catchermiscount

RAing provides a lot of opportunity to get a sense of what real research looks like. Many classes---be they substantive or technical---offer an idea of what scholarship looks like, but sometimes they don't give a sense of what the process feels like. I have gotten a lot out of RAing. Further, many people use RA assignments as a starting point for collaboration with faculty. So, sure, there are some advantages.

Any number of ways. You might RA, which presupposes a prof (1) wanting to hire you and (2) having money in the ol' budget for an RA, or (2a) the university having money for profs to supplement research accounts to hire RAs. It might mean lots of teaching availability in the summer for grad students. It might mean funds for your lovely summers abroad getting datums. It really does vary by department and university, which is why it's a handy question to ask! Having been in two programs, I can tell you that one of the most obvious differences is summer funding. At my first, none was available (other than for ICPSR, but nothing to live on) until you could teach your own classes in the summer---which was then contingent on getting enough to enroll, of course. At my second (and current), there are dedicated streams for this kind of thing for RAing or working on the dreaded second-year paper. The variance is massive.

Typically, they call people. I was called on a Monday morning directly from a member of the admission committee. I believe that's what we did last year, as well.

Funny story. While a student in the department I attended before transferring here, I took a class with a guy at a top five department that I really wanted to go to. I didn't go to that school at the time, but I was able to take the class through some funding allocated for inter-university cooperation. After the class, I emailed him letting him know that I was applying to transfer there, and that I hoped my performance in the class would be enough for him to consider my application a bit harder than usual. I got no response from him, and I was rejected later on that year. I transferred to another place, and as luck would have it, that very professor came to give an invited talk. I totally had images of "oh look at me now" in my head. I saw him in the hall that morning, and he comes up to me and says "what are you doing here?" I said "I transferred here." He goes "from my department?!? Why?!?!" I re-explained; he thought I was a student in his department the whole time. So I had a meeting with him that afternoon, and he asked me why I didn't apply to transfer to his department. I told him that I did, but that I was rejected. He goes "Oh, f**k!" I said, "oh, no, don't worry---I'm really happy here, and while I would have loved working with you, it's not awkward for me now." He goes: "oh, no, it's not that. I just know what people we admitted and they suck." I stopped harboring any ill will right after that. This is such a random process. You can think you have every in possible---you can get an A+ from your would-be advisor in a graduate class while writing a paper he or she loves---and still get rejected. It's just numbers. Keep your motivation internal, because the business and these other places aren't worth your time. You'll do great: ninety-eight and three quarters percent guaranteed.

At the risk of being ornery, I would encourage anybody to go back and read Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values. In it, you will find numerous allusions to classical political philosophers of the past. So too with lots of other good formal theory. By all means, do not pre-empt your graduate training the summer before! Rather, dig into some stuff that's fun to read and that can help you build a big bank of ideas to draw from when you actually do engage more modern scholarship. In terms of essentials, I can only speak for my little world in IR/conflict. I would recommend Schelling's Strategy of Conflict, Blainey's The Causes of War, Keohane and Nye's Power and Interdependence. There's more than enough to chew on for a few weeks there. Also, you may want to prepare for the methodological training that is ahead, and jumping into a probability book like Degroot and Schervish, a purer math book like Simon and Blume, or a very low-level econometrics book like Wooldridge's might be a good idea. I would start with Simon and Blume, accompanied by a healthy dose of something more fun like, say, Jack Knight's Institutions and Social Conflict.

Generally speaking, very large departments in large public universities will offer more opportunity to TA and teach one's own classes. I don't know what kind of departments liberal arts schools typically draw from.

Three very important questions to ask: 1) Summer funding? 2) Summer funding? 3) Hey, do you offer summer funding?

Congratulations!

We are indeed behind from the past few years. I have my own guesses at explanations, but nothing concrete. My apologies---you wouldn't want to consider us this time of year, anyway. You'd go to weather.com and you'd be like OMG I DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN THE TUNDRA SCREW THIS I'M GOING TO RICE.

Oh, I did not mean to say that this was a urinating contest per se---in fact, as you noted, it's been relatively collegial by the standards of these conversations. Still, it takes but a single drop of pee to turn a nice session of Kumbaya into Peefest 2011, as these things often do.

Don't get into urinating contests about math classes taken. A good department will give you the training you need as you go, and the dedicated student can pick up skills as needed. I don't mean to poo-poo the achievements of many of the posters in this thread, but I do fear that applicants (or potential applicants) will see this and run for the hills. Certainly, it's nice to have technical training, but I would not call it a prerequisite.

I'm not above whacking my quasi-countrymen. It's the Italian-American in me.

