HobbesianKant

Just to answer the question of program which could fit your interest, I cannot provide any advise as to Master programs. As it concerns PhDs, however, the general top tier security schools are MIT, Chicago, Columbia, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, and Ohio State. Another school I would suggest is Notre Dame, which has been growing its security faculty and houses NDISC and the Kroc Institute.

Hello! I am currently a PhD student who specializes in international security, so I might be able to provide some insights. To begin, if I understand your question correctly, the options which you are considering is that of a Masters security program or a PhD. While the Masters path is somewhat self explanatory and generally expensive, opting for a PhD would entail you attending a political science, or government, PhD program and selecting IR as your primary subfield, in which you will specialize on conflict or security studies. Further, most PhDs, regardless of field, is fully funded. Some universities have joint PhDs with programs outside of the Political Science department. Nevertheless, if you are considering a PhD, I would suggest that you begin by examining the faculty within various departments and try to locate programs with professors that share your own research interests. As to which path you should choose, the decision is dependent upon for what purpose you are pursuing the degree. Masters programs are professional degrees--intended to assist individuals in their careers. Therefore, if you want to be employed by the government or a NGO within your field, a Masters would be better suited to such a goal. Conversely, a PhD is designed to create academics, those who will be producing research and teaching on the field. While, especially in the subfield of IR, some PhD students opt for non academic careers after their dissertation, the intention is for a PhD student to eventually become a professor.

One of the best examples I would provide of the importance of fit is someone I met at my own PhD program, which is top/mid depending on the field. By most metrics, like the GRE and GPA, this person would probably not have gotten an acceptance. With that said, their research interests was close to a few faculty members and, thus, they are about to enter their dissertation years. The importance of fit cannot be understated and, after reading the forums for a year, is the only quality which provides some consistency as to if one will get into a program.

Concur with this sentiment. Unlike undergrad, where an acceptance is based almost completely on one's gpa and test score, the more holistic review for PhD applicants and limited spots eliminates the possibility of "safety schools." When their most important measurement is one's fit within the program, it is possible to be accepted to an Ivy while being rejected by a University of Oregon-not to insult any Ducks in the forum. The upside of this process is that you cannot count yourself out of the best schools, but, conversely, there is a possibility you do not get accepted anywhere.

Yes, in order to see if your acceptance status, you have to find it in the texts of the great ancients. There, you shall find the map to Austin and Boston College.

I can attest to this sentiment. Grad students are not involved in the admissions department in any capacity. Our insight generally comes in the form of our experience from our experience as applicants and the information we pick up off-hand from those who have been on admissions committees. As to the when decisions will be released, your best guide is when decisions were released in prior years.

I cannot speak to American, but I have a friend who was accepted into UT-Austin today who is in the theory field. At least when it concerns theory, their relatively small share of the aggregate applicant pool likely accounts for the lack of messages on these threads. Further, in my experience, programs do not send out decisions at different times for different fields. Considering that, from what I have been told, admissions committees generally meet as an entire group to determine final acceptances and that a program administrator is responsible for actually sending the emails, it would not make sense for a IR applicant to be admitted before an American applicant. The exception to this is an informal acceptance, which generally comes in the form of a professor emailing you to inform you of your acceptance before the program releases their formal acceptances. This is done so as to keep applicants up to date as more schools begin to release their decisions.

One last warning I would provide for OSU is that they seem to be the only program who accepts more people than they can fund. The seemingly general rule of grad school admissions, from my experience, is that programs only accept the amount of applicants for which they are certain that they can supply a full funding package. While they do not expect every applicant to accept their offer, they are prepared if such an event were to occur. Duke, for example, did not take applicants last year supposedly because they had a massive yield rate among their applicants the prior year. The reason why cohorts, and thereby accepted applicant pools, are likely to be so small this year is that, with the pandemic, they can only provide funding for a small group of applicants.

From my experience, the timeline is that you should receive an email within week or two weeks informing you of your acceptance and how to navigate the process of accepting. They will reference the process for funding, but they do not provide specific dates as to when you could hear back. The most irritating part of the OSU's funding process is that it can take months to actually figure out if you will get funding. I believe if you are accepted in the first round of the scholarship review it will be communicated you by late February. With that said, for those who are not accepted for funding in the first round, they will keep you guessing by informing you that there is a possibility to receiving funding as the previously funded applicants decide to attend other programs. This is why it is important for everyone to decline quickly other offers if they know they will not be attending.

Yeah, there are a small selection of schools which are suspect every year. Last year, a favorite target was Columbia, with weekly supposed "acceptances." In my experience, most schools, particularly the top programs, tend to release larger batches for initial acceptances. Therefore, if you see at least four or five results, it is a pretty good indication they are real. There are exceptions, particularly when it concerns informal acceptances. Concerning when acceptances will be released, universities are generally consistent in their release window. If you consider everything that has to be done by the committee and the supporting staff, it is a large time commitment for everyone involved. Therefore, it is easier to just to keep the review process and acceptance period constant so people can plan their schedules accordingly. COVID and its subsequent effects are the unknown factor, of course, but I would not be surprised if it does not change the release window. At the very least, Ohio State's recent release provides some evidence that admission committee are maintaining the prior schedule.

Hello Everyone I was a lurking applicant to this website last year who managed to get into a great program. I decided to actually post after seeing the recent Ohio State acceptance just to provide some forewarning for that particular school's acceptance process. Of course, if you were accepted, congratulations! Getting the first acceptance is a massive relief and hopefully is only the start of a successful application season. For those who were not, do not worry! OSU is consistently the first to release a large batch of acceptances and it likely will not be until mid February for most schools to release their first acceptance letters. Now, the reason I wanted to post is to provide a bit of a warning from my experience last year after being accepted to OSU. It goes without saying that it is a great program for a lot of fields, but the way in which they allocate funding to their graduates is abnormal relative to every other school. Specifically, from what I was told, the funding is not directly allocated from the political science department upon the admissions decision. Instead, the program has to wait until after the admissions decision to submit each admit to a grad school-wide review which then allocates the funds. Therefore, while most programs will present the stipend offer in the admissions decision, OSU waits for sometime to inform applicants as to if they have been funded. It is possible that they have since updated this system, but it appears, at least thus far, that the acceptance process is the same in that, akin to last year, the portal is updated before the program sends a email. I do not know why OSU is one of the only schools who allocates funding through this process, but I can attest to it being frustrating trying to figure out if you received the funding needed to attend the school. Once again, if you got accepted, that is fantastic and it indicates that you are a competitive applicant for other programs. With that said, I did not want to see the same conversation, and subsequent stress, replicated in the forum last year where a bunch of accepted applicants are asking if anyone received funding with their OSU acceptances. Best of luck with the remaining application season!