plisar

Social science program, but yes, for all intents and purposes, they do. A very good one.

I got into 10 programs last year, but was only able to visit two. Part of this was timing. Three of the programs admitted me off their wait list and their visitation weekends had come and gone. Part of this was narrowing down my decision set to a smaller group of schools and only going to those that I knew I had a high likelihood of attending. By the end of February, I narrowed my initial seven acceptances down to a set of three schools that I knew I'd like to go to. Part of this was based on fit of the programs I was accepted to, part of this was based on the quality of training, and the final part was based on the quality of the financial aid package. Ultimately, I only went to two schools, primarily because those first two visits negated the need for the third visit--I knew that I would go to either school A or school B. Nonetheless, it's nice to have this awesome opportunity to visit a bunch of places I had never been, but having a full time job made it necessary to make a number of choices early in the process.

They could, but that may require you to wait until the end of the month to find out if you are admitted. So there's an opportunity cost. Do you want to have most of the uncertainly taken away with a vague acceptance, or do you want to wait until they've finalized funding packages?

This isn't even a question. All things considered, Wisconsin is the clear choice out of all three schools listed.

Without a doubt, yes they would, and yes they have. It's not an issue of who knows, it's an issue of who is doing the notifying...

Why does being open matter? Decisions cannot be communicated from the comfort of one's home office?

I'm not saying that you are going to be rejected, but I would not keep your hopes up. The reality is most schools don't do rolling admissions. Last year, Northwestern was telling people decisions were not finalized after the visitation weekend had already come and gone. The reality is that most schools don't send out rejections until late for two reasons: 1) They want the possibility of accepting additional people if they have a particularly bad yield. 2) They aren't a priority. The graduate coordinator has a lot of day-to-day operations, and sending out rejection letters is not on the top of his or her priority lists.

Guys, you need to calm down a bit. Cornell told us the same thing last year, and I got wait listed on February 11th, which I believe was a Wednesday last year. The letter came from the DGS, not Tina Slater. Graduate coordinators are going to say March so that you stop sending them emails. I said that acceptances didn't come out until April 1st when I worked as a graduate coordinator, and we sent our first set of acceptances out in January. Stop over thinking the results board. You're all going batty.

Congratulations to all of you who have been accepted at UCSD. I look forward to meeting most of you next month. If you have any questions about the program, shoot me a PM so we do not clog up this thread. I'd be more than happy to answer anything you'd like to throw at me before the official communications start coming at you.

I took the GRE twice. Once I studed for two weeks and got a: 600 Verbal, 640 Math, 6.0. It was about a week after my grandmother died and I was too distracted to do much better. I studied again for about another two weeks and improved to: 650 Verbal, 800 Math, 6.0. It was well worth taking it again. Generally, I would imagine that you want to try to shoot for about 90th percentile in the verbal (about 630) and at least an 80th percentile in the math (somewhere in the mid 700's) if you want to get taken seriously at a top ten program. There are clearly exceptions, but you have a ton of time to prepare, so why not do as well as you can. I just used two books. One Barons and one Kaplan. I do not find the courses particularly useful and they are waste of time if you are self motivated. If you need that guided hand and have a 1000 dollars, than by all means, take the course!

ftw!

Agreed on all accounts. UCSD graduate programs have been given the same budgets as last year for recruiting new graduate students and have also green-lighted a 7% cost-of-living adjustment. These programs are well protected and the professors are going no where.

I'm already in grad school, so I have no stakes in the admissions process. I was just trying to calm the nerves of the people applying who were freaking out. Didn't mean to rain on your parade, especially considering I had no idea that the parade occurred. Congrats nonetheless.

I have no doubt they are fake.

Why not just have your friend open it for you?

Congrats cpaige! Well deserved!

The offer from UC-Davis, at least from my understanding, is not a guarantee but a hope. You should be VERY careful with that. If anyone talks about guaranteed funding when you talk with professors or go to the visits, be sure to tell that person that it is not what your offer letter says! They can very easily fail to fund you at anytime during the first four or five years. Remember, anticipations are NOT a guarantee. If you have your heart set on going to UC-Davis after you receive offers from other schools, be sure to negotiate a guarantee in writing, or you should seriously considering declining them, no questions asked. As for the public versus private debate, this is simply not true. I would argue that the University of Michigan is probably in the best financial shape of most of the top schools, simply because they anticipated this recession earlier than other peer institutions, and rely less heavily on their endowment or state funds for funding most of their everyday activities. As such, they are actually in a situation where they have a budget surplus for this year, have not had to furlough faculty or staff, have not had to lay off any employees, and most departments have been given green lights to hire (including the department of political science). The UC system is an interesting case. At UCSD, grad students were promised a 7% COLA increase. They have also told departments that they will be getting an increase in funding for their block grants, which is where most departments form their 'fellowships'. That being said, I'd imagine that the recruitment class here will likely be slightly smalelr than it was last year, but probably not as small as one would anticipate given the problems with the UC System. That being said, UCSD is probably in better shape than Berkeley or UCLA are. Again, this is because our school is less heavily reliant on state funds then UCLA or Berkeley (which gets about 35% of their funding from the state). I would anticipate that the hiring freeze will be lifted at the UC level by the end of May and that you may see some hiring, but I cannot say this for sure. I hope this helps with some anxiety. Expect decently sized cohorts at most institutions. It's unfortunate to see such problems at UIUC because they have a great program. But certainly expect them to be the EXCEPTION and not the rule.

