Tufnel

Most people would probably agree with you. However, I love the stuff and drink too much (probably need to seek professional help). My caffeine intake is so high that it doesn't do a thing for me unless I don't have a cup.

Ahhh... Now I truly am sweating. Stanford, I swear I'm smart. I swear! I think that was a given a long time ago for us all.

Uh-greed. Oh well. Such is life.

You are good people. Congrats on the acceptance and thanks for posting.

In the name of all that is good in this world, someone please claim the Stanford acceptance if it is real. I'm freaking out over here.

I'd give it more than an hour or two before feeling the bumping need. I'm running but it doesn't do anything for me as far as stress is concerned. I've been a runner for years so any perceived increase in stress occurred concurrently with the treatment. Perhaps I'd be more stressed without running. Sadly, increasing my running isn't really feasible, I already run quite a lot. To manage stress, I'm catching up on films, reading outside my research area, drinking too much coffee, ect. April couldn't come slower.

Holy thread resurrection, batman! I don't think he's around - he was "last active" in May, 2010.

Then I really don't understand this thread. I guess I shouldn't have made assumptions. SOG, if you want to be a professor, get a PhD. It doesn't matter if you think a JD qualifies you because, at least as far as hiring is concerned, it doesn't matter what the job applicant thinks.

Not to intrude on what seems like an utterly fascinating debate... What is the intent here? Why is this conversation still going? Nothing new has been said since page one. Let's sum it up... Differing definitions of the role of the professor. Great. Why does it matter what anyone here thinks? SOG, none of us are going to hire you. We don't have PhDs. It seems like you'd have a greater incentive to try to convince some hiring committee somewhere. We can't do a thing for you, one way or another.

This is gold. Thanks, I'll give it a roll. I was doing so many things wrong...

Placements at Brown... I do think it's a bad sign that they don't even provide a few select placements, let alone a complete list. I gathered as much information as I could from the jobs wikis and the job rumors site (I considered applying to Brown). There is a wiki for each of the last few years listing who got placed where. It's not complete but it's the best I could do to get info on placement at schools that do not provide it. 09-10 http://bluwiki.com/go/Poliscijobs0910 Unless a school provides the denominator (# of Ph.D.s produced in a given year), there's no way to tell how many grads simply didn't get placed. Which kind of sucks. If I get into a school that doesn't provide placement info, I will request it. I'm not sure if you were trying to disagree but I noted that difference (academic verse policy/professional).

I think we agree. You attend the school that gets you where you want to go. I do think there's much to be said about strength in a specific subfield or area. I don't mean that placement record across the board is the most important factor, but rather placement record as it pertains to your substantive area. I should have been more clear. For methods, Rochester is among the best. For other subfields, it's not as strong. It should be perceived as such. Thus an Americanist at Rochester probably shouldn't anticipate the same kind of placement as someone who does methods. That's not a knock on American at Rochester, only noting that not all fields are the same. Brown, in my opinion, isn't a good example of a school whose ranking belies its value. It's a great place to do undergrad and it carries a lot of lay prestige. However, I think its placement attests to the fact that training grad students is not necessarily the university's strong point. I believe at one point they completely stopped taking grad students in political science. It seems to place like a school ranked in the 40s ought to, perhaps indicating that in this case the rankings were fairly accurate. Obviously, they have some phenomenal political scientists. That doesn't mean that it's the kind of place that will provide phenomenal placement. I agree completely that it's not about the name brand. You go to the place that gets you where you want to go, no matter the means by which that goal is accomplished. Just my opinion. I've never spent a day as a grad student, so I admit that I could be off-base. It'd be interesting if one of the faculty members would chime in, I believe there are a few that occasionally check this board.

The law school reference is a bit ironic. While the rankings are undoubtedly gamed, they are incredibly valuable for a prospective student. Not because they actually reflect the educational merit of the school but instead because they are sort of canonized into the minds of employers (at least at the top). As far as job placement is concerned, one's peer schools are the schools beside which it is ranked. The only real exceptions are HBCUs. So while they don't measure what they claim to, they remain (far too) important. That's fairly irrelevant though due to the differences between law school and Ph.D. admissions. I hang onto placement data because it's the only thing I can judge that's relevant to my priorities. I concede that such an approach may favor schools with fewer international students. However, I don't think there's a better way to account for placement ability outside of placement history. So while a faulty measure, I figure it's the best thing going. Also, I'm not opposed to working abroad, so long as the university is one at which I'd like to work. Certainly that's biased toward European universities but ehh... If there were a better way, I'd go for it. However, at the end of the day, I'm getting a Ph.D. because I want to do academic research. I don't think that's entirely about education quality. Given my learning style (largely independent and self-motivated), I think I'll probably learn the same stuff no matter where I go. I'm picking a program on the basis of its ability to train me in the nature of the discipline and to open up doors for future employment since those are things that I can't learn independently. I'm not disagreeing with you, that'd be ridiculous because no two people are going to make these decisions the same way. I'm only explaining why I'm taking the approach I'm taking.

