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This is good advice, though we should let the original poster know that there are: Roughly six top five departments. Roughly thirteen top ten departments. Roughly twenty two top fifteen departments. Countless top twenty-five departments. I didn't come up with it.

It seems like "security studies" is a signal for more traditional, qualitative work (think Barry Posen or Steven Van Evera, who lead the "Security Studies" group at MIT), while "conflict studies" is much more of a signal of doing quantitative work (think anybody that tortures fresh confessions out of the CoW data).

An easier algorithm: look at the work you really like. If it's by an assistant professor or a younger associate, consider the school where they got their PhD. If it's by an older associate or a more senior person, consider the school where they currently work.

Ha, well, you know the particulars of my project more than most do---I don't consider what I do "IPE," but some folks here have called it IPE.

There are all sorts of terms. IPE might mean that you're interested in doing (formal) theory applied to international relations, or it might mean that you're interested in actual matters of international economic phenomena like investment or trade. The same goes for CPE. Good grounding in theory can help you to be aware of what's going on in theoretical political economy, though it doesn't necessarily mean that you're THAT much more prepared than somebody with less background but more work ethic. Since you're more interested in empirics than theory, obviously less background will be required, though being able to digest things remains relevant. In general, being aware of these things is a really good start, and being able to ask the right sets of questions remains the most important skill of all. eponine is right on: you don't have to know exactly what you want to look like. In fact, you probably shouldn't know exactly what you want to look like, else you probably won't grow as much as you can.

It's nice if you can parallelize, but certainly not required. R takes your computer's specs into accounts for some of what it does. This generally comes into play only if you're doing something non-standard, but hey, maybe you'll be doing something non-standard.

I sure hope you can do both, else this dissertation is a first class ticket to a job at McDonald's. There is a lot of work (mostly empirical) that links conflict and a variety of IPE-ish things (trade, investment, institutions, whatever). If you intend to be pretty general about it, you might need to go more theoretical. But there are plenty of strains of the literature that combine conflict and IPE-ish things, so you'll have plenty of chances to whittle down as you go.

Well that was what I was getting at, yeah. But there probably isn't a universally meaningful classification scheme (is all I meant to say).

At the risk of sounding glib, I don't really know what folks mean by "types" of conflict. Do we mean conflicts that are fought in a certain kind of way, or do we mean conflicts that arise for a certain set of reasons, or conflicts that are fought between certain kinds of combatants, or what? For my own stuff (which, of course, has little to do with anything), a fight is a fight is a fight. The rest gets me too confused!

That's a very nice, though very long, list. Going in to grad school, I would probably spend more time on theory than on empirics (if you're going to insist on having a fruitful summer instead of watching YouTube videos the whole time like I did), and I would probably spend more time on fewer pieces that are related to one another. One of the best things you can do is really read and understand Fearon's "Rationalist Explanations for War" in the 1995 IO. The models aren't complicated, so you should be able to digest them. While this article is perhaps the most important one written in the past thirty years or so, it is mis-cited and mis-quoted so often that it will make your head spin. That's a pity, because Fearon takes great lengths to be really clear with the explication. To hear many people tell it, war is simply something that happens when there are informational asymmetries, indivisible goods, or commitment problems (which are the three brief names of the rationalist explanations). There is a lot more meat on each of those bones, and folks should remember that they're relying on a particular kind of model when they're considering those explanations. In the name of seeing that formal models are tools we use rather than law-generating, infallible collections of symbols that ensure correctness, you might move on to Powell's "War as a Commitment Problem," which (I believe) is in the 2006 IO. Powell laments the fact that so much of the scholarship inspired by Fearon 1995 has focused on information issues and observes that good indivisibilities are just a particular kind of commitment problem (which is a point you may have come up with yourself if you really thought hard while reading Fearon 1995). If you're itching for a book to read, Powell's "In the Shadow of Power" is a good one. Fearon and Powell are both reasonably readable. If you're feeling very ambitious and would like to see a much more technical, but substantively motivated, response to this sort of thing, you might check out Fey and Ramsay's "Mutual Optimism and War" in the 2007 AJPS. Fearon's conception of incomplete information is informed by historian Geoffrey Blainey's (1988) Causes for War (another good book to read); Blainey spends a lot of time on mutual optimism as the informational mechanism that causes war. So Fey and Ramsay formalize "mutual optimism" and demonstrate that, in the two-person bargaining situations that Fearon is talking about, mutual optimism is not a consistent cause for war---in the classes of scenarios where mutual optimism is a necessary condition for war, there is no war due to mutual optimism in equilibrium. This is a point that Slantchev and Tarar (AJPS 2011) take issue with, though I don't think their response to Fey and Ramsay was completely well-founded. So if you can really dig in to three or four theoretical pieces and really own them, you're off to a GREAT start. These are just two little vein from Fearon to Powell on commitment and Fearon to Fey and Ramsay to Slantchev and Tarar on mutual optimism. All are inspired by historian Blainey. There are other, similar veins if you're interested in them (bargaining while fighting comes to mind); feel free to PM if you'd like. But the big point here is: you might as well think theory while you have the chance now.

What kind of work do you intend to do?

Heck, just knowing most of the capitals would put you ahead most of the conflict folks.

Where's Luca Brasi when you need him? Buckpassing is awesome.

For what it's worth, I'd like to second BFB's comment re: emailing DGSes to ask which aspects of your application were weakest and which next steps might be the most helpful. The first time I applied to schools, it didn't go well (I happened to have both a low GPA AND a bad undergrad institution, woot woot); I lucked my way into acceptance for the PhD program of a good department that was weak in my own subfield and got relegated to a master's program at a top place. So, I emailed the DGS at a school very dear to BFB's heart (where I had been rejected) and asked: what was weak about my application, and which of these two steps do you think might help me the most moving forward? She was very candid. Obviously, candor can be difficult to swallow sometimes, but you get over that. She made her recommendation as to which path was better given my current weaknesses, and I took her advice. When I re-applied to her department two years later, I was lucky enough to get in---and on the letter from her, she added a postscript about how pleased she was to see that our decision had paid dividends. At the risk of getting trite, I was touched (too late---that was trite). It made it all the harder when I went elsewhere...but that's another story. The point here is: acquiring information is scary, and it's hard, and it can be disappointing, and not every DGS will be so kind as to get back in touch with you, and not every DGS that does will be as kind as the one I reference here is, and so on. But, what BFB is saying isn't just propaganda on the faculty side: there are some good ones out there, and they can help you if you do it right.

I can guarantee that some are aware.

You should go!

Holy crap!! Power outage!!

There's no way this is what you're asking about, but what the hell. You might also consider quota rules (an option wins if it gets to a certain number, 50% or otherwise) a bit more generally. There are some good notes on the subject (in the context of social choice theory much more generally) here.

Dream school: Rochester weather, don't care about the rest.

We've had partners paid for and also pay for hotel, though we admit (and host) far fewer folks than most departments.

Getting this right will be difficult. The language as it appears on this link generally focuses on prestige, but there are other things that go into placement. Obviously quality of training and selection effects of high-quality students make this a nightmare. How would you measure training? How would you get the data on which students applied to and were accepted to where? So, while applicants should always look down the tree to see what they'll look like at the end of their training, they should temper their response to this particular piece a bit. I'm sure it will improve as it develops.

Note: if you make a ranking yourself, keep it to yourself.

Wait that means I don't get any shots. This makes me sad. ADJUST THE RULES NOW.

Among the other schools on the places that kind of specialize in quantitative security stuff, consider Rice and Illinois.

At least you guys were smart enough to withdraw. Try two semesters of Fs instead.