RWBG

Out of curiosity, who would you be interested in working with at NU for formal theory? Feddersen and Austen-Smith are great, but they're affiliated with Kellogg and I don't get the impression they work much with political science students nowadays.

The general impression I get is that UW-M places less well than its faculty would suggest they should... this might be a factor. But I'm speculating. All in all, it has a great faculty, and the department has a reputation for congeniality, so I think there are a lot of smart grad students who'd be willing to take the financial hit to go to UW-M. Faculty fit and training are going to be more important in the long-term.

Sure, I think that's right. So then your point is less about having a ranking that's opinion-based, and more about increasing the sample to include more than department chairs/program heads. The TRIP survey does that for IR[1], beyond that, maybe it would make sense to get more opinions in different subfields. It might also be interesting to get grad student opinions, although I wonder to some extent how broad their knowledge would be of different departments, especially early year grad students. [1] http://irtheoryandpractice.wm.edu/projects/trip/TRIP%202011%20RESULTS%20US%20RESPONDENTS.pdf

One thing I forgot to note; apparently the tuition waiver does NOT cover $539 in student fees per semester... so the effective stipend is more like $10474... Edit: So, I suspect this not enough to live on, even in Madison. I would/will check about summer funding opportunities, and would look into taking a modest supplementary loan if I end up choosing to go to Wisconsin, probably of about $5000/year. Then the question becomes, is the marginal benefit of Madison over another school greater than the cost of $25,000 (at least) of increased debt over five years? Assuming 50 years of working afterwards, if you think the degree will increase your income by $500/year more than the next best alternative (neglecting interest rates for simplicity) then it still makes sense. That is, of course, neglecting intangible consumption benefits of going to your preferred choice of school, which may make Madison even more of a compelling option. So while I think this financial package is disappointing, I don't think it should necessarily deter people too much from choosing it.

Isn't this basically the USNWR ranking?

I actually probably had this data. I have a STATA file with all the raw data from these rankings compiled: Will be interested in seeing the results.

Wait, what data?

I seem to recall them doing something like this last year, although my memory's a little fuzzy given that I never applied to NU myself.

Also, it should be emphasized that your school isn't everything! I think the school you go to matters, but it's not like it fully determines what level of success you'll have. Even if your choice of school isn't precisely optimal, if you're at a strong school that's a decent fit for you I suspect what you do in grad school is going to matter a lot more to your eventual success on the market.

Sure, but very few departments are as specialized as Rochester. You can still get the broad contours from the USNWR, maybe crossreferencing with this: http://polisci.fsu.e...nt_Rankings.pdf Ultimately, I think the main points are (1) consider carefully the costs and benefits if you're going to a school outside the top 25 (2) If you have offers from schools from different tiers (i.e. top 20 v. top 10) then you should seriously consider whether any perceived advantages of the lower ranked school will outweigh the reduced competitiveness on the job market. Beyond that, the rankings aren't going to tell you anything informative about the fine differences (7th versus 9th), and schools like Rochester are always going to be difficult to evaluate on the basis of those rankings. And, of course, you have to consider your school's strength in your subfield. I don't think the Realist's point is to have the rankings make the decision for you, but merely to give a bit of a better guide as to the kinds of considerations you should be making when deciding between schools, with the important note that "pedigree" (an awful word) matters. Edit: Re Brent: Sure, which is great if you have a bunch of advisors very familiar with US schools in your subfield. Not everyone has those, especially students from overseas, students from tiny schools with a small faculty, etc. Also, you should always consider that each advisor is only one person; in my experience talking with individual people, I've gotten really good advice about things I didn't know about, but I also think (mind you, this is based on my own evaluation) that some of the advice I've received in the past was skewed by personal biases and casual perceptions that can be idiosyncratic. My advice: do everything. Consult with advisors, read professors' CVs, use rankings, read placement records, go to campus visits, talk to graduate students, talk to students at different schools who won't be biased, read the CVs of the students of potential advisors, check to see which faculty are new and which have moved and what effects that might have on placement, check who's publishing in the journals you like, check who's participating in specialized conferences in your subfield, and try to find recent students who have been placed in your subfield to get a sense of how they did. Even then, there's no certainty your choice will be the best one, but relying on any individual measure is likely to be foolhardy. Edit 2: Or maybe something slightly less obsessive but still comprehensive...

Everything said here is right. Just use the USNWR rankings to get a sense of the broad distinctions, and go from there by looking at placement data, etc. Moreover, Rochester is probably one of the least useful comparisons given that they are so specialized in formal and statistical training; their overall ranking is lower as a result of their specialization, but they place better than many schools ranked higher (or equivalent) to them. However, Rochester would probably be a bad choice for many people not interested in that approach to political science.

As a general note to all applicants who haven't been admitted to anywhere yet: just remember that not getting in this year is not a signal that you won't get in at some point in the future, and a lot of the people being admitted now (myself included) are experiencing this good fortune because they are benefiting from the knowledge and experience gained from previously unsuccessful attempts.

Sure, although it might work better in a separate thread (or everything is going to get lost in an anxiety-fueled torrent of rampant speculation )

7/7! Impressive.

Well that's a very nice (and probably unwarranted) thing to say! Seriously though, lots of people get 800 on the quant, including Balderdash here (if I'm remembering correctly). Not all those people get interviews as Yale, and it would be pretty ridiculous if they did, so in that sense I don't think balderdash's response was unwarranted. I'll remind everyone that I was rejected from every school I applied to last year, so there's that... wmplax's response seems unnecessarily confrontational. I also don't think he understood that balderdash's response just stated that having an 800 quant does not imply getting an interview; I'm sure it's possible that given the idiosyncratic nature of the process there are some adcom members for whom having a high GREQ would be a deciding factor (for better or worse), but balderdash's response would still be true. It looks like wmplax's response post actually suggested he agreed with balderdash on that front... However, if you want some picture of what the admissions process looks like, I'd take a look at this: http://jackman.stanford.edu/papers/pa04.pdf

Yeah, Deborah Beim is a grad student. But I agree about avoiding feeding the trolls.

I don't think more Princeton results showed up. I think the troll post was deleted, and now it looks like the other Princeton stuff were after it. For the record, I think Princeton will release results, but it'll probably be at 5. So leave gradcafe for 20 minutes and come back

Well, now the person in question admitted trolling. I think this year, drawing any inferences from the results survey has been a foolhardy enterprise; I would stick to seeing what results are posted here.

Weird! Well congrats to the Stanford and Harvard acceptees (if real). Anyone want to claim one?

OK, well the Wisconsin-Madison stipend is apparently $11552 for a 16 hour/week TA commitment every year. I don't advocate making decisions based on stipends, but that is by far the lowest financial package I've seen, with the greatest amount of teaching commitments. I think this is the university's fault though, not the department. Really great program though.

Well, I just got the Stanford rejection, so it definitely looks staggered! Fingers crossed for waitlists for the rest of you though.

Me neither; guess it's staggered for some reason?

Fantastic! UW Seattle has produced some fantastic scholars fairly recently; take a look at John Ahlquist for someone doing IPE/CPE work. From everything I've heard it's a great program!

The faculty for the PEG program is absurdly good. Seriously.

I think there's a subtle unifying theme to your post here.