catchermiscount

I wouldn't take this advice too seriously. Yes, having a good GPA helps, but a 3.9 is not absolutely necessary. A good rest-of-the-application-packet can more than make up for a 3.4 or whatever.

There was a time when this is true, and that time might still be today. But, the current trends within methodology seem to be steering methodologists away from econometrics and toward statistics. Look at all of the methodologists (and smart applied folks) that are crushing it today (particularly those that have come out of Harvard), and you'll see a lot of the potential outcomes framework, a lot of experimental language (hell, a lot of experiments and field experiments), and so on. Many of the top methods rockstars have master's degrees in statistics. Now, I don't know that this means that political science is any closer or further to the bleeding edge than it would be if we were still econometrician wannabes, but it's still an observation worth making.

Hot take!

Look at the scholars you most like to read in your particular area. If they're assistant professors or young associates, consider where they did their PhD. If they're advanced associates or fulls, consider where they work now.

I think it's interesting how the public-private thing plays out across social sciences. It really isn't that big of a deal, but it's not-a-big-deal-ness varies a bit across disciplines. Think about a discipline generally more liberal than our own (like sociology) or one more conservative than our own (like economics). I'm painting with really broad brushstrokes here, by the way. Anyway, I took some US News data for the top 50 or so schools in each discipline and made this plot. Note that the divide is stronger in econ than it is in polisci, and that the divide in polisci is stronger than the divide in sociology. Nothing to hang your hat on; just good water cooler talk.

There many not be a conventional wisdom. I contacted the professor that ended up being my committee chair, but he's adamant that contacting faculty is at best futile and at worst annoying. If it does matter, it's at the margins.

I was deeply saddened.

It happens. You should do your best to avoid Doubt Time, but fact is, Doubt Time happens. Doubt Time is sometimes good for you; for example, it's the thing that lets you know if an idea you thought was good last week is, in fact, terrible. But there's an Aristotelian balance on this one.

That's pretty much what I was getting at, yeah. In celebration of the upcoming job market season, I'm not letting myself use jargon, even if it's appropriate and the first word that comes to mind (e.g. endogenous). Otherwise, my job market paper is going to be a real killer. Anyway, to the point: if you come across as a reasonably smart, reasonably nice, reasonably hardworking, reasonably creative person, "the department" (and yes, they probably talk about you, which would make them able to coordinate if they so chose) would do the right thing. This applies to lots of things, including failing comps, missing deadlines, and so on. These things don't go unpunished, but cutting funding is pretty drastic. If your "true" grade was going to be a 3.4 and you had done well (and earned some advocates in faculty meetings), then you might have some options. Rule number one of political science grad school: there are 1.2k "top k" departments. Six top fives, twelve top tens, and so on. Rule number two of political science grad school: it's more like Whose Line is It, Anyway? than you think.

That said, "the bar" is a somewhat qualitative thing, and the relationship between grades and over-the-bar-ness can go in either direction.

You work, and you work, and you work. You work in the office. You take laps around the office every now and again to make sure that you're seen. You demonstrate that you're perceptive, hard-working, and collegial on a daily basis: in classes, in the office, everywhere. You do that, and you do just fine. You have more background than some of us did (myself included). This is the last summer that you'll get to do a lot of things, and you should do them. You should read for fun. You should spend time with folks you care about. And you should just keep breathing, which is the most important skill of all. ETA: as noted above, it is very important to ask for help. But, it is also important to learn the skill of self-sufficiency. You should ask for help when you need it, but not without struggling for at least an hour by yourself. This practice ensures that (1) the problem is important enough to have warranted that kind of time investment on your part; (2) the answer is not embarrassingly obvious, thus saving you on precious reputation costs; and (3) you have enough experience with the problem that you can meaningfully convey your question(s) is reasonable depth and detail.

Definitely not expected. Quite rare to see. I had nothing close to a pub during my transfer, though my writing sample was probably better than many folks that didn't benefit from graduate experience.

This. There really isn't a "day in the life of an RA." The gigs are far too idiosyncratic. When you get to campus, it will be very important that you have the expectations of the gig stated in no uncertain terms.

I coordinated it; it sort of gave a reason for them to respond to my email, even if the response was "I will be monumentally busy at APSA, so go fly a kite, kid."

I did decide not to apply to a place based on an email exchange with a faculty member. My email had the usual "here's what I want to study and here's why I think you and I could be a fit," and his response was a very terse "I'm taking on students, but I wouldn't want you. You should apply to Rochester. But if you came here, I guess it could work maybe." So, I didn't apply. My general impression is that the email thing doesn't matter very much. The professor that I emailed before applying here, who is now my dissertation committee chair, claims that it has nothing to do with anything. I did get a chance to meet with some faculty at the APSA conference before my application season, and my sense is that face-to-face time was an asset. That said, APSA is a very busy time, so it's hard to get that face-to-face time squeezed in. In general, this all seems to be at the margins.

I would have killed for a 3.6.

Keith Poole wouldn't have been able to do so well there if it wasn't a casual place!

Oh yeah. I'm not gonna iron, and the only person less likely to iron my clothes would be my girlfriend.

