Purled

I love that someone began this thread. I am absolutely getting a dog once my coursework is complete. Prior to that, I have long-term custody of the dog my partner and I have been raising together for the past year (before I had to move away to grad school) - both he and I worried about my separation anxiety, both from him and our dogs (we have two, the oldest is staying with him), and I do tend to hunker down and socially isolate myself while in school. I absolutely add my voice to the chorus of commentators advocating shelter dogs! They are a wonderful grab bag of physical and personality traits, and as worthy of love as any purebred. If you can't hold out until post-coursework, cats are awesome, too, and wholly respectful of your academic priorities. Or, mostly respectful. Usually.

I'm curious about this, as well. I keep toying with the idea of emailing my likely adviser, but don't want to annoy/pester unnecessarily.

Thanks to all the posters who helpfully described Ithaca's neighborhoods and transportation situations. A few pages back, a poster asked for names of reliable rental agencies or online resources (other than Craigslist, Zillow, and Trulia) and I haven't been able to find a response. If you could recommend who to go to to find apartments, that would be wonderful. Thanks!

This is excellent, thank you, and possibly see you this weekend.

Excellent, this is going on my resource list; thank you!

Just want to say that this is really helpful, and thanks for the insight. I'll certainly have additional questions after recruitment weekend.

SBM is definitely making the move. As is Brown, I promise.

For example, Butler and Brown are off to Columbia; Buck-Morss is leaving Cornell. The latter is certainly mucking up the works a bit for me. What other large changes are happening?

You cannot go wrong with a good bottle of wine, unless the recipient is an alcoholic or teetotaler. I've given wine to several past professors for letters of recommendation for grants and fellowships. I usually get them something from a vineyard near my hometown in California, to personalize it a bit, but no one does not appreciate wine.

Withdrawing from UWashington (theory), making room for those waitlisted.

I hadn't really seriously considered sending gifts until I saw this thread. I am definitely going to do something, probably crafty - I like the idea of the handmade cards. I'm more of a knitter, myself, but in a pinch I can decoupage. My LOR writers really did a fantastic job, not just with their letters (which I obviously didn't see, but they were mentioned by adcom members), but with their follow-up, as well. My application schools contacted a couple of my LORs for additional information, and they were happy to act as boosters for me. My appreciation increased tenfold after reading the letter-writing-related posts on Political Science Job Rumors (http://www.poliscijobrumors.com/topic.php?id=38427).

Interesting...I'm curious, and I realize that not everyone is comfortable sharing this info, but where else are you in/where else did you apply/what's your area of interest? Also, incredibly happy about this particular tough decision.

Cornell's made decisions; strange timing - they must have pulled up my file or something, after I contacted them. Umm, I'm in at Cornell - just received an email!!

Could someone give me a general idea of what's considered reasonable rent? I'm looking at studios, one-bedrooms, and shared housing situations. Is there a resource other than Clist for finding housing? Also, how's the fresh produce? Thanks!

Consensus seems to be that they aren't yet done with admits, given the large number of acceptances they issue each year: http://government.ge....edu/57323.html Remaining funding, however, is unclear. ------------ I emailed JHU last week to confirm my rejection/waitlist status, just to pull off the band-aid already, and still haven't heard back. Cold indeed, Ms. Hall, cold indeed. Edit: Just contacted Cornell, out of curiosity. There were glitches in the grad school's application system; applications didn't reach the Govt dept until recently (far more recently than that last email would have us believe); adcom is meeting this week; decisions begin next week.

