dysmetria

Alternate/HM letter arrived. I'm not counting on anything happening, it would be nice to get rating sheets and/or an idea of exactly how many al/hms there are.

I worked very, very hard on my proposal. My professors also reviewed it multiple times. I shared it with half a dozen colleagues as well as writing instructors. I received four letters of recommendation and am at a top 5 political science program. I worked as hard on this proposal as anything I have ever done. There are 4 accepted proposals in political science. Four. I received a flat-out rejection. I would like to think that I put together a "respectable proposal" and I find your comments highly insulting.

I am in PS and was rejected via email. That seems pretty harsh for political science, I wonder if the reviewers were even political scientists or from one of the disciplines that thinks PS isn't science. My application was quant/game theory, BTW. I'm not sure what else I could do besides travel back in time and improve my undergrad GPA.

Opportunity costs are specific to the individual but unless you have been on both sides, I don't really think you can say. For someone willing to try this route, the opportunity costs are obviously lower the closer one is to undergrad.

You know, the people who usually say this are those who have never been in policymaking jobs where the benefits of an academic PhD over a policy degree are quite obvious.

Depends on position (assistant, associate, full / TT or not) and type of school (R1 or LAC/ public, private) and other factors (prestige, recruitment, ability to pull in NSF funding, etc.) For all public schools, base salaries are usually public information. There is wide variation. I don't know the origin of your question, but if you are trying to figure out if this is lucrative work, the answer is definitely NO. Very few PhDs in any field, with few exceptions, can recover the opportunity costs of spending 5+ years in a PhD program. I recently did my own calculation and estimate mine at a quarter of a million dollars, undiscounted. And I have a fully funded fellowship.

Based on your specific interests, you should definitely look into the PhD program at the RAND Corporation. It's very quant-heavy, but students get through quickly and can command considerable salaries upon graduation. "defense planning and spending" is precisely what they do.

Adcomm information gets out to grad students, and I already know who some of the posters on this board are. Fortunately, they haven't yet said anything insulting about my program (their possible program-to-be) so I think our adcomm probably made at least a few good choices.

You sound like IR Quant to me, given the current state of the literature. I agree that comparative and IR are converging, with quant as the driver (think Fearon.) I also agree that you should ditch the theory, especially as it seems tangential (like something else you are interested in.) If it is incredibly important to think about this stuff, do it on your own (as theory is not too difficult to teach to yourself) or as a second minor. Constructivism in IR is kind of a dead-end these days, as far as I can tell.

ICPSR Food service? Unwinding? What about scholarship?

China is the only country where you can do comparative with a focus on one country because is is just so big. Source: A R1 tenured professor who does research in this area.

In my department, offices are only for PhD candidates.

If the newer one is that brilliant, he will likely get recruited to another school before you have the chance to finish your dissertation. This is not a dealbreaker, but I would go with someone more established.

convex is right, stating a preference for a nonacademic career path will probably kill your application.

Is it too late for you to change your class registrations for your senior year? Methods are difficult to teach to yourself, and having the classes on your transcript will be important to show the necessary commitment to (and ability in) advanced math. If you must work for a year, you'd keep your skills sharper if you did applied math with datasets, i.e. the Fed, BLS, or finance. Do-gooder jobs won't hurt, but if you are committed to methods, you'd be better off with a real math job. P and Y are both well-funded programs, obviously, but the most interesting cutting edge stuff in your area of interest is coming out of NYU and Stanford right now.

polphd: If you want to focus on quant, you should apply to PhD Stanford, Michigan, NYU, Harvard, and Rochester. With your info, you will likely get into one if not all of them. I don't think Yale, Princeton, Chicago or UCSD will serve your interests as well with respect to methods unless there is a specific faculty you are deeply interested in working with. If you go into serious quant, you will soon discover that the topic you study (IR, American political behavior, comparative studies) pretty much doesn't matter, it's just different data and modeling challenges, no more. Suggestion: Take more upper level math/stats courses (and few if any soft IR/area studies) next year. You will want to be highly teched up to jump right in at these programs. Good luck!

I am glad I applied to 14 schools, despite the cost. I applied to a range of programs, which gave me a good set of choices. I recommend this to everyone, despite the hassle. I am glad I spent the money on GRE prep.

The cost of a car is not just an oil change and tank of gas! The overall cost is: car payments, insurance, parking/storage, gas, scheduled maintenance, repairs, tickets (parking or driving - no one is perfect) ... and if you have a really stupid day, the enormous costs associated with a DUI. In grad school, you will be very busy and won't have the chance to use the car often.

Another perspective is that it would be technically a breach of academic ethics to put their name on as a co-author of a paper they did not write or contribute to. This would be the case in social sciences, at least, but it is different in every field. I think many of the "authorship" practices in the natural sciences are very odd, but of course it is driven by the demands of the journals and the departments.

IMO, GringaTica has given the most practical advice so far.