Paulcg87

Hi @Taaya! I'm a first year polisci PhD student at UofT (University of Toronto). Last year was a bit misleading; the first round of admits were sent out on Feb 10th, which was exceptionally early for UofT. Normally, the department doesn't send out notifications until a bit later, usually some time between late February and early March. Don't get discouraged if you haven't heard anything yet from Toronto, the department should be sending out decisions any day now. Also, I can't speak to anything immigration/visa related, but if anyone has any questions about Toronto/UofT, the department/program, etc., please feel free to message me.

Everyone calm down, it's not a big deal. Seriously. Cal/GSPP is definitely more of a research MPP, but many others are not. It isn't enough of one or the other to really say "all MPP's are research based" or "all MPP's are professional/terminal degrees". Here in Canada, MPP's tend to be more professional based but we do have research-based MPP's too (see "The MPP is a research based degree" under courses at: https://www.schoolofpublicpolicy.sk.ca/programs/graduate-programs/master-of-public-policy.php). It really goes both ways. No need to argue so much about it. And personally, I'd rather have an MPP in the current economy, but if you'd asked me a year ago, I'd rather have had an MBA. If it's from a good school, MPP's are more marketable in recessions when there's a surplus of MBA's, and MBA's are more marketable when the economy is good. Don't believe me? There's literally tonnes on this right now... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/09/elon-musk-on-the-problem-with-corporate-america-too-many-mbas-.html https://www.ft.com/content/f2d91aca-8933-11ea-9dcb-fe6871f4145a https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/there-are-officially-too-many-mbas/266880/

Agree it's good to diversify and include Canadian schools but I'd caution against getting your hopes up about masters-level funding at the top 3 Canadian schools if you are not a Canadian citizen/permanent resident. UofT (Univ of Toronto), where I'm a PhD student, doesn't really fund masters-level students at all in the polisci department and the only funding available is provincial/federal and for residents only. The PhD funding is excellent here, but the master's funding is nonexistent. With that said, tuition costs are significantly lower in Canada versus the USA so if funding isn't vital, it's much more affordable here. And, other Canadian schools outside of the top three (UToronto, UBC, McGill) definitely do fund masters students more.

For everyone on here who has applied this year: Please don't blame yourselves. Almost everyone on here who provided a profile/info about themselves would have had a much better chance in previous years compared to this year. Would you have definitely gotten in last year? I don't know, and no one else knows that. No one can say either way, but what's true from an objective perspective is that many of the top tier polisci/govt PhD programs are reducing their cohort sizes and/or receiving a record number of applications this year. I'm not one for making excuses, but there's a bloody pandemic going and we are just about in the worst part of the second wave here in North America. Schools, particularly public universities, are dealing with the realistic possibility of significantly reduced budgets over the next fiscal year as a result of cuts in public funding, alumni/private donations, etc.. and right now the end isn't quite in sight yet. No one knows how long this will last or how deep it will go. Unfortunately, what this translates to is a lot of institutions being reluctant to commit to funding for research based PhD students. So without making excuses for no good reason, I think it's important to remember that the majority of this isn't anyone's fault on here. This is the first time the world has been in this kind of a situation in over 100 years. Believe me, for people finishing their PhD's soon, it's equally terrifying right now because for all the schools reducing or eliminating cohorts, many will be reducing hiring or eliminating tenure track positions. Over the last few years, only the top candidates from departments outside of the CHYMPS have had success with prestigious TT jobs and it's about to get worse. It isn't anyone's fault. We can't be too hard on ourselves.

Same. Our pre-fall math camp was called "Data Analysis Bootcamp" and it was pretty much designed for people who already have a math background so if you don't, spend the summer before your first year doing a stats review. Seriously. I did my master's in a quant heavy program and I was a little shocked to find calculus and linear algebra in our basic intro "Statistics for Political Scientists" course last fall. The level and complexity of the math will depend heavily on your department/instructor but polisci is trending more data/quant intensive (for every subfield besides theory), not less. Can't emphasize enough how important math and R are these days at the PhD level if you're doing AP, CP, IR and/or public policy.

