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I only applied to places to which I would want to go, including weather. I guess I'm 'lucky', like some others here, that I much prefer colder to warmer climates. Of course, I don't mind sunshine, but I couldn't bear it perpetually and with such intensity. I find heat to be much more oppressive than cold, and I love the crispness and aggressiveness of a cold winter's day, and the struggle therein. This is psychological, I suppose.

Absolutely. I didn't intend to be dismissive or critical. I actually thought there might have been different sources, since your rankings were slightly different.

Um, isn't this already here: http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/political-science ? That's where I got most of my information when I was selecting schools.

For me, it may be partly cultural (I'm of Asian heritage, though born here), but I have never felt and probably never will feel comfortable calling professors by their first name, unless and until I achieve the same 'status' by virtue of having earned a doctorate. Even then I would probably be much more deferential to those with seniority than perhaps most would. I would find it difficult even if a prof explicitly told me that their first name was preferable, though I suppose I could become accustomed to it.

I see there's a Pittsburgh acceptance. Congrats!

Uh, OK? Sure. Yes. All right. Spam spam spam berkeley and spam. BTW, I applied there.

SOG25, the burden of proof is on you to show that there should be a greater number of JDs in poli sci faculties. I'm not trying to shift the argument, but it's so clearly the case that poli sci departments do not and have not thought this to be the case. Surely, you don't think you're the first person to consider the question. And I would reiterate my earlier suggestion that you e-mail the chair of the Harvard government department or law school, or another top school, and politely explain to them why their hiring practices are wrong and why JDs are tragically discriminated against simply because of their degree. As for that elections course you pointed out, it seems to me it has a very narrow focus, being that "The project for the entire class for this semester will be to develop U. S. House districts for all of the 50 states". Again, I don't doubt that legal questions are important; legal institutions provide the structure within which political conflict takes place. But clearly the course doesn't offer a comprehensive view of the literature on US elections, not even close. As well, I notice it is a jointly-offered course with the Government Department and is, I assume, not a required course for JDs. Someone mentioned earlier that we need to be talking about the average JD, and that 's exactly right. Even assuming the course was a rigorous examination of the social science literature, which it isn't, not all, or even many, JDs will have taken the course. Now I know your response will be to the effect that there's no guarantee a PhD will have taken such a course or been exposed to the literature, what with their "nano focused" research. Well, in case you weren't aware, there are such things as comprehensive exams. So I'll direct you to examples of Virginia's exam and reading list (the first google results): http://www.virginia.edu/politics/grad_program/print/APAug09.pdf http://www.virginia.edu/politics/grad_program/old_exams/aglist.html If you can show me that JDs, as a requirement of their degree, are throughly exposed to this material, then you win, at least for me.

The first point: no, look at the poli sci faculty page: http://www.yale.edu/polisci/faculty/index.html . The only faculty member with a law degree as their highest degree is Ackerman, and that was actually an LL.B. in 1967. Second point: I'm assuming GopherGrad wasn't conceding that the other eleven were exceptions, but only speaking to one of your examples. None of us has the time to go through each one. And I'd be grateful if you could find real instances of such "common political science courses" as Administrative Law. As for American Government, I go back to my earlier anecdote about TAing for such a course. As I said, we spent perhaps three or four weeks of a full-year course on topics in a JD's wheelhouse, and even then the discussion wasn't exclusively law-focused. Can you point to something on that list of Harvard law courses, or a similar source, which necessitates law student engagement with the literature on political parties, party systems, partisanship, electoral realignment, American political culture, participation, voting behavior, interest groups, media... I could go on.

I'm honestly confused about this. Are there different GPA scales of which I'm unaware? 4.0 is the maximum, is it not? So if you and the OP have a 4.0, you can't have done any better, regardless of what other students did. Now, I can understand the feeling of relative inadequacy, but the grade itself can't be 'average-mediocre', unless everyone else is also 'average-mediocre'. I must be missing something.

Come on, no need to be so reactive. It was a lighthearted jab; perhaps an emoticon would have helped... Edit: As to the original post, I despair at my own chances if you can't get in or are worried about it. You have an excellent record for a PhD admit, and MAs are typically much easier to get into.

Oh God, that's horrific. Seriously, what? Why would you even list any of your degrees below PhDs? Especially the BSc - I mean that qualifies you for absolutely nothing.

Yes, if you're worried about it you have to ask. E-mail or phone them, but don't just leave it and assume they're getting around to it. Most likely, they are, but it never hurts to check, and that's their job.

Heh, my first reaction was, what a prick! I mean, for all I know he might be a nice guy, but that's just beyond silly. If he handed me a business card like that, I don't think I could help but laugh out loud. Although the blog doesn't show where it got that, so I have no idea whether that's real.

Well, my experience doesn't come close to yours, but I recently completed my MA and while writing my thesis I often felt this way. In the end, when submitting it, I had difficulties with my advisor, who didn't want to sign off on it until I made some changes. I basically said that I needed to submit it at that time (to avoid fall fees), to please give it your full consideration, but don't pass it if you really believe it's not up to par. Just a question: how is it that you're doing comp exams in your 8th year? In my field, most departments require you to do your comp exams by the end of second or third year and in order to pass onto ABD and 'PhD candidate' status. I'm just curious.