Research assistant.

To be fair, you are misconstruing what is meant by 'rational' in rational choice theory.

Wow, you really are as rude as you come off as, aren't you? Doing the job of a grad secretary, where I am responsible for making sure all my current students (250 masters students and 150 Ph.D. students) are doing what they need to do while tracking down materials for that many applicants is not exactly efficient work. But thanks for making the most critical assumption and putting it into writing. It's not surprising, however.

LOL. You are in a X program. How many apps do you get? I was a grad secretary for a few years and when I was processing 900-1000 applications, it did take weeks.

Changes from program to program, but you're making the assumption that these applications are instantly done. They take weeks to process.

Trust me, it's not the first week of January at any place that has a deadline after Nov 15. Do you realize how long it takes to produce applications packets? Combine this with getting professors in the same plae at the same time? No.

I'd agree that this is the case, but in most programs at this point, all fields (with the exception of political theory) are really thought to be quant methods fields. You're not going to be able to walk out of a program without being able to run some sort of quantitaitve test to show causality, even in comparative politics. This doesn't mean you have to be a prolific formal theorist, using deductive mathematics to model something, but it does mean that you will likely need to have a good grasp of some advanced statistical techniques. The above is neither here nor there on the GRE question. The GRE quant is completely learnable. For those of you applying next year with a goal of going to a top program, make the math your top priority. Give yourselves two months over the summer to learn it and LEARN IT. You can probably guarantee yourself a 750 doing this and prevent the GRE from being a negative. The verbal is important, but ultimately more of a crap shoot. The ideal GRE scores are going to be the following: 650+ Verbal, 730+ Quant. That being said, your right, a 680 is not going to disqualify you at a lot of the schools your applying to, but things change from year to year. Last year, a friend of mine got declined across the board with the following profile: 3.99 GPA from a major R1 in the South 790V, 800Q Great recommendations from three tenured professors at the same R1 A well crafted personal statement, tbh, at least as good as mine. Essentially, this process is a crap shoot. Nato and I are arguing that you give yourself every advantage in this mess. I know at this point, it's too late to change it, so I guess I'm doing a poor job being supportive. My apologies.

I *never* said that you needed above a 700 or a 750, I said that it should absolutely be your goal to have those numbers because there is no reason to see your app tossed. Some of us have been through this before, some of us in multiple contexts. Anything below a 700 is going to hurt your chances of getting in. It doesn't make it impossible. Scores are weighted down by different math standards being used for different fields. When I was applying to grad school, I was told to shoot for an 800 on my quant, and I took that goal very seriously. I attained it, and I got into a bunch of fabulous schools. Why would *multiple* professors encourage this if it is not important? Finally, I have no idea why I'm getting yelled at for explaining my experience and my opinion on this process. The GRE is important, no matter how much it sucks. A lot of people who want to get into these programs sucked it up and either: 1) paid a ton of money to have Kaplan teahc them how to take the test or 2) spent a ton of time teaching themselves how to take the test. Those people are going to get into the 90th percentile on the math. They want it *that* bad. Does that mean that a 680 is going to sink you at Harvard? No, but you are going to likely be fighting an upward battle that will require excellent letters, a ton of research experience, and one hell of a spectacular SoP which asks a good question. Finally, if you want to know what sinks applicants the most, it is the concept of research agenda. If you don't know what a social sciece question is, you are as sunk as one would be if they had a 500-500 on the GRE. They are going to absolutely throw out your application if you ask a qestuion like: why does Putin not like democracy, or how did the election of Barack Obama effect newspaper sales? Point is you need a solid app: 3.5+ From a good undergraduate institution (3.8+ from a poor undergrad instituion). 3.7+ From a grad program (if you attended) 90th Percentile Verbal, 80th Percentile Quant, Good research questions pertaining to social science puzzles Letters of rec that make it seem like the sun comes out of your ass, because everyone else has the same phenomenon during this process. Other than, nothing more is going to help you. You aren't going to impress the admissions committee because you were president of Phi Beta Kappa or because you have wanted to be a professor since you were five (they're probably going to laugh pretty hard if you actually do say that). Tell them you have a passion for research, explain why you're better than the other guy, explain what you want to do and why School X is the place for you to do it. And at that point, any peripherals that you have control of better be as high as possible. Good luck, since my opinion is not valued here, I see no reason in wasting my time posting any further. -PS