RWBG

It's been a while since I've taken math stats/probability theory, so this might be a bit off, but I think it's a bit misleading to consider the probability of acceptance at different universities as independent events. I think the better way to think of it is in terms of conditional independence; your probability of being accepted by different universities is independent conditional on a third random variable, namely the quality of you as an applicant/your application. or Pr(H∩P|G)=Pr(H|G)Pr(P|G), where H represents chances of getting into Harvard, P represents chances of getting into princeton, and G represents the quality of your application. The main implication this has is that during the process, once you have acceptances/rejections, you should update your probability of admission accordingly based on new information about G. You can't consider the events independent, given imperfect information about G. For example, if I'm rejected by Rochester, the probability of being accepted by HYP is reduced substantially, because new information changes my G-distribution. If you were close to certain that your G was at a certain level, you could probably treat the events as independent, and calculate probabilities the way you've been doing (i.e. 1-p^n). As it is, even ex ante, I think you probably have to consider your G-distribution when considering the number of schools you want to apply to, and how many in each tier you want to apply to. For example, if I thought my G distribution included a 1/5 chance of being an excellent applicant, 3/5 chance of being a mid-tier applicant, and a 1/5 chance of being a low tier applicant, and if I thought that being an excellent applicant meant I would have a 100% chance of being accepted to any given university I applied to (assuming for the sake of argument, all universities were of the same tier), being a mid-tier applicant meant I had a 20% chance of being accepted, and being a low-tier applicant meant that I would have a 0% chance of being accepted, then your probability can't be figured out from 1-0.8^n, but has to be (1/5) + (3/5)(1-0.8^n) + 0. This would have implications on the appropriate structure/number of your applications, dependent on your utility/cost function. This is probably just a formalization of what people are already doing intuitively, and may not actually contradict what you said, but insofar as we're calculating explicit probabilities as in the previous posts (even rough ones), it's probably a good idea to keep in mind how it works out formally.

Excellent. I'm hoping you'll keep us abreast of any upcoming acceptances as well. Personally, I'm especially eager to hear from Rochester, and it's good to know there's another Rochester applicant on the forum, so that if acceptances go out and I'm not one of them, at least I'll know.

Congrats! Out of curiosity, did you apply to Rochester as well?

While I can't comment with certainty whether or not the Pittsburgh acceptance you mentioned is real, I don't think the comment about it being fully funded is evidence one way or another. A lot of people mention that kind of thing even if its true for every accepted student. This week should be a big one; good luck everyone!

Congrats! UNC has an excellent program.

Last year, it looks like all the Stanford acceptances went out in the last three days of the last week of January. So I'd agree that if you haven't heard by the end of Friday, it's unlikely you'll be admitted. That does leave one day in which I think they'll still be contacting people, though. I'm in the same boat too, although I was fairly certain my chances at Stanford were extremely low before this. I rushed my SOP to get it in by the deadline (it was my earliest application deadline), so it was pretty unpolished. Honestly, if I were Stanford, I wouldn't let me in based on my application. Too bad though. My near certainty that I won't be admitted didn't stop me from freaking out a bit when I got a call from a blocked number at about 4 pm PST today. Turned out to be a restaurant calling to confirm reservations...

Fair enough! I just wanted to make sure I was clear on his meaning.

Just to clarify, did you mean to confirm the posted acceptance was real, or just to note that such an acceptance was posted?

So it seems! I think their deadline was around the same time last year, but I can't confirm that.

So in case anyone didn't notice, a Pittsburgh and a TAMU acceptance have been posted on the results page. According to the results page, last year had first week of February admission offers come in from WashU, Penn. State, Northwestern, Duke, OSU, Rochester, and UNC. So one way or another, we should have more information in the next week or so. Also, I don't know about other schools, but WashU and Rochester have been pretty consistent over the past few years in sending out admission offers by the end of the second week of February at the latest. Edit: Also, a Virginia Ph.D acceptance is up.

So, as mentioned by GopherGrad earlier, LL.Ms are often marked on a different curve, and sometimes evaluated using different assignments, even when they're in classes jointly with JDs. Also, most LL.M programs have a thesis component, which exposes someone specifically to law as an academic discipline. However, if you had actually bothered to read through my "babble," you'd notice that the model explicitly does not use the fact that LL.Ms are more than a specialized extra year of JD studies as an assumption. In fact, it explicitly takes your assumptions as given. Anyways, I'm no longer interested in responding to your increasingly hostile and condescending posts, so I'm going to do my utmost not to post any more in this thread. SOG, I sincerely hope that at some point you develop the ability to be critically self-aware, and move away from your approach of assuming that everyone except you is either too myopic or too biased to understand your arguments.

