catchermiscount

For what it's worth, up until reading a few recent posts in this thread, I was not aware of the reputation system despite being a gradcafe member for something like 4-5 years. Now I know how to size all of you up at conferences. NICE.

You can also stay further away and take advantage of the L. It kind of redefines "walking distance," but at least you won't be driving drunk.

I got a few "why Emory?"-type questions, and also a few substantive questions. In my statement, I had indicated that I was interested in developing a continuous measure of rivalry, so the folks conducting the interview (three IR faculty) asked a few literature-ish questions and a few methods-ish questions.

I believe a small group of applicants is accepted without interview; they have their own pure recruitment weekend separately from the interview weekend. Others interview. I believe the worst-case scenario from the interview is getting waitlisted. Not sure if failing to get an interview implies a pocket rejection, but that seems like a reasonably sensible conclusion.

Well this is a fruitless (and boring) conversation if we're talking about somebody that dominates on all dimensions. If the question is of the much more interesting tradeoffs (Candidate A wrote an interesting thesis under a well-known professor but had a 700Q; Candidate B was an econ/poli sci double major at a well-known state school, didn't write a thesis, but got a 800Q) It requires little insight to say that somebody that is superlative on all pertinent measures will do well on the application market.

Did it twice. I maintain: recreational reading, particularly short stories, drama, poetry---stuff that doesn't require a huge time investment. Your attention span is about to get really short. Drink a lot. I'm serious. Go out with your friends and have some fun, as this will likely be the last time you'll get to really get after it for a while. Stuff to turn your brain off and lose track of time: video games, cards, that kind of thing. The weekends will be weird, since you won't have the same day-to-day anxiety from active waiting but you'll have a lingering sense of anxiety in the background. This is much easier with a hangover.

I disagree (note: I was somebody with an 800Q and no math background, so maybe I've got too much dog in this fight). I think many places---at least among the more technical places that would care about this sort of thing in the first place---want somebody with interesting ideas and sufficient technical potential to be able to withstand good, rigorous training.

you hurts my feelings when you says these things

If you're looking to do empirical/quantitative work, there are a number of excellent departments with slightly less competitive admissions with strengths in IR/conflict. Consider Penn State, Florida State, Colorado, Illinois, Rice, Emory, Washington University in St. Louis. Good departments, good training, good track record with IR folks. They might not be perfect fits for your interests, but still worth a look.

I am guessing from the schools you listed that you're interested in more traditional IR. It would be smart to consider which master's programs would put you in the best position for PhD admissions moving forward. If you're interested in doing the traditional stuff, then there are some good options (Georgetown's Center for Peace and Security Studies, Columbia SIPA, Chicago CIR, Hopkin SAIS). If you're interested in mainstream political science, you can use the resources in many master's programs to beef up your application in terms of technique. While SIPA or CIR may seem like bastions of traditional stuff, their graduates are often able to move to academic PhD departments with success. At present, one of my colleagues at Rochester is a CIR grad, and two are SIPA grads. I have friends from CIR that are getting PhDs at Michigan and Princeton. And so on. Columbia and Chicago probably offer the most access to good mainstream folks---for example, if you're interested in theory, you can take a class with Ethan BdM over at Harris at Chicago, etc. Your contingency plans come down to what kind of stuff you want to do. And if you intend to go mainstream, you'll probably want to retake the GRE to bump up the math score.

Subfield?

Bear in mind also that you should be controlling for the philosophy folks, who often take longer to finish since (1) you might have to learn a dead language or two, and (2) the philosophy market is even less awesome than the chronically-unawesome poli sci market in general.

I mean don't spend time with extended attempts at rationalizing what you perceive to be your weaknesses. It's a short statement, and you should use the scarce space you have highlighting strengths, commonalities, and intended direction. As has been noted, it'd be better to use other parts of your packet (letters, an addendum) for this kind of thing.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot. There are plenty of people in the business happy to do that for you. You're your own best advocate.

The program I got into was a reasonably good, mediumish-sized (cohorts of 10-15), Big Ten school ranked in the mid-20s on the US News rankings. Perfect substantive fit isn't necessarily the goal, and I think people overstate the importance of The Perfect Committee as it relates to the dissertation they think they already have written. Interests will change and questions will evolve, so it's probably better to think about departments' core competencies rather than hair-splitting. The school I got into had existing strengths in American politics and in methods. I am in IR and wanted to do qualitative work at the time. Interestingly, the SoP prompt at that school said "make sure to list your weaknesses." So I told them that I knew nothing about methods (I didn't) but that I was open to learning more about them given the reasonably good training available. So, by "fit," I think I mean alignment of their strengths and your needs. That requires having a sense of what they perceive their strengths to be. Tricky. To be honest, I think more than anything I was lucky. Looking back, I have no idea why they accepted me. I asked one member of the committee about it before I left, and she said she pretty much looked at the quantitative GRE score and went from there. YMMV.

Penelope can speak on this far better than I can. However, personal experience indicates that strong performance in graduate school helps minimize the negative effects of a spotty undergraduate career. My undergraduate GPA was far lower than those mentioned here---I flunked out not once but twice. It's possible. You just have to really convince them that you're ready: apply to schools where you have a strong fit, write a convincing statement, have a strong writing sample, make your overall package "unified" and indicative of thought on the big picture.

?? You just need to use the standard document class. I recommend the geometry package to get the margins right and the fancyhdr package with your name and what the document is (SoP, etc.) in the header.

My application for the school I currently attend was two weeks late. I didn't know they used paper letters and my letter-writers only have been submitting online.

Finally! Somebody else that likes Mingus.

The real question is: is Hegel v. Marx... ( A ) ...a classic example of the Prisoners' Dilemma? ( B )..a Rousseauian Stag Hunt? ( C ) ...a Schellingy bargaining conflict process? ( D ) ..basically just a couple of awesome hombres getting together, rocking out, and doing it for the kids? I should note also that, even at in this bastion of all things positivist *shudder*, I have had to read both Marx and Hegel this year. TAKE THAT! AND THAT! AND THAT!

Clearly, math can fix this.

Oh yes. Talk about your modal Kool-Aid drinker ;-).

Not especially.

No. They may, on the other hand, think .doc files are informal (unlikely).

See, this is why you shouldn't let political scientists view the ol' Psych board... Fields vary, but I think the logic of how this kind of thing goes in political science should generalize to other fields. I write as a graduate student in political science at URochester. Rochester poli sci has a reputation (on the good end, call it a "brand name," and on the bad end, call it a "stigma") based on a particular type of work we do here. Consequently, our faculty often dissuade good undergraduates from doing their graduate work here, because if the student in question hits the job market with Rochester allthewaythrough, some search committee members might wrinkle their nose at the student's apparently love of Kool-Aid. A similar phenomenon takes place at other political science departments with similar brands (WashU, Caltech social sciences, NYU). On the other hand, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford (which is to say, excellent, full-service, general-purpose poli sci departments) routinely recruit their own undergrads, who in turn go on to do wonderful things on many occasions. My point is this: the answer to your question is a function of what kind of brand you think you'll be getting. If it will look like you're a taboo-seeker, it might reflect badly (though not TOO badly). Otherwise, for standard department with strengths like UNC's, the issue is likely immaterial.