@needanoffersobad Not going to lie, it's tough being relegated to Zoom. Especially office hours and feeling like everything takes longer (including lab questions) when we are trying to do it over Zoom. With that said, my cohort had the advantage of (mostly) being together in person when classes started since we had in-person classes at the beginning of the term that switched over to online only once the second wave got bad, so many of us had met each other in person before we were forced to go online. Some schools/departments weren't so lucky. I think the answer to your question really depends on your life situation right now. The interaction is sufficient enough for me, but I'm also a bit older and I've got a lot of competing time demands from outside of school so my time is already taken up with my partner or visiting family/friends rather than going to the pub with classmates or spending extra time with faculty. My cohort is fairly large and consists of people everywhere in life from straight out of undergrad (direct entry PhD, without even a masters) and just 22 years old, to a few students in their 40's and quite a few like me who are in between those two extremes (a few years work experience, a master's degree, in many cases a spouse/partner and in some cases kids). I think it's harder for the foreign students and the younger students because they have different needs than those of us who are a bit older and have more going on outside of school. @timeseries I think @Theory007 already answered this but in terms of my program/department, we do not require theory students to take anything quant but they are of course allowed to take our 3-course quant sequence if they would like to, as electives. Quant is purely optional for theory students but it is required for all other fields (development, IR, comparative, American, public policy). I'm in a larger political science department with a separate master's degree program and about 30 students in my 1st year PhD cohort and none of the theory students elected to take quant this fall with the rest of us. @kestrel18 +1. For my specific program, I took three of the hardest courses this past fall all at once to get it out of the way. I kind of regret the effects this will have on my GPA when it is posted in January; I might have bitten off more than I could chew. But, as one of my professors said this fall, "you're PhD students. Grades no longer matter". Not entirely true because they do matter for fellowships and post docs, but they sure do matter a lot less to me now than when I was getting a masters degree and still had another degree program I had to apply to! Great advice @Theoryboi. I am not theory for either of my fields but theory transcends every single field of polisci in my opinion. Even my non-theory (non-quant) core courses this fall went into theory in such depth and it was a struggle. And I have to say, the first year of the PhD was infinitely more difficult than my master's degree; significantly more reading than my master's in polisc and pressure from the department to start preparing for the thesis proposal pretty much from day one.

