uncle_socks

Unless anything has changed, I think this is right. Based on older patterns, this is probably what happens. Northwestern and NYU get into this mess every year where they admit WAAAAYY before they reject and they're super vague about timelines.

there's a person who posted on twitter (and based on their bio it is likely they're an americanist) who got into UT Austin, for all the subfield counters.

It certainly makes you seem professionalized to certain departments though, many of whom have (maybe unfairly) certain ideas about what legitimate, worthwhile research is. Trying to apply to NYU or Chicago Harris or something by declaring that you want to do 100% qualitative methods to study public opinion or something and it's clear that the applicant doesn't have a clear grasp of what political science (at that department) inherently is. That said, most applicants won't do something that egregious. I certainly did not know what causal inference and whatever was before starting in my program and now that I think about it, a lot of my application components were cringe. And that was fine. But I was at a disadvantage. I'm just saying there are a bunch of these ways that people (predominantly ones from privileged schools/people who have always known that they wanted to get a polisci phd) signal "hey I'm ~~~~qualified~~~~" for programs (let alone, the most competitive ones), not that they are necessary nor sufficient conditions for admissions.

I'm thinking specifically about things that you do in everyday political science, but if you come from a lower ranked undergrad you might not encounter (where going to a PhD is highly uncommon) : how to write a research paper, like how to structure it, how to write like an academic having methods training beyond like very basic OLS or chi-squared tests knowing what to say in the statement of purpose (ie no "I want to change the world through my research" lmao) having read political science papers before (lots of undergrads just read textbooks/an occasional monkey cage article for example) knowing where the field is, methodologically (ie "causal inference" or "identification strategy" means something to you) knowing what the current frontiers of research are in your subfield (and importantly, whether the questions you pose in your SOP are "solved")

Well that depends! If you're a 4.0 Princeton grad who has professors who love him but scored 150/150, then leaving them off is advantageous. If you're a 3.6 (not a UC or Mich level) state school grad who has less pre-PhD "professionalization" and knows less about the keys to creating a "winning" app who could've scored 167/167, then leaving them out certainly hurts. My prediction is that the removal of the GRE is going to only help "safe" candidates who know already how to craft stellar applications and (for a lack of a better way to say this) have been groomed for a PhD, many of whom already come from positions of privilege (or at least have been eyeing the PhD for years) That being said, if you're in theory and are applying to schools that don't force theorists to take the full or most of the quant sequence, then that's probably a different story because they can get a measure of your reading/writing ability through the SOP and writing sample.

I'm aware, I just wanted to clarify the distinction between decisions and admits because it's helpful to know when to stop holding out hope for (I know personally holding onto false hope made me a very very anxious mess when I went through the process). It's cruel when programs send rejections and waitlists much much later than admits. As I've noted before, NYU does this thing where PhD rejects are sent to the MA pool, and aren't told that they're rejected from the PhD program until very late. However, when you inquire with the department, they'll tell you something vague along the lines of "final decisions are pending," making people think that they might get a PhD accept, even though like the NYU admit weekend RSVP deadline has passed. But every year, people on this forum hold onto hope. I just clarified "top" (and here I mean maybe ~25ish) because it's what I personally have experience with and because these are the most discussed schools on here.

Princeton in a usual year admits ~40-50ish. We just don't hear about most of them on here.

most top American programs do not send out admits in batches that span across days. they send notifications in batches (which means if you're rejected, you probably have to wait a few days/weeks/months to hear back, but if you're admitted, you hear back in close proximity to others).

Princeton is almost assuredly trolls, this is over a week earlier than usual, and they admit 40-50 people in a regular year so the fact that no one is claiming it in the thread is suspect (I also haven't seen anything from polisci twitter on it either). They admit so many people that in past years, there's at least a couple of people on the thread who will claim acceptances. Northwestern could be legit, though they have a slight reputation for trickling out admits, but they do start early.

you don't apply to PIs in political science and interview days are very rare in our field (and many schools that interview some applicants don't interview everyone they admit). For the most part, for at least the top ~25 schools, if it's been a couple of days since the wave of notifications of acceptances have gone out and you haven't heard back, you're either waitlisted or going to be rejected. Some schools are super evil about prolonging the wait time (I'm looking at NYU, because they then put you into the MA pool but tell you "final decisions haven't been made", as well as Northwestern). Some departments do have field coordinators email people instead of the chair of the adcom, but these come out within 1-2 days of each other if not mere hours. Sometimes, someone with an "in" in the department will hear back informally before the general public, but I think people here on this forum are pretty good at indicating when that's the case. It's not fun to say, but for at least the top schools, if you see admissions out (or if people indicate that their online portal has changed) and it's been a day or two and you haven't been contacted, it's highly likely a rejection.

