RWBG

I also think you can often diagnose problems without an adcom telling you what went wrong. Send your materials to Ph.D students, professors, etc. and get them to comment on ways they could be improved. Many of these people are the type of people who would be on admissions committees anyways, and they may be more willing to give you advice.

I expect to feast upon only the finest garbage plates [1] Rochester has to offer. [1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Nick_Tahou%27s_Garbage_Plate.JPG

It's hard to say, and I don't have any inside info on this, but I was called at around 5pm, which could feasibly have marked the end of their calls for the day. I haven't received an e-mail with official info, which I suspect will follow after they've finished calling everyone. Best of luck!

So much for my guess that Stanford was done! Congrats to the acceptees.

Very true. This is not looking like an easy choice. Thanks everyone for the congrats!

Looks like Rochester is indeed still calling people; was just admitted in a phone call from Lawrence Rothenberg.

Congrats! Glad to get confirmation that things are actually moving with Rochester.

Not me! Although the timing seems like it fits. However, it is a little odd that none of the five people accepted have posted any information.

Certainly not I!

I'd encourage consumption smoothing! Take out a small loan (say 3k a year) to supplement your stipend. When you weigh the total added debt (say 15k over five years) against the cost of taking a year off, I think the loan makes sense. Also, as a Madison grad, I feel like you'd get a job somewhere, so you would be able to pay off the loan with future earnings (hence consumption smoothing).

First off, a bit of an explanation of what I'm hoping for from this thread. In the past, I've found the SOP threads really helpful, but I think they would have been even more helpful if they were not devoid of context (i.e. what schools people were admitted to, what other factors may have contributed to their success, etc.). As such, I thought I would combine the SOP thread with the Profiles and Results thread this year. Moreover, I have some advice written up for next year's applicants, and I thought I would encourage others to contribute to the marketplace of ideas on this so that future applicants have a broad range of perspectives to draw upon when working on their applications. My hope is this thread will be an easily accessible and centralized resource to make this process a bit more manageable. However, my admissions cycle isn't finished, so I don't yet feel comfortable posting my profile or my SOP! Nonetheless, given that some peoples' cycles are ending around now, I wanted to get this thread up and running before people started leaving. So here's my advice on writing SOPs, and I'll edit this post with my SOP and profile once my cycle's over. Also, I've included a helpful template from a previous year for your profile and results. Also, here's the last thread with SOPs: PROFILE: Type of Undergrad Institution: Major(s)/Minor(s): Undergrad GPA: Type of Grad: Grad GPA: GRE: Any Special Courses: Letters of Recommendation: Research Experience: Teaching Experience: Subfield/Research Interests: Other: RESULTS: Acceptances($$ or no $$): Waitlists: Rejections: Pending: Going to: My Advice (primarily on writing an SOP): 1) The first time you finish a draft of your SOP that you think is great, it is probably awful. Seriously. If you don't have others look over your SOP and give candid comments, you will probably end up submitting something you think is way better than it is. Which leads into my next point... 2) Get people to read and give suggestions on your SOP. Moreover, when they give comments, take them seriously. Don't defensively discount them because it's not always easy to hear critiques of a short essay that is supposed to represent you as a researcher. On the other hand, don't accept comments unquestioningly; people have differing opinions on what makes a strong SOP, and you have to be careful to discount information that doesn't work with what you're writing. Several people have mentioned having Professors review your SOP; this is great, but Professors often don't have that much time to review several drafts line by line, and if they haven't served on an admissions committee lately, they can be a bit removed from the process. In my experience, current Ph.D students were probably way more helpful in their comments than the Professors who looked over my SOP. CoachRJC on this forum deserves particular mention for being very helpful over the past year in precisely this regard. 3) Choose reference letters strategically. This is not so simple as building relationships with the most senior professors possible (although starting these relationships early is a really good idea); you should also consider how each letter-writer fits into your overall application. I'm interested in studying mathematically rigorous approaches to international trade, so my letter writers included a political scientist who has done some political methodology work, a formal theorist from the econ department, and a law and economics scholar specializing in trade law. I figured the different letters could speak to different parts of my application; the political science background, ability to work with complex models, and understanding of the trade substance respectively. These considerations are (in my mind) as important as whether the scholars are senior; two of my letter-writers are Assistant Profs. 4) Work on all aspects of your application, and mention everything that could be helpful. The first time I applied, I didn't even mention that I had any experience with statistical programming. The second time, I had a well-formatted (+1 to LaTeX) C.V. documenting everything I had done which I thought might be relevant. 5) Choose a writing sample that shows your ability to think more than your knowledge of the literature. Last time, I chose a writing sample I thought was worse, but more related to political science; this time, my writing sample was better, but was basically a law and economics paper with only a brief section on political economy. However, it was comparatively theoretically sophisticated, and on a more interesting topic, so I suspect it was a better choice. 6) Signal a clear and precise research interest. Even if you have many broad interests, it can be dangerous to talk about too many of them, lest you seem unfocused. Pick an area and sell yourself within that area. 7) Know your schools' strengths and talk about them. Don't spend too much time on this, but it shouldn't take more than a paragraph to demonstrate that you've done your homework, and are not just "guessing" that School X would be a good fit. 8) Don't try to justify weaknesses in the SOP. I had one line about inconsistent grades in my first SOP, and it totally threw off the flow of the essay. You should hope letter writers will talk about it, and keep your SOP focused on your research interests and the tools you have to do that research effectively. 9) Do things that signal that you are an independent researcher. As examples: do independent studies with professors on topics you're interested in, get permission to take graduate courses in areas relevant to your research interests, etc. Don't make it seem like you're just "going with the flow," or you will not credibly signal that you can handle the independent work of a Ph.D. 10) Don't be a jerk (especially not while writing the SOP). Don't tell people how great you are. Say what you're interested in, what you've done, and let the committee draw its own inferences. Best of luck applicants from the World of Tomorrow!

