LatinAmericanFootball
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Posts posted by LatinAmericanFootball
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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.
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On 3/22/2022 at 5:07 PM, Steven_Walls_1991 said:
Did NYU already do the visiting day? No answer at the end of March seems unbelievable
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.
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11 hours ago, Jack R said:
Has anyone heard from MIT regarding admissions?
I was fortunate to interview over the 16th and 17th of February. Is it unusual to wait this long to hear back?
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
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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.
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36 minutes ago, Simorg said:
How long should I wait for the official email?
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.
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Let's do it!
PROFILE:
Type of Undergrad Institution: Large public in my country, mostly unknown in the US
Major: Political Science
Undergrad GPA: Doesn't translate well but should be something between 3.6 and 3.7
Type of Grad: Large private in my country, well-known
Grad GPA: 3.92
GRE: 170Q/165V/4.5AW
Any Special Courses: Lots of substantive polisci and quant methods
Letters 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 America
Other: 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 PolEcon
Waitlists: Notre Dame, WUSTL
Going 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!
- honeymoow, polisciboy, modesteffect and 2 others
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27 minutes ago, second-time said:
So if I didn't get a call from Harvard today (IR), I can safely assume a rejection?
I expect we'll hear more from Harvard and Stanford tomorrow, so wait at least until then I guess.
- second-time and swanronson
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On 2/19/2022 at 12:01 AM, Quriosity said:
Probably Tuesday considering Monday is a holiday?
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...
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2 hours ago, honeymoow said:
I'm surprised that Stanford hasn't released yet, relative to previous years.
I'm betting on next Monday or Tuesday. Fingers crossed!
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32 minutes ago, CapTipps said:
I reached out to ask about my application status a few days ago and after a while, yesterday they replied saying that they were not offering me admission. Unfortunately, I think at this point it is safe to assume rejection.
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.
2 minutes ago, at1109494 said:For those who got into UT Austin, what's your stipend/fellowship package look like? Mine is 4 years of TAing at $22k/yr
Mine's the same.
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3 minutes ago, midd1324 said:
What is the idea behind holding rejections far past the days where they extend offers? Is it the departments trying to feel out if their first round offers will be accepted before moving down a list of the "next best"?
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.
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1 hour ago, kmccorm2 said:
Question for those of you who have made it into your dream schools. First of all, congratulations! It's so great to know that there are colleagues are getting in places, and that we can (hopefully) do that too!
So a lot of you have said that you worked really hard on refining your statement of purpose. Did you work with professors in the field to do that, or have some sort of service review it? I feel as though it's difficult (at least for me) to refine my SoP, since most of the people that I have looking at it aren't scholars or in the field specifically. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! As we're waiting to hear back from a lot of schools over the next few weeks, feeling like I'm at least doing SOMETHING to make my application package more competitive will (hopefully) help my mental wellbeing lol
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):
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).
- serpentstone, PoliSci_PhDgal, kmccorm2 and 1 other
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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:
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2 minutes ago, moomagoo said:
For those who've heard from NYU and Georgetown, did your online portal update at all?
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.
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Also in at NYU! Got my email a few minutes after @catiecatie's post.
- Lighthopes, CapTipps, swanronson and 6 others
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Also in at Columbia!! Email from the Program Coordinator.
- CapTipps, scared_phd, swanronson and 7 others
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1 hour ago, PhD_attempt said:
Has anyone had a conversation with a POI after admission? If so, what was it like?
Seconding @CapTipps, I also had a nice conversation with a POI. He knew I had acceptances at higher-ranked schools and basically tried to show me the benefits of a smaller program, where I could more easily get faculty attention etc. I recommend you go in with some questions prepared.
- Bosox, polisciboy, PhD_attempt and 1 other
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2 hours ago, bmo103 said:
If they don’t release in the remaining days of the week, I fully expect WUSTL and UNC to release early next week. I don’t think Stanford will start releasing decisions until the last week of February/first week of March.
I'm thinking Stanford can maybe release next week. They released on the 23rd last year but on the 13-14th in 2019 and 2020. So, hard to say, but could happen.
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51 minutes ago, XiPeepee said:
Has any Emory admit received funding info yet? They said they would send out the formal acceptance and funding package yesterday but I haven't got anything from them.
Yeah I also haven't. Will meet with some profs from there tomorrow and ask about it, but it's weird cause they really promised it for yesterday.
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Also in at Princeton!! Thrilled and shocked - I did NOT think my fit there was great, but they must know better than me. My decision just got much harder...
- jjiffy, fallingballoons, Lighthopes and 7 others
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Thank you all! I'm incredibly happy. I certainly did not expect to get this many acceptances from such great schools!
1 hour ago, Movies_1411 said:Hey congrats!! Claiming a waitlist there, will add it to the results page in a bit. Will you consider declining their offer? Just wondering because we have very similar interests, Vanderbilt has an amazing Latam program, so congratulations again!!
Sure thing! I will probably still wait for their official offer, though, as the email was an unofficial admission. And thanks!
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Claiming an acceptance at Vanderbilt! Just got an email from the DGS.
- PoliCommsGirl, sswimky, CapTipps and 7 others
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26 minutes ago, honeymoow said:
I will say that I do think it more fruitful to focus discussion on the forum, which is naturally more accessible for both current and future applicants.
I wholeheartedly agree, since these forums helped me so much when I first decided I wanted to apply. It's only fair to give back to the community and future applicants.
I think the Discord server can be useful for quick questions, off-topic conversations (so that we can talk to people who are going through the same things without flooding this thread), and discussing stuff you wouldn't be comfortable saying in a completely public forum. But we should make sure it is complementary and not substitute to the forum!
- Lighthopes, Avocado_town, HappyCheese and 6 others
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1 hour ago, modesteffect said:
This is really great news to close friday! congrats to you three!
@zoooxu @LatinAmericanFootball now that both of got into UCB, would you guys consider declining UCSD?
I will probably decline most of my other offers very soon, including UCSD. I'll post here when I do so!
14 minutes ago, scared_phd said:@LatinAmericanFootball@jjiffy@zoooxu I was trying to sleep when I decided to check the forum one last time and saw your posts. I refreshed my email and there was nothing. Berkeley is one of my top schools, probably number one, and I was devastated. Like I felt my heart sink literally. And, because of a reason I really can't explain, I decided to check my spam folder and there it was. I got innn!!! Damn you Gmail! I am sooo happy right now.
Haha that's amazing! Congrats!!
- scared_phd and modesteffect
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Which master should I pursue for Ph.D? Methods VS International Security VS International Relations?
in Political Science Forum
Posted
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.