MIT too

RIP eta: she's not officially housed in polisci (but i'm under the impression that she has some involvement in that department), but rather the public policy school, so i'm not sure if she's referring to the polisci or the public policy PhD program

On the websites for both the Stanford and Michigan program, I don't see any indication that they have staff who aren't either {postdocs/people with PhDs} or {already affiliated with the university, be it current grad students, faculty, or a couple of university BA/MA graduates}, nor do I see any job postings related to these research institutes/a few of the affiliates that I bothered to type into the institutional job postings pages, though perhaps maybe you have insider information that I don't have. Which maybe speaks to a broader part of the problem is that those who know these jobs exist/when these jobs open/how to get these jobs are not representative of the applicant pool as a whole. I genuinely don't think that admissions committees are comparing strength of research experience beyond a certain threshold. Yes the threshold is getting higher, but it sounds like OP has met this threshold to me. They don't care nearly as much about your resume as they do your letters or your writing sample, where things like research experience (and more generally "does this person know what political science is and what they're getting into") are better conveyed. Assuming good GPA/GRE, They're only reading your ~1000 word SOP, 3 or maybe 4 letters, and skimming your writing sample. If those are good, then you're good. If you already have a solid writing sample and 3-4 awesome recs, taking a year to work on new projects doesn't add much because it won't really translate to much in your application beyond a CV line and maybe one sentence in the SOP. What it comes down to ultimately is not the number or even quality of research experiences that you've had, but rather adequately conveying that you belong in political science. Besides it's not just research experience that is becoming more and more vital for admission to top programs. Quant skills (which do sometimes come hand-in-hand with research experience, though tbh a lot of RA work is very menial) are also becoming more and more the norm as well and we could make a similar argument there. Almost everyone came in knowing R or Stata, like being really good at them. Everyone has had enough stats to the point that the regression course is not fully new information to anyone. Everyone (but NYU) tells you that it's okay to come into the PhD program having last taken high school stats/calculus but the reality is that that's becoming less and less true for top programs. The same goes for regional specialists: you're already expected to know the language well (if your research involves knowing another language). The same goes for regions generally, that you're expected to come in knowing about political systems and institutions of the places you're studying. They're not letting anyone in saying "I want to be a formal theorist" without proving that they're strong in formal theory and already have the math background. Yes, previous research expectations are higher, but so is everything else. Anyways I'm not saying that doing more RA work is bad, I'm just saying that there are other things (particularly higher paying industry work in polling, think tanks, or corporate quanty analyst work where the skills are also directly transferable to the PhD) that they could do that would probably yield them the same results, where the jobs are more plentiful and less cabal-ish. Like yeah, if you get the MIT predoc, absolutely take it if it pays well enough, but that's not necessarily an easy job to get. You're not doomed or anything near it if you have to go work in policy/polling/industry, which is the modal thing to do prior to the PhD anyways.

@munch22 I don't think we disagree with each other on the macro scale, these tweets are absolutely right. Top PhD programs want extensive pre-PhD prep that entails knowing how research in the field is conducted. However, OP already has a fair amount of research experience (evidenced by their saying that they have experience with research and are in the process of submitting articles to journals). RA work/senior thesis/relevant post-BA jobs are important for people coming out of undergrad, but this person already has that via a MA with political science work and enough research experience to submit research to journals. I don't think another post-MA gig will help them much, they've already ticked the box for "has a sense of what doing original research is like." Also, RA work isn't just about these full-time fellowships where you're an RA for a year. Being an RA can also mean working 5-20 hours with a prof during the school year or doing a school-wide summer research program. This whole twitter discourse (even beyond these two tweets) is about how there's an expectation that PhD applicants know how to political science, not that they've literally worked full time as an RA. I've gone through the process for the top schools and met tons of people at admit days. Most of us (the subset of people who aren't applying straight out of undergrad or an MA program) did not do full time academic RA work before getting in. Most did quant-type work for think tank/polling (non-academic) types of groups, which is the most common. Another subset did quant-type work for corporations. Another subset is the Teach for America and law-adjacent types. Even fewer had university affiliation(beyond those applying straight out of undergrad or straight out of an MA) were doing things like full-time RA/postbacs, and again, these people were already highly qualified and could've gotten in just as well if they had gotten any old job. I'm not super familiar with what kind of RA/research related roles you're thinking of. Immediately my mind goes to the roles already covered in this thread, the Stanford and MIT ones. I think there's a Dartmouth one too. I'm familiar with people who did full time RA type work at business and law schools at highly ranked schools. I'm also familiar with people who work in faculty-related sorta interdisciplinary labs (though again mostly at tippy top schools). I know econ predocs exist but I don't personally know of anyone coming into political science PhD programs with one of those. I'd love to learn that there's more out there, however, I'm not too familiar with what else is out there. tldr: Research experience is indeed vital, but OP already has this experience so I think they can do whatever they want in their off year and be fine.

