RWBG

Madison probably didn't send you an e-mail about FAFSA if (like me) you are not American, and thus won't be applying for US aid.

The comment about scores between 700 and 800 cannot be generalized to all programs/disciplines; economics programs, for instance, would be unlikely to accept anyone below a 770 (and for top programs, probably a 790). Beyond that, just looking at average GREQ scores for admitted students, I think it's pretty clear that many admitted students are not perfect on all dimensions; trade-offs undoubtedly have to occur. Ultimately, I think that getting a near perfect score on the GREQ may not imply an aptitude for quantitative/formal work, but it's a harder sell to suggest that someone getting <700 is going to be able to do formal theory, or use statistical modeling in a sophisticated fashion (i.e. a high GRE is necessary but not sufficient.) Small differences (e.g. between 700 and 730) may not tell you anything useful, but the large differences do, and because the old GREQ was pretty easy (800 was still only 94th percentile), most people with a serious inclination/aptitude for math seem to be able to pull off at least a 760 (maybe after a little time spent relearning triangles), even allowing for the timed conditions/environment.

I'd agree with Axelrod. I kind of feel that the Evolution of Cooperation should be read by everyone, irrespective of discipline.

A lot of departments say they'll send results way later than they actually do.

Both your points are reasons why it's an imperfect signal, not reasons why it's not a signal at all. The latter claim is much harder to make. Beyond that, I won't rehash the debate about the GRE.

How so? I mean I could see the argument that it's an imperfect indicator, but "in no way an indication"?

This is very true. Once you pick a particular approach/subfield, this thread becomes a lot more tractable; until then, there's really no way to answer the OP's question.

Interesting! I haven't looked at this rigorously, but it still feels like there was more activity in the political science subforum as a whole, even if not in the analogous thread; I only joined thegradcafe in mid-December, and I seem to recall a lot of replies to the thread I started, and generally more discussion than this year. There definitely seem to be fewer "regulars" (so to speak) on the forum this year.

Happy holidays! It's getting a little weird how quiet this forum is this year, relative to last year...

Northwestern doesn't seem to make sense given my formal interests. Austen-Smith and Feddersen are there, but they don't seem to have much connection to the political science department. Beyond them, they have one or two people doing formal stuff, but broadly Northwestern doesn't seem like a great fit.

If one of your letter writers can comment on that, it would be better than you mentioning it in the PS. Doing so tends to break up the flow of the statement, and does sound a bit like you're making excuses. At least it's seemed so from my experience (my UGPA is relatively low.)

For theory broadly, Toronto would have a good MA program. Lefty/critical theory, look at the MA program at York University.

Thanks Penelope; your comments here have been helpful, as usual.

I think that's fair, and I think it is, in fact, clear advice! The only other question I suppose I have is one that I imagine is difficult to answer; from your experience, how important for placements do you think school brand is between, say, Emory-level and UCLA-level schools in the rankings? I'm trying to parse out how much of the difference in placement is because of the ranking of the school someone went to, and how much of the difference is because good candidates tend to be admitted to and choose to go to higher ranked schools.

Thanks for the advice, Penelope. So would you suggest I include Emory and Penn State (and generally, more upper-mid tier schools) on this year's list of applications? Do you have any thoughts on my strategy of applying to a restricted subset of schools with the intention of applying to larger set next year?

I think the OP's question is about whether they should send a LaTeX-formatted pdf instead of a word document. Obviously sending the TeX code would be an exceptionally poor idea, and would make absolutely no sense, as they would just be skipping the generate pdf step. Re laosheep's most recent post: That's not a good idea. Editing the text in a pdf directly would only work if both your documents turned out to be the same length; as I understand it, you need to regenerate a pdf to have everything work out properly, which is why the previous poster asked about TeX templates.

