eggsalad14

I think Brown gets kind of severely punished on US News because they are decidedly not strong in much of the field, including some parts that are quite prominent within the field (weak quant school, not a lot of American subfield, (even though they are quite strong in other parts). US News ranks overall departments, not just specific subfields. That's why other specialized schools like Stony Brook also do worse than their placement suggests. Is this a flaw? Yes. But to say that's it's "pretty flawed from nearly all of the aspects" is wrong.

It's not really random. Places like Denver aren't ranked in US News because US news ranks Political Science programs (as well as the top 15 IR subfields within political science departments). Denver isn't ranked because it's the school of international studies, not the department of political science. While it's pretty similar to IR, it has very very little resemblance to the rest of a political science department.

Your app if it had all three will be classified as complete. The fourth may or may not be (but let's be real, it probably will be) read, but since you had all the required materials on time, you're completely fine.

So what exactly is your question? If you want "essential quant topics" to cover, I need to know more about what your goals with them are. There's a lot going on in the quant side of political science (not to mention all the stuff going on in statistics), so it helps to know whether you're just trying to learn enough to have an idea of what's statistically going on in Political Science, or if you're trying to learn enough to run these statistical methods on your own, or if you're trying to learn enough to become Gary King. About a causal inference course, all I can say is you should take it if you can. Is it a course in the statistics department? If so, you may need to learn some other math and stats before you'll be qualified to be in it.

I know that, but what topics are entailed in OLS?

What does your definition of OLS entail? Have you done hypothesis testing? Interaction terms? Diagnostics (like VIF, collinearity, leverage)? Multiple regression? Strategies for choosing the best model (ie stepwise comparison)? Basic stats for freshmen will probably be easy for you. If a lot of what I said above is unfamiliar, a first regression course in a stats sequence would be appropriate

Are you in grad school right now or not? It sounds like you have your good basic bases covered. If you want to really gain advanced quantitative methods and understand it (which it sounds like you do), I think the next logical step is to actually learn some calculus and maybe linear algebra. Calc is the bases for regression, probability, and is used heavily in game theory and formal modelling. Time series is kinda hard and also relies on calculus. More topics you can potentially get into: Bayesian stats, data science principles, different kinds of regression (logit, probit, lasso, etc), nonparametric stats

I got it too. I think it was neutral. I'm American/methods and have made about 0 indication that I want/need a language so I'm inclined to think it was sent to everyone.

To add a few more to top out the top 25 (and then some), using data from https://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/. Dates are of modal acceptances, and rejections tend to come a little bit later. ** for schools with weird data. To consolidate: **Jan 16 UIUC - tricky and no good data from last year. Based off 2017. Jan 22 Emory **Jan 22: Interviews and rejections for GWU, with acceptances Feb 23 Jan 24, 2018 Wisconsin Jan 25 Ohio State Jan 25 Penn State Jan 29 Northwestern Jan 30, 2018 Duke Jan 31, 2018 Berkeley Jan 31 UC Davis Jan 31, 2018 Princeton Feb 02, 2018 NYU Feb 02, 2018 UCSD Feb 05, 2018 UCLA Feb 06, 2018 Michigan **Feb 6 (approximately, results have more variation) UT Austin Feb 7 WashU (St Louis) Feb 8 UNC Feb 14, 2018 MIT Feb 15, 2018 Cornell Feb 15, 2018 Stanford Feb 17 Rochester Feb 19, 2018 Penn Feb 22, 2018 Columbia Feb 19 Minnesota Feb 22 Vanderbilt Feb 23, 2018 Georgetown Mar 01, 2018 Harvard Mar 01, 2018 Yale Mar 09, 2018 Chicago

Well most of those on that list mirror top US News PhD programs, with exceptions of mostly DC schools (notably JHU, American, and Georgetown). If I had to guess, I'd say the discrepancy between the two is that the US news programs are looking at IR programs within political science departments (and subsequently rankings based on political science faculty), while the other is centered around policy school PhDs (and ranked by policy school faculty). If you're in a PhD program it'll largely have an academic focus. But the methods and scope may be different in between the two. You'll probably never or very rarely read a piece from Political Analysis in a policy centered PhD program, but you definitely will in a political science one.

What an odd grading scheme. I was assuming a standard American grading scheme where 3.5 is in between a B+ and an A-, and I think for the most part top schools expect mostly As. I'm going to preface this again by saying that my words really only apply to about the top 25, because I am not familiar with admissions statisticsbin lower ranked schools. I don't know what kind of school you're applying to, but top schools get so many applicants that's they're looking for reasons to reject you, not for reasons to accept you. At top schools, there are going to be plenty of math/econ/stats majors that have great methods course grades AND high Q and V scores. A very low quant score is a reason to reject you.

That Q GRE as well as your methods grades imply you might have a hard time in a methods sequence. For the most part at top 20 schools, it looks like Q is more important than V. Even beyond those 20 schools, Q scores seem to be on par (scaled score, not percentile) with the V score. The big exception is if you're in political theory or applying to masters programs (especially policy vs political science ones) where Q is much much less important.

US news is you want to become an academic and teach at a university. They rank PhD programs. Foreign policy if you want to have a career with think tanks/the government/NGOs. I think it's mostly masters programs here, though apparently they take into account undergrad and PhD programs too. But for the most part, they're mostly talking about MFS, MPP and MPA programs.

Do you have a backup plan if you don't get in anywhere? Even with a solid GRE score it seems risky to apply only to top 20, and your scores are well below average at all top 20s.

Will people on the admissions committee recognize the names of these journals? If yes, I can see you getting into a T15 and potentially multiple offers. If they're country-specific journals or otherwise no-name journals, I'm a lot less optimistic that those can help you overcome the low test scores. Your GRE quant scores are relatively low for T15, as are your verbal. Schools even beneath the top 15 like Minnesota, GWU, and Emory have average GREs of 315+, so with a superscore of 314 you're definitely behind the pack. Not completely debilitatingly so, but they are without a doubt something to overcome. But you better hope that adcoms you get aren't the type to automatically throw applications that don't meet a certain threshold in the trash. Top 30-50 will be a lot safer for you. GPA is ok. Not impressive (though honestly even a 4.0 at most schools isn't impressive) but also not crippling, but it really depends on what classes you took and your school's reputation. Professional experience only matters if you can tie it in to your skills/research well.