Dreamer109

School Name: The New School for Social Research
Subfield IR
Funded/not funded: Partial Funding
Type of funding: Tuition Remission (75%)

So in other words, don't be a dick while you are visiting.

From what I have seen, Texas A&M and Penn State have good placements. Not amazing placements, but still good. As long as you are ambitious and motivated, I think you could make a great go of it with either option. Really, it comes down to do you want to take a risk and take the Masters from Chicago or NYU and maybe get into their Ph. D. programs down the line or take the sure fire bet and just go for A&M or Penn State now?
If it were me, I would go with Penn State or Texas A&M. The road will be rockier for stellar placement, but as long as you stay motivated, you will get what you want. Between the two, it sounds like Texas A&M would be the better fit of the two. Mainly because if your ultimate goal is academia then you should focus your attention on that and worry about private sector if academia doesn't pan out. You can still get a rock solid private sector job with an A&M degree. It just seems the best of all worlds. 

So in other words, don't be a dick while you are visiting.

So in other words, don't be a dick while you are visiting.

I'm not sure if Duke is more prestigious that NYU. It is similar.
Duke has a good methods sequence/training as well. There are a lot of people who do advanced methods that went to Duke and some methodologists as well. As far as I know, the methods training/focus is different. At Duke, students take classes in the stats/computer science department, so they focus on statistics, Bayesian statistics, machine learning, etc (Duke has one of the best stats departments in the country). NYU focuses more on causal inference and experiments, though you have Spirling doing text analysis and Rozenas is a Duke PhD so he does more statistical modeling. 
Your focus should be more on your substantive interests (American, Comparative, IR) and look for a couple of people who could be your advisors (so associate level, maybe full professor as long as they are not retiring, and some people that are about to get tenure). Try to ask them about their current projects and see if they co-author with graduate students. You can also try to talk to their students during the visiting weekend. Ask about people leaving/retiring (I know J Larson is leaving NYU, for instance).
 
 
 
 

Some with money do give more benefits to people they particularly want to recruit. I've heard of people that have negotiated at UCSD. But I'd be careful/very polite because some schools -- public and private -- make the same offer to everyone in order to promote collegiality and fairness.
That said, some public schools have special fellowships, but those are usually part of a special contest awarded at the university level and nominated by the department.
Some departments do have the possibility of putting you in RA duties rather than TA duties, or they might be able to give you like a small research fund to get reimbursement for books, travel to conferences, or field work. If there are centers affiliated to the political science department, those might be able to give you a bit more money, though that could come with strings attached. You could inquire about summer funding (most schools provide 9-month stipend, but you still have expenses during the summer). 
 
 
 
 

Trying to get a sense of the number of schools who haven't given their decisions yet. I'm waiting on NEU

School Name: George Washington
Subfield: CP
Funded/not funded: Funded
Type of funding (fellowship or assistantship or combination): Assistantship

She said Yes!!! She is Yale. Claiming an admit, slightly hysterically. 
Edit: notified by POI email. 

0a/0w/1r/7p so you are not alone 

I'm still waiting on a pretty significant amount, though with 3 of the schools people have posted results and I haven't heard anything either way. 

Man am I bad a poetry. But I can give it a go.
December
It is complete
A process, I hope to never repeat
Ten potential schools in sight
My future, hopefully, looking bright.
Waiting

January
Waiting, Waiting, Waiting
My hopes slowly fading
February the time expected
Still the fear of being rejected
Still Waiting

February
The first five letters come in
My head is in a spin
Acceptance, Rejection, a mixed bag
My future, dreams, and shoulder being to sag
The End, still waiting

March
What is to come, I do not know
Why must these final schools be so slow?
My dreams and aspects simultaneously high and low
Still waiting for those final crushing blows
Still Waiting

AND WITH THAT I have written my first poem since my junior year of high school AP English class.

The feelings of fear, acceptance, rejection, elation, and extreme situational depression can be felt on each and every page. It is like a roller coaster made out of academia.

Man am I bad a poetry. But I can give it a go.
December
It is complete
A process, I hope to never repeat
Ten potential schools in sight
My future, hopefully, looking bright.
Waiting

January
Waiting, Waiting, Waiting
My hopes slowly fading
February the time expected
Still the fear of being rejected
Still Waiting

February
The first five letters come in
My head is in a spin
Acceptance, Rejection, a mixed bag
My future, dreams, and shoulder being to sag
The End, still waiting

March
What is to come, I do not know
Why must these final schools be so slow?
My dreams and aspects simultaneously high and low
Still waiting for those final crushing blows
Still Waiting

AND WITH THAT I have written my first poem since my junior year of high school AP English class.

