Clintarius

It's true that at this time of the year this page was going wild 2-3 years ago haha. Good luck to everyone!

fwiw, looking at past results, it's unlikely anyone has heard from Duke yet, nor been invited to an interview for that matter, which Duke does not seem to do. (But I'm happy to be wrong)

I can add 2021 next weekend if y'all think it'd be helpful!

It's not costing a lot don't worry! I just have to pay a few bucks per month for it to support the number of hours running, but I won't have to after March once people stop using it as much. Independently of that, if you want to run the R code locally there's a GitHub link to the code on the page.

In the past month alone you guys have been using the app for a total of 320.88 hours as of today ?

Even if you end up not getting in, don't take it personally, this is an incredibly competitive year, for a process that is always incredibly competitive. When you find yourself in a pool of other good applicants, it's gonna come down to whether the faculty chooses you or them, and this necessarily hinges on some idiosyncrasies of the faculty in the admission committee this year. So chance plays a big role! You will definitely make it somewhere, either this year or next

Last year every decision came as an email (which either would let you know of the decision directly or would have you check the portal). I don't know of any scenario in which people find out by checking the application portals without having received an email first. This didn't prevent me from constantly checking the portals unprompted though

I and some friends got admitted to some schools after an MPP or an MPA last year, I definitely don't think a policy-oriented master's degree plays against you!

I doubt the virus will impact the timeline, given that other typical deadlines in departments remain the same despite COVID (so faculty members probably except to dedicate the same time of the year as usual to admissions), and that the April 15th deadline to accept offers is more or less institutionalized. So i would guess decisions will come in February/March like in previous years. But I might be wrong obviously! I already posted the link above, but I made a little app on this page where you can get an idea for most schools you might be applying to.

I would not worry about this (mixed methods v. quants v. qual. work). I think what admission committees look for is a signal that you are intellectually curious, ready to engage in depth with the material you study, and rigorous in the way you do. While it might be appreciated if you make strong claims about wanting to use them in your SoP, I think it's certainly not expected for applicants to have a strong command of quantitative methods prior to the start of their PhD.

Fingers crossed! And congrats for finding the strength to apply this year despite the pandemic!

Hey I remembered you had asked that, here's the link to the Github repo that shows the code for scraping and other things.

Good luck everyone with the final push for tomorrow's deadlines!

I agree with the others for the course! For the writing sample, I think an important part is to show that you understand the method you choose to use. For example, if you use regression analysis, it will better to do simple OLS, and then really discuss whether the result can be interpreted as causal (if that's what you're trying to do): what are potential selection biases, potential omitted variables, potential systematic measurement error, etc. rather than trying to apply a "fancier" method like IV regressions or the like.

I agree that mentioning a few is good practice! + If you have time, it's worth it to look up what is said of them (what they are known for) and to perhaps listen to one of their interview or to read one of their non-academic publications. It shows what they do and what they are invited to speak about, which is not captured easily by their CV's list of publication. Last year, I mentioned a professor very well known for statistical analysis to illustrate my motivation in formal theory, because I had noticed that he had published about formal models once. The faculty probably thought it was weird that I would pick him for formal theory and not stats, and in a way it revealed that I had done my homework but had no real familiarity with their work in the bigger picture. I think that I could've easily found out about my mistake if I had even just read their wikipedia page. It won't be a red flag if you make a similar mistake, but it won't hurt to double check if you have time. Don't panic if you haven't done it though, looking at their list of publication or so is sufficient to ensure they are at least relevant to your SOP! :)