RWBG

Are you not teaching this semester or something?

I would check the admissions websites of programs you're interested in to see whether they will still accept the scores; I would not be surprised if some will require you to take the test, particularly given that the test changed about two years ago, so using the scores to compare you to current applicants may not be as easy. This may vary from program to program. Beyond that, your numbers are good, so focus on writing a compelling statement. Advice on writing such statement, as well as samples of previous statements, can be found here; More than this, it is difficult to assess your probability of success, given that much of this is dependent on soft factors. My only piece of advice particular to you is to be wary of leaning too heavily on your law degree and legal experience, unless you are planning on doing political science research on law & courts type stuff.

I didn't think it was that big a deal. He wasn't being a jerk about it; he just noted that sometimes schools use gradcafe to gather certain kinds of information about offer timing, etc., and it's usually pretty easy to figure out who someone is once you know what schools they were admitted to. We continued having a perfectly lovely lunch. I also had a grad student e-mail me (whom if you're reading this, hello!) saying he'd figured out who I was, and he was a gracious host at the visit weekend. If anything, the whole situation just gave me the sense that they cared about who they were admitting and who entered the program, so I'd say my impressions were net positive, although I didn't end up going there. I also hadn't written anything on this forum that I felt particularly ashamed of, and frankly, if you're posting a bunch of information on a public forum, you shouldn't be all that surprised if someone figures out who you are. Keep the information vague if you don't want to be found out.

I had a faculty member at a visit weekend mention that I was a frequent poster on gradcafe while we were eating lunch.

I think it's about time to bump this again for new applicants...

I think so. As I understand it, we used to admit something like 8-10%, but in the past few years have hovered around 5%.

My apologies, I misunderstood. Stanford GSB has a political economy program, but it's basically is designed to train formal theorists (it's not political economy understood substantively, really) so I'd do the regular stream in the political science department. Take a look at Maggie Peters' CV for a good guide to doing political economy at Stanford. Harvard's PEG program looks great; couldn't you apply to both it and the Government program? I don't know what your math background is like, but keep in mind that expectations for these specialized programs may be closer to those of economics departments; if you don't have a solid background in, at minimum, calculus and linear algebra, it may be tougher to gain admission. As to UCSD, I don't think it'll matter much which you choose. Faculty probably don't care which program you're in, and the IR/PS Ph.D looks like it has most of its coursework in the political science department. I think I saw a thread somewhere on gradcafe about this though, so you could do a search for that if you haven't already done so.

If you want to do political economy understood substantively (i.e. not formal theory like jazzrap is talking about) then Stanford would be a good choice, but not necessarily Stanford GSB (although you could take courses there). As far as the value of interdisciplinary programs, I think what you want to do is choose a program that allows you to get the training you want (e.g. take courses in economics, game theory, statistics, etc.) and has advisors who can supervise a dissertation that engages in a sophisticated fashion with economics, political science, game theory, and econometrics. I would do this instead of focusing on whether the program is officially interdisciplinary or not in name. In general, the program name just affects how easily people can slot you into particular roles when you apply for jobs; something like IR/comparative, even if virtually all your courses are political economy and economics courses, may position you better on the job market than political economy, because people will be better convinced you can teach their standard IR and comparative classes. Off the top of my head, I'd say good schools to do your kind of work would probably include Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Michigan, UCSD, UCLA (if you want to work with Rogowski), NYU, Wisconsin-Madison, Emory. Rochester would train you well in game theory and stats, but Randy Stone's the only one there who does political economy (and even then, it's more IO that political economy) so you'd have to be a bit of a self-starter on the political economy stuff. Trade-offs and all.

12-14 for my program for at least the past three years; a number of years back it was closer to 18-20. I like how the acronym for the program that collected OSU's data is PRISM.

A bigger concern I would have is that the rest of your committee will be unsympathetic to the modelling enterprise, such that you'll be at odds with them over the usefulness of your work. It might depend on how deep into formal modelling you want to go with your work.

With my program (which, for what it's worth, is not one of the three mentioned in the initial post) you basically have to complete the coursework required for students internal to that department to get another department's master's degree. I'm planning on doing that with the economics department, which for my school requires completion of at least two of the core first year sequences (i.e. micro, macro, econometrics), as well as two other courses in economics. I'm of the opinion that whether or not you need this kind of coursework in the economics department depends on what kind of work in CPE/IPE you want to do. Outside of a couple of boutiques like Rochester, Stanford GSB, etc. I think if you want to do formal theory seriously, you'll probably need the micro sequence. Beyond that, a lot of CPE/IPE work engages with economic models at a fairly simple level (e.g. you need to know Stolper-Samuelson, Mundell-Fleming, etc. but not much deeper than that), but if you want to do CPE/IPE work that engages with economic models at a deeper level, it's hard to do without being well-trained in both economics and political science. Generally, to the extent that PE courses cover the economic theory, it'll be done quickly and at a fairly superficial level, and often such courses won't even do that and you will be expected to learn it independently; PE courses certainly won't replace a serious set of courses in micro, macro, trade theory, international finance, etc. Nonetheless, I'd say most CPE/IPE students I know don't do this, preferring to stay within the political science department as much as possible. As to logistics, at my department you can take a number of courses outside the department before doing prelims while still having enough space to complete the courses you need to take your prelims, and you can finish off any extras by taking a course or two after achieving candidacy.