I like the parts where, like, somebody says "hey, I got into Harvard!" and then everybody else is like "oh, man, that's great that you got into Harvard!" Or, like, the parts where somebody hasn't gotten in anywhere and has been depressed but then they get in somewhere and they're like "hey, I hadn't gotten in anywhere and had been depressed but now I got in somewhere!" and then everybody else is like "oh, man, that's great that you got in somewhere!" Or, like, the parts where somebody is like "Hey, should I mention my mother's pasta e fagioli in my SoP?" and then somebody else is like "YMMV, but I mentioned my mom's pasta e fagioli in my SoP last year and didn't get in anywhere, but this year I didn't mention pasta e fagioli and got in places, so by Mill's method...." Or like, I like the parts where people are like "Hey what books should I be reading next year?" and then other people are like "oh, you should probably be reading this book and that book" but then I'm like "you should probably be getting drunk with your old friends before you make new grad student friends that are bad drinkers." I really like this new thing where people are like "Don't be a jerk!" And they're all like "hey, one reason to not be a jerk is that coach said not to be a jerk!" As if they were going to be jerks if I hadn't said anything. I get to be a treatment in a Rubin model. It is very flattering, even if it is just pretend-mattering. Hey, that rhymed. Apparently I also like typing with the comedic timing of Mitch Hedberg. I do not like the heavy. This is probably related to the fact that I also am kind of sad that I won't get to be a dumb grad student next year; even though I will no more intelligent or accomplished or well-paid than I am now (which is nil on all dimensions), I will have to kind of pretend to be a grown up. It's kind of making me sad. I hope you guys will take advantage of getting to be dumb grad students. You won't have to iron or tuck in your shirts. You'll get to sit around and brainstorm and woodshop and spitball and mix it up and make it happen and stir the pot and take the time to really learn the deep, substantive meaning of the Lagrangian multiplier and reading Rousseau and saying "hey it would be cool to model the Lawgiver" because that's a fun idea that you get to have when you're a dumb grad student and maybe you'll even think you did something really novel and interesting only to find out that Abraham Wald did it a kajillion years ago or that Daron Acemoglu had six working papers on the topic when he was 12 and all of them turned into Econometricas and you don't know if that should make you feel good or bad or scared on a dimension so much deeper and more existential than regular fear that "scared" probably isn't the right word and next thing you know you'll be worried about your diction even though it is the least important part of any of this. I will be working on not swearing and not making jokes about Father O'Malley or "the old bestiality days." No longer will be I able to teach students about exogenous shocks by describing punching a guy in the stomach so hard that he poops himself. Allofasudden, I will have to be the good cop, and all of you guys will get to be the bad cops, skillfully trained in breaking down every argument, every research design, every set of assumptions, every data set. I already miss being a grad student. It is also sad that the NIT games tonight were so bad that I found myself saying "hot damn! I wonder if Property Brothers is on." It was. Not too many of you have met me, though I've been on here a long time. I suspect I will continue to come on even though I am old and grizzled and constantly crippled and lacking in hair. Some of the talk today was heavy and I didn't like it because I like thinking about rainbows and sunshine and whether the composition of an arbitrary set of correspondences is upper hemi-continuous. But one thing did kind of make me sad for other reasons. Those few of you that have met me could probably surmise that I think loyalty is cool or at least that I think effort put into my friends and colleagues and the department itself is not effort wasted. It's cool with your friends and with your colleagues and with your professors and with the younger grad students and even with the Pleges [sik] and with the secretaries and with the janitor lady that really gets glad when you take the time to ask how she's doing and even with the undergrads that try so hard on a daily basis to suck your brain from your skull and your soul from your heart. This is not a business that rewards loyalty, which is kind of a bummer. I am not trying to say that it is such a business, or even that such a business exists. It probably doesn't. You must be your own advocate, from supporting your own ideas in contentious advising meetings to writing in a clear, confident prose to choosing the best situation for yourself to being willing to negotiate politely and humbly and unjerkily. But in the course of your career you will make many decisions, and some will be good and some will be bad and some will not be entirely clear and I would like to think that some sense of community matters. I should note that this ramble was written with an intentional style and was influenced only by the impeccable fixing-up skills of the aforementioned Property Brothers and perhaps also to the squawking of Mingus albums playing in the background. To the best of my knowledge all of the numerous subject-verb dyads above feature correct conjugations which should serve as an indicator of sobriety and attention to detail and craftsmanship. The aim here was to reduce the heavy, which to my eye has been done competently though inelegantly and self-indulgently. You all seem like good enough people to be willing to take on those costs in the name of humoring an old man finding himself being put onto an iceberg floating away to the icy sea. Did I say self-indulgently? I meant megalomaniacally.

When you put it that way, most of the other reasons to leave seem pretty feeble, too ;-). I wouldn't have transferred to placate an SO. Then again, I am equally unattractive everywhere.

I have heard of professors getting "very angry" with would-be transferers. When I made a decision to transfer, the professors were quite gracious about it, though I did have some extenuating circumstances. How this maps into "quitting then leaving," I don't know.

It's cool. If you can program with it, you can read angry people with it.

Not with this bad of a hangover.

It's cool. I just, you know...this got heavy, man.

This got heavy, man.