LatinAmericanFootball

I think you should choose the one that allows/encourages you to conduct the best research possible (considering funding, coursework, RA opportunities, the possibility of writing a thesis, etc) and that puts you in touch with the best possible faculty (considering fit with your interests, having active agendas, ideally having connections in the US). My impression is that the degree itself matters less than those things, so try to investigate how the different degrees compare on all of that.

You might find some info about this browsing the old application threads, particularly their last pages. I think last year someone got off the waitlist at UT Austin pretty late in the cycle, for instance. It's quite common, and programs set up waitlists because they assume they might have to use them. But of course it's hard to predict the odds for any specific case.

Nope, their visit is scheduled for the weekend of April 8th-9th. BTW I just rejected most of my remaining offers this week, including NYU's - hope this helps someone still on the waitlist.

MIT did visit days this week, and I got my acceptance email in late February. You should probably write them to ask about your status. You might be waitlisted or something of the sorts

Not necessary for most top programs, certainly helpful if you're aiming at quant "boutique" programs (NYU, Rochester, or the likes of CalTech and Stanford GSB). Probably not a lot of added value if you do well on the GRE Q section and have your recommenders emphasize your quant skills on their letters. Then again, it definitely wouldn't hurt to have a few As in Calculus in your transcript, so it depends on the opportunity cost of taking the classes.

It really varies. If you're feeling anxious about it you could ask the DGS or whoever originally emailed you (e.g. "When can I expect the official letter from the Graduate School to arrive?" or something like that). But it really could take anything from a couple days to two weeks or so.

Let's do it! PROFILE:Type of Undergrad Institution: Large public in my country, mostly unknown in the USMajor: Political ScienceUndergrad GPA: Doesn't translate well but should be something between 3.6 and 3.7Type of Grad: Large private in my country, well-knownGrad GPA: 3.92GRE: 170Q/165V/4.5AWAny Special Courses: Lots of substantive polisci and quant methodsLetters of Recommendation: Undergrad advisor (AP), Grad advisor (tenured associate), prof in a US T-20 who I RAed for (AP), prof in a top European uni who I RAed for (full prof). I'm very close to the first two, a bit less to the others, but I can only assume all letters were very strong. All four of them did their PhDs in the US and are well-known in the subfield.Teaching/Research Experience: Lots of TAing and RAing since undergrad. A few conference presentations, no publications.Subfields: Comparative politics, political economy, methods, Latin AmericaOther: I'm an advanced R user and briefly worked as a data scientist for a think-tank. I also think my writing sample was pretty good - some POIs complimented me for it. It's very quant-heavy, which certainly helped.RESULTS:Acceptances: Harvard, Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, NYU, UCSD, Emory, Vanderbilt, UT-Austin (all funded)Rejections: Stanford, Yale, Chicago PolEconWaitlists: Notre Dame, WUSTLGoing to: Not sure yet!LESSONS/ADVICE: I honestly would have never expected to have such a successful cycle. I knew I had a competitive profile, but I expected to receive maybe 2 or 3 acceptances because admissions are so unpredictable. Instead, I got in at 10 amazing programs, including some of my dream schools. I know that assessing exactly how competitive you are is really difficult, but if I were to apply again (or advice someone on applying), I'd say the ideal range in the number of places to apply to is something like 8-10. I also could have saved a few months of my savings if I had applied to fewer places. But then again, if you can afford it, the worst thing that can happen is you get too many offers and have to spend some time making a decision and declining offers. Letters of Recommendation are really important. I obviously didn't get to see my letters, but POIs at places that accepted me all mentioned that "the strong words of my recommenders" were a factor for admitting me. It's not always easy to strike a balance between recommenders being famous and liking you, but you should absolutely try to maximize these things. If you can't, choose the recommender that's most likely to say you can walk on water. Take your time on the GREs. It's not a particularly hard test, but it demands that you really get used to its style. I studied with Magoosh's prep, but there are many high-quality, free or very cheap options online (check out Gregmat). My Quant score was certainly an important part of the story I wanted to tell in my application, as an additional credential of my aptitude for studying some of my interests (political economy and methods). Also, I almost retook the test because of my unimpressive AW, but it doesn't seem to have made a difference (maybe programs discounted the fact that I'm an international student?). My SOP's structure was similar to @honeymoow's and to some successful applicants of previous cycles (check out sloth_girl's in the 2020 thread). Given all of our results, I think it's a very competent template - just make sure you understand its purpose and then dedicate yourself to the content. I started with a paragraph summarizing my research interests and my career goal, then a paragraph saying how I prepared myself for an academic career. Then I had 4 paragraphs with research interests - two substantive, one methodological, one regional focus. I tried to tie into all of them what work I have already done in that domain and to mention some sort of question or approach I'd like to explore going forward into my doctoral studies. Finally, I had one "fit" paragraph where I named 3-4 faculty members who I'd like to work with at that specific place and how their interests are similar to my own, and a mostly generic concluding paragraph. The main point here is to make your SOP be about how your experiences and interests make you an ideal candidate for conducting new research at this place. Don't fall into the trap of making it a personal statement - places that want to know more about you as a person will ask for a separate essay with that information. A SOP is first and foremost a research statement. I mistakenly called Harvard's Department of Government as "Department of Political Science" in my SOP, and somehow still got in. Always proofread your statements so that you don't go through the stress I went through when I noticed it, but if you end up doing something like that, don't fret, because it probably won't be something that gets you in/keeps you out. I obsessed over GradCafe more than I should have. I sh*t you not, I clicked on "Next unread topic" at the bottom of the page until I reached posts from 2012. I learned a lot of useful information, but much more useless stuff - these things are cumulative and saturate really fast, and you mostly have the same advice and questions every year. I highly recommend reading the Profile/Results threads I posted above, and maybe glossing over some of the official Application Cycle threads, but that's basically it. Don't bother checking the application portals daily. One thing I learned this year is that good application news arrive faster than bad news - acceptances came with excited emails from POIs or the DGS before the portal changed, while rejections came with automated emails asking to check the portal for updates. I think that's it. These forums really helped me knowing what a great application looked like when I started preparing, and to keep me sane while waiting for results, so I hope my experience can be of help to future applicants. Also feel free to ask here or send me a private message in case I can help with something else - I will try to check every once in a while. Good luck everyone!