I don't have familiarity with the MIT one so I'm not commenting on that. But most major universities (unless CHYMPS is all that is "major" to you) do not have tons of RA positions, and when they do, they are often very informal and go to graduates of that department/people who know someone. Political science faculty at R1 (CHYMPS types excluded) by large do not have money for an RA. Also the IPL at Stanford does not hire a full time RAs. The Stanford democracy focused lab hires a single RA. The Princeton one IIRC is for underrepresented minorities, so not too many people are eligible for that anyway. If you really want to stay close to academia, consider RAing/many of the other job titles that mean "person who does data work" in business schools, law schools, and economics (though again these will mostly be available at top schools only). RA hiring is generally incredibly strange in that 1. those who do them very often already come from very elite schools and 2. those who do them probably could've gotten into a top PhD program without it. My take on this is that postgrad RA work, especially if you already have experience in political science, doesn't matter all that much. You're not expected to have papers published or in R&R when you apply. PhD programs don't really care about how you are outside of your research ideas and what your letter writers say about you. It sounds like you already have a solid background, and unless you need more letters of recommendation, I don't think having an RA job will necessarily help you all that much. Many people in my program came from policy research or polling (so stuff like Pew or thinktanks), but some also came from irrelevant quantitative jobs. You get paid much more in the latter. To answer some of your other possibilities: Teaching? No, unless teaching is a job that generally interests you. Teaching experience is not very important for getting into a top PhD program. Working on articles? I mean sure this is okay but with the caveats that you're going to learn a lot in your first few years of grad school that your views on your current papers will evolve drastically. Also try not to be unemployed. Internships? Don't bother interning for like a politician or anything, but quant/policy/polling work in any field is marginally helpful and also pays money.

Getting published in real academic journals can be a big plus in showing that you're ready to take on a PhD. Getting published in an undergrad journal is nice, but won't move the needle much. That being said, most people who apply to polisci programs (even the very top ones) have nowhere close to a publishable paper, and it's not nearly as expected in political science to have publications like it is expected in CS or biology. Again, almost no one applying to PhD programs have published papers, and most who do have significant post-bac work like a literal post-bac or a masters.

Mine was 1260 words (2 pages single spaced, though I think I played with margins which is fair game) for every department that didn't have a hard word or page limit. I re-hashed things in my CV and my transcript a lot, but also talked about my research interests. I got in to most elite programs. I think sticking to 2 pages (doing whatever you want with spacing and margins) is the important point, though looking over my materials there were some that are 3/4 pages (the program probably demanded 1.5 or double spacing or something idk).

It's gonna depend on how hard your undergrad math/stats was and how hard your grad program is and what your inherent math talent is and what classes you took in undergrad. Diff EQ? not helpful. Linear algebra, real analysis? slightly helpful. ANOVA with linear algebra? Very helpful. Math stats? helpful. Design of experiments? Surprisingly unhelpful. The people who are going to have the easiest level are those coming in seriously thinking about being a methodologist, which means probably some past experience in math/stats/metrics beyond just the undergrad level. middling school undergrad -> tippy top program known for hard methods: it's probably gonna be kinda hard, and at least definitely harder than your undergrad. you can probably get by with studying less than the modal student but you can't expect to be the best kid in the class without trying (and you generally can't expect to be the best kid in the class even if you're trying). tippy top -> tippy top: same as above, but maybe a little easier if you have the right preparation. tippy top undergrad -> a school outside of like the top 15 or so: it's not going to keep you up at night. you can probably bank on being the best kind in the class without trying too hard. then again, if you go from a tippy top undergrad to a substantially lower ranked grad school, you made the wrong decision just generally.

