RWBG

NYU hasn't admitted anyone yet, but in the past has done so in the second week of February. So you should likely be hearing soon.

Or, for a free option: http://www.economics...e/MathTutorial/ Edit: It's not quite as comprehensive as Simon and Blume, but it's a pretty good tutorial. I also don't think you need all the stuff in Simon and Blume for understanding polecon work. The tutorial covers most of what you need to understand mathematical optimization. Also, you can pick up Osborne's book, Intro to Game Theory.

Probably calc II will look better then a "topics" econ course, especially one that doesn't require intermediate micro/macro. It might be nice to have a math grade at the university level on your transcript.

I feel unqualified to give you advice on WashU and U Mich, given that U Mich has rejected me, and WashU has de facto rejected me by omission. Suffice to say that math ability is certainly not sufficient to get into those schools, although they do seem to like some background in calculus and econ. Their average GRE-Q score is a 720, so not too intimidating. As far as the GRE, in my experience, as long as you don't get thrown off by a question and run out of time, GRE-Q scores should stay fairly consistent. GRE-V scores tend to be a bit more unstable. Is calc II year long at your school? And what would be the econ course you'd be taking otherwise?

This is an incentive for incivility.

Pretty normal, from what I hear. However you shouldn't feel bad; the fact they admitted you is a good sign they really want you!

If you are solely interested in signalling quant ability, math would be better. However, political scientists like to see Econ on transcripts both because it signals analytical capacities, and because a lot of even non-quant work intersects with economics. Not to mention I think studying Econ can improve your polisci work. In terms of your broader profile, if you're applying to non-quant programs, I'd probably just do some Econ courses and study hard for the quant GRE.

I think a lot of what veracious_star mentioned illustrates the importance of taking courses that apply mathematics to social science questions (like economics courses), in addition to taking math courses. Formal modeling, when applied correctly, can be extremely useful in insuring that your work is logically consistent with its assumptions, and insures those assumptions are as clear as possible. Econometrics tends to help in making causal inference in a subject where experiments are often unfeasible. But it does make sense to try not to lose sight of how one might use what one's learned from math courses in their political science research, and not all mathematicians make good social scientists. As to the OP's question, I think most adcoms would like to see first year calc and some statistics to get a sense you can handle the methods courses, but if your work isn't all that quantitative/formal, more than that will likely be unnecessary. An econometrics course might serve you better than more math. And non-econometrics econ courses will tend to be useful both for the substantive knowledge you'll get from them, and because the "economic" way of thinking tends to pervade a lot of political science literature, even when that literature is not explicitly formal. Edit: Actually, I feel I should clarify what I said about formal modeling. I don't think formal modeling is ONLY useful as a check of logical consistency. I think you have a bit of a cyclical process, where you have political science intuition that leads you to construct a model in a particular way, and then that model allows you to check logical consistency and often provides you with nontrivial (unobvious) conclusions from your assumptions that in turn modify your intuition and fuel new intuition. So I think math can be extremely useful, but it needs to be connected to that social science intuition/knowledge in order for it to produce good political science research. Not much good work in political science was derived in a self-contained fashion from mathematical logic.

Well, still waiting on most of my acceptances/rejections, so I don't really feel comfortable posting too much detail about the courses I took. I'll also note your survey is a bit weird, in that I don't think you could describe linear algebra and calc 3 as different "levels" of mathematics. Here's a general overview of my profile though. Poli Sci Subfield: IPE/Formal Taken about a year and a half of proof-based calc with analysis topics thrown in, linear algebra, math-stats/probability with calc & proofs, a topics course in math involving a lot of proofs, econometrics, micro theory up to advanced micro, and I am currently taking a grad econ course in formal theory/political economy. So far rejected by Stanford and Michigan. As general advice, I would say that learning how to apply mathematics to social science questions is as important as learning the math itself. Econ's a great way to do that, so I'd take courses in that as well if you can. Good luck!

MAPSS deadline has passed. QMSS is not until April 1, though.

Official Stanford rejections seem to be out.

Congrats to the WashU admits, even if this isn't a good sign for my own application. Out of curiosity, around when did you get the e-mails?

If I get rejected from all the schools I applied to, I'm going to play a lot of songs in D minor, because it's really the saddest of all keys.

One thing I've been wondering about; when transcripts are sent out (at least from my school) they don't include any information about the course besides the course title and course code. I'm wondering how adcomms try to evaluate the relative difficulty/rigor of courses. Like, for stats courses, at my school there are a couple distributed amongst the stats and econ departments, with one basic, non-calc stats course in each department, and one math-stats (calc and proof-based) course in each department. The math-stats courses in each department use the same textbook, but I guess the stats department courses (even the non-calc one) would be assumed to be more rigorous? The course titles provide very little information about their content.

Sorry to hear that. Also, don't take my "liking" your post the wrong way. It was definitely based on your second sentence.

Agreed, for the most part. The main limitation with acceptance rates remains data limitations. And yes, it's true that average size of the incoming class affects things, but only really insofar as it changes the ratio of applicants to accepted students. UCLA tends to get a lot of applications.

Don't revive it! It was dead! Go back to stressing about grad school admissions!

Not to speak for him (but kind of); it's This Is Spinal Tap. I approve of the choice of avatar, Tufnel.

I think this is true for some schools, and makes a lot of intuitive sense. However, looking at admissions patterns in the past, I think the more common pattern is more like two waves; the first wave of acceptances, with some applicants being waitlisted (often the waitlist notifications come out a bit later) followed by a smaller number of acceptances later in the year based on who accepted their first wave of offers. So basically, I don't know if the second wave you described is actually that common in practice. Especially given that most people will not accept or reject schools until they absolutely have to (i.e. April.)

