kaykaykay

yep Canada asked for criminal clearance for a student visa.and ^ is a great link about DUIs. p.s. the US does not ask for criminal clearance for student visas, but I assume they run a background check themselves.

As an international student I find that American students in my program are very approachable. We are getting closer and closer as friends as we share a lot of school related experiences: PhD is tough and we are all in it together. Also we work on similar topics ,it is very lame but we share our suffering a lot. Strangely now with the global culture we share a lot of cultural experiences too. They are sometimes surprised. My advice: try to go to all parties what your cohort organizes and do not be afraid to speak up in group conversations.Just be yourself, talk about what you would be talking with your friends at home you are probably very similar to them(books movies etc). I think political topics are ok too, but probably it depends on the part of the country you are in. Anyway I think they are interested in how foreigners see America so they will not be offended. I sometimes make language mistakes, especially with my accent but we clear it up and we laugh (together ) on it. If I use slang they are very amused(ok if I manage to "get it" they sometimes do not even notice). Just realize that all your cohort (people who go into PhD) will be very educated and even if they do not know much about geography or foreign politics, culture they will be very intelligent. And that makes all the difference.

Well you have to see this in perspective.For you, this is a big thing and a big decision. For them less so. Sure they will not be very happy but this happens and they have a lot of students to worry about who actually attend so nobody will spend thinking about the news more than 5 minutes. Don't feel bad, the department spared some money for next year, maybe someone will get in who wouldn't have. levin00's email template sounds good.

well, I am not sure we are talking about the same thing. I know that at some schools as a principle they do not waive nonresident tuition for TAs. So there is nothing that the department can do for you because you cannot become a resident. In some schools tuition waiver comes with the TA ship. In this case if there is a chance that the school will give you a job if a big IF there are not enough people who accepted their offer. In any case usually administrators and profs know where the school stands. You can ask for statistics from previous years (whether they have international students) and you can try to shoot the international students(if any) an email to ask how do they finance themselves. (things are changing though be aware. a few years back non funded students could still get TAships). If there are no international students at all I would not be hopeful. p.s. please forgive me if we are talking about the same thing. I have never heard a school which does not announce whether TAs get tuition waivers or not, but that is maybe just me. By the way although it is not very nice you can withdraw for financial reasons even if you accepted an offer , as circumstances sometimes unfortunately change.

what makes you think you will not get into similar level programs elsewhere? Are you even trying to apply to another state? Funding is a problem in some CA public schools, especially for international students. You have only one way to know where there is no money: listen to what profs/ administrators have to say. If they say that there is no money probably there isn't.There is only one way there can be magically money: if for some reason waaaaay fewer students accepted the offer they made for them(and this does not apply if the TA ship does not cover tuition remission as in some schools). But some schools will offer very few spots for international students if at all to avoid this problem altogether.

If the situation is bad maybe you can use the ombuts person in your university if you have one. My understanding is that their role is exactly to smooth out conflicts like these. Try to see if they can help you .

" Which field you are major in? if you are tech guy, then you will know percentiles are not percentage " I am not a guy thank you. And my field is actually under my user name. The reason for looking at points and not percentiles is very easy: percentiles change and they are not really relevant as the adcoms want to find the best applicants from the application pool they have, not from the entire world. They will not compare two 161 points based on the percentiles, as the points are the same, they mean the same only the testing pool has changed. To give you an easy(?) comparison you cannot say that a train is faster than the one you saw yesterday because you see it when you are standing and not from a car as yesterday. Anyway, don't believe me if you do not want but as you can see I am already attending a program and I learned some things about the selection process after I got in.

No, just no. Adcoms are university professors. They are smart. They compare apples with apples (points with points). I have never heard anyone(professors) referring to percentages in my field. Moreover, they will compare the points to the points in your field (and the other applicants to the department) and not a hypothetical overall plane. I was told that my verbal score was low, even though I had over 90%. When I mentioned the percentage they shrugged their soulders. I was very offended at first but it was how they read the points..

I thought the second poster made a joke. Anyway theoretically speaking there may be some fields that are easier to get into than others, and there may be some fields that are easier to get funding. BUT in Phd acceptances your preparation is key so this theoretical comparison does not make any sense. Eg. who knows maybe it is easier(?) to get into engineering with funding but boy you have to have adequate math training , lab experience, etc... even to apply. So at the end it is not so easy.

check the ETS website, or call them. If I remember correctly the TOEFL takes ages to be corrected and you do not get preliminary scores when you finish.Some schools are ok with scores arriving somewhat later than the application deadline though if you write your testdate in and you have all the other material sent there in time.