While I do think that the above poster is a little annoying in hijacking seemingly random chance me threads with alarmist takes, I want to maybe step into their defense at least a little bit and reconcile my take with some other takes that are prominent in this forum. Hopefully it's not too garbled. What they are right about is that job prospects are very asymmetric and that the job market is...not good to say the least. My philosophy is very game theoretic, that you ought to do whatever is going put you in the best position in the future, from both a monetary and career trajectory standpoint. I gave up a job where I probably would've been able to break six figures by 26, but am in a PhD program because every reasonable future possible option will put me in an equivalent or better position, with respect to work satisfaction and salary. I want to be a professor, but am getting teched up so that if that doesn't work out, I can do data science work in industry. Maybe my thoughts are extremist, but these were some things I really thought about when trying to figure out whether grad school is worth it: Professorship, with a degree from anywhere, at any school, can never be guaranteed. We all know that the US job market is bad, but it's not like most of us can go to Canada, Europe, South America, or East Asia and get hired just by virtue of an American degree. The Canadian market is just as bad if not worse than the American market. European schools especially are very uh incestual and don't care for most American PhDs, especially if we don't have connections. No idea about the South American market, but I presume that your application is DOA if you aren't fluent in the native language. East Asian schools, while hiring individuals from American programs, are largely hiring back people from that particular country. The community colleges and unprestigious regional schools are the ones that each year lean heavier and heavier on adjuncts. R1 positions are relatively "safe" but even big state schools have adjuncts, grad students, and non-TT lecturers teaching many courses. If you have the sole intention of being a professor, even if you're willing to work literally anywhere, you need to change that mindset and be open to industry. In my field, there have been notable recent students from CHYMPS programs, with solo APSRs and AJPS publications and prestigious postdocs, who earnestly tried on the job market and got nothing. They did everything "right." They have industry jobs now, and that's fine -- they're not starving or anything, but anyone who thinks that they're for sure 100% going to get some kind of TT academic job is lying to themselves. Some people will look at placement numbers and see that program X (especially when X is middle-range program) has ya know 80%+ in industry jobs and think that "ah people just realize that they don't want to be professors" but that's really not true for a lot of them. They take these industry jobs because their probability of getting a TT job is outrageously low, coupled with the fact that whatever TT jobs they can get will pay poorly relative to [think tank/industry]. The appeal of industry is big, especially for PhDs who can get these tech/MBB jobs where the starting salary is $150k+, but even then, most who end up getting the PhD would prefer to teach if professorships paid just as well (they just don't, and once you're 30 you realize there's more to life than examining the relationship between vote choice and political party, like affording kids and stuff). You shouldn't go to a school unless most/all of your realistic preferred outcomes are only attainable to you if you go to that school. Obviously, yes, you need the PhD to be a professor. If you are admitted to a quant heavy top school, then if you want to work at Facebook doing experiments, then yeah a PhD is absolutely necessary. If you don't have connections and come from a no-name generic undergrad and get into a fancy-name school and want to get into MBB consulting, then yeah the PhD or mastering out from a PhD program is going to open that door for you as well. If you're going to take a lot of metrics/stats/CS classes on the side and go into data science then again a PhD is cool. If your PhD work isn't getting you these practical skills or fancy school names, and you don't have any backup-to-professorship options that require a PhD or at least an MA, then you really need to think long and hard about whether it's worth 5-7 years of your life. I guess this condenses down to the idea that going to a top program is doubly important if you want a job that you couldn't have just gotten out of undergrad or with a generic MPA.

Yeah if you want an honest shot at the CHYMPS you want to push that combined GRE closer to 330 than 320: just a couple more points on each section would be really helpful. You're probably fine on the lower end of the top 25 as is, but if you think you can improve on the GRE (especially quant section), a top 10 school isn't out of the reach.

my pet theory is that they took a sloppy average or something. Maybe there were international GPAs included (I know India is out of 10) or there were some MIT grads (GPA is out of 5 there), or maybe they had some people with masters and undergrads and summed both of those but only divided by the amount admitted. The 4.1 average is so obviously suspicious and incorrect though when you compare with data from UCSD or Duke.

Every school in the US has their own way of calculating GPA. Some give extra points for an A+ (and for example law schools calculate undergraduate GPAs this way), and that's usually how averages can be above a 4.0. That being said, I doubt that their real average is actually that high: anything above a ~3.8 good for similar programs.

It means that one person once got in with a 150, not that it's a regular occurrence at all. Even though most programs say they don't have an explicit minimum score, they will be very quick to toss out your application if you don't meet some kind of range unless there is a big obvious reason to not do so. Like they'll glance at your CV, but not with the same consideration that someone with a 330 GRE is getting. It's incredibly likely that those admitted with 150s have something else (or many other) incredible going for them, such as independent funding, published papers in top journals, HYPS pedigree and amazing recs from HYPS professors, a Yale prof who knows the student and is willing to convincingly vouch for them in front of the admissions committee.

IMO if penn doesn't entirely shut down polisci PhD admissions, they'll probably only accept individuals who have external funding sources like NSF or military sponsorship. I don't think they'll hand out offers with the expectation that anyone will self fund. In other news, Pitt has cancelled what seems to be a lot of humanities and social science departmental admissions for the year: https://www.asgraduate.pitt.edu/admissions

For the most part that low in quant is going to be a non-starter for any program that has its theory students take any required quant-oriented courses. Yale looks like it doesn't require you to take the quant sequence but you'd still have to take an AP or Comp or IR class, which they're going to think is out of your depth with a 147. This won't help contextualize your GPA in a good way: it'll make admissions committees think "this person graduated with high grades but struggles with high-school level math," which is not a good look. Also, faculty very much don't want to evaluate anyone's chances of admission, and you do not want to reach out to faculty about GRE scores in particular.