Yeah, this was how I initially thought of the issue, so writing it down didn't take too much time. I've quoted my original post so it can be used as a reference when reading this post. The conclusions are robust to a fixation on teaching over anything else. The root of the conclusion is in the determination of expected utility from pi and ϕ. So let's examine this a little further. SOG's argument is that admissions committees SHOULD focus on teaching over everything else, or at the very least, some of the people they hire should be hired for only that purpose. Without questioning why someone would be hired for only teaching when they could be hired for both research and teaching, we can take this as an assumption and look at the implications of the model. It is likely that the established prior belief pi would still favor a Ph.D or LL.M/SJD over a JD-only holder. I realize that SOG's argument is based a lot on his saying that shouldn't be the case, but without getting mired in the discussion of political science Ph.Ds v. JDs, let's look specifically at JDs versus LL.M/SJDs. Even if you accept that LL.Ms are just another year or two of JD work (a contentious claim backed by no-one except SOG), that extra education provides that person with specialized knowledge about a subject (possibly public law?) which they could use in teaching, and works as a signal that such a person wants to teach in the first place. So even if the prior belief is not as strongly against JDs as it would be if research is included, it's still a fairly significant difference. Now consider that it is particularly hard to make distinctions between ϕs if only teaching is taken into account. Teaching reviews are often unreliable, and a lot of the top people will have strong teaching reviews anyways. Given this, if everyone at the top of an applicant pool is indistinguishable in terms of teaching qualifications, LLMs and SJDs will be selected over JDs every time. Apply backwards induction, and JD applicants aren't reviewed. Now you might ask, if this is the case, why are some JDs employed as Professors at law schools? This usually occurs because the candidate is particularly distinguished in either research within the field, or has had a particularly distinguished legal practice career. However, both of these justifications are discounted by SOG's argument. He suggests that research should not be a significant factor in determining whether someone should be hired, and if someone has a distinguished career in legal practice, then such a person would be qualified only to teach other lawyers how to become lawyers. Thus, there is essentially no way that a JD could show that they should be hired over other applicants, even if they are in fact superior candidates.

...well since you asked... Let's say the utility of any professor i to a department can be broken down into several components, as represented by the following utility function. Ui = Ri + Ti + NCi where Ri is a professor's research ability, Ti is the quality of teaching, and NCi is the number of courses a prof can teach in a department. Now let's say the department chooses faculty members such that they maximize ΣUi - nc Where c is the cost of reviewing an application, and n is the total number of applications reviewed. Given this, a hiring committee (heretofore referred to as a HIRCOM) will review an application if the expected utility is higher than the marginal cost. Now let's say that the only information the HIRCOM knows about a candidate before reviewing an application is what degree they hold. Given this information, we can construct a set of prior beliefs P = {pi,..., pn} such that each belief represents the initial expected Ui of a candidate, with that belief being conditioned on the degree that they hold. Given that JDs have less research experience, less teaching training, can teach a smaller subset of courses, only have three years of training, and lack the self-selection signal that a Ph.D or LL.M represents in terms of showing that a candidate wants to teach, we can say that they are less likely on average to be good professors. This may not be true universally though, so we can make this claim without making the stronger claim that Ph.Ds are always better candidates; some JDs may, in actuality, be better candidates, although we can't know this with certainty. Thus prior beliefs are likely to be lower pi's for JD-only holders. Now let's say that if the HIRCOM chooses to review an application, they receive a signal ϕ that represents the total information they get from reviewing the application. This can include publications, existing research, teaching evaluations, etc. The adcom then performs a Bayesian update on the expected Ui using ϕ, and chooses the candidate(s) for which expected UI is now the highest. Now because ϕ does not provide complete information about a candidate, in order for the Bayesian update to result in a higher expected Ui for a JD holder than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holder, the signal ϕ has to be much stronger in relative terms, due to the prior beliefs that JD-only holders are less likely to be good candidates for TT positions. Now let's assume we have a position for which we have a lot of applications, and even assume similar ϕ distributions for Ph.D/LL.M/SJD holders and JD holders. It is likely that you will have a number of extremely qualified applicants at the top, in that everyone will have strong teaching references, etc. Especially for this mythical "teaching only" position, it would be difficult for JDs to show ex ante that they would be such better teachers that they should be hired as TT faculty despite lack of research preparation, even if they would be. So the probability that the ϕ for a JD is so much stronger than a Ph.D/LL.M/SJD's ϕ that they actually get the position ends up being extremely small. A HIRCOM knows this, so before they choose to review an application, they do backwards induction and conclude that the expected UI of reviewing the application is less that the expected cost. JD applications are not reviewed, and JDs do not end up taking positions as TT faculty in political science departments.