If you people keep this geeky statistics talk up, I will go tell the members of the adcom in my department to whack you. Fun = good. Geeky stats talk = bad. Geeky R coding = worse. I know. I'm on my 367th line of R code this evening. Don't you be like me, kiddies.

For what it's worth, those of you that will be TAing next year need to work on your troll-control skills if you hope to own discussion section. When in doubt: ignore.

tidefan, if I may speak for him, has pretty good sources at UIUC, seeing as how he spends a lot of time there.

Why on Earth is this still going on?

Sounds a bit early-ish. My first acceptances in 2008 were both on January 30. After that were a few early Februarys, and then Wisconsin chimed in at 2/9. The year before and after were similar. So, Wisconsin tends to be early February, and it tends to be after a few other programs. To be sure, dates and stuff can change, but mid-January would be REALLY early for this kind of thing. So, keep breathing.

James Joyce is also excellent to try and chew through at times like these. Ulysses is completely trippy when you're in one of these "hurry up and wait" scenarios like so many of you currently find yourselves in. Also, based on some people's posts in this and other threads, many would benefit from reading Araby---particularly the last line of the story. Don't be the boy weeping to the heavens, yeah? Nobody wants to be that dude.

I love reading about my subject to the point that I am willing to take the shine off of it by making it what I do for the better part of 60-80 hours per week. The point is: you're going to be getting married, and soon. Why not date a little first?

You'll read what you need to read in grad school, and you don't have to be in a rush to be a miserable, poorly-rounded political science grad student before you actually become a miserable, poorly-rounded political science grad student. How about some book books? I went through the collected works of Gunter Grass prior to grad school. Nowadays I wish I had more time to read stuff like that---that is, stuff that actually makes me feel something.

You'll get a lot of conflicting opinions, but Penelope is an excellent source. Amid the noise already in this thread, I would go with her, since what she says is the most sensible thing about 99.9% of the time.

Generally "reviewing" at this stage means "all the files have been compiled and they're ready to get read." But hey, nobody is going to be reading anything over the holiday. Generally, the very earliest responses are in the last week of January. So that brings up your important question: what to do while waiting. Do you have any hobbies that don't include political science? Like, maybe, fun? Fun is good! In all seriousness, the best thing to do is to try and enjoy yourself by reading something you actually enjoy reading, hanging out with your friends---after all, this time next year you'll have new people you'll be hanging out with, and if they're like my officemates they'll practice poor hygiene---or taking an interesting class for once. I got in trouble before for recommending getting drunk and watching lots of YouTube videos, but that's what I did and I got through it alive. Other than my liver, of course. YMMV.

I transferred from Department X to Department Y when faculty in my subfield left Department X. Transferring is really tough, and you should not count on doing it. In fact, you should not want to do it. I did not want to do it, but I had little choice. For starters, as the comment above notes, you don't want to burn bridges unnecessarily. Political scientists have long memories, and some faculty members are deeply offended when students go somewhere else. I have heard a horror story of a student at Department X that wanted to transfer due to faculty attrition. S/he went to ask one of the remaining faculty members in Department X for a letter of recommendation. This faculty member had research interests that overlapped with the student, but not perfectly. The faculty member launched a twenty minute tirade on the student that resulted in some weeping and complaints to the DGS. While s/he did end up transferring successfully, his/her last year in Department X was a nightmare. The faculty members at Department X will not forget it, and neither will his/her colleagues when they get jobs elsewhere. The business is small enough that such vitriol can have real consequences on your job prospects. I was a bit luckier, but even then it was a negative experience overall. I am very happy where I landed, but the move was not without costs. I think about my old department every single day, even though I went to a program that I love very much. What's more, many departments will not seriously consider you for transfer unless you can come up with a compelling reason to leave---the most notable ones are faculty attrition or some kind of family concern. Few places want grad students that transfer just because they don't like a place, and few professors want to be known as "poachers." I realize that this was not the original question, but I thought it might be a good idea to chime in.

I didn't realize that one of the schools required paper letters of recommendation rather than electronically-submitted ones until three days before the deadline. As all of you know by now, getting faculty members to do something in three weeks is heroic enough, let alone three days. I quickly emailed the graduate secretary there and asked her to alert the committee of my mistake, to send apologies for being so stupid, and to promise that the letters would be there quickly. Two weeks later, the letters got there. I was accepted to and currently attend that school. While they probably wish they hadn't been so lenient based on my lack of political science skillzzz, it remains that these departments are made up of human beings that realize that you're a human being. What's more, these human beings won't be meeting to discuss the packets for a while anyway. Breathe easy, friend.

Mike Ward at Duke is also a nice option---he's more of a "methods" network guy than a "substance" network guy, but he's an excellent IR scholar broadly.