I think my ranking might have dealt with ties differently. I was working off the raw data, which I was going through for other purposes, and figured I'd post this.

Deleted Duplicate.

You're totally right. That site uses NRC data, but I didn't realize you could sort by GRE-Q score until checking it just now. http://graduate-scho...______________U However, its originality doesn't really matter. The data wasn't mine to begin with anyways. If people weren't aware of the NRC rankings, the website you quoted, or the fact that the NRC had GRE-Q data, they can use it as a resource now. Or if they just didn't think to sort by GRE-Q.

I thought about that (although I don't have a well-organized data set including acceptance/enrollment statistics, and many schools don't publish that data) and one big problem with that is that the selection biases can be misleading. Everyone applies to Harvard, so the applicant numbers are skewed up. In lower ranked/seemingly less competitive universities, acceptance rates still seem very low, probably because the applicants are on average less competitive. So every tier of university has its own selection biases confounding inference based on those statistics. Anyways, by no way is this intended to be a perfect ranking, but I also hope it serves as a good starting point.

So let me start off by saying this is a rudimentary ranking at best. What I did was take NRC data on average GRE-Q score (GRE-V scores are not in the data set), and rank political science departments based on that critieria. There are serious methodological flaws in such a ranking. Two examples: First, it tends to bias the admissions competitiveness of universities upward if that school weights GRE scores heavily in the admissions process. Second, given that it uses the GRE-Q score only, it tends to bias upwards those universities that are more mathematically-oriented. However, informally, it has seemed to me that GRE-Q scores are used much more in the admissions process than GRE-V scores. Additionally, if we assume that admissions committees are relatively randomly distributed in their weighting of GRE scores, we can say that it's likely that the data being taken over three years might average it out a bit. So as long as we're cogniscant of the methodological limitations, I think this ranking can give someone a sense of the relative admissions competitiveness of schools. Just adjust quant schools down a bit and non-quant schools up a bit. This also has roughly accorded with my informal impressions of the competitiveness of schools, based on the acceptance records I've seen of a number of applicants. So keep in mind the limitations, and use it as you will. Happy obsessing! var1 var2 rank STANFORD UNIVERSITY Political Science 1 YALE UNIVERSITY Political Science 2 HARVARD UNIVERSITY Government 3 NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Politics 4 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO Political Science 5 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY Politics 6 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY Political Science 7 DUKE UNIVERSITY Political Science 8 MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Political Science 9 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES Political Science 10 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Political Science 11 UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER Political Science 12 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN-ANN ARBOR Political Science 13 OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS Political Science 14 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK Political Science 15 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STONY BROOK Political Science 16 CORNELL UNIVERSITY Government 17 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON Political Science 18 GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY Political Science 19 RICE UNIVERSITY Political Science 20 BOSTON COLLEGE Political Science 21 PENN STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 22 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL Political Science 23 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN Political Science 24 EMORY UNIVERSITY Political Science 25 UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA Politics 26 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA Politics & International Relations 27 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Political Science 28 UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI International Studies 29 UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME Political Science 30 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY Government 31 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI - COLUMBIA Political Science 32 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Political Science 33 BOSTON UNIVERSITY Political Science 34 UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA-TWIN CITIES Political Science 35 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO Political Science 36 SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS Political Science 37 RUTGERS THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY NEW BRUNSWICK CAMPUS Political Science 38 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-DAVIS Political Science 39 BROWN UNIVERSITY Political Science 40 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 41 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY Political Science 42 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN Government 43 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BUFFALO Political Science 44 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER Political Science 45 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH PITTSBURGH CAMPUS Political Science 46 UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT Political Science PhD 47 OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY International Studies 48 INDIANA UNIVERSITY AT BLOOMINGTON Political Science 49 ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 50 UNIVERSITY OF UTAH Political Science 51 UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA COLUMBIA Political Science & International Studies 52 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA Political Science 53 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-IRVINE Political Science 54 FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY International Relations 55 HOWARD UNIVERSITY Political Science 56 UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII AT MANOA Political Science 57 UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK Government and Politics 58 TEXAS A & M UNIVERSITY Political Science 59 UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Political Science 60 FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 61 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON Political Science 62 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY Political Science/School of International Service 63 BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Politics 64 UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS Politics 65 UNIVERSITY OF DELAWARE Political Science & International Relations 66 WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 67 LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY AND AGRICULTURAL AND MECHANICAL COLLEGE Political Science 68 UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA Political Science 69 PURDUE UNIVERSITY MAIN CAMPUS Political Science 70 UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA NORMAN CAMPUS Political Science 71 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT ALBANY Political Science 72 TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Political Science 73 VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY Political Science 74 STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT BINGHAMTON Political Science 75 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-SANTA BARBARA Political Science 76 UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA - LINCOLN Political Science 77 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO Political Science 78 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA Political Science 79 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA Political Science 80 UNIVERSITY OF HOUSTON Political Science 81 UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO MAIN CAMPUS Political Science 82 UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA Political Science 83 UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE Political Science 84 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS Political Science 85 CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK GRAD. CENTER Political Science 86 GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 87 UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI MAIN CAMPUS Political Science 88 CLAREMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY Politics and Policy 89 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA-RIVERSIDE Political Science 90 UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI - SAINT LOUIS Political Science 91 CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA Politics 92 UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Political Science 93 UNIVERSITY OF NEVADA RENO Political Science 94 UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY Political Science 95 WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY Political Science 96 NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY Political Science 97 FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Political Science 98 LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO Political Science 99 TEXAS TECH UNIVERSITY Political Science 100 SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY CARBONDALE Political Science 101 WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY Political Science 102 UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI Political Science 103 UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA Political Science 104 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE Political Science 105

I think you mean "great" and "better."