Wow, it's really quite difficult to check gradcafe without looking at this thread. I agree with humanprovince that we should ignore this thread. Most people here aren't finding it fun, they're finding it aggravating, but can't bring themselves to stop engaging every time SOG posts something new that misses the point. However, while debating can be helpful in clarifying one's original perspective, that's only true if discussion happens on a substantive level. Right now, SOG has resorted to silly semantic arguments (seriously, no-one cares whether or not professor has "to profess" in their title), and to attacking straw mans of people's arguments, while consistently missing the point. When I mentioned that public law in political science is a different subject than public law in law school, due to the degree of focus on case law, the response was simply: "Surely, you don’t mean to imply that a pure PhD is more qualified to each public law courses than a JD. Talk about "willful blindness."" Totally ignoring the substance of my point. When I mentioned that JDs are qualitatively distinct degrees from regular graduate degrees, noting that there is not worldwide acceptance of them as graduate degrees, and that they generally imply fewer years of preparation in a subject than a Ph.D, given both the length of the JD and the fact that JDs need not enter the program from a cognate discipline, I was treated to: "There’s really no need for me to be explaining any of this, so I only recommend you do more research." While being told that I was "ignorant of a fact." This is not a productive discussion. Given that there is no-one on his "side" but him, it would be advisable that people stop wasting their time. Easier said than done though...

Your argument is predicated on your asserted knowledge of exactly what a JD is and how law school courses are carried out, to the extent that you've casually dismissed the arguments of someone in this thread who actually holds a JD (GopherGrad). Personally, I've taken law school courses, and run in a circle of friends that consists to a significant degree of currently practicing lawyers and law students, and none of what you've said accords with law school as they've described it to me, or with my limited experiences in law school. I'm curious as to where you derive your extreme sense of self-assuredness. It won't be productive because your responses do not engage with the substance of arguments made in this thread. I could try to explain why, but you wouldn't engage with the substance of my explanation.

...this discussion is clearly not going to be productive. I'm going to save myself some headache and not continue in it. Out of curiosity, SOG, have you taken law school courses/do you hold a JD?

Some departments allow you to upload or send in fall grades, and they'll certainly use them if they have them, but it was also my impression that fall grades are not essential to the evaluation process. I was explicitly told by one department that "many applicants will not have fall grades in by the time they submit their transcripts - this is fine."

In Britain, law degrees are undergraduate entry programs (LL.Bs), and in countries like Canada, they're openly considered second-entry undergraduate degrees, though some schools have changed the degree title to JD to conform with the United States. I don't think the actual content/substantive training is much different than US programs, but the US tends to have more people with a seemingly vested interest in arguing it's a graduate program. You might be able to distinguish it from undergraduate programs, calling it a professional degree program, but it's certainly not the same thing as a regular graduate degree. On another note, it should be mentioned that public law in law school is usually significantly different than public law in political science. Courses in law school (in my experience) tend to focus on things like case law related to a particular substantive area, and how particular decisions were come to by the adjudicating bodies in question, whereas political science courses usually focus on broader theoretical implications of legal institutions. This is reflected in the huge substantive differences between legal scholarship and political science scholarship. Really, even where the substantive areas covered are similar, it's very hard to support the argument that "JDs are essentially in the same field." While there might be something to be gained for political scientists from knowing the case law, I don't really see why there's any benefit to having such content taught by lawyers in the political science faculty. Insofar as breadth and diversity is useful, why not just have students take law courses with JDs employed in the law department?

