wtncffts

Man, E.C.D., from this and all your other posts, you seem incredibly bitter about everything: your situation, department, fellow grad students, location. I wouldn't generalize about poli sci - where I did my MA there were a lot of fun and interesting people. Of course, being in grad school we're all 'nerds' to a certain degree, but there were plenty of outgoing, gregarious people. I don't really know what to say, but if your negativity and pessimism is this extreme, it would probably be better just to quit completely and take some time to think about what you want to do.

The mistake of using the contraction <it's> for the possessive <its> is annoying to all heck, and seems to be becoming more and more prevalent, to the point where I've seen it numerous times in reputable news sources. You wouldn't believe the number of times I came across it while grading student papers. What is going on?

Another one, and I got this from someone's post, so I apologize for stepping on that poster's shoes: <advice> is a noun, <advise> is a verb. The pronunciations are different. One advises someone by giving them advice. An advicory opinion: I advice everyone in future to take this advise and stop using advize incorrectly.

What are your grammatical annoyances?

Thanks, The Realist and others, for all your responses. I certainly understand that the process is more complex and less structured or formalized than my assumptions suggest. I also understand the staggered acceptances thing, even if it does result in greater anxiety for applicants.

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.

The world is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter.

And these protests are qualitatively very different in purpose and scope. They don't portend the imminent apocalypse.

There's already a thread for the Wisconsin situation, specifically.

The world is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter.

And these protests are qualitatively very different in purpose and scope. They don't portend the imminent apocalypse.

There's already a thread for the Wisconsin situation, specifically.

The world is a spheroid region 705 meters in diameter.

And these protests are qualitatively very different in purpose and scope. They don't portend the imminent apocalypse.

There's already a thread for the Wisconsin situation, specifically.

I don't see what the first point has to do with anything. By the description of the Realist's OP, it's clear that there's a point at which all decisions have been made. As balderdash and I have said, it doesn't matter, after that, when decisions are sent out, only that they're all sent out on a specified date. This could be done administratively, with individual faculty following up on their own.

I also don't understand your point about funding at all. How would they admit more people than they could fund? If they wanted a cohort of, say, 10 students, they could send out admits to them, waitlist a sufficient number of others (perhaps 20 or so; a good number could probably be ascertained through trial and error, modeling, or just educated guessing), and reject the rest who under no circumstances would have been admitted. That's the stage of the decisions I'm suggesting could be sent out simultaneously. Granted, being waitlisted is another kind of agony, but at least every applicant gets a clear idea of where they stand.

I'm not in anthropology, but I agree with all the above. I also want to echo space-cat's comment about "imply[ing] that two top tier programs admitted classes of raging idiots." Obviously, the people they did admit weren't "far less qualified" in the eyes of the adcomm; the way you phrased it sounded very entitled, which is a major pet peeve of mine. I trust that you didn't mean to convey that impression.

Back to the admissions process, I'd like to ask what determines the timing and manner of notifications of decisions. The 'Fall 2011 cycle' thread, and, indeed, most of the rest of these forums, consists in a whole bunch of anxious and nervous people waiting for news. So, why? I know you can't speak for every school, perhaps, just yours.

1) Why do some schools not send out all decisions at the same time? I recently commented on that other thread that there were some schools which sent out some acceptances but no rejects, thus leaving those, like myself, in limbo and perpetual hope. If the department has already made such decisions, I'd humbly submit that it would be much kinder to let people know at the same time.

2) Couldn't there be a fixed date of notification? That is to say, couldn't a department send out an e-mail once the application deadline has passed, saying, in effect, "We've received all applications, will begin the process of reviewing them, and will notify all applicants on March 1", or whatever day. That would also alleviate a great deal of nervous waiting and worry, waking up in overinflated hope every day, and checking e-mail every ten minutes. If we knew the date, we could all relax, and, god forbid, get some work done?

Perhaps there are logistical reasons for all of this; I'd like to hear them, if possible. I hope this doesn't sound rude or whiny, it's just that there seems to be a whole lot of unnecessary emotional distress as a result of this process.

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.

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.

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.

As to your last question, I would just stick it out, get the degree, and not look back. You can't let them beat you, especially since it seems you're so close to finishing.

