wtncffts

Yes, I'd second the Minnesota option. It seems they have a pretty thorough poli psychology program. Of course, I'd know it better if they had admitted me when I applied to that program three years ago...

This is totally incidental to the discussion, but my problem with the "current canonization of the Founding Fathers" isn't that it's unwarranted, necessarily; I think that founding generation included some of the most brilliant thinkers and statesman in American history (by the way, I'm Canadian). It's more that I doubt whether the "Founding Fetishists", as it were, have ever read or really know anything about the period and the people. I'm skeptical that Sarah Palin spends her time reading Gordon Wood, Joseph Ellis, etc. and I'm guessing the only way she's acquainted with the Federalist Papers is if one of her advisors gave her point-form, Coles notes talking points.

Oh man, someone just searched for me on google and went to my academia.edu page (the site lets you know). It's gotten me antsy...

That's certainly true, though I'd think to be a well-rounded academic who can seriously be called an 'expert' on politics and political science one would need to at least be generally familiar with these works. This is one of the fears I have: that my knowledge in one major area of poli sci is sorely lacking (IR), and that I probably couldn't answer even relatively elementary questions. It's funny you mention it, because I was trying to find online sources for these as I was searching for 'academic' responses to SOG25's posts. No such luck, though. For comparative, I took the core seminar when I did my MA. As I said, there's no set list, especially if you're doing area studies, but here's some of the authors/works that are 'foundational' or I would otherwise recommend: Gabriel Almond, "Comparative Political Systems" and Comparative Politics: A Developmental Approach, also, with Sidney Verba, Civic Culture Anything by Adam Przeworski Arend Lijphart, "Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method" Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences, ed. Mahoney and Rueschemeyer - discusses many of the recurring methodological issues Theda Skocpol, esp. States and Social Revolutions A few more: Downs' An Economic Theory of Democracy - perhaps you've already read this Duverger's work on political parties Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone and Making Democracy Work Tsebelis on veto players/points I think those should give you a pretty good foundation for comparative. I don't know if you have access to some of the articles; I can probably e-mail them to you if you like.

If you don't mind me asking, what discipline is your academic experience in? I find it perplexing that one could be admitted to a PhD program without ever having taken even, say, an intro course in the field. That's not to take anything away from you, I'm just curious. I think Cicero is right that there really isn't any set list of 'essential' texts that everyone could agree on, and it also depends, as stated, on your area. If you're in the field of political theory/philosophy (I'm not), there is a basic set of texts which are, I think, almost universally taught in intro courses: Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Politics, Machiavelli's The Prince, Hobbes' Leviathan, Locke (Second Treatise), perhaps Rousseau, Mill, Rawls, Nozick? But if you really have never taken a poli sci course, I would recommend just picking up a textbook used in intro courses and peruse it.

wish fulfillment

There's a thread somewhere down the page asking for users' ages. '22-25' has an absolute majority right now, so that says something.

Yeah, I'm still waiting, but I'm expecting a rejection. Someone above had an acceptance, but their online status didn't change.

If that's the case, then nobody here is, since as I and others have stated many, many times, public law is not a subfield of poli sci in the same vein as comparative, theory, or IR. As I pointed out a long time ago, it's more a specialization like political psychology. You still seem to be labouring under the mistaken impression that (the study of) law is much more central to (the study of) political phenomena than it is. SOG, I don't ever recall reading in this thread your experiences with political science. Have you ever taken a poli sci course? I'm just curious, because it's pretty obvious that you're the one in here that seems unfamiliar with the discipline. I opined earlier that I didn't view this as harshly as did some others, but it's becoming clearer that you just don't get it or are putting us on for the hell of it. I had hoped that the thread was dead a few days ago, but unfortunately it has arisen. Ah well.

hip check

Well, it looks like someone got a Rochester acceptance. It seems odd that they would call on a Sunday, but I guess we've seen stranger things.

Isn't this the norm in the US? I think most domestic PhD students go from undergrad to a doctoral program directly. In some countries, like Canada, an MA is generally required for admittance.

To be honest, I don't think that would serve very well as a writing sample for IR. Have you ever taken an IR or political science course, and if so, do you have a writing sample you could use from there? I'm not quite sure of your fit with an IR program within political science; perhaps you could look into area studies programs.

I would simply respond by stating that fact, that you never went to a foreign school and gently suggest that they made a mistake. You may also want to recheck your application just to make sure everything was right at that time, and refer to your name and application ID in your response. They may have just e-mailed the wrong person.

Wow, that's harsh. At least most of the ones that have been posted tried to couch their rejections in either generic, 'faint praise', or passive-aggressive language, but the personal specificity of those 'reasons' would make me pretty upset. I'd rather be just one in a pile of rejects given the same rejection letter than have my specific faults and problems picked out like that.

remote viewing

Oh, that's unwelcome news. Did your online status change? That's what I've been checking, and it still says 'pending'.

Seems like it. Still a few hours until close of business, though.

No problem. I'm thinking it is a good sign, since the large batch of rejections they sent in the last couple days seems to be a 'first cut' of sorts. So you're still in the game!

Hey, it's the internet. You have to expect a certain degree of childish behavior, especially when, as on the results page, you don't even have to register. It's likely some of those posting aren't even prospective grad students or forum members at all, just people posting crap for the sake of it.

OK, so when you log into ApplyYourself, you should be at the 'Applicant Status Page'. At the bottom, below the list of recommenders, there should be a 'Decision Status', with a link which will pop-up a letter. If it's not there, I don't know what's wrong. Hope that helps.

I don't necessarily have a problem with the funding situation in comparative terms. It's obvious that science and engineering fields simply cost a whole lot more because of the technology and equipment involved. The LHC costs $9 billion; you can get the complete works of Shakespeare for, what, $26? (I just checked on Amazon). I expect that more funding will go into those resource-intensive fields, even on a per capita basis. What I take issue with is the utilitarian, 'tangible benefits', results-based paradigm which, unfortunately, seems to be on the upswing in many developed countries, certainly in Canada, the US, and the UK. Now I'm in poli sci, not english, but I view both the humanities and social sciences as having the same basic purposes: making sense of society, relations among people and with their environment, finding better ways to govern ourselves, imputing value in an otherwise value-neutral physical reality, coming to terms with the human condition, finding beauty, and so on. These are things which you cannot measure in dollars and cents, but that doesn't mean they are any less valuable to a society. Science without culture is nothing, and a purely scientific world such as you seem to imagine would be unbearable. It's not either/or, or a question of science 'replacing' culture, as you seem to suggest (with the point about 'taking over'... what does that even mean?). I'm sorry, and don't take this as a personal attack, but there seems to be an incredibly narrow worldview going on here, far from the 'well-rounded individual' the academy is, ideally, supposed to cultivate. It just makes me sad, that's all.

Well, poliscijobrumors isn't exactly the most reputable place... I discovered that site before this one, and the behaviour on that board is mostly juvenile - a lot of anonymous trolls and general nastiness.

I always read most of the comments on my papers; I hope this is what more students than not do, because I've certainly put a lot of effort into commenting on papers in the past. I was the only TA for a class with around 60 students, each writing a 30 page paper. I probably averaged a page to a page and a half of handwritten final comments, not to mention the small comments throughout. I'd hate to think that most didn't even read them.

But don't you have the actual hard copies that were graded and returned? Or have you not horded every single piece of paper since eighth grade like me?