Congrats! I've never had an admissions interview, but I'd just make sure to review the kinds of things you wrote in your SOP and be ready to elaborate a lot on each aspect of it. WUSTL is a great school; they've produced some really strong graduates in recent years.

Congrats! My guesses for next week: Stanford's done, HYP will contact people, with Harvard and Princeton contacting people a little closer to the end of the week (Thursday or Friday).

Good luck making your choice, and I imagine I'll see you at Madison in a few weeks!

For IR and Methods, FSU seems like a great choice.

On representativeness of gradcafe: It's a bit unscientific, but gradcafe posted 26% of the total number of acceptances to Michigan, and 10% of the total rejections. I'm sure that entails two kinds of selection bias; first, the skew towards strong applicants at The Grad Cafe, and second, the greater likelihood of posting an acceptance than a rejection. In any event, I feel like 1/4 of the total acceptances is a fairly good way to get a rough sense of expected numbers, with some obvious random variation around it. By that metric, I think the Stanford numbers look like they make sense, but the Yale numbers look somewhat fewer than they should be, especially if the interviews are more than an obligatory call before the applicant is admitted (i.e. if the interviews are actually used as part of the process of admissions, meaning that more interviews are given than applicants admitted).

Kolja00: Stanford, Berkeley, Ohio State, the rest of Duke, Rochester, Chicago, and San Diego. 6/7 Brent09: MIT and Vandy. 2/2. RWBG: Will: Stanford, Rochester, Berkeley, Northwestern, NYU, UCSD. 6/6 Won't: Chicago, MIT, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia. 3/6 Whirlibird: Stanford, Berkeley, UNC, UCSD. 4/4

Rochester's calling people too, it looks like!

I kind of feel like they've made their offers, given that the phone calls were from staff members, which seems to provide less of a reason why they would be staggered. Wouldn't be unhappy if they haven't though; best of luck to everyone!

Congrats everyone! I'm especially happy to see some people who hadn't received acceptances yet pick up some. Re: FSU. I think it's a great school and will place you well if you want to learn formal theory/methods. If not, I'd look carefully at their less technical graduates to see how they place. Definitely request the full placement statistics (including cohort data) before you commit to anything. Also, be aware that they are known to be a school that loses a lot of faculty to other schools, so make sure you're not interested in going there to work with one person, or you'll probably be subjecting yourself to a fair degree of risk. Finally, you should seriously consider what you'll be doing in the intervening year (should you choose not to go to FSU), and whether or not that will make you much more competitive. I'm proof that taking a year CAN make you more competitive, but that's no guarantee that it will, especially dependent on the MA program you choose. Just my two cents; happy to discuss it further, even though I have no direct experience with FSU.

So Michigan > Stanford for you? Who are you interested in working with at Michigan, out of curiosity?

Fantastic! Congrats, and thanks for letting us know. I suspect you'll be able to let us know when Yale starts contacting people as well!

Well, if you want more...

You'd need strong letters from faculty at the school you're attending that identify a clear academic reason for the transfer. I suspect that your reasoning here would not be sufficient to get those from Michigan's faculty. I also think you need to seriously consider how much of a difference a change between schools in the top five is going to have on your ability to do good research. I think some people have a tendency to get fixated on a particular school (or a few schools) that they want to go to, to an extent that far surpasses the real distinctions in training between those schools.

Congrats on UCSD! As far as the Hix ranking; it has some serious methodological flaws, and pretty much no-one takes it seriously. Some of the relative rankings it produces are just nuts; the USNews and NRC rankings are considered more reliable.