foxcarnival

Not to be rude, but we are still focused on our own prospects for this admission season. Furthermore, we do not serve on any school's admissions committees, therefore, we cannot provide you with the detailed insight you are looking for. We've been supporting one another for months on this thread, and I can tell you that folks with better credentials than you have been rejected everywhere and vice versa, so you won't receive the straightforward answer you desire.
That being said, given my personal experience with two admissions cycles, I can tell you that the most important thing Departments look for is a good match between your research interests, the Department's own interests, and the faculty's capacity to advise you. Best of luck.

So, after two years of heavy stalking, I am glad to finally be putting my own profile up! GradCafe was super helpful for me and I hope it can be helpful for other people as well. If anyone else is coming to UW-Madison or has similar research interests, please PM me I would be happy to talk! I also want to wish all the future applicants the best of luck with your applications. 
 
PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution: Community College -> Large public R1 – T40
Major(s)/Minor(s): Poli Sci | Stats and Econ Minor
Undergrad GPA:  3.76 (upper division 3.9, make sure you try in gen eds a few years of lower grades are hard to bring up!)

Research Interests: IPE/IOs/Electoral Regimes

SOP: All business. First paragraph states what I broadly am interested in and how my current training has prepared me for a PhD. Paragraph on my RA work, paragraph on my thesis, paragraph on my coursework, paragraph on my future research ideas and a conclusion/fit paragraph to end it. PM me if you'd like to see it. 

GRE:  161 (Q), 164 (V), 5.5 (W)

Any Special Courses: Regression analysis, couple of courses for data analysis, econometrics, extra poli sci research course. A stats minor typically takes 4 courses, one of which is an intro-type course. If you can pass 3 other stats courses you can put stats minor on your CV and get a pretty significant boost for an insignificant amount of coursework. I highly recommend it and believe that it can help compensate for lower GRE scores (like mine). 

Letters of Recommendation: 3 –– a) Undergraduate thesis advisor, b) Thesis Committee Member c) Professor from the Community College I went to. Two DGSs said that the LORs I have were a key reason for my admission. Don't underestimate the power of a good letter to assuage some Adcom fears. 
Teaching/Research Experience: OLS and probit honors thesis, nothing special. Semi-original data collection. 2 years of RAing mostly for a business school prof. 

RESULTS:
Acceptances: UVA, OSU, UPenn, Rochester, Vanderbilt, and UW-Madison
Rejections: Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, UChicago, MIT, Duke, Cornell, Emory, University of Minnesota, Georgetown, and Brown. 

Attending: UW-Madison

LESSONS LEARNED: 
My application was very weird. I attended 4 different undergraduate institutions in total and worked multiple years for a professor that I did not receive a rec letter from. Could this have gotten me an immediate trash pile for looking flakey? Possibly, I guess I will never know but a lot of things in my profile looked strange on paper. I recommend really trying to provide context for anything that may be off-putting. Adcomms are looking at hundreds of applications, and the likelihood that they will reach out to clarify the minutia of your profile is highly unlikely. Do it for them, or ask your letter writers to do it for you.  Do not stress too much about your applications. It is easy to say that looking back, but it is harder to do during the waiting season. I got a very early rejection from Emory (a school I really thought I had a good shot of getting into), and I was very concerned about how the rest of my applications would go. It all works out, and if it doesn't work for out for you one year just take another year to beef up your GRE scores and writing.  I spent about two years altogether getting my profile ready. I took my GRE last year of undergrad and scored poorly on it. I did not leave myself enough time to retake it. I heard from an advisor that it is much easier to move up the rankings on the front end (as an applicant) than it is to move up on the back end (as a graduate). This really stuck with me. My biggest piece of advice is to not downplay the gap year. I had a polished thesis and SOP as well as months to study for the GRE which I am sure worked wonders for my application. My original application probably would have been about normal at a T50 school, one year of dedicated work was able to move me towards T20 acceptances. I cannot recommend it enough, take a year to work, study, and polish your materials!  As I am sure you can see, I applied very broadly, mostly because I did not know how my non-traditional profile would sit with admissions committees. A couple of things to consider for future applicants. In my experience, public schools are more likely to admit applicants from public schools than private schools are. I came from one of the top 10 public schools in political science and typically came from the lowest-ranking public school at all of my private school visits. My private school visits consisted overwhelmingly of undergrads from other prestigious, private undergraduate institutions. Of course this was a very small sample size, but this was my experience at least this year.  I think finding your niche on where your application will be most competitive is important. I (pretty correctly, luckily) predicted that my application would do best in the 15-20 range. All but 1 of my acceptances came from this range. This gives you the opportunity to negotiate offers and choose between programs based on fit and interest rather than just picking the one school you were admitted to that is higher ranked/in a better location/has a better fit etc.  Apply to private schools! Private schools have more money and can generally offer more fellowship years which is a serious help when it comes to negotiating offers. Having (better) competing offers from peer institutions will really help your future stipend by giving you some negotiating power.  Visits are very important, find out how many grad students your advisor currently has, what their reputation is, and if they have time to take on any more grad students. Also, ask about how plentiful funding is past the 5th year, PhDs are taking longer and the sixth year may be needed to complete your dissertation.  Please decline your offers as soon as you know you are not interested. I declined one offer back in February and a couple in Mid-March. If you know you are not interested in going to the other institutions, please decline so that the dept. can provide offers to individuals who are interested in the school. I was not on any waitlists, but I am sure folks that were on the waitlist would certainly second this.  I remember looking at some of these cycles in the past and seeing where people decided and thinking "What, why would they choose that place out of all their acceptances??" When you are admitted and start looking at how the department is organized, how grad students feel, what fellowship/stipends/COL are offered, it becomes a much tougher decision. I chose UW-Madison because it was my best fit and there were multiple people there that could easily advise my dissertation. In some departments, you only realize after meeting faculty that there is not the fit you thought there was when you applied. I am lucky because UW-Madison was also my highest-ranked acceptance, but even if the school was 5 places lower I would still go because I believe it is the institution where I will be supported in writing my best possible dissertation. 

PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution:  Liberal arts college (<4000 students) in the Midwest
Major(s)/Minor(s): Political science/history
Undergrad GPA:  3.89
Type of Grad: PhD program at a Big 10 university in the Midwest
Grad GPA:  3.9
GRE: 168 V, not telling my math, but it is not good, so don't let bad test scores limit where you apply!
Any Special Courses: Two years of coursework in a PhD program
Letters of Recommendation: One full professor (CP), one associate (methods), one assistant (IR/game theory)
Teaching/Research Experience: Two semesters TAing, one semester as instructor of record, one summer doing research with a faculty member in undergrad

RESULTS:
Acceptances: WUSTL, Duke, Rochester
Rejections: Chicago PE, Emory, OSU, Vanderbilt, NYU (assumed), Princeton, Michigan, Stanford GSB, UCSD, Columbia
Attending: Rochester 🥳

LESSONS LEARNED:
I went straight from undergrad to a PhD program two years ago when I was admitted off the waitlist to my current program. At the time, I knew that I loved studying political science and not a whole lot else. Graduate study gave me the chance to narrow my research agenda, develop my technical skills, and build my confidence. Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to others? Depends. I knew for sure that I wanted to be in grad school and that I eventually wanted to be a professor, but the details were fuzzy. If you're unsure of either of those things, taking an RAship or policy job may well be a better use of your time. 

PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution:  Large public R1 – not state flagship
Major(s)/Minor(s): Public Administration
Undergrad GPA:  3.84
Type of Grad:  NA
Grad GPA:  NA
GRE:  159 (Q), 161 (V), 5.0 (W)
Any Special Courses: 4 graduate-level political science courses (1 PhD, 3 Masters), half-a-dozen quant methods courses, probability theory, research design
Letters of Recommendation: 3 –– a) Undergraduate thesis advisor (asst. prof, methods), b) Undergraduate research supervisor (assoc. prof, American + methods), c) Grad-level research design professor (assoc. prof, comparative)
Teaching/Research Experience: Quant-heavy undergraduate thesis I plan on submitting for publication, national conference presentation (with a second acceptance at time of PhD applications), 2.5 years of RA experience
Other: Strong R, subfields are Methods and American

RESULTS:
Acceptances: WUSTL, OSU
Rejections: Harvard, Princeton, Michigan, MIT, Columbia (MA offer), Duke, UNC, NYU (MA offer), USC
Pending: UVA (Waitlist)

Attending: WUSTL

LESSONS LEARNED: 
My GRE scores were a) not where I wanted them to be and b) out of line with the rest of the admitted cohort at WUSTL (at least according to the results page). I'm under the notion that my coursework –– which includes grad-level stats and undergrad probability theory, alongside a number of courses in computational methods –– helped make up for this. My writing sample applied many of these computational methods, and I believe my letter-writers emphasized my strengths in quant poli sci. All in, I felt I was building much of my application to make up for this.  The lesson, here, is to spend more time preparing for the GRE. It's hard. I gave myself two weeks to prepare and took it in early October, so I was unable to retake.  As soon as I began exploring the possibility of applying to PhD programs as an undergraduate (beginning of junior year), I spoke to (virtually) all of my poli sci professors. I received lots of advice, but the most frequent feedback was to take as many methods courses as possible. Causally, I have no way of knowing the extent to which this played a role in my admission (n = 1, selection on the DV, etc.), but I certainly wouldn't have been able to write the paper I submitted or elaborate my research goals had I not. I spent much of my undergrad building relationships with faculty members – both my letter writers and others in the department. When decision season rolls around, and the rejections are coming thick and fast, it's helpful to have a group of people who understand the process rooting for you. Again, no way I can attribute a causal effect to this, but my research statement was almost entirely focused on research plans. Of the seven or so paragraphs, one was dedicated to my academic background, and one described my fit for each program. It also exceeded the length limit at (just about) every program to which I applied.

PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution:  Liberal arts college (<4000 students) in the Midwest
Major(s)/Minor(s): Political science/history
Undergrad GPA:  3.89
Type of Grad: PhD program at a Big 10 university in the Midwest
Grad GPA:  3.9
GRE: 168 V, not telling my math, but it is not good, so don't let bad test scores limit where you apply!
Any Special Courses: Two years of coursework in a PhD program
Letters of Recommendation: One full professor (CP), one associate (methods), one assistant (IR/game theory)
Teaching/Research Experience: Two semesters TAing, one semester as instructor of record, one summer doing research with a faculty member in undergrad

RESULTS:
Acceptances: WUSTL, Duke, Rochester
Rejections: Chicago PE, Emory, OSU, Vanderbilt, NYU (assumed), Princeton, Michigan, Stanford GSB, UCSD, Columbia
Attending: Rochester 🥳

LESSONS LEARNED:
I went straight from undergrad to a PhD program two years ago when I was admitted off the waitlist to my current program. At the time, I knew that I loved studying political science and not a whole lot else. Graduate study gave me the chance to narrow my research agenda, develop my technical skills, and build my confidence. Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to others? Depends. I knew for sure that I wanted to be in grad school and that I eventually wanted to be a professor, but the details were fuzzy. If you're unsure of either of those things, taking an RAship or policy job may well be a better use of your time. 

PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution:  Liberal arts college (<4000 students) in the Midwest
Major(s)/Minor(s): Political science/history
Undergrad GPA:  3.89
Type of Grad: PhD program at a Big 10 university in the Midwest
Grad GPA:  3.9
GRE: 168 V, not telling my math, but it is not good, so don't let bad test scores limit where you apply!
Any Special Courses: Two years of coursework in a PhD program
Letters of Recommendation: One full professor (CP), one associate (methods), one assistant (IR/game theory)
Teaching/Research Experience: Two semesters TAing, one semester as instructor of record, one summer doing research with a faculty member in undergrad

RESULTS:
Acceptances: WUSTL, Duke, Rochester
Rejections: Chicago PE, Emory, OSU, Vanderbilt, NYU (assumed), Princeton, Michigan, Stanford GSB, UCSD, Columbia
Attending: Rochester 🥳

LESSONS LEARNED:
I went straight from undergrad to a PhD program two years ago when I was admitted off the waitlist to my current program. At the time, I knew that I loved studying political science and not a whole lot else. Graduate study gave me the chance to narrow my research agenda, develop my technical skills, and build my confidence. Would I do it all again? Absolutely. Would I recommend it to others? Depends. I knew for sure that I wanted to be in grad school and that I eventually wanted to be a professor, but the details were fuzzy. If you're unsure of either of those things, taking an RAship or policy job may well be a better use of your time. 

Not me! still waiting 

Just declined my Duke offer! Hopefully it helps someone out!

Anyone at the Rochester visit right now? Would love to talk to prospective cohort mates even though I couldn't make the trip :')

Anyone at the Rochester visit right now? Would love to talk to prospective cohort mates even though I couldn't make the trip :')

Not a promising approach. MAPSS tends to suggest taking out loans and financial management info sessions in response to any expressed concerns about financial feasibility. 

I was also wondering about that before, but a reliable source told me this is confirmed news

Claiming a Rochester acceptance; very excited! CP/formal theory

From what I understand, Illinois admits will come individually and through the end of March. You may or may not be notified if you're waitlisted, but Illinois recruits heavily from its waitlist, so there's a good chance of receiving an offer, even if you haven't heard anything yet. Don't lose hope!

From what I understand, Illinois admits will come individually and through the end of March. You may or may not be notified if you're waitlisted, but Illinois recruits heavily from its waitlist, so there's a good chance of receiving an offer, even if you haven't heard anything yet. Don't lose hope!

Also claiming Rochester.

Claiming Rochester! UT Austin is still above it though.

Also claiming a Rochester admit, email to check the portal. IPE 

Claiming a Rochester acceptance; very excited! CP/formal theory

Also claiming a Duke acceptance! Institutions/political economy

Also claiming a Duke acceptance! Institutions/political economy

Also claiming a Duke acceptance! Institutions/political economy

Also claiming a Duke acceptance! Institutions/political economy

Also claiming a Duke acceptance! Institutions/political economy

Claiming Duke!! So excited! Received an email to check portal. Best news of today!