NeedaMormon

This community is fantastic, and it was great to see such a diverse group of people applying for PhD programs. Best of luck to anyone applying next year. Anyone can DM me with questions about my application experience or if you want input on your application materials. y’all are pretty chill. Keep it wavy.

Figured I would get things started as my season is essentially over. PROFILE Type of Undergrad Institution: R2 State Institution Major(s)/Minor(s): Major - Political Science, Minor - Japanese, Statistics Undergrad GPA: 3.83 Type of Grad: N/A Grad GPA: N/A GRE: 159V/157Q/4.0W Any Special Courses: Graduate-Level Political Methods Course, CS Class in Python, Classes in R, Advanced Statistics Courses Letters of Recommendation: 1 Professor, 2 Associate Professors, all tenured, I'm close with two of them. Teaching Experience: Taught one lecture on using functions in R Other: Summer Fellowship, Applied for NSF GRFP RESULTS Acceptances: WashU ($$), Texas A&M ($$), MSU ($$), IU ($$), Iowa ($$) Waitlists: UIUC Rejections: Princeton, Michigan, UCSD, Emory, Northwestern, UW-Madison (With Interview), UT Austin Pending: UMCP Going to: I'll never tell LESSONS LEARNED: 1. I feel like this sums up this application season for a lot of people: (If y'all ever need something to laugh about I would recommend the podcast that comes from this GIF, My Brother, My Brother, and Me. It's the best.) 2. Well, if there's anything I can say about this year is that I am glad there was a wide amount of schools I applied to. Most of this came from the advice of my adviser, who I am glad I discussed possible schools in-depth with. Your professors will know places that would fit well, so ask them what they think. 3. One thing I haven't mentioned much is that I applied for the NSF GRFP in October, and I ended up reusing most of my materials from that application with small tweaks. Applying for that grant was the single best thing I was able to do myself. I spent weeks on my statements and sent them to quite a few people to get revisions. The input I got from the many people who read my SoP helped me out so much. Send your SoP to professors, relatives, anybody who is willing to look over it. That input is important. 4. One part of my application I thought was going to be especially weak was my writing sample, since it was a grant proposal. The proposal was mostly a literature review with a proposal of general methods I could use, but was pretty broad and I could have done better to make use of political science literature. I think my proficiency in technical skills (R, LaTeX, Python) made up for the weak spot of my writing sample. 5. I want to echo something that was mentioned in last year's lessons thread by @sloth_girl, who was EXTREMELY SUCCESSFUL last year, and that is "Success in grad school applications requires both a great profile and luck. Both are necessary, but neither alone is sufficient." I feel especially lucky that I got accepted to so many places. In a normal year, I would not have made the cut at most of these places. 6. Fit. If you are struggling to find professors whose research you are interested in, why are you applying there? I would have cut out maybe 3 schools if I had followed this. If I think of anything else I'll add it later.

I got the email at 10:00am MST on the dot. I would say that going alphabetically makes sense here but the fact that it was exactly at 10:00 makes me think otherwise.

I also got a rejection from Northwestern. I got an email to check the portal.

Claiming a University of Iowa acceptance. It looks like emails are being sent out on an individual basis.

I'm planning on AP/Quant Methods

To the others accepted to WUSTL( @_nutella_@Barry B. Benson@aae322 ), the funding info should be sent soon in the formal offer letter.

It looks like an individual email from the DGS. Oh my goodness I am shaking and I should be focusing on the class I'm in right now.

