kaykaykay

I do not want to bully you, but you have not thought your question through do you? I mean seriously? You think all these people are struggling through the GRE because they cannot remember all the answers of two practice tests? I would suggest that you read more about the exam before asking these questions, let alone taking it (an advice I should have taken).

^ good point! if there are assistants in the field that you are looking at it can actually mean that the department is investing in that area and trying to build the subfield. but you need some tenured professors too. you should find at least 2-3 people (I would say 3) in a department who you could imagine working with if you want to have a department with a good fit.

yes she is very helpful. Also maybe you have already seen it but there is also a useful thread on adcoms revealing some hidden aspects of the selection process on the poli sci forum. good luck with your applications,

just see what Penelope Higgins wrote about AW scores at the Poli sci forum. PH served as an adcom before. I would really not waste any more energy on the GRE if I were you, but of course it is your choice

do not feed the troll. And newcomers please please read through the 18 pages of "conversation" before deciding whether you want to contribute to this thread or not.

yes, I am not sure what your question is. Are you thinking about a terminal MA before the PhD (not an MPP!? ) ? Then I would suggest to apply to both types of programs and see where you get in, and what kind of fellowships will you be offered. Your GPA seems to be competitive, in my opinion your Q GRE is a bit low but the adcoms will evaluate it based on what you want to do and other parts of your application so it may be ok.

it is possible to transfer in your first year. but I would actually look around the university first if it is only for financial reasons.often there are RAships for summer, check how other students in your program survive. I mean you should have negotiated before accepting the offer if you liked the place, that is what will be on everyone's mind. (adcomms as well as professors at this place)

the GRE is difficult for everyone so it is easy to use it to cut people with it- in sciences anything but 800Q for instance is bad. Compared to that social science/ humanities majors have a slack (like over 650-700 should be ok depending on the major). Also you have to consider the supply side - where there is a competition and universities can chose among many strong candidates with high scores they will do so.

Relax, poli sci departments do not care about the writing score. Your GREs are stellar, move on to your SOP, writing sample (these will prove that you are competent in English) and gathering your recommendations.

start up costs can run very high, and I for one had no start up funds so I had to survive those initial months on my own. here are some of my experiences: 1.If I could start again I would go for a furnished apartment, at least for my first year. I thought I would have to eventually buy furniture so why not at the start. However, I could not navigate the city, the furniture shop, my stipend arrived late, I did not have friends (yet) with cars, I had enormous homeworks etc, and I ended up sleeping on a blown up mattress for half a year (my room mate's). To my astonishment I learned that at least two other foreign students from my department-one in my year and the other one year ahead of me did the same (we are not even a very big department). Buying a bed in the US is very expensive, rather difficult plus there are bedbugs (I heard about them here first ) so getting a bed on craig's list is not really an option. Also later, when people were moving out so many great furniture was dropped at me. International student life and grad student life is about moving around. I had to throw away a lot of stuff too before and I think it is such a waste. But furniture give aways will happen only at the end of the year. Also to use craig's list you need a phone and some knowledge of the city where you live, I found. 2. I collected all the syllabuses ahead of time, I went to the library (before the school started) and I borrowed all available books for the entire semester. I like to own books as the other person but as a startup this seemed to be the most reasonable solution. Some of my classmates gave me big eyes, but hey those first month I had no cash. Next semester all the books were gone from the library by the time I checked, haha. 3. There are discount stores with left over stock where middle class Americans probably shop less often (well, I do not know) but it is really ideal for a grad student who is not designing a permanent home. Like Ross, TJMAxx etc, you can get a lot of stuff from small furniture, household appliances , kitchenware for really really cheap. Of course check whether they are in ok condition, not broken etc, but usually they are ok. 4. Get a club card in every shop you go. Ask if they are NOT credit cards though. I did not want them first because I thought I have to pay for them or something but they just give it to you even at your first shopping and you get discounts afterwards. 5. Look for 1 $ shops. For copybooks, pens and such they are perfect- I kept my school supply budget to the minimum for a while but it worked. 6. I had to borrow first from my university(which they do if you have a fellowship coming) and they have a pretty good system to do it, maybe your university will have it too, ask your graduate coordinator. 7. Check for the transportation discounts if you do not own a car, I was amazed when I found out how much I overspent on buses by not getting a pass on the first day. 8. Don't afraid to socialize with your American colleagues and ask them whether they can give you a ride to a shop.I did bring some American friends to one of the above mentioned shops where they went crazy shopping after they saw the prices! You will spend a lot of time together and they will understand that you are in a more difficult position than them. Also the international students one year above me gave me a lot of city specific and department specific pieces of advice- I found that those initial pub crawls and beers were good investment but everyone's experience is different .

well if they say they do not require it (if you are looking at programs outside the US) probably it does not matter (and you should not send mediocre scores). If it is a top 20 US poli sci program they will look at your GRE as it should be within a range..., sometimes of course people with lower GREs will get in but you probably do not want to gamble that you will be the one. If you check the poli sci board it is clear that there is some tough competition out there and everyone wants to apply to the top schools. Frankly while your econ major probably shows that you were not a lazy undergrad, 3.5 is also a borderline low GPA. You should improve the things that you can (GRE,SOP, writing sample) as much as you can so you will not end up cut just because of your numbers.

