balderdash

Hey, congrats! If you don't mind, could you give us a glimpse of your background/research interests/etc? Sorry if it's too nosy, I'm just curious. And yeah Tufnel, taking the drama out is certainly right.

I wouldn't be so black-and-white about it - it depends on the school and the field. A lot of people in my College don't have them, my MPhil doesn't, and my friends at Oxford are about 50-50 on having a dissertation (we're pretty much all in the social sciences).

Yeah, that's what I was thinking... Though before I get too nervous, does anyone want to claim it?

Also, he posted that before the UIUC acceptance went up on the results page.

Haha thanks dudes. It's been planned for about 8 months now, so I'm doubly anxious for admissions results. As soon as I know where I'm going, I'll pop the question. It's funny, because she's been telling me off for being so anxious... little does she know...

Once I know where I'm going, I'm proposing to my girlfriend. (Seriously.)

Trust me, I noticed. I just couldn't type because my hands were too busy being wrung. This stress is going to kill me, f'real. Woah, UCDavis acceptance up? Anyone want to take credit?

Yeah, feminist21 did a bit of thread necromancy yesterday in another subforum as well... That's why you've got to check the timestamp.

I worked in an admissions office for years. Trust me, they can't, and they don't. Even if they could, it'd probably be an IT guy that could see the information - which would be completely separate from the app readers. Besides, there's no way to interpret whether logging in a bajillion times is obsessiveness or interest in the school, so it could either be bad or good. It's just not on their radar, at all.

Mine's only 50 pages total, but it's a one-year course, so there you are. I'm on my second draft, which is getting made over as soon as I can get off of this forum!

I've had a terrible experience with Aer Lingus both times I've flown (lost baggage, cancelled flights, et cetera), so I wouldn't recommend them. STA travel is having a sale now, so they can get you some cheap seats on Virgin for like 300 quid roundtrip, which is really as good as you're going to get anywhere.

Yeah, but I think Stanford will be next week. They sent out that "first week of February" email a few weeks ago, so I take them on their word. Good news is that if they have an open house planned that early (March 3-5, was it?), it pretty much means they have to stick to the decisions timetable.

I've actually gotten into opera quite a bit. Go to last.fm and listen to "opera" tagged radio... it's actually really good study music, and it's always good to broaden your horizons, so to speak.

Ditto. Though I think we've swapped - I'm in the UK right now, but only applying to US universities.

It's state school, and as we only have like 3 locations...

The cost of living is quite low, but you'll realistically need a car (which may be different from what you're used to). There's no city in Maine larger than 120K, which is Portland, and a few hours away. Bangor is nearby and will give you access to shopping and such, but it's not a city in the traditional sense of having a downtown where people just hang out. It's kind of strip mall city, if that makes sense. Parking shouldn't be an issue, as the campus has a lot of space (heck, it's in Maine). You'll get the four seasons there, but much heavier on winter and summer. Spring and fall are only about 2 months each, maximum, with about 4-5 months of winter and a few months of summer. It does get cold in the winter, but not as cold as you might expect. The biggest difference is going to be snowfall - sometimes you'll get 2 feet overnight, sometimes you'll get hit by 8 inches every 3 days for 2 weeks. And everyone expects that you'll be at work/class the next day.

I'm from there. Trust me, what I said above was pretty much all you need to know.

+1 for effort expended, haha.

Well, you're the one that framed the debate by the title - "in University Political Science Faculties." Nothing about teaching specifically undergraduates there. When challenged on the point, you retreated to the teaching aspect. You were then challenged on the fact that most professors give greater value for money in that they can teach undergraduates as well as serve other purposes, ie research. Then you narrowed it further to places where education is the main purpose of the department (which, by the way, LACProf has pointed out not to exist). This too was rebutted by those who showed that should such a place exist, it is sure to hire grad students to teach these courses, as they're cheaper, and fill the gaps with PhDs who are still better value for money for their range of specialities. I'm not sure where you still see a hole in the opposition to your claim. Do you refer to institutions focusing on both teaching and research? If yes, PhDs are obviously better for their research training. If no, next question. Do you mean anything beyond Public Law? If yes, then PhDs are better for the same reason as above. If no, then PhDs are still better for their range of subjects. So I'd say I have it about right with the analogy, actually. By the way, I went to a school with a top-10 poli sci department. We had exactly zero law classes. I took one course titled Institutional Development of the Congress and Presidency. It was taught by a PhD, as it charted institutional change over the long duree, public pressures to existing legal principles, the use of extralegal powers by political actors, et cetera.

I must have missed it then. The turtles quotation comes from a famous exchange between Bertrand Russell and an old woman who asserted that the earth was flat and rested on the back of a tortoise. Russell responded by asking what the tortoise was standing on. The old lady replied, "you're very clever, young man, very clever. But it's turtles all the way down!" It's a joking expression for when one dogmatically asserts what essentially turns into an infinite regress. In this debate, you're claiming that JDs have the same proficiencies as do PhDs, or at least a comparable set that should allow them to take up faculty positions to teach political science. When many posters have picked at the assumptions and implications of your argument, you've gone further into definitions. They've responded by digging deeper, you retort by digging deeper still. Eventually, you both get into the minutiae to the point where the original topic was lost, and nothing has been solved because you've dodged the original criticism. In essence, you're on an infinite regress where you might just as well have said, but it's turtles all the way down!

How come you haven't responded to my points? Everyone else gets a point by point rebuttal except for me? I still think it's good that you're pouring yourself into this debate, but part of it is knowing when the game is up. Substantive answers have been given to all the points you have raised; answers of every type short of a formal model. At this point, your argument is becoming "but it's turtles all the way down!"

This is a good point. The thread title refers to why there aren't "JDs in University Political Science Faculties." Well, the simple answer would be that no one on the faculty is there solely to teach undergraduate courses in poli sci. Everyone on the faculty is also expected to teach graduate students, run seminars, research, publish, and otherwise engage in the scholarly debate. Having substantial training in really just one of those areas is insufficient.

Has anyone pointed out that legal writing and research is nothing like academic writing and research (in the sense of what you'd see in APSA journals)? Also, the legal system is like a car, the JD a mechanic's license. A certified mechanic knows the car inside and out, and he's qualified to know what part does what and how. But he's not qualified to tell me how to build a car, how other vehicles work, or even why cars exist at all.

If the MA is research-based, yes. If not, no. For research degrees in the UK it's even more important to get in touch with a potential advisor before applying, but it makes little sense for taught degrees. A few friends of mine are doing their MAs here England with me and none of us made contact beforehand.