I have to agree that the problem here just seems to be a bunch of terrible people. I can't believe that professors would act that way, nor that they would jump to conclusions just because you're doing better now than you were. I mean, that's a good thing, isn't it? What does wearing a tie have to do with anything? This behaviour sounds like high school, not a professional environment of mature advanced students and academics. I don't understand this complaint about 'lying to get sympathy'; from what you said, you weren't giving excuses or asking for special favours.

Obviously, I don't know the whole story, so there may be something else going on here. It might also be the case that you're perceiving slights or attributing motives to others which aren't there. But, as I said, I think you need to hang in there, get what you came for, and leave it behind.

Wow, you applied to 18 schools with little chance, on your own account, of getting in? Don't take this the wrong way, but you must be incredibly wealthy and/or severely deluded. Sorry to have to say that.

Wow, you applied to 18 schools with little chance, on your own account, of getting in? Don't take this the wrong way, but you must be incredibly wealthy and/or severely deluded. Sorry to have to say that.

Wow, you applied to 18 schools with little chance, on your own account, of getting in? Don't take this the wrong way, but you must be incredibly wealthy and/or severely deluded. Sorry to have to say that.

Wow, you applied to 18 schools with little chance, on your own account, of getting in? Don't take this the wrong way, but you must be incredibly wealthy and/or severely deluded. Sorry to have to say that.

Wow, you applied to 18 schools with little chance, on your own account, of getting in? Don't take this the wrong way, but you must be incredibly wealthy and/or severely deluded. Sorry to have to say that.

I've posted here before with my thoughts about choosing graduate school. Seeing how so many of you are in the middle of this supremely stressful time, agonizing over admissions and deciding where to go, I thought that I would let you all have some insight into what the process looks like from the perspective of an admissions committee member. I do this for three reasons. First, some of you could use the distraction. Second, many of you are facing the prospect of asking "why was I denied at school X" and should know how difficult this process is. Third, this is the first time that I've served on an admissions committee and I frankly was surprised at how hard this was, so now that it's all over I want to record my own thoughts.

Some background: I am an associate prof at a large department that is somewhere in the 20-40 range. We're good, not great, and we place our students fairly well. We admit an average sized class for schools at our rank. We have somewhere between 30 and 40 times as many complete applications as we have spots in our program. Another 50-75 every year are incomplete (missing GRE scores, something like that). We do not hold it against you if you are missing one of your letters of recommendation, but if you are missing more than one your files goes into the incomplete pile and is not reviewed.

From there, the process works like this. Every candidate who submits a complete application is given an anonymous number. We then do an initial pass through the applications to eliminate students who are simply unqualified based on test scores. The bar for this is very, very low, but if you cannot score at least a 100 on your TOEFL and a 500 on each of your GRE sections you are eliminated at the very beginning. This doesn't cut a lot of people, but it does have the benefit of eliminating students whose English or basic math skills are not up to snuff.

From there, the files are divided randomly into piles, which are divided up across the members of the admissions committee without regard to subfield or anything like that. Each file is read carefully by a committee member and assigned a numerical score from 1-10. Anyone who receives a "1" at this stage is automatically forwarded to the final round.

The remaining files that receive a 2-10 ranking are then given to another member of the search committee, who re-reads them and rescores them. Any file that receives a "1" in this second stage is automatically forwarded to the final round.

The remaining files from this stage (meaning that they received "2" or lower on both initial reviews) are then divided up based on subfield and given to the member of the admissions committee who represents that subfield. That committee member then ranks the files a final time. Any student that receives a "1" or a "2" at this penultimate stage makes it to the final round, regardless of the earlier scores from the first two reviews.

The point of doing it this way is to ensure that we give every student a fair shake. Each student receives a close read from three separate faculty members, each of whom can advance a student to the final round.

We end up with around four times as many files in final round as we have available spots. Each committee member then ranks these students, and we have a big meeting where we decide who to admit and to waitlist out of this group. We then bring our proposal to the subfield representatives who are *not* on the search committee, and they have the ability to lobby for different choices from the final round (although they tend not to do this). From there, the department votes on the proposed list of admits and waitlisters.


***********


So that is how the process works in terms of procedures. I suppose that all of you are probably wondering how we decide who gets one of the 1s. The answer is that it is supremely difficult to do this. We make mistakes, I am sure of it. Our goal is to find people--and this is important, so read carefully--who can successfully complete our program and secure a tenure-track job. That is the outcome that we are trying to achieve; we are not trying to admit the smartest, the most unique, or even the most interesting students (although we do want these people too!). It's possible that other departments that care less about placement are more interested in just admitting smart people, and I bet that for schools like Harvard and Princeton, that's probably true. But for us, we want students who will succeed.