I am not sure if you were looking for this answer but if you want to get into a poli sci top 20 you should retake the GRE. Both your verbal and your math low, and while (I have to emphasize in this field) the AWA is not really counted you will be in the best case scenario a borderline case( your math may be ok depending on your field but with this verbal it is possible that you will end up in the reject pile). If your practice tests were better hopefully it was just a bad day for you ! Good Luck! (you should aim for V around 700 if you are a native speaker and a Q around 750... -AWA does not matter really if your SOP and writing sample are ok)

don't worry too much about the writing score. Schools do not worry about it. Some people say that any originality actually hurts your points As for the other parts of the exam you can overcome anxiety with some practice ..

you are reading too much into the emails. most people in political science will change their research topic during the graduate studies. in the US the professors do not take students because of their precise research topic, a committee decides. In your SOP of course you have to talk about what you are interested in -this tests whether you can identify an interesting topic and if you can express your interest clearly. But people will not really expect you to actually write your dissertation on that topic. You really cannot expect more than "that is fine" as a reply at this stage. What is more interesting to you is whether these people are going to stay in the places you are applying to and whether their rough interest is still aligned with yours.

1. Japanese summers are horrible, and he will be on a "vacation" so I do not think that you have to be hyper formal, but I would try to put on a short sleeved shirt with a pair of pants. It is not that terrible if you are in air-conditioning, and there are a number of places where there are air-conditioned underground tunnels in Tokyo. Also as a girl I often have to wear heels as a formal attire and changing from shorts to skirts and heels in the bathroom works all the time. (happily there are a lot of coin lockers around all main train stations in Tokyo) 2. I am sure he will not make you drink during the actual interview. If you are going out with the grad students you can always get a beer and do not really drink it. While I understand your concern about Japan beeing a good drinking place, you can always turn that into your advantage. You can recommmend nice places, you can interact with the professor/students in a relaxed environment, you may network with Japanese professors,students in your field etc. Japanese drinking is about bonding. and yes even if they do you probably should not get drunk. 3. I am not sure how much Japanese ability do you have and whether you want to "inflate" it based upon your post (I always think my Japanese is not so great but then I meet others who have never been there and I realize it is quite ok). I think it would be very strange if you would try to avoid normal human interactions, making this prof to order etc. On the other hand switching back and forth between languages is difficult even if you are fluent in both languages, so I do not think that it would be strange if you made mistakes in Japanese. Laugh about it. For that very reason there is a big chance that you will both speak English to the waitresses as well in my opinion. But I am not sure whether in Japan you can keep your level of Japanese a secret, even if the conversation is going to be in English their experiences will be about Japan, and they might make jokes related to the language, read signs or anything like that. Anyway, just be cool about the entire situation- if you manage live in Tokyo I am sure you will be fine.

well she clearly liked you. different schools and diffrent programs have different protocol about how much professors can influence the process. be happy for your new great connection(and keep her updated) but keep your game strong as you are still in a competition and spend enough time with your other applications as well, just in case (and trust me if you get into more than one place the feeling that they are competing for you is unbeatable). good luck!

you should ask this from econ majors too. in poli sci the competition is big enough that they do look at the V of foreign students. on the other hand no one cares about the TOEFL as that is usually high for serious applicants.

I was in the same situation as you. Of course you do not have to follow what I did. But I asked myself the question - what would happen if I didn't get in and my friend would get in to my dream school? Would I be happy for (and proud of) my friend, would this friendship last? I figured it would so we had some stress relief fun periodically we supported each other and we both got in. If your answer is negative just let the friendship go, and avoid this person in the application season and maybe beyond. If it is positive then talk to her or look at the bigger picture (how stressed your friend as well as you) when she is being super competitive and do not let it stress you out because an application is not defining your friendship. Just remember - most of the factors that will decide between the two of you (if it comes down to that but it has a very low, low chance honestly) are out of both of your hands and you are competing with many other people.Your respective conference roles will most probably not be the deciding factor etc..

tell your supervisor. I was in a similar situation and my supervisor. I told her and for my biggest surprise she seemed to be happy that some other prof wanted my help too .And this came in handy later when I could not work enough to the other prof because I had to work for my supervisor she cleared the situation.

As PH said before, your GRE scores seem to be kind of low for the first 4 schools. I do not know about Hopkins , UPenn and Maryland, maybe ok (?) and I think your GRE points are fine for the rest of them. If you feel like you can do better and you want to go to a top 25ish school you may want to retake it.

I have to add that the application process is a crapshot even if you are the best candidate. Usually there a lot of idiosyncratic decisions are made even if you make it to the last cut. So even if you are Ivy league material and we could (??) judge it by your numbers in the last cut there is approximately double of the number of students that they are going to take. At that level the adcoms are trying to put together a class, with balance of students/ professors, personal matters, geography , balance with previous years' classes, funding opportunities etc.

if you like the programs you got into try to talk to them, if you have good enough reasons they might let you start in the spring.

the ETS has a long explanation and some preparation tools on their website. Maybe you can start there.

My advisor asks me to write a couple of pages on a certain topic for him/her and takes parts out of it for his/her paper. But (s)he would not be unfair, anything beyond this has to come with coauthorship.

sorry your post is very jumpy and you have a lot of different questions, some of which should be in other forums. I found the US News Rankings the most easy to understand hence useful. http://grad-schools....ience-rankings. These are reputational rankings so they show what professors think about other grad programs, which may be good as they offer jobs as well. Till top 25-30 it is quite good. Your other possibility is to turn to he NRC rankings which are supposedly less subjective. This was done a couple of years back came out last year and people still debate about the methodology and what was left out from the algorithm, but you may find more information on different quality measures. PhDs from even lower ranked schools(below 50) like probably yours get jobs too but these jobs are on a lower tier , you should ask this in your school. These jobs can be quite satisfactory for those who are passionate about the subject . Again if you are still in school talk about your options with a professor probably one who has a PhD degree from an institution ranked at the level or higher that you are aiming for.