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I have no idea about the process at AU, so I'm just going off of what you say, and it does sound somewhat unfair, IF those batches were created arbitrarily. However, I have seen a number of programs where they explicitly say they admit on a rolling basis and simply stop when they have their cohort. I don't think that kind of system is necessarily unfair. I also strongly disagree with a couple of your assertions. Granted , I'm not familiar with professional programs which I think you're talking about, but in academic progams there's nothing surprising about being accepted at a 'higher ranked' school while being rejected at a lower one. Also, I don't see how being in the peace corps has anything to do with anything at all. I thought such programs were meant to inculcate humility, not a sense of entitlement.

Of course, it's only special in the US, just as Canadian politics, one of my subfields, is 'special' up here. Really, as one of my profs says, it's IR, comparative, theory, and the politics of wherever you happen to be standing at the moment. I also don't think you're quite immune to competition; I applied to US schools and would have done American and comparative politics. I'm sure many non-Americans apply to study US politics - it's certainly a lot 'sexier' than, say, Canadian politics, though of course I do find the latter greatly interesting. I know your post was light-hearted and not meant to be contentious: just thought I'd throw my two cents in.

Well, congrats to the recent acceptances and decisions, and to those whose cycle didn't end happily, all the best and better luck for the next cycle or whatever you decide to do! I guess I did have something to 'wait for' April 15th, even though I'd already accepted an offer: my final two official rejections, from Colorado and Toronto! I would not have gone back on my acceptance in either case, but I was surprised to get them. For a second they pulled me back into that anxiety-inducing trepidation of opening e-mails of so long ago (February, March)...

Are you referring to letters of recommendation? If so, it's really out of your hands. I think many, if not most, profs will simply write a general letter and send it to however many programs you specify. I don't think they have the time to tailor them, unless, perhaps, you make specific requests for specific schools. Depends on the person. In terms of how many, I would say you get no more nor less than what is asked. if they ask for three, get three, not four or, obviously, two. There may be the odd situation where more than the required number happens, but in general, do what they ask.

OK, I certainly understand better your situation, and I sympathize with your being in a program you don't want to be in, but feel like you have to finish. One thing I might suggest is to ask other experts about your ideas, whether at your own school or externally. In this day and age, there's nothing constraining you from e-mailing someone whose research you find interesting and asking them about it and testing out your own ideas. Look for help wherever you can find it.

Well, I guess I have a little different take on this. I'm not taking the advisor's side; I agree that he seems like a bad advisor, especially about the inability to meet and discuss. But, and I hate to say it, it does seem like maybe you just weren't cut out for this particular program or field. It troubles me that you say you can't come up with a feasible research project without your advisor essentially giving it to you. Perhaps your field is so technical that getting a handle on a few outstanding research questions is very difficult; if so, I sympathize. Still, it points to a fundamental lack of knowledge about the state and direction of the discipline. I don't think your learning habits have anything to do with anything. If you learn best from reading, I don't see why you can't muster up research ideas from looking at recent journal articles and books. I'm all for switching advisors in this situation, but you can't expect someone else to do your work. I have to disagree with the above assertion that you wouldn't have been admitted if you had the ability and research chops; we all know that's self-evidently false. It happens all the time. Sorry to sound so harsh. As I said, the advisor is certainly not in the right here, but my view is you have to take some initiative for yourself. If you can't come up with a reasonable line of research on your own, perhaps the field isn't for you.

Awesome, works perfectly! Thanks.

I guess I'm an austere person, because I don't share any of these problems. When I moved from home across the country (Canada) for my MA, I took a couple suitcases: clothes, books, that's it. I plan on doing the same thing this time. Come to think of it, it's probably more because I still have a room in my parents' house where most of my things are, though most of it is just accumulated crap. I think I could survive with only a few sets of clothes and my laptop/ipad. What else would I need? The only moving expense for me is the plane ticket.

<br /><br /><br /> I know you explicitly stated this was anecdotal, but it would be interesting to see actual quantitative evidence on this question. All else equal, are older students rejected at a higher, statistically significant rate than others? I'm sure some data is out there somewhere. Personally, I'm skeptical that there is a significant difference. The vast majority of applicants, I think, are younger, and so it's not surprising that the vast majority of grad students are. There may also be a self-selection bias going on, I don't know: older applicants may apply to 'elite' schools at a lesser rate. I can imagine a number of reasons why that might be so, but that would just be speculation.

Just tell the truth, perhaps not about the ranking, but certainly the funding. There's absolutely nothing wrong with choosing the better funded offer among otherwise comparable schools. The fit reason is also perfectly acceptable. Unless this POI has psychological problems I don't see why he should be so thin-skinned as to be insulted by whatever reason you give.

I don't think there's any 'harm' to one's professional reputation from rejections. In what ways do you imagine there to be? Nobody's going to ask you about it, and certainly jobs and tenure won't depend on it. Career progress in academia is about your work and abilities; a hiring committee isn't going to look at an impressive body of work and say, "but wait, this person was rejected from a few schools five, six, seven years ago, forget it". I'm doubtful that they would even have that information. Remember, this is just the first step in a much longer process.

It's hard to know what the prof meant if we don't know what the e-mail said. Perhaps you could post it with, of course, identifying details left out, or paraphrase it. I'm thinking the prof may have meant he was recommending you, not that the department was to the grad school.

I think you have the right idea with the keyword searching but probably the first step should be to discuss your topic with the professor. He or she should be able to give you a broad view of the state of research on your topic. I know in my field there are sources like the Oxford Handbooks which give good and relatively up to date overviews on particular subjects; there's probably something like that in your field as well. If you go to Wikipedia for literature review, there are links to 'how-tos'. I haven't looked at them but they're probably useful. Good luck!