As a fellow political scientist wannabe, I am not qualified to answer the above. Thus, I'll contribute another question. How do you cook southern barbecue? As a midwesterner who's only visited the south, I have experienced the fine art of southern barbecue but am unable to recreate the mouthgasm it provides. I realize that each state does it differently (right?), but I'll take what I can get. Edit: I realize this was intended to be academic. However, the study of good barbecue is academically rigorous.

This is not entirely accurate. Many universities have both a political science department and a policy-oriented school, the names of which often include international relations. However, every political science department in the top 30 does IR. They just approach it from an academic perspective instead of a professional one. For example, Harvard's Department of Government contains some of the best IR scholars in the country and includes the subfield among the choices for graduate students in pursuit of the Ph.D. However, Harvard also operates the Kennedy School, which focuses heavily on international relations as practiced professionally. As far as BU is concerned, in my opinion, you already spoke to the most relevant detail. For me, poor placement is sufficient to preclude my enrollment. Unless you'd be happy at a median placement for BU, don't go. Edited to add: Berkeley only kinda, sorta does IR (relevant to my comment about the top 30). However, that's not due to separate faculties, they just haven't replaced several key departures.

Not that I am confident one way or the other, but as you insinuated, Harvard trolling would be much more obvious. Thus, one might pick a different school in order to increase their chances of "success." Perhaps it's real, perhaps it's fake. 'I'm not going to worry about it.

Anyone who would post fake acceptances to screw with people is a little sick. Not funny guys. Not funny.

Holy crap. And it begins.

I would have applied earlier. I barely made a couple deadlines and made some careless mistakes as a result. For instance, I submitted my rough draft instead of my final as my writing sample for one of the applications.

In my opinion, a lot of this depends on the character of your application. If you went to HYPS, have a 3.9+ GPA, a strong letter of recommendation from Gary King, a combined GRE of 1570, etc, then you should feel good with a few apps. Conversely, if your application is considerably more moody/unpredictable, perhaps you'd want to apply widely. At the end of the day: 1) Apply in a manner that leaves you without regrets 2) Don't apply to any school if you wouldn't actually be happy attending

No matter what institutional academia attempts to tell you, I think it is healthy to have a range of intellectual interests. And they aren't terribly broad, they only seem so compared to the degree of focus that's expected of contemporary scholars. I have similarly broad interests. I found an area of social science that allows me to incorporate several different fields, including the occasional lab science. I like to read physics and bio journals sometimes. I think that kind of breadth is good. Disciplines can be too insular and are sometimes guilty of groupthink. Being aware of, if not entirely literate in, different areas of research will only make you more creative and pluralistic. Political science is notorious for borrowing from other disciplines and many great strides were made because of those efforts. Bring back the renaissance (wo)man.

You might get better results if you pose specific questions rather than merely soliciting advice. Correspondingly, I only have a couple random suggestions: -Berkeley is quite bad at IR. I would avoid it. -You have two verbal scores but I'm assuming the high one is your Q. -The relevant bits of your application differ given different research interests. Languages, the necessary Q GRE score, all of that changes with research area. Thus (and in keeping with the above post), you have to consider what you want to study and how that intention aligns with your strengths and weaknesses. Best of luck.

I completely agree that being out of control is one of the bigger challenges of the process. I put a lot of work into my applications because that was a way to address the poor odds, not wholly but in part. The inability to continue improving my chances is certainly frustrating. Nice! In the interest of distraction, my namesake...

Substitute the tequila for cheap whiskey and you've about nailed the night I submitted my final application.

Throughout the restless submission of application after application, I eagerly anticipated the completion of my side of the arrangement. Now that said time has come, I am going absolutely insane. I'm not a worrier, at least under normal circumstances. However, visions of graduate school seem to have transformed me into the most paranoid of them all. My brain constantly cycles through potential problems... There are days when I'm confident I'll get in to at least one of HYP. Then there are days when I don't think I'll get in anywhere. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. How are you going to cope? This has only just begun, we're a good month and a half from serious movement. Any grand solutions? I want to disappear and hike/travel, but I fear being away from my computer in case something goes wrong.