I just finished the first term/semester of the first year of my political science PhD. Just a few things for next year's incoming cohort: Learn how to code in R. Don't fight the inevitable, just learn it. - This is the most important advice I can give to anyone entering a PhD program next year who doesn't have a strong computer programming/coding background. In the past, users on here have emphasized how important quant methods are ad nauseam, and this is true and I don't want to take away from it. You do need to understand undergraduate algebra based statistics. You do need to know basic concepts like hypothesis testing, linear regression and p values, ordinary least squares, t-tests and average treatment effects. What you also need to know that is as important as a basic knowledge of stats is a basic knowledge of coding in the 'R' language. R is a computer coding language similar to Python but a bit more customizable and complex. It has become the gold standard for a lot of social science PhD programs. Python is also important and used more than R outside of polisci specifically so try to learn that too if you can. Polisci PhD students (in North America at least) are no longer doing stats on paper or in Stata or in SPSS; almost everything is being done in R. My entire first year PhD quant methods framework uses the R language, as did my master's degree quant courses. It's no longer enough to have a basic intro to stats; you need to know how to do those stats in R. If you aren't familiar yet with R or with coding in general, take an online class and download R Studio and learn how to code in R markdown and then practice applying quant analysis to sample datasets/data frames. Learn how to code functions, plots and tables. It will make the first year of your PhD so much easier. You can learn R during your first year and some in my cohort are doing that right now, but they are struggling because of the extra workload. It's enough to be dealing with all of the other pressures of the first year and the required coursework; also learning how to code from scratch simultaneously is just one extra thing that you don't need. And for those who are thinking "It's ok, I plan on doing mostly qualitative/ethnographic etc research and I don't need to know R", trust me, unless you are a theory student, you will be using R. It isn't possible anymore to avoid R or computer coding in the majority of North American polisci PhD programs if you are a non-theory student. So much of the field has moved from observational to experimental and from qualitative to quantitative that even if it isn't what you plan to do professionally, ever, you still have to learn how to do it. I think the logic is that if you're going to be competitive in applying for academic/TT jobs some day, you at least need to know enough about quant methods and coding in particular to be able to explain it to your students even if you avoid doing it yourself. Don't stress if you don't like your field(s)/subfield(s) What most North American polisci PhD programs have in common is that you have to choose one or two fields/subfields (comparative, IR, theory, development, policy, American, etc). Some people, including myself, go into a polisci PhD sure of the field we are interested in studying and then change our minds a few weeks or months in. Sometimes it even happens after the first year. Fields are NOT set in stone when you are starting out and it's ok if you want to change. The tradeoff is that if you change fields after you start your PhD, depending on how long you wait, you could be adding an extra term or an entire extra year to your PhD that might not be funded if you received a fixed amount of funding. I, for example, received 5 years of guaranteed funding, so if I stay past that for whatever reason, I'm on my own when it comes to money. It is what it is, but don't stress about being locked into a field/subfield. Also note that changing fields/subfields within a political science PhD program is different from changing your PI/advisor/supervisor. The size, culture, funding and other attributes of your PhD program will determine how much flexibility, or lack thereof, you'll have, but nothing is usually impossible if you have a change of heart after starting. Don't stress about online education My department/school started off this past fall semester in a hybrid with in-person and online courses and then switched to entirely online for everything once the second wave started a few months ago. Yes, online classes are not as good as in-person classes in just about every way, including networking with your cohort and in-person learning. I found it so much harder to do the weekly labs for my stats/coding course when everything went online because we were not together in the computer lab and I couldn't just ask the TA what a line of code meant in person. Personally, I'm not a fan of online education and I don't like Zoom. When we switched over to online only, one of my classes was in Zoom, one was in an Adobe program, one was in Microsoft Teams and a lab was in Blackboard Collaborate. Literally, every single one of my classes/labs used a different online learning program/method and it was very frustrating. It was a lot harder to do do these things this way, but it was not the end of the world. We got through it as a cohort, we commiserated over Zoom study sessions and on our cohort facebook page/group, and life went on. I'm happy to say that we didn't have any of the first term curriculum delayed because of COVID, and you won't either, whether everyone is vaccinated and everything is in-person in the fall of 2021 or it is still online. Hopefully it's the former, but if it's the latter, your department will make it work. If anyone who is still on here from last year is also just finishing the first term and has anything to add, please do. The single biggest piece of advice I have is to learn R as soon as possible. Even if you can't take a class on it, try some of the free online learning modules, download R Studio, use the sample datasets and start practicing with the mean function in R markdown. Also, I highly recommend one of the interactive texts we are using this year for our 3-course stats/R coding sequence, which is available in paper, PDF and Kindle formats: Kosuke Imai. Quantitative Social Science: An Introduction. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017.

Good news my friends - the U.S. government has agreed today to rescind their new policy regarding foreign students and visas. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/14/trump-administration-drops-plan-to-deport-international-students-in-online-only-classes-361053 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-14/harvard-and-u-s-make-deal-on-foreign-student-visas

@needanoffersobad just wanted to elaborate on a few things I mentioned earlier. Each school and academic department in North America has to make its own choices with regards to how it will offer courses during the 2020-2021 school year. Some will not offer classes at all in-person. Some, like my school, will offer online and in-person. Some will go with the majority in-person as if nothing has changed. I'm lucky that I have a choice; I think your perspective will vary depending on how much flexibility your school gives you. For those who have to go back to campus when they don't particularly want to during a pandemic, their attitudes might not be great, and similarly, those who only have the online option might not be thrilled. Totally understandable either way, but for those users who are trying to be provocative in their comments on here, I'd remind them that everything is relative, including perspective. The world does not revolve around any of us, or our opinions. For those of us in particular who might be older, who might have weakened immune systems or something like diabetes or a congenital heart condition, the prospect of being on a large campus right now in a world without a vaccine is terrifying and the opportunity to not miss out on a year of education during a pandemic is absolutely, positively awesome. With that said, if your entire future career is predicated on having every single year of your PhD studies in-person, or if you feel your ability to benefit from online courses is so severely diminished because they are online, then maybe deferring a year until you can hopefully attend everything in person is the best bet for you. My perspective is different from some, and I do not intend for this to sound condescending or arrogant, just manifestly different. I already have a T10 master's degree from a quant intensive program and half a dozen years of quant research/work experience in this field, including several years at a big 4 consulting firm and a few more in government. I'm also already published in this field. I personally do not need the on-campus/in-person experience as badly as some might. I don't have pre-existing health issues, but I'm already statistically at higher risk simply because I'm older. For me, the opportunity to live anywhere I want during a pandemic and take my first year online if I want to is indeed an awesome opportunity because this offers me an unprecedented amount of flexibility, and if I so choose, I can still take everything or whatever I want in person. The majority of my PhD will still be in-person, from a great school, in a field I love. I am grateful simply to be in this position. For others who are straight out of undergrad or who are younger with no professional/research experience and who will be attending an institution that will be going exclusively online this next year, I can see how online-only classes could be deflating, disappointing and inadequate. In that case, I guess it comes down to whether the benefits you'll receive by waiting a year for in-person courses (if you defer) outweighs the year that you will miss out on while the remaining members of your original cohort move on while you do other things for the next year. Either way, good luck and I wish you the best with your decision and the next year.