Email from Georgetown, recommended for admission.

Unfortunately
Unfortunately, we cannot... Unfortunately
Are unable to recommend... 
We attract the best: brighter, younger things. 
We cannot extend
An invitation to you, unfortunately. 
Many thousands of qualified applicants — 
And then there’s you.
What’s a committee to do? 
Dossiers on dossiers, friends of friends
Commend them to us in the millions:
The quickest, steeliest, wiliest applicants you’ve ever seen, 
Sharp-elbowed and ravenous.
They’ve got the stuff, and what it takes. 
But not you.
We can’t say yes, and them’s the brakes. 
Somewhere else you’d do — 
Just not with us. Unfortunately.  
 

Man am I bad a poetry. But I can give it a go.
December
It is complete
A process, I hope to never repeat
Ten potential schools in sight
My future, hopefully, looking bright.
Waiting

January
Waiting, Waiting, Waiting
My hopes slowly fading
February the time expected
Still the fear of being rejected
Still Waiting

February
The first five letters come in
My head is in a spin
Acceptance, Rejection, a mixed bag
My future, dreams, and shoulder being to sag
The End, still waiting

March
What is to come, I do not know
Why must these final schools be so slow?
My dreams and aspects simultaneously high and low
Still waiting for those final crushing blows
Still Waiting

AND WITH THAT I have written my first poem since my junior year of high school AP English class.

The feelings of fear, acceptance, rejection, elation, and extreme situational depression can be felt on each and every page. It is like a roller coaster made out of academia.

Dear Mr.,
It is with delight I inform you,
The submitted application is under review.
Acceptance it is not,
As you may have first thought.
In fact,
Decision will be due,
In a month or two.
But we may place you on a waitlist,
Just to see if we are the school,
You really wanted to go to.

The feelings of fear, acceptance, rejection, elation, and extreme situational depression can be felt on each and every page. It is like a roller coaster made out of academia.

The feelings of fear, acceptance, rejection, elation, and extreme situational depression can be felt on each and every page. It is like a roller coaster made out of academia.

Hey, look, we're on our 100th page on this thread! 

Some more stories / things to not do:
- Suddenly show up unannounced at the department without an invitation and ask to meet with students and profs 
- Tell everyone at visit that you already decided to attend somewhere else and you just want a free vacation to this city
- Tell everyone at visit that they are just your safety school / that you really wish you could get into School X instead
- Make unreasonable demands on the time of the host grad students / take advantage of host students' desire to be a good host
- Make sexist/racist remarks to visiting students (in the example I had in mind, this was actually done by profs[!!!!], not the visiting students)
- Being rude to the non-research support staff (e.g. admin assistants) that actually did all the work to plan the visit in the first place (tip: the admins are probably the most important people in the department in terms of getting stuff done, especially when you're a student that need help)
- After receiving clear instructions from the admin staff, booking a first class plane ticket and expecting full reimbursement
Fortunately, these cases are quite rare: the list here comes from my and some of my colleagues, which means for these bad cases there were also several hundred visiting students that were perfectly professional, courteous, friendly, interesting, etc. When I was a student, I always looked forward to visiting students day because I'd get to meet so many awesome people that would be future colleagues, whether in my department or elsewhere (we'd meet up again at conferences and such). So while there are some jerks out there, the majority of people are actually great, thankfully
And the last point is also a reminder that even if you don't choose a particular school, the people will still be colleagues in your field. If you stay in academia, the current students and your fellow visiting students may end up as your lifelong colleagues: they will serve on review boards for your grants/conference proposals/etc, they will choose who to invite to their dept colloquia, they will peer-review your papers, they might get asked to be your external letter writers in a hiring case or a tenure/promotion case etc. For the above "do not do" items that happened to me, I still remember who they are! So, really, don't be a jerk!!

It has been painful. I got four letters out the gate, first week of February. That was followed by nothing for weeks. i just want some closure so I can get to work on planning the move and what not... and yeah one or two more acceptances would be amazing!