RWBG

Congrats!! About time.

We've had a change in program coordinators, and the new one might be handling how letters are sent out differently. Decisions have been made since Monday. Once again (since it might have gotten lost amidst the fray), if you were admitted to Michigan and have questions about the program, feel free to PM me.

Michigan admits can feel free to PM me if they have questions about the program.

If it helps, Mika definitely is the director of graduate admissions this year, and I'd heard offers would be going out around now.

There's some ambiguity about what constitutes a top 10/top 20 school, etc. but the most commonly used ranking is the US News.

I don't necessarily have strong feelings on the term generally (although it's not my favourite and I don't use it myself), but I do think it's often the case that people use it to be pretentious about their perceived qualifications. This is especially true in the context of the results page, where many of the comments are just putting down schools that rejected them, or acting better than the offers they have. I also wouldn't downplay how frustrating it can be when someone is really hoping to be admitted to a school, and someone else who got into that school is acting as if it's beneath them. Grad school can be bruising to the ego, but being on the losing end of the admissions lottery is nothing to sneeze at either.

It really isn't instructive to think of the average ratio, as this varies a lot depending on a school's expected yield ratio. Some data on this exists to get a sense of the variance: UCLA, for instance, admits approximately 60 students each year (19% of total applicants) with the aim of getting a cohort of about 20-22, so about a 33% yield rate (possibly with a few people moving in from the waitlist). [1]. Duke admits about 35 students (11%), with the expectations of about 30-40% yield, leading to a cohort of 12-18 ish.[2] Princeton admits about 40 (8%) with the aim of a cohort of about 20-23 (50-57% yield).[3] Michigan admits about 18 students (5%) aiming for a cohort of about 12 (65% yield).[4] I've heard Harvard's yield is something ridiculous like 24/27, but I don't have the data on it. So something like 3:1 might be an OK approximation for schools outside the top six or seven, but it's hard to say. [1] http://www.gdnet.ucla.edu/asis/progprofile/result.asp?selectmajor=0699 [2] http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitpol.htm [3] http://www.princeton.edu/politics/graduate/prospective/faqs/ [4] http://www.lsa.umich.edu/polisci/graduate/admissions/faq

I think it varies from school to school. Many are just a few students (i.e. <5). Beyond that, I don't have any more information on this; you can usually ask the program how many people are on the waitlist and they'll give you that information.

That is a very long waitlist. Most schools' waitlists are a small fraction of the size of the number of people they admitted.

They do not update this. My offer from last year still isn't on the status checker.

I heard they were still reviewing as of this past weekend; I wouldn't expect results until next week. I've also heard them say that they want to release results the first week of February.

I'm not doubting you! My never having heard of it may suggest (in answer to your original question) that it's rare, but I really don't know. I think most top 25 programs have organized admit weekends, but that's just based on my personal experiences and those of others I know who applied to Ph.D programs. I imagine visiting outside of the artifice of an organized admit weekend may actually give you a better sense of the department under normal conditions, but most schools I know want to take advantage of economies of scale by putting on one event at one set time. Beyond that, I have little insight to offer. Edit: Looking at a thread from last year, Illinois looks to be somewhat atypical in this regard. They were the only school mentioned that sets up meetings individually. So it certainly seems rare. In any event, Illinois' a great program with lots of good people, and I'm sure you'll have a good visit irrespective of when you go.

I've never heard of that in the US.

So, I think there are theoretical reasons for and against the idea of admitting in waves. Whether it is the case that it is commonly used as a tool to deal with yield issues, ensure competitiveness for their top candidates, etc. is an empirical question which I can't answer conclusively. I can say that in none of the schools I was admitted to was this the case, nor is it the case at my current department. Some schools admitted students at different times, but the admits weren't far enough apart that I think there's much likelihood of it having served some strategic purpose. I can also say that from two years of obsessively going over the results section on these forums, and reviewing the results from previous years in an attempt to predict when schools I was interested in would send out acceptances, it was rare that schools admitted students in the fashion you described (i.e. in waves), at least for US political science departments. This data would, however, be skewed to the departments I was interested in, so maybe it was true for schools I didn't look at? Some Canadian departments on the other hand (particularly Canadian master's programs) did exactly what you describe for much the same reasons. Were the three admissions processes you're familiar with US political science Ph.D programs? If so, that's interesting to me, and I'd be curious to hear which schools they were, although I'd understand if you'd prefer not to share that information. Does anyone else have experiences with US political science programs where they observed this wave phenomenon? Also, as far as admit weekend scheduling, I know that all the schools I was admitted to gave me plenty of leeway before confirming my attendance, and there appeared to be a lot of planning behind the scenes to minimize conflicts between schools. Generally, schools that admitted students later had later admit weekends. I didn't really meet many people for whom the issue of conflicting admit weekends actually came up.

Sorry about the negative reputation point, I meant to select "quote" and misclicked... I do not believe what you've described here is the norm for political science Ph.D admissions. As I seem to recall a professor on here noting at some point (I forgot whom), admitting people in waves/waitlisting a lot of students creates divisions in the cohort right off the bat that most departments try to avoid. Waitlists are usually quite small, and one or two students at most are taken off them. Also, I don't think any school "forces" students to commit to an admit weekend; students can hold off confirming their attendance until other schools admit them, etc. Moreover, I haven't heard of any school (again for political science Ph.D programs) actually contacting students in between waves to assess their likelihood of attending before determining how many others to admit.

Wisconsin-Madison.

Nope. Based on previous years, I wouldn't expect anything until late February. Excruciating, I know.

Michigan seems pretty committed to the first week of February. If I had to guess, I'd say the first of February is probably a bit early, but early the week of the 4th seems like a good possibility.

I had this happen with one school last year; some times it just takes them a little while to get a personalized letter written up, etc. Or in the case of one school, they actually forgot to send me the e-mail admitting me, so I only found out about being admitted when a POI e-mailed me to set up a phone conversation...

Every year someone makes this argument, but it just doesn't empirically appear to be the case. Most schools admit everyone at once, and those that don't tend to stagger things in a somewhat random fashion.

Living The Dream.

Programs vary. One school wanted me to teach all five years, one gave the first year off, one had varying levels of commitments depending on the package offered (two years without for a few, more commonly one year without), and one school only required two years of teaching at some point during the five year degree. Nearly all programs require you to do teaching at some point in your degree, if only for pedagogical purposes, but there are exceptions.

While this question was not (I believe) directed at me, I'll note that the composition of one's weekly activities appears to change a lot throughout the Ph.D. Some years you may have teaching commitments, others you might not, you might reduce the number of courses you take each year (eventually to zero, in most cases), and how much time you devote to research can be a function both of where you are in the program and how motivated you are to write lots of papers. Also, things like fellowship/grant applications can take up a fair bit of time, as can conference proposals, conferences, workshops, etc.

Dunno, my program's cohort is really close, and not very competitive. I think people's interests are different enough that nobody feels like they're in direct competition with anyone else. I think there's a lot of random variation though; one or two people can throw off the dynamics of a cohort, and I hear from people in different years that the dynamics were less pleasant for them.

Rochester was easily the most generous place I visited in their hosting, even when compared to other places that were hosting a similar number of people for the weekend.