I'm interested in formal IPE, with a particular focus on international trade, and I'm part-way through a 1-year master's program at a well-respected university (top 25ish?), which was also my undergrad institution. My profile, unfortunately, has some fairly significant weaknesses. While my GRE was strong (V740 Q800 A5.5), my GPA is relatively low (approximately 3.5 overall) and exhibits extremely high variance and kurtosis values, consisting of mostly very high grades with extreme deviations (e.g. a D- in the easiest economics course I've taken, and As in many others.) Moreover, my grades do not exhibit a particularly clear trendline upward; they were very strong in first year, poor in second year, and then steadily rose, with my final year GPA being slightly above a 3.5 (again, with a single grade dragging down the average.) My political science GPA is about a 3.8, so it's mostly economics and math coursework dragging my overall GPA down, though again, with high variance and kurtosis amongst those grades. As a result of these weaknesses, my plan this year is to apply to a subset of programs (indicated in my signature) based on the understanding that the admissions process has a fairly large stochastic component, but to focus on applying after completion of my MA, so that I have a year of demonstrated consistent performance (my school, incidentally, does not have a reputation for grade inflation, and MA courses are a subset of the courses offered to Ph.D students.) I will not have any grades reported by most of this year's application deadlines. I also might do an MA in economics in the intervening year, should I not be admitted to a Ph.D program this year. As such, my current list includes only my top choices, and not all the schools I would be interested in attending. I hope to solicit your thoughts on (1) whether my strategy makes sense; (2) whether or not I should be including more upper-mid range schools on my list. My initial position was that if I went to a school that was outside my top choices this year, I would always wonder whether I could have gotten into a program I prefer if I had waited. Now I wonder whether that position might be a bit too greedy given my profile. Anyways, two schools I'm considering adding are Emory and Penn State; Emory in particular seems to have strong placement, and has Eric Reinhardt, whose interests are closely aligned with mine (i.e. formal and trade.) Both seem to have strong formal and methods training. So specific advice on those two schools would also be appreciated. Edit: Penn State has Bumba Mukherjee, whose interests are also closely aligned with mine, but I don't know if their placement is as strong.

Fair enough!

So I probably won't do this, as it seems a bit unusual, but has anyone ever submitted two shorter papers as a writing sample instead of one larger one? I'm thinking of this especially in relation to NYU's writing sample, which asks for something of length "30-50 pages." I figure that if submitting two papers were a viable option, I could include two papers that complement each other in terms of what they signal about my writing/scholarship capacities. Any thoughts?

Low AW won't harm you at all, but the importance of the quant score is dependent a lot on what kind of comparative you want to do. NYU, for example, is very quant focused, and may want a higher GREQ. Depending on what you're studying, I wouldn't expect UCLA to be as much of an issue. I would, however, generally caution against becoming overly fixated on a particular school, given the fairly large stochastic component of graduate political science admissions.

Well, to be fair, York is barely in Toronto.

Hahaha...

To the extent that such a trend exists (I'm not sure I see the evidence of that being the case) I don't see any reason why the new test would reverse the trend. The verbal section is a bit better, in that it's less focused on vocabulary knowledge than the old test, and more focused on reasoning. However, it's not different enough that I expect it'll change anyone's opinion on the test drastically. The quant section, on the other hand, isn't much different except that it has a bit more range at the top; you can now go beyond the old max of 94th percentile. So I can't imagine anyone treating it that differently than the old test, at least in polisci where scores close to 800 were the exception instead of the norm (relative to say, economics.) As far as comparing old scores with new, they have new score predictions based on your old scores, and vice versa. For example, my V740 Q800 score had a predicted conversion of V169 Q166.

@Professor Baker I just read a paper of yours on trade policy beliefs (the one published in AJPS) that I really liked! I'll keep CU Boulder in mind for the future.

After reading this thread, I am actually really confused about what it is you want to do. You have Rochester as your top "reach" school, Cornell as #4 (these two schools seem to have very little in common), but want to do critical theory? Not to mention, York isn't even on your list of Canadian schools you're considering? Didn't you suggest in an earlier thread that you were considering specializing in political methodology?