convex

Perhaps you can be more specific about your research interests. Comparative political economy is pretty broad -- what are your specific substantive interests? Also, when you say historical, do you just mean empirical (is statistical analysis "historical"?) or are you referring to a particular approach?

Someone at the WashU admitted students weekend had just finished her MA from the Center for Political Economy. She seemed smart. It seems like they probably do a quantitative methods sequence and a microeconomics sequence, which will make you better prepared than most of your cohort when you enter a PhD program. Letters from Schofield/Sened can't hurt either. Looks like a recent MA student (Evan Schneidman) is now a Harvard graduate student, another is at Indiana, and the girl I met is starting at WUSTL next year, so that's a pretty good record. If you're going to do a terminal MA, this is probably a good idea. I don't know anything about funding, but I'll say that most terminal MA programs are not going to fund very many students. My $0.02.

Are we obligated to withdraw from places where we were only waitlisted?

This is not good advice.

Real analysis and calculus-based probability are the next steps for you, in my opinion. Most programs don't mind if you take the econometrics sequence, but with your background you ought to be able to get into a program where you don't feel the need to do that.

Summer math camp is good if the purpose is to remind yourself of math concepts that you once knew but may have forgotten (for example, if you took multivariate calculus when you were a Sophomore, and are feeling rusty on partial derivatives). In my opinion (based on word of mouth from professors and other graduate students), it is not sufficient if you never took those courses. If you haven't taken multivariate calculus and/or linear algebra, I suggest working on it during the summer before you enter graduate school. I would suggest using these materials if you do not have access to summer courses at your school: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Mathematics/

In response to your main question, I would say "sort of." The median economics program has better math/stat training than the median political science program. However, at the top few methods departments, your training will be as good as many of the top econometrics departments. Economics departments, however, have the advantage of having graduate students that come in with multivariate calculus and real analysis, where most political science students have to learn some more math once they get there. Either way, I imagine it would be advisable for a political science or an economics student who is interested in doing original research in methods/econometrics to take some coursework in a real math/stat department.

The above is probably true. I recommended Clayton under the assumption that a good public school district may be a higher priority than those factors for the person who asked the question.

Also, on the subject of neighborhoods to stay away from, I'd say anything very far east of, say, the Central West End. Generally speaking, the crime rate rises as you move east. I am not a St. Louis native, but I am a Missouri native with a lot of friends and family in St. Louis.

I think Clayton is probably perfect. Clayton and Ladue have a reputation for being the better public school districts in the area, and Ladue is large and a pretty expensive place to live. Clayton is directly adjacent to campus, and you may be able to find a place in walking distance.

I think you read that wrong.

Congrats. Where are you going?

I think you are probably right, AllFiredUp.

I do not think it's the case that Minnesota offers top methods training. Certainly not compared to either of the other two schools this person is considering. John Freeman (who is admittedly very good) is the only legitimate quantitative methodology faculty member (and maybe Shawn Treier, but junior faculty probably shouldn't count). The rest of the people they list under "methodology" on their website are simply scholars who do some quantitative work, not people doing original research in methods. This is an important distinction, even if it is not your intention to do such work. At OSU and WashU, on the other hand, you can learn methods from people who are doing methods research. Of those two, WashU edges out UIUC in terms of placement, although either place is going to be decent place for studying behavior. WUSTL appears to have placed American Politics people this year at Yale, UTD, Colorado, George Washington, and Georgia State, a very good placement record for one year, and this was a particularly bad market. University of Illinois does not have a comparable record, even in a year with a good market.

Don't think you're going to go to Caltech and study security. It's just very unlikely. edit: Same with GSB, really. And UCSD should be on that list. They are better known for IPE, but Gartzke is one of the best quant security people around, and Slantchev is one of the best formal security people

I would add Journal of Peace Research to that list.

IR Security or IPE?

It depends what you mean by interdisciplinary studies, honestly. Many faculty members are very critical of most interdisciplinary programs. For example, I would be cautious about taking the path the OP is talking about, or one of the topical programs like "sustainable development" at SIPA, or any kind of political science/philosophy hybrid. The successful interdiscplinary programs for political science are those related to economics, psychology, or math/stat. Examples of this include Caltech, Stanford GSB's political economy program, Harvard KSG political economy and government, Northwestern MEDS, etc. I also suspect that graduates of Carnegie Mellon's machine learning and public policy joint program (http://www.ml.cmu.edu/prospective_stude ... z_phd.html) will do very well in political science or economics if they even care to do so. The reason for this is that there has been increased collaboration between these fields and political science, which is not the case for philosophy, literature, or whatever.

I will not be attending Minnesota. Edit: To be more general, it is very unlikely at this point that I will be attending anywhere other than WUSTL. I feel like a Bayesian already!

I am visiting WUSTL March 21-22. I already know a lot about the department and there's about a 99% chance I am going, so this visit is pretty much for fun, and because they paid for everything.

I am from Missouri, though not the St. Louis area. People get concerned about crime in St. Louis because of all of the published list that consistently rank St. Louis in the top 3 in terms of crime per capita, but one should keep in mind that this is largely an artifact of the way the FBI measures crime rates, and when you account for suburbs (where most people in St. Louis live), St. Louis drops to about 120. There's was a good letter in Nature almost a year ago about this. Don't get me wrong, crime in St. Louis is a problem, but the rankings that put them on par with Detroit and Compton are misguided, in my opinion. Also keep in mind that the lion's share of violent crime in St. Louis is concentrated in East St. Louis. St. Louis isn't extremely liberal. It just isn't. However, it is moderately liberal. I am guessing the area next to WUSTL ("the loop") and other parts of town such as Soulard, will be what you're looking for though. Does anyone know the answer to my question about the Metrolink? I am very interested in this.

Bueno de Mesquita et. al. The logic of political survival. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. Cox, Gary. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Przeworski, Adam. States and Markets: A Primer in Political Economy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. edit: Sorry, I didn't read the comment above. Although, my advice is to go to the library and read as many of those books as you can. I would not rely on Oxford Handbooks.

Yale's comparative placement is really not very good. NYU is very good -- I would argue one of the best in comparative.

Did Paul Huth just move to Maryland? I could have sworn he was at Michigan... edit: nevermind, I see. Michigan just likes to keep people on their website for way too long.

I am reviving the St. Louis thread. How is public transportation near WUSTL? Can I rely on the metrolink? What is the probability that someone puts a knife in me in the trolley on a given day?