I expect we'll hear more from Harvard and Stanford tomorrow, so wait at least until then I guess.

I had no idea lol that's good to know. So tomorrow will probably be a slow day again, right? Expecting Tuesday to be busy then...

I'm betting on next Monday or Tuesday. Fingers crossed!

Yeah, I think it's safe to assume that if you haven't heard from Vandy. On the visit day info they provided to me, there's a spreadsheet with what seems to be the names of everyone admitted. There are 18 people, by the way. Mine's the same.

I think sometimes it might be that, and sometimes it's just that acceptances are notified first by the department itself and then everything (both acceptances and rejections) go through the university's Graduate School, which sends automated messages to everyone. Also, there are far fewer acceptances than rejections in every program.

I worked a lot on my SOP. I kicked it off following these suggestions by @sloth_girl (an extremely successful applicant from a couple years ago): https://forum.thegradcafe.com/topic/122272-results-profile-lessons-2020/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-1058764080 I also asked my advisor to review it and also had it reviewed by some friends from college. I really recommend having at least one professor or academically-oriented friend (if they're already in a PhD in the US, even better) take a look at it. People who are not into academia probably won't know what a good SOP should look like and might end up confusing you or assuming it has to be a personal statement (when in fact it should be mostly about your research).

Thanks for starting the thread! I'll wait for my last results before posting, but for future reference I'd like to add the links to the past threads, which were really helpful to me:

Nope, nothing on NYU's portal. As I understand, the Department recommended my admission to the Graduate School, which handles the portal. They probably still have to process a lot of stuff before getting the decision up there. Most programs seem to work like that.