@needanoffersobad Yep, University of Toronto And yes, that's pretty much exactly it. My department is going to conduct every class both in-person and live/synchronous at the same time using live video via zoom. Undergrad and grad students have been given the option of attending in-person or online at their own discretion. So, if you want to attend in person, you can (as long as the class size is relatively small; the 50+ person undergrad classes will only have the online option) and if you don't want to be in Toronto right now or attend in person, you can attend purely as an online student. For grad students, given none of our classes are very large, all will be offered with both options. @Artifex_Archer makes some great points. This is an awesome opportunity and probably the only time (short of another crazy, once in a century unforeseen event) where many schools will be giving students these options. My advice remains, do not defer!

My school has offered us the choice of in person or online for the next year, with everything (including orientation) being offered in both formats. If my choice was online or deferred admission, I'd definitely take the online option. It's unfortunate if online is the only option in lieu of on campus, but at least you'll make progress towards your degree; if you defer for a year in particular, you are losing an entire year. Your cohort will move on without you and they will be a year ahead of you when you do start, and additionally, there are no guarantees about what the format will be in a year anyway. If these are definitely your only choices, recommend you go with remote learning.

@JamesPratt congratulations on getting into two amazing programs. About a decade ago, I spent a summer at Cal doing an energy policy workshop with GSPP and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For what it's worth, if it were me, I'd go to Cal, but that's because I'm an IR specialization. I know UCLA and Cal seem to be trading the USNWR ranking for best public school, but Cal has (in my opinion) better contacts with government and private IR think tanks, including very close ties with CGSR at Lawrence Livermore and Rand, both through their polisci and public policy programs. I saw this personally, with my own eyes. Additionally, Cal's proximity to the tech/STEM companies and startups in SF and silicon valley are beneficial if you're interested in some specific research areas. If you are a theory, comparative or AP person then I don't think you can go wrong with either school. If you are IR, go to Cal and take advantage of both an incredible polisci department and the relationship that department has with the best quantitative public policy school in the world and two of the best national laboratories (LBNL and LLNL, both of which hire political scientists).

^What BTF said; Carleton has outstanding placements and networking/connections if you want to work for the government/civil service, particularly if you want to stay in Ottawa with the feds. Also, there's an entire forum on here just for this degree type but the MPPA (and Public Affairs/MPP/MPS type degrees) from North American schools generally are not the same as a master's degree in political science in a number of ways so this specific forum is ill suited for this. Just FYI, there are some fantastic Carleton MPPA threads on reddit too that answer just about every question.

Haha no doubt you will get good meat here! You are both spot on. I was in Argentina last year and went to a steakhouse in BA, my first Argentine steakhouse. I had the porterhouse steak with chips and local wine. It was literally the best steak/meal I have ever had in my life. I would fly from Canada back to Argentina just to do a tour of the steakhouses. Back to reality, I sincerely hope everyone commenting on here is able to get into the US for school this fall. I can empathize/relate, having studied in the US for my masters degree as a foreigner. The process isn't easy even in the best of times and with this pandemic I am sure it is a lot more difficult. Trump is the reason I decided to stay in Canada for my PhD but right now with COVID I'm just grateful I don't have to deal with the US immigration process again in general. If the US does not work out, we'd love to have you here in Canada

Fair enough. Digressing to something unrelated to CARES, I just saw that the University of California announced it will be ending the current testing (SAT/ACT) requirements for undergraduate admissions at all of its campuses. We are living in interesting times.