political science applicants have to wait compared to many of the hard science fields which found out before the holidays.

I think outside of people with scores in the 98th percentile+ in each section, we all probably wish we had retaken it to push the scores up a few points. At this point there's no point in worrying about it though!

I'd like to back up the recommendation from @TakeruK. If your biggest concern is actually your guilty conscience (as you've stated is the biggest factor) you tell them before the 3 month period is over. Inform them that you know you messed up, and that you deeply regret your mistake. Inform them that you'll help train or prepare any replacement and that it's been one of the biggest mistakes you've made in your professional life and express your sincere regret. If they decide to fire you, then your conscious should have little to no problem with it. If you take the alternative route of not saying anything until after the 3 month period, then just be prepared for that bridge to be burned forever. It may be necessary given your financial status and possibility of finding another job to hold out until you start your Ph.D. program, but obviously accept that you'll have put them in a bad position. To me, it's a matter of weighing how guilty your conscience actually is versus the financial requirements of staying on until June when you'll leave. In my opinion, waiting until after the 30 day period and then telling them is still just extending the lie until you lock them in to a point where it's apparently harder for them to get rid of you, which is also a scumbag move. Additionally, I'm not sure where you're from so look into this, but lying during your hiring process is often times grounds for terminating a contract. If you've signed a detailed contract, look into it because most decent companies protect themselves with clauses that include topics such as this. That's why it's not all that rare to hear about professionals 5-10 years into their career being fired when it turns out they lied about their degree despite an otherwise acceptable performance.

So this forum website is pretty strict with their editing policy, and users only have a couple of hours to edit their post before it's locked. For this reason, these threads in past years are posted in February and March. I think that's why everyone sticks to the standard application cycle thread. We should probably do the same, no?

Big time. I was surprised at how some apps came together and looked really impressive, while others felt weak. Didn't expect the level of variance I ended up seeing going into the process.

Joined a couple of you in the waiting game department today. Felt amazing to hit submit on that final one. Good luck to everyone submitting on deadline day tomorrow!

So we're 1 week out for the December 15th deadline. How is everyone feeling?

I've been wondering the same thing, as that's what I got on the Q section. My guess is that it largely is influenced by the quant focus of the program and the quant background we have. My guess is that we're above the "cut off" where the app doesn't even get a serious look, but on the lower side and needing some other quantitative support for the top programs. At least, that's what I'm hoping is the case.

Congrats to @deutsch1997bw and all those who've completed their apps! I still have 5 more to submit, 2 of the 5 are completed and 3 left to write a focused SOP for. The end is so near, only a few days worth of work. I think it's going to be a strange feeling to have all of this over after the last few months. Still it was nice to check in on the December 1st ones today to make sure everything was good and know those are out of my hands.

You know what, now that I look at it more I'm remembering the wrong school. There was one school that used the 25th-75th percentile of students accepted in their GRE reporting, but now that I'm looking at the UT program it wasn't them. If I come across which school it was again I'll let you know. Sorry!

Well, theory students also bring up the average verbal scores in all likelihood as well, not just bring the quant down lower. I think the top end and bottom end weigh each other out a bit though. For instance, Northwestern might accept some high end students that have 170/168 and high GPA's, who ultimately get into and attend a top 5 program instead. They also include international students GRE scores, who naturally tend to have a bit lower verbal/AWA scores. So naturally the average/median scores are not perfect, but IMO they generally do a decent job at highlighting the type of candidate that schools is looking for. I should note that the Texas way of approaching it, looking at the middle 50%, is by far the best IMO. It removes the outliers who have stellar applications and weak GRE scores, and also removes the highest students who might be more likely to go to a higher ranked school.

Probably a fairly decent assumption, although most programs are going to have higher quant requirements. Really wish I knew what the median scores for accepted students were rather than "minimum" at Northwestern. For comparison sake, average GRE for WashU which is fairly close ranking wise, is 162V, 161 Q, 4.2 AWA. University of Texas says average quant would be 75th-80th percentile (160/161) and verbal 90th-95th (162-165). I'd say for other programs around that ranking you can assume their quant will be more important and their verbal less important than northwestern, but that combined V+Q would be around 320ish for average GRE scores. Obviously minimum scores will be lower than average too.

I've tried to do some research on this topic, both on this specific subforum as well as gradcafe/other websites as a whole and I'm hoping some past applicants or faculty members who lurk here can give me some advice. I've read really conflicting things regarding potential POI's. Political Science doesn't operate under the same lab system as a lot of hard sciences do, and so it's always hard to know whether general advice is applicable to us or not. As such, I'm always skeptical of the "contact POI's" advice. From what I gathered, the general advice in political science is that it's a good idea to email a professor if you actually have a legitimate question regarding their research, but that if you're just contacting for the sake of contacting, that's typically frowned upon. Am I correct in arriving at this conclusion, or is this misguided? edit: Answered my 2nd question I think, so I'll just leave the 1st up.