I GOT INTO WUSTL OH MY GOSH

For people who aren't proficient in LaTeX, I learned how to make my CV using LaTeX and that helped me out a lot. - LaTeX CV Tutorial (Overleaf has a great amount of tutorials for learning LaTeX. I'm not a fan of using LaTex on their website though but that's a personal preference.) For the departments that I've talked to it appears that R is the main statistical software used now. Especially for younger professors. There are some people using Python and other software languages but those are more niche. For R here's some resources for people who want to learn certain skills: - Blogdown (This is R adajcent, but if you want to create a website to show off projects you worked on this is fantastic.) - TidyTuesday (Data Visualization. They put out datasets and it gives you opportunities to try and visualize the data in fun ways.) - swirl (Basic R tutorials within R. It's a great way to start learning the program.) - R for Data Science (Great supplement to learn R. Focuses on a package group called "tidyverse" and skills in that are very helpful.) There's also a number of good books about R that are more focused on social sciences. Some of those include: - Quantitative Social Science - Kosuke Imai - R for Political Science: A Practical Guide - Francisco Urdinez, Andres Cruz - Political Analysis Using R (Use R!) - James E. Monogan III I think a final note on learning R is find a niche! Think of R as the Mariana Trench. R is DEEP. And there are a crazy amount of parts within R you can explore. But pick one thing and learn it very well. Then branch out to other parts of R. Having a strong foundation in one part of R can be helpful in learning adjacent things. @timeseries If you have anything to add about learning R/LaTeX that I am missing please add it.

I mean we'll see what I end up doing. My real interests are with voter turnout, and political communication. Especially online communication by political campaigns. If I want to do stuff in Japanese politics I should def brush up on my Japanese lol. Can't just waste those 2 years in Japan.

It depends on how hard the people pray. (jkwhydoimakethesejokesaboutmyownreligion) In all seriousness, it snows pretty frequently. We get a couple serious snowfalls. Probably no more than 18in in a year.

It was snowing earlier does that count.

I'm actually AP/Methods. I thought I would be a decent fit at Emory, but I assume my GRE scores made me less competitive there. In any case, you'll get some good news soon no doubt!

Claiming Emory and Princeton rejections. Expected the Princeton rejection, but not the Emory rejection. I'm counting my blessings though, because I have gotten three acceptances so far.

I've been doing the following to assess the schools I've been admitted to so far to do my part in knowing the program and preparing for the admit visits: - I've been contacting professors who I'm interested in having as an adviser and just talking with them generally. Some of them I reached out to unprompted and other professors have been contacting me first. I figure this is good to get some one on one time with the professors to get a feel for them all. - I've also been reaching out to grad students and asking them their options about the school and program generally. This has mostly been 4-5th years who are on their way out. The current grad students have been super helpful in answering my questions, and they've been pretty blunt which is what I wanted. I also ask them why they decided to attend their program, and that has been telling of the current mood of the grad students. - I've also been asking to get the grad handbooks just to understand the structure of the programs. Since my schools are pretty close together in ranking and everything it's important to know the differences. The professor who I'm RA for has been helpful and is giving me some good questions to ask these programs. Those questions include: 1. How is the methods sequence structured? Are there opportunities for funding to attend workshops (e.g. ICPSR)? 2. What types of academic jobs are students getting (meaning R1, teaching jobs, etc.)? 3. What is the research paper requirement in the first two years, and how do the comprehensive exams work? 4. Are there opportunities to collaborate with the faculty on research? 5. Are there opportunities for summer funding?

UT-Austin rejections are officially on the portal now. I didn't get an email notification for anybody wondering.

I heard last Friday. I’m still waiting for an email about funding since they contacted me via phone call.

Just received a waitlist email for UIUC. Mentioned the applicant pool was twice the size of last year.

I’ve been lucky to get decisions relatively quickly compared to others here. I guess it comes with different subfields and my selection of schools (I’m AP/Methods, while it seems like most people here are IR or CP). Fingers crossed with these other places! ?

Thanks! It’s interesting to me that all three so far are essentially the same in ranking (mid/low 20s). Doesn’t make any decision easy for me ?‍♂️ At this point I’m waiting for WUSTL and Emory to release results. Once I get decisions from those two schools I’ll have a better idea of where I want to go.

Claiming an Indiana University admission! I turned away from my email for 5 min and this happened. Literally a jump-scare for me.

It doesn't look like there is any other way to see your status. The application portal doesn't mention anything new. I would assume they would leave a message or something.

Thanks! It's nice to know I will have options now. It's humbling to think that these schools essentially want to pay me to be there. I've felt "imposter syndrome" for a while now, and while I don't think that's gonna stop anytime soon, it's reassuring that schools (no matter the ranking) see potential in me.

Just got a phone call from Texas A & M! Accepted with full funding!