Thanks jendoly and eigen. I'm sure it just takes getting used to; it's only my second day with it and it's pretty comfortable already. I just downloaded dropbox and it works great. This has nothing to do with my academic field, but I downloaded this app called Star Walk which is amazing and it alone makes me feel justified in getting the iPad (well, not quite, but you get my point). On a side note, I hate that the on-screen keyboard has most of the punctuation on the other screen: so annoying!

Alright, so I got an iPad today. I've had a lot of fun with it, but I'm still getting used to it and am having a few small problems: 1) I can't seem to post on gradcafe! The reply text box simply doesn't respond when I tap on it. Anyone else experienced this? 2) I downloaded GoodReader but I couldn't get pdfs to download and open properly. For instance, I tried to get articles off of JSTOR and Cambridge Journals Online but they didn't work. If anyone could explain it, it'd be appreciated. I've actually never had an apple product of any kind before, and I heard how 'locked-down' the iPad is; I have to say I have been a little frustrated so far by the limits imposed. It feels a lot less open and 'accessible' than a pc just in terms of finding, managing, downloading files, certain types of media formats, etc. I'm guessing some of this has to do with it being a tablet and not specifically an apple product. Hopefully the more I work with it, the more things will make sense.

So, I'm assuming there's no funding for either program? If so, as mandy says, you need to decide whether the difference in quality of the programs is worth the extra cost. That's what should be foremost in your decision, though; I wouldn't decide based on weather. Unless the weather, in your experience, actually causes you psychological problems, as I guess it does some people, I see no reason to put that much emphasis on it.

Thanks for the comments. I think I'm very close to getting an iPad, and just keeping my laptop, which as I said, still works but gets slow and occasionally has problems starting.

I don't think there is any special meaning to each term, but their use probably differs from field to field. That is, one field may tend to use prelims, another comps. I know in political science, both at my MA school and the school I'll be going to for PhD, uses comps. The actual differences in content vary between fields, departments, schools, etc. In short, I don't think those various terms carry any differences in meaning in themselves.

Well, I got quite good GRE scores (770/770/5.0) but was rejected from all the US schools I applied to. The school I accepted is in Canada and thus didn't even require GRE scores. Unless your GRE scores were mediocre, I'd suggest putting your effort into other aspects of your application. It's pretty evident to me that GRE scores don't matter very much; if they're very low, though, the other parts of your application do need to compensate. As for what I personally did for the GRE, the answer is: an hour flipping through the prep books in a bookstore and practicing a couple times with PowerPrep.

No advice on my dilemma? Anything would be appreciated.

Yeah, I'm having trouble finding a place for September at this point. Everything is for May 1st or a few months after, and it's not possible for me to move to the new town until school actually starts (perhaps August). Also, does anyone have experience with unfurnished apartments? When I did my MA, both places I rented were furnished, and I really don't want to have to look for furniture, etc., at the same time as starting a grad program. How do you manage it? Is it easier than I'm assuming?

I have a related question. I've been agonizing about what to get in advance of entering a PhD program in the fall. I'm interested in an eReader but also have to buy a new laptop (my current one, which I'm typing on now, is over three years old and is very slow). The real problem is I have a bit of a fear of buying expensive things: call it pre-buyer's remorse, or something. It doesn't help that I would have to put all the purchases on a credit card which I won't be able to pay off until I begin to receive the funding from the program. Thus, I'm really hoping there's some way to buy just one relatively inexpensive device (in the $500 range) which would serve both as a good eReader and also as a laptop or laptop replacement. I've read that though the iPad is great it can't do a lot of what a laptop does and thus I would still have to buy both an iPad and a new laptop. So, what are my options? I'm leaning towards a Kindle and a $400-500 laptop. Any thoughts?

Like the other responses, I'm confused by the choice here. You got into these programs, so I'm not questioning your credentials, but these are two entirely different fields. It's not like a Mercedes and a Ford, it's like choosing between an automobile and, say, a boat. They're different vehicles for different purposes. At this point, you should know which field is more appealing to you; I agree with the above that the question of funding is separate. The question of which path is "more likely to be survivable and intellectually fulfilling" is entirely dependent on your passion and curiosity in each field. Having said that, it sounds like you're much more invested in public policy than English, in which case it comes down to taking an unfunded PhD now or applying again, hoping for a funded offer. Personally, I would do the latter; it's almost never a good idea to do an unfunded PhD.

I think you guys are short-shrifting the effort adcomm members put in. Doubtless, there are lazy or preoccupied ones who won't give due attention to the applications, but I think the vast majority treat it seriously and give every application the consideration its due. That means looking at all parts. That's not to say, though, that they read every sentence of, especially, a writing sample. If you've ever graded papers, you'll know that it's pretty easy to get a rough estimation of quality just from glancing through. I'm sure this is what happens at the early 'first cut' stages of the process. The adcomm member looks at an application, scans through the SoP, looks at the LoRs, glances at the transcript and GRE (after all, it doesn't take all that long to take in such information), and can pretty quickly form a pretty accurate overall picture of the applicant. The obvious rejects are dismissed, and the others are given a closer look. If there's any faculty around, correct me if I'm wrong. Believe me, I had my fair share of rejects this season, but I never felt and don't feel now that my applications were ever given anything but a fair review.

Yes, congratulations! I don't know anything about Purdue's political science, but I'm a huge space geek, and I identify Purdue with Neil Armstrong, so that alone makes it awesome.