I looked at these job options once. I found that getting an entry level job is very difficult for foreigners because of various visa issues. (they will not break themselves to get you a working visa for a RA job). Also they often want someone who can proofread and edit(you will have to work on other people's stuff) , which gives them a good reason to eliminate non native English speakers first. In any case if you speak Chinese maybe your language skills will be a good asset. Try to network in DC maybe someone needs you.

UCSD is the only UC to my knowledge which does not give tuition remission to TAs (impossible for international students). The others are fine.

1. In general Canadian and American Universities are invested in two different schools of teaching political science. US- much more quantitative and Canada much more qualitative (in general). decide what you want. 2. It seems to be much easier to get a job with US degree in Canada than with a Canadian in the US. (again think about where you want to work. if it is your country this does not matter) 3. Most PhDs enter with an MA in Canada- so the emphasis is much less on taking classes.You will start on with your research and have one on one interaction with your advisor. It is really important that you had a clear idea what you want to do and have an advisor (or more interesting people) that you want to work with before getting there. You will have few classes to figure these out. Again if you had enough of classes this may be what you want. 4.Look at placement in general and funding for international students carefully. Even big universities are not very clear about this! When do you have to start TAing? Living expenses? Size of cohorts/placement (do you want to work in jobs like the placements) 5.If the above post is correct - 20-30% of international students is a good ratio anywhere. you can ask the departments for admission statistics though. Asking for no GRE is good and bad at the same time probably. A lot of people may try who wrote a weak gre.(although I do not know this for sure) 6. Canada is a very livable country. There are great and diverse cities with a lot of cultural events. I think though that most American college cities are nice too.

short answer is : no. I was in a very similar situation as you and managed to transfer. Your reasons are very legit. Maybe you can get recommendations from the leaving faculty if they leave for good reasons because they can explain the exact situation in your department, as well as you can get into touch with some of your old recommenders if you update them about your problems. Of course you will compete with all new applicants though and may or may not get into the same departments as the last time so apply widely with new places in the mix.

just do a practice test and see where you stand. ets provides one as much as I know.

I am not sure about your program but I do not think that a 3.6 GPA is considered to be amazing. Check the opinion of your mentors about your file that is the easiest way to know how you fare.

Try to ask this question on the political science subforum for more and probably more accurate answers. My personal opinion: your stats are low across the board (low grad gpa low gre low undergrad gpa), and it is not clear from this description why you want to study East Asian politics all of the sudden. Do you speak any of the languages? Your preparation may be ok for some political psychology stuff. Getting into political science programs is extremely competitive and if you do not have some exceptional qualities that could convince some departments that they want you I am afraid that you have minimal chance to get into any decent program.

I think the competition for admission is more fierce in theory than in other subfields exactly because some departments try to limit the theory acceptances somewhat because of the scarcity of jobs. As much as I can see there are truly remarkable people in theory and they are there because they love what they are doing just like you.

Oh man here (s)he is again. Do not feed the troll!

Not really. This is grad school, if almost all schools "prefer" all grad students (even theorists) to take a particular class you can assume that there is a good reason for it. Those classes are designed to make you able to read political science articles with some quantitative analysis in them. If you have not done any calculus you will need that class no matter what your research is in just to be able to understand the other half of the poli sci research. I think you should still choose schools and advisors that do the kind of research you would like to pursue but do not eliminate schools because they force you to take a stats class.

Are you from this country? You sound very confused about recommendation letters. The prof asked you whether you want to stay or not probably because he was deciding what job to assign to you. Probably you got the one that needs 5 more years of work because you said you wanted to work with him. Asking for a random recommendation letter is almost rude.If he does not know why he writes it it will be perfectly useless anyway. If he likes you and you would have answered you wanted to go elsewhere probably he would have helped you in several ways even if you have screwed up with the research but you were intelligent and skilled. That is perfectly common. Well you made a social mess. I think you should talk to him as fast as possible, you should be very honest, humble and tell him that you will apply elsewhere too (nothing is sure in this life) and apply to your current place as well. Later he can fight for you in the recruitment phase.

students usually take 3-4 classes (3 hours each). you need to take 3 classes to be a full time student. if you TA or work on something some of these can be dummy units

Well, you have plenty of time to retake the GRE if you really think that was the problem with your first round of applications. Now, I think you will even be able to chose scores. I think you should ask your letter writers why do they think you did not make it last year. they may have a better understanding what went wrong as it seems they really think you have a shot next time.

if you have many additive scores that are graded strictly ,at the end grades will mostly naturally follow a curve.only really good students will do excellent work on every task. you just have to shift it if you feel like they deserve a better grade.

TOEFL screws you over even worse because there is a speaking part. If you are the first one to start everyone will hear your answers and you will have to write your essays why everyone is speaking. I know this is not much help but I guess it can give you some perspective on the GRE testing circumstances. there should be individual booths or something.