Muan1

Yes, depending on your research interests, Oxford might be a better place to study, and you could easily stay on via the DPhil. Although the funding is in general a ton iffier than in the states, however the importance of this really depends upon the person.

Right, you correctly identified a possible complication: next year's admissions prospects might even get worse. But it also might get better. But the fact that this is an uncertainty should convince you about why it might be incorrect in not entering a PhD program this year on the off (maybe off-off-off) chance you get into Harvard the next year. Moreover, plenty of folks who get waitlisted from a top program one year when reapplying the next year do not get in. Perhaps the faculty on adcom reading theory apps won't be the same next year, or perhaps there might be a candidate next year whom they prefer more. Who knows? Your safest best is to go with Northwestern in the here and now. Yes, of course the Harvard name brand carries some weight when it comes to hiring decisions, but Northwestern is not chopped liver, and what is more decisive is the quality of your research and the strength of your mentorship relationship (not to mention the reputation of the mentor itself). NW does not lack on any of these fronts: depending on what your interests are, plenty of great theorists to work with at Northwestern. Monoson and Dietz immediately pop up in my mind, and Monoson as I understand has a lot of diverse eclectic interests that span the history of political thought. I'm sorry for the aporetic quality of my advice. But these are the questions that I genuinely would be thinking about if I were lucky enough to be in your position. Hope this helped -- best wishes.

Sure -- happy to chat in the DMs.

Go to Northwestern. You really don't want to miss out on that opportunity based upon the possible but by no means guaranteed chance you'd get into Harvard in a normal year. Certainly, there is no harm in hoping you'd get off the waitlist this year (who knows what would happen? And I presume your chances of getting off the waitlist is greater than the initial chance of even getting on the waitlist). But Northwestern is a very good program, especially for theory, that consistently places its students in great TT positions after graduation. Also would you be commuting to Evanston from Chicago? If I recall correctly, Evanston is an hour from Chicago proper, so the vibes would probably be quite different.

out of curiosity -- how did the cornell rejection read?

I've heard great things about the MA program in security studies at Georgetown: it's great for people who are considering either transitioning into government-work (also being in DC it's quite an advantage), or the PhD/academic pipeline. If you are interested in a PhD program with a dedicated group of scholars invested in security studies (not just tangentially, but explicitly and primarily), then UChicago is definitely somewhere to consider. Folks like Mearsheimer are still advising students, and there's a new crop of associate professors there that are ready to take up the mantle.

It suggests that they are admitting students one by one, as opposed to a massive email dump. The hope is that personalized emails imply that not all acceptances happen at a single time, which implies that if you haven't heard anything yet you still might. Hope that helps.

Just a friendly suggestion: try not to get tunnel vision just because you didn't happen to get into a particular school, whether that be Princeton or whatnot. For many of us, we still have yet to hear from a ton of schools, and how one school decides is quite different from another. Also a nice excerpted thought by Henry James: “Life is, in fact, a battle. Evil is insolent and strong; beauty enchanting, but rare; goodness very apt to be weak; folly very apt to be defiant; wickedness to carry the day; imbeciles to be in great places, people of sense in small, and mankind generally unhappy. But the world as it stands is no narrow illusion, no phantasm, no evil dream of the night; we wake up to it, forever and ever; and we can neither forget it nor deny it nor dispense with it."

Fiat lux, said Cal, showering the night sky with a million acceptances.

What's going on at Berkeley? Anyone hear anything?

Best wishes. I saw on the results thread that one year they were getting back to applicants on Sunday. So who really knows. Admittedly right now I'm enjoying riding out this Schroedingerian moment of uncertainty. I certainly would rather be hopefully waiting for good news than feeling sad because I was rejected. Strange how the mind works.

Any chance Cal gets back today, though? What was their original timeline as stated in the Zoom call?

If we haven't heard anything from Wisconsin, is it safe to assume a rejection?

I just have no idea what type of person would do this. Adding gasoline to the collective bonfire of grad application anxiety. On another note, I'm totally fine with being rejected from Princeton. I just don't want my cycle to start with an L.

And now someone's claiming a rejection on the results page. Which makes no sense, considering how there's a week delay between admits and rejects. The rejection post also said they checked the program website where it was said there was an "update" to their application, and they found out that they were rejected.