RWBG

My first offer last year came January 24th, with my last offer coming February 13th.

This is mostly true, although the easiest way to confirm things is to contact the department and ask them to confirm that they will accept your LOR when it arrives. Usually one late LOR is not as much of an issue. Also, keep in mind that there's really not much chance the review process is actually going to start until January.

So, I think "holistic" rankings are sort of silly, given that they involve weighting different criteria that you may weight differently when you're making decisions. I like reputation rankings because they tell me something tangible; for instance, with the THE world university rankings, their main ranking relies on things like some measure of teaching quality (which I'm skeptical of), but their reputation ranking is very straightforward and clear. So if you look at NRC rankings, I'd look more at the specific data on different factors than the overall rankings. TRIPs and US News are both strictly reputational, although they use different samples, and I think they both accord fairly well with impressions of the schools by people in the field or subfield. The US News rankings seem to be the most highly correlated with selectivity, average student quality, placement, etc. (though still imperfectly) so they are the rankings I consider the most useful, but at some point, you have to use some level of discretion.

Well, formal is very different than quant, so it's hard to answer this question. For formal IR, Princeton/Rochester/Stanford/NYU all seem like good choices to me. To do empirically driven IR, maybe Harvard/Michigan/Princeton/Stanford. For work that looks to combine theoretical and empirical modelling, e.g. EITM style work, maybe Michigan/Harvard/Princeton/Stanford/Rochester. Rochester doesn't have much of an IPE group though.

Not sure if you've already seen this, but this remains a good resource:

My impression from personal experience, and from seeing the profiles of others, is that simple measures like GPA aren't all that important to your application; what's more important is what courses you took, how well you did in specific courses, etc. and how that fits the narrative in your SOP. So I'd agree; expand the list.

From what I recall, the request to list other schools was not a "requirement", and sometimes was limited in the number you could list. In any event, there is functionally a zero percent chance that this will ever come up, and I don't think it's right for schools to "demand" that you tell them where else you're applying. When I spoke with schools after being admitted, whenever I was asked where else I had been admitted, people went out of their way to let me know that it was my choice whether or not I wanted to tell them .

Hey GopherGrad! Good luck with it.

This sounds like a throwback to when they had analytical as a separate part of the test (of three) on a 800 point scale; maybe they just haven't updated their average. It seems highly improbable to me that 1500 was the average otherwise.

I don't know if there are that many schools in the top 30 that the vast majority of people can characterize as a place they would "almost certainly be admitted." With fit considerations, varying tastes of admissions committees, etc. it's not uncommon to see students who are accepted to top five schools also be rejected by some schools ranked far lower. That being said, your profile looks good, and depending on the rest of your file I'd imagine you'd have a shot anywhere. Michigan definitely sounds like a good fit for you. I don't know if Berkeley, Yale, or Columbia would be as great fits if you really want to do teched up empirical work and American politics. Consider adding WUSTL, plus possibly Duke and NYU.

I'm going to go ahead and bump this for the current crop of applicants.

UCLA funding is variable. The package they offered me was competitive with those offered by other schools, but I met people there who weren't offered funding. In any event, I certainly wouldn't take any UC off the list for funding reasons except UCSD; apply, see what funding you get, and then make a decision.

Sorry, I didn't even notice that you were applying to places like SAIS. This forum is more for people applying to Ph.D programs.

I think your GPA is strong enough that with a positive trend you shouldn't have too many issues as a result of it. I think your situation is not uncommon, and in my experience admissions committees are not so worried about what your overall GPA is as they are what specific courses you took and what your grades were in those courses.

Kaykaykay: just as a note, I did not mean to downvote your post, I meant to upvote it. Gradcafe will not let me fix this.

This is speculative, but I think your department likely selects for a specific skill set that is better signalled by coursework and GRE quant than the SOP, which might explain the attitudes of faculty in your department re: admissions. When I spoke with people on the admissions committees of other schools, they all seemed to emphasize the SOP when they spoke with me about my application, and they gave me the impression (although it was never explicitly stated) that the SOP was heavily weighted when determining who to admit.

Not 100% convinced of this. Maybe "rank" doesn't matter, but perceived "quality" of the undergrad institution matters insofar as what adcoms think that implies about the rigour of your coursework and grading. That being said, I think coming from a less recognized institution is something one can compensate for; you just need to do well on the GRE.

Yeah, it's a tough sell for non-US citizens. It's hard for me to imagine that one would be able to justify going to UCSD over somewhere else they were admitted (given that the probability of being admitted somewhere else conditional on being admitted to UCSD is pretty high), but I suppose others might have more disposable income than me. I don't think anywhere else in the top 25-30 categorically doesn't fund int'l students. I think UCLA seemed to have to fill out more paperwork to fund int'l students than other schools, but they still accept and fund plenty of non-US citizens. Don't know if being an int'l student puts you at a competitive disadvantage, but I suspect not.

I'm starting a program in the fall. Beyond that, you can find more information about me in this advice thread I created, which you may also find useful otherwise!

I don't think they'll reject you because of that.

As an additional note, I don't think UCSD funds any international students, so you might want to strike them off your list.

It devolved well before the 18th page. Thanks for saving us all from ourselves.

The first statement (UCSD's) suggests that you only need to demonstrate proficiency (write the TOEFL) if you do not satisfy both conditions (native English, have attended an English language institution), or equivalently, you don't need to write the TOEFL if you satisfy either condition. The second (MIchigan's) technically states that if either condition is unsatisfied, you have to take the TOEFL (i.e. implying that foreign language native students with a degree from the U.S. would still have to write it), but I suspect that's actually them confusing the logic as well. I think the general rule is that if you're either (1) a native speaker OR (2) have an undergraduate degree from an English language institution, then you should be fine not writing the TOEFL; either of those things are supposed to suffice to demonstrate English language competency.

For your interests, I'd say yes, taking "quant" to mean anything that involves math (i.e. formal and stats). If you want to do conflict-y stuff (as you seem to be suggesting) I'm guessing some people you'd want to work with are Stam, Morrow, and Axelrod... That said, I would echo the illustrious Mr. Power's comments in noting that you don't need a strong math background to apply to these programs; my impression is that most admitted students haven't taken a whole lot of math or stats yet.