Bravo RWBG, quite well expressed for, I'm guessing, being dashed off quickly. It's pretty much reiterating more formally what everyone has been saying, however, and I think SOG25 has shown that he rejects out of hand several premises of your model, e.g., the weight of Ri in the utility function. And trolls IMO are more the 'post and run' type. SOG25 may be inordinately obstinate, but he is replying, often at length, and giving reasons, even if none of us are very persuaded. Maybe a highly-functioning troll, if that's a thing.

A few not so substantive comments: This isn't so much 'Sisyphean', as that would imply we've moved the stone up the mountain only to have it fall back again. This is more an 'immovable object' situation... SOG25, as has been pointed out, your whole argument about the meaning of 'professor' is just silly. It's simply a title used to denote someone on a college/university faculty and has nothing necessarily to do with teaching. Emeritus professors, for instance, obviously do not teach but are not stripped of their 'rank'. On the other hand, my experience differs from GopherGrad's; every school I've attended has had tenured faculty teaching the intro courses, though not exclusively. Maybe it's a Canada/US thing, I don't know. In fact, the only time I've seen grad students teach a course on their own has been 'special topics' or upper-level undergrad courses. This brings to mind what a professor once told me, and that is that teaching intro courses is actually a lot harder in some ways than advanced courses because the material is so broad and wide-ranging, if more elementary. You really have to know your stuff. Actually, given the dearth of public law in undergrad as LACprof notes, one place where a JD could teach a poli sci course is at the graduate level. I'm sure poli sci grad students could benefit from some exposure to the rigorous study of legal institutions. Even then, though, we could just pull from the law school and not dedicate a faculty position within poli sci just for this. I understand the mechanic/urban planning analogy, though it should be noted that, at least in the US, 'mechanics' fully run one branch of the 'planning' structure and are overwhelmingly represented in the other branches. In fact, a 'mechanic' is President of the planning board right now. I'm not sure what the previous occupant was... And lastly, PhDs already know about Intentional Infliction of Emotional Distress. It's called graduate school.

Mine says the same thing. I'm assuming the next change in status will be the actual decision, but I have no idea when that will be.

Ah, okay, I get that. I must've skipped the part in your original post saying their advisors wanted to see B's, not A's; I took it as sort of the official department line. Still kind of odd, but understandable, I guess.

You're right, but it's also, dare I say it... fun? In real life, this discussion would have taken a nasty turn long ago, but I'm all for anonymous internet blabber. At least it's something to think about besides applications...

Well, that's silly. I mean, are you supposed to purposefully make mistakes on things? Perhaps this is field-specific, but in my experience, much of the coursework directly involves research. During my MA program, a couple of the papers I wrote for classes were specifically intended to be 'rough' parts of my thesis, testing out arguments and ways of saying things. The distinction between coursework and research, at least with me, has been extremely narrow. I understand in the sciences the emphasis on research may be greater, but doesn't your coursework strengthen your research both directly and indirectly?

SOG25, you obviously feel very strongly about this. So much so, in fact, that what I think you should do is write an e-mail summarizing your position to the chairs of and other professors in the top poli sci departments: say, HYP, Stanford, Michigan. If your quibble is with hiring committees, why not go at them directly? The whole exercise in this thread is one in frustration on both sides, it seems. Nothing anyone says here is going to cause a change in your views, which seems the definition of a pointless debate. So hear it from the horse's mouth, put your 'money' where your mouth is, etc. and tell us about the responses you get. I'm only being slightly facetious here; I really would find it interesting to see what responses you receive, if any. Edit: While you're at it, I'd be keen to hear the views of law professors as well. Feel free to solicit their views on the criminal under-representation and utilization of JDs in poli sci departments.

To be fair, I think foosh was using 'professional degree' in its strict sense, which refers to a course of study preparing a student for a particular practice requiring licensing or accreditation, e.g., bar examinations. The distinction between these and graduate degrees is pretty clear, IMO. You need a recognized and regulated license to practice medicine or law; it seems very odd to say one needs a 'license' to practice political science.

Perhaps I need to work on my conciseness of expression - this is pretty much exactly what I was trying to say.

Well, I thought since there are people from many different fields here, I'd start this topic as a sort-of 'things you always wanted to know' or just were curious about. The idea is that someone would post a question that could be answered relatively quickly and concisely, and someone else would answer it as best they can, and then post a question themselves (or not, if they can't come up with one). They don't have to be particularly deep, and don't be afraid to ask 'stupid' questions. This is all in fun; perhaps we can all teach each other a little bit about our own disciplines. So here's a question which comes out of many utterly fruitless discussions in my house: What are the current leading theories about the shape of the universe, or colloquially, what happens if you continue to travel in a straight line? I've had this discussion many, many times in my household and I always say that it's the 'come back to where you started' hypothesis, like travelling on the surface of the earth. So, is that accurate? Perhaps, this wasn't the best question to start with, but to the respondent, please try to answer in plain English if possible... Edit: Actually, to solicit more responses, you can post any questions you may have, regardless of whether you answer a question, and hopefully someone'll come by and answer!

I didn't know that, so I went to their websites. It seems the poli sci department does do IR within it, so they're not so much separate as the Department of International Relations is an entirely different thing. If you look at its site, it describes it as a multidisciplinary effort which started as "The Center For International Relations" and which "grew primarily out of the History Department".