In your post, you write that you are I think that there's an ambiguity which you need to clarify before you move ahead with your line of inquiry. So, there are three terms that I think you need - foreign policy, international relations, and international politics. Foreign policy and international relations are fairly neutral terms which denote different aspects of interstatal relations - of how states decide to interact with each other, and how they go about that interaction. Then you have international politics, and that is not a neutral term. Now we're talking neorealist/defensive realist/etc approaches to international relations. 'Foreign policy' denotes the actions of a state towards other states. That is, a country's foreign policy is the set of actions and attitudes a specific state has towards other states. 'International relations' is the study of relationships that hold between states, and between state and non-state actors. If that didn't help (which wouldn't surprise me, since IR is *not* my area at all, and I have logged zero hours as a TA), think of international relations as the game that all teams are playing with/against each other, and foreign policy is the strategy a specific team uses to play the game. 'International politics' is a neorealist approach to international relations. So, that's the first part of your question, I think. Once the terms are disentangled, you can research better and more thorough definitions, but this should help to clear things initially. The other part of your question asks whether the U.S. invasion of Iraq is explainable via a neorealist approach to international relations and U.S. foreign policy, right? Take everything I write with a grain of salt. IR is NOT my area, and I'm not that familiar with Waltz or the nitty-gritty of neorealism, especially as my IR professors were a mish-mash of pluralists and constructivists. Waltz did not support the invasion of Iraq. Prior to the invasion, the common neorealist response was, We can predict the actions of Hussein, he's a reliable dictator who poses no immanent threat. The rest, you should research on your own. You can certainly analyze the invasion from a neorealist perspective, but I don't think you can justify it from a neorealist perspective, which I think is what you would like to do. Umm, can someone from IR verify this? I'll just go back to my political analyses of Billy Budd, k thnx.

sheep's wool

Out of curiosity, are you an undergrad enrolled in a polisci class, writing a weekly response paper?

I mentioned this to my LOR writer, who was shocked. He mentioned it to a colleague in the Harvard Government department, who didn't know that this was department policy. Apparently, approximately one fourth of applicants send in samples anyway (way to follow directions), but he was very surprised, and decided to look into it. I think the concern regarding the absence of samples is that additional emphasis is then placed on GRE scores and, well, pedigree, diminishing the opportunity for non-traditional applicants or applicants from less well-known schools to stand out from the pack. (I didn't apply to Harvard, btw) In other news, it's getting very quiet around here. Eerily so. Where in the world are the remaining responses? It's crazy how many posters' signatures indicate that they're still waiting on the majority of their expected responses. I keep trying to will my inbox to fill up, but the force is not strong in me.

spare room

I'm not sure what your field is, but in my field, off the top of my head, I can think of a half dozen well-known couples who met as teacher/student. You've been ethical in your relationship so far, and you should continue to be so going forward. It may be a bit awkward initially, but it probably won't be nearly as bad as you think. My concern would not be the attitudes of your cohort (they won't really care, especially if they didn't attend the same undergrad as you), but of the professors in your department, since their relationship to your SO is that of colleagues, but their relationship to you is that of mentors and instructors. But don't let any of it deter you from proudly being with your SO, and do remember that, while many people warn that your relationship probably won't work, there are many cases of similar academy relationships that do last. There's nothing intrinsic to this type of relationship that dooms it to fail. Just be honest; everyone involved will appreciate this, and your relationship will become unremarkable surprisingly fast.

Personally, I didn't apply to HYP(e) because I'm really not interested in the directions the departments and professors take in my subfield. I applied to schools where it seemed the right type of inquiry is occurring, and the right academics work (right for me, of course). Maybe, again, it's a subfield thing? I have no idea the degree to which "fit" is important for those in quant-heavy concentrations. It strikes me as a bit sad when one applies to the biggest names in order to apply to the biggest names - which is not to say that that's the case here, but it did strike me as a bit of rattling of golden chains.

No, not even a letter, just an assumed rejection. I do wish I had received some notice at all, even a rejection. I feel as though my application was just another leaf in the wind, blowing right past the admissions building in the heart of Baltimore. If I do receive a notice of anything at all, it will arrive, with a footprint across it, sometime in May. My neighborhood is so bad w/r/t mail delivery that when I initiated an open case with USPS (in October, mind you), the customer service rep sighed deeply upon hearing my zip code. On the up side, the Scotch is as good as it sounds.

No idear at all, the letter included no specifics other than the number of applicants (264).

They rarely pull from the waitlist. Well, there's that dream shot dead. This non-rejection-rejection definitely hurt a bit - this was the program I've been thinking about & aiming towards for two years. Three years ago, I would have had a very solid shot at admittance; now, though, there are just too many applicants. Time for a medicinal glass of Scotch.