So I don't know if this has already been mentioned, since I haven't really read through this thread. However, JDs aren't really graduate degrees, so much as second entry undergraduate degrees. Political science graduate degree holders generally have some degree of undergraduate preparation in political science or a cognate discipline in addition to their graduate preparation. So generally, their preparation can be said to be greater on average than a JD who could easily have entered from a program in chemical engineering. Also, the distinction made by SOG between undergraduate political science graduates and JD graduates (saying JDs have graduate preparation) is a false one. If anything, a political science undergraduate would likely have more preparation for teaching political science related courses, whereas a JD holder would only potentially have some knowledge in fields related to political science on the periphery, such as public law. JDs also tend to emphasize breadth in their preparation over specialization, not to mention the qualitatively distinct focus on practical application over research. So it is unlikely that a JD would be thoroughly versed in a field like public law upon graduation. Really, that's a big part of the reason why you have LL.Ms and SJDs; to provide graduates with substantive knowledge in a particular area, as well as familiarity with the discipline as an academic one, instead of a practical one. That plus signalling. Ultimately, it becomes a matter of line-drawing, and you could say that there are SOME JDs that have adequate preparation for teaching a restricted set of undergraduate courses. However, you need those lines in order to reduce the applicant pool to some extent, especially when you have some schools with 250 people applying for one position. As well, given that JDs would have to compete with LL.M holders and SJD holders, the probability of someone who holds only a JD being better qualified to teach undergraduate courses seems relatively small. SOG's argument as of the last few posts I've read seems to have become more and more restricted; less so why there aren't more JDs in political science faculties, but why JDs shouldn't be automatically excluded from teaching undergraduate-only classes in a small subset of areas which are sometimes considered part of political science. If that's SOG's argument, he may have a (very restricted) point under idealized circumstances where you don't need signalling to lessen the applicant pool, and could just review everyone. But in the real world, where lines are drawn, the argument doesn't withstand any kind of scrutiny, and no amount of willful blindness will change that. Sorry again if this has all already been said.

You're right, the data in the link I posted is old. Thanks for catching it! Also, thanks for the links you posted.

Hi Everyone, So I'm working on a political science ranking research project, and I've been trying to compile a list of all the different political science department rankings I can find. I thought I would post what I've found so far, with the request that if people know any others I've missed, they let me know what they are. I also figured this would also be a useful resource for people in itself. Simon Hix (2004) http://www.political...pdf/psr/hix.pdf Masuoka and Grofman (2007) http://www.socsci.uc...ernie%20web.pdf Rice, McCormick, Bergmann:(2001) http://psruckman.com...PSRankings2.pdf '' 2002: http://www.brandeis....docs/PS2002.pdf Academic Analytics (2007): http://chronicle.com...ary=31&bycat=Go Miller, Tien, Peebler (1996) PS: Political Science and Politics Katz and Eagle (1996) PS: Political Science and Politics Ballard & Mitchell (1998) PS: Political Science and Politics Schmidt and Chingos (2007) Based on Placement Records: http://www.princeton...ngs%20Paper.pdf US News and World Report: http://grad-schools....anities-schools US National Research Council Doctorate Rankings: -2010 http://www.stat.tamu...ngs/area39.html British RAE: -http://www.rae.ac.uk/pubs/2008/01/ IR Scholar Survey: http://web.wm.edu/ir...-07.pdf?svr=www

Interesting. The list mostly accords with my expectations as to how people would rank the schools (distinct from what I think the rankings should be.) However, I think Harvard's comparatively low position is interesting; my guess is they probably are subject to some anti-Harvard sentiment that comes from them being top-ranked. Let's hope the quiet is a signal that there are fewer applicants competing for spots this year!

I won't comment on most of what you wrote, except to note that most schools can submit grade revisions after marks have been submitted.

Why would you have to retake the GRE? Did you take it four years ago? Either way, I'm sure your score wouldn't change too much. I wouldn't be so sure about the review process starting that early. The majority of schools aren't going to want to bother reviewing applications until the semester begins, and for most schools, that's January 10th. I'm doubtful things will change much by next year, so even if things don't work out, I think you would be fine to reapply next year. Just try not to get discouraged.

Assumedly you applied to schools with later deadlines than Dec. 1? It's my impression that a lot of schools don't start reviewing until the week of January 10th; if you can get your letter in by that week, you may be ok.. That, and I might e-mail departments notifying them of the issue, and perhaps assuring them that the other letter is on the way (even if you can't confirim that.) Sorry to hear that, and best of luck regardless.