The challenge is that it is really difficult for us to tell what kind of applicant will be able to do this. We know that you will have to be bright, you will have to be creative, and you will have to be highly motivated. But trust me, anyone who has gone through a PhD can tell you, it's not like anything you've ever done before. Unless you already have a PhD, there's nothing that you could write in your application that will convince us that without a doubt you've got the chops. We have to make a bet based on imperfect information (and in fact, we probably are facing a game of incomplete information too, at least about your own objectives). It takes a special kind of person to do this, and I'm not certain how much we learn from pedigree, letters, grades, and test scores, but that's what we have.

What I can say for sure is that even if we only based our decision on pedigree, letters, grades, and test scores, that wouldn't be enough to whittle down our choices to a manageable number. We are dealing with a massive oversupply of qualified candidates. In my first round alone, at least 20 students were Ivy League grads with 3.7+ GPAs, 700+/700+ GREs, and glowing letters. We could have populated an incoming class with these alone, yet each other admissions committee member probably had the same number of people with similar backgrounds. Then you dig deeper and you realize the number of people with incredible life experiences, great grades, great letters, and all the rest, but from other schools. Or they have great writing samples that make it clear that they know what a political science PhD is all about, even if they don't have the very best grades. Or you get a student who has worked two jobs to pay for an education at a regional state university, someone whose drive and motivation clearly signals his/her ability to bring a project to completion even if s/he does not have the best pedigree. Or someone who's at the top of her class at a top-rank Indian university. I could go on. There are simply too many of these people for us to admit all of them.

So what does it come down to? At the end of the day, it's seemingly minor things like "fit," or "interest," or "promise." Most of these are beyond your control as applicant. If you don't seem to have a good idea of what graduate school is all about--many applicants, unfortunately, do not--you don't make it. If you make a big deal about how you want to work with Professor X, and Professor X is considering a move to a different department, we don't accept you. If your writing sample doesn't show that you can express yourself clearly, there is little hope for your application. If your application emphasizes grade/scores/letters/pedigree, but doesn't convince us that you have what it takes to succeed in the PhD, you're not going to be admitted. If you've gone straight through from undergrad, without the sort of life experiences that convince us that you know why you want to go to get an advanced degree, the bar is a lot higher (but not insurmountable). And these are very fine distinctions, and again, we definitely make mistakes.

There are two things that you should take away from this. The first is that, at least this year, admission to my department (admittedly, not the best one) was fiercely competitive. Unbelievably so. I have never served on an admissions committee before (my department only allows tenured professors to be on this committee) but I get the impression that it's gotten much harder since I got my PhD. The second is that you should not sweat it if you don't make into the departments of your dreams. I'd say that at least 80% of the total applicants in our pool this year were plausible candidates for admission, meaning that I would have been happy to admit them. We end up making a lot of hard choices based on imperfect signals of future professional performance, and to reiterate once more, we definitely make mistakes. Nothing makes me more frustrated than when we admit a dud (it happens). I am always happy to see a student who didn't make it into our department succeed somewhere else.

Best of luck to you all.

Received my Wisconsin rejection in the mail today. The only good thing about receiving a paper letter is that it can be framed.

Man, E.C.D., from this and all your other posts, you seem incredibly bitter about everything: your situation, department, fellow grad students, location. I wouldn't generalize about poli sci - where I did my MA there were a lot of fun and interesting people. Of course, being in grad school we're all 'nerds' to a certain degree, but there were plenty of outgoing, gregarious people. I don't really know what to say, but if your negativity and pessimism is this extreme, it would probably be better just to quit completely and take some time to think about what you want to do.

Is anyone else feeling intense resentment towards the schools that rejected you? It's a funny feeling, because I know it's nothing personal, and perhaps my application just wasn't comparable to others, for fit or for credentials. But right now I'm in an "I'll show them" mood, fantasizing about possible future scenarios in which I, as a future eminent scholar, could stick it to them hard. I don't know, my feelings about this whole process have taken a dark turn lately. Someone give me some good news or else put me out of my misery.

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.

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.