Yeah, I just checked the website, and it looks like UCSD may have revised its policy. They used to have a note that said: "INTERNATIONAL (non US Citizen) APPLICANTS: You should be aware that non-U.S. citizens are responsible for tuition and fee payments that total close to $28,000 per year for every year in residence. Unlike many other state universities, this tuition is not waived for students receiving teaching assistantships, which is the primary source of graduate student funding in the Department of Political Science. In almost all cases neither the University nor the Department of Political Science has the funds to cover these payments. As a consequence, very few non-citizens enroll in the program. Please keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to request the application." Now it still seems like their funding for international students is limited, but it at least exists. They must have realized that what amounted to a blanket ban was a pretty ridiculous policy, and one that was hurting their program. Wisconsin has a great IPE faculty right now; they might be a school to consider adding to the list. Also, you can't get better training in modelling than Rochester, although they don't have much of an IPE (or really PE) group to speak of. Maybe also WUSTL?

Are you an international student? If so, keep in mind that UCSD doesn't fund non-Americans. Beyond that, I do IPE and formal theory, so if you want someone to bounce ideas off as you write your SOP, feel free to PM me!

If you want to spend time learning things the summer before your first year, my recommendation would be to focus your time on the kind of stuff that you'll need for your first year courses, but which aren't necessarily covered in detail in those courses. Things like learning LaTeX, math, etc. can help you engage with your first year courses better, and they won't necessarily be repeated during the year, with the expectation being that you'll pick it up yourself. Also, insofar as learning math is like building a muscle, even if you do end up repeating some of the stuff, it won't be a waste. In addition to Simon and Blume, working through a book on proofs like Velleman's How to Prove It may be useful, depending on your inclinations. Also, getting comfortable with matrix algebra can't hurt for the stats sequence; I've heard good things about this book (although I haven't looked at it myself yet). http://www.amazon.com/Matrix-Algebra-Econometric-Exercises-Vol/dp/0521537460/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367557803&sr=1-2&keywords=exercises+in+matrix+algebra

You discuss the interplay between an economic model (albeit a simple one) and a political model of conflict. Close enough! Especially when considered within the context of IR research at Rochester.

PE is used interchangably with formal theory all the time, but I've never seen someone use IPE to mean formal models of conflict! IPE has always seemed to me to have a distinctly substantive interpretation.

Not to pester you all too much, but I thought I would post this graduate school advice that was posted on the forum by another (in this case anonymous) faculty member, in case you would like to give any thoughts in response to it. I think it's been pretty influential on many of the people using this forum as they look to choose between graduate programs.

My two cents on the update: I don't think most of the movement in the overall ranking represents much more than random variation.The jumps in ranking for OSU and NYU are probably well-earned and meaningful. However, some of the movement in subfield-specific rankings have been more dramatic (take a look at political methodology for example); those changes seem more interesting to me.

Well, tied for second.

Thus ending the speculation! Overall not much change. http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/political-science-rankings For comparison: http://stevenliaotw.blogspot.ca/2009/04/2009-us-news-world-report-rankings.html

Michigan is this upcoming weekend (March 14-16 to be precise). You should have heard from them, no?

Some interesting stuff from the faculty contributors! As a thought, if any of you wanted to post some general advice on admissions in a separate thread on this forum, it might be more easily accessible to future applicants than finding it through this thread. Also, I'm going to count the fact that both Irfan and Bear are Michigan Ph.Ds as a win for Ann Arbor...

I think we should have contacted you by now. I'd give Michigan a call.

This thread from last year might be of use: As a side note, one particular factor that I think stands to be weighted more highly than it often is by applicants is the quality of students at the department. Being surrounded by good students means your seminars will go better, private conversations will be more productive, you'll have better opportunities for coauthorship, etc. So keep an eye out for that kind of thing as you go on admit weekends.

Well, so far, grad school's a lot of fun, and way better than undergrad. I think this professor was being hyperbolic, or at the very least, had experiences that are not necessarily generalizable to many graduate students in our field. My high expectations for the experience have (so far) been met.