foosh

UC Davis is not hiring two more faculty. They hired one senior faculty, Matthew Shugart, from UCSD.



The keyword here is quantitative. UCD has a very rigorous methods sequence that everyone (including theorists) must take during the first year. It is tough, and students have dropped out in the past because they couldn't handle it.



You are encouraged to cut across the traditional subfields in your research. American politics is very strong (nationally ranked in the top 20) and comparative politics will be comparable in the next few years (if it isn't already). Generally the subfield pairings are american/methods, comparative/methods, or comparative/IR, although you are welcome to choose your own combination.

UC Davis is not hiring two more faculty. They hired one senior faculty, Matthew Shugart, from UCSD.



The keyword here is quantitative. UCD has a very rigorous methods sequence that everyone (including theorists) must take during the first year. It is tough, and students have dropped out in the past because they couldn't handle it.



You are encouraged to cut across the traditional subfields in your research. American politics is very strong (nationally ranked in the top 20) and comparative politics will be comparable in the next few years (if it isn't already). Generally the subfield pairings are american/methods, comparative/methods, or comparative/IR, although you are welcome to choose your own combination.

Most deadlines are postmark deadlines. And firm deadlines do not apply to letters of recommendation: those will just be added to your file as they arrive. Nobody will start looking at admissions files until late January at the absolute earliest, so no need to worry about late letters yet.

Can you connect your research interests to what political scientists study? If so, you will be fine, and time at a think tank, which will focus on policy or politics rather than academic social science, won't help very much. If you feel that research experience would help you refine your interests, that is a good reason to do it. But if you can articulate a research focus that falls in the arena of political science, you will not suffer for not having a political science background.

I think we agree more than I made apparent. Think tanks can be a good experience in preparation for grad school, but such work is neither necessary for admission like work experience is in some fields, nor a way to make up for not having a political science background in previous education. That is what I was trying to say; apologies for not being clear.

Public universities that rely heavily on university (rather than department) fellowships for funding grad students often operate with rolling deadlines in one sense. They admit a very small group of candidates early and nominate them for university competitions for funding. Because those competitions operate across departments, GRE scores tend to be the most important criteria. So if your GRE scores are high, and you applied to state schools that are not ranked in the top 40 or so (think places like UMass, Penn State, Temple, Georgia, not Berkeley, Michigan, Wisconsin), you may hear something as soon as late January.

Other schools use rolling admissions in different ways; I don't know enough about the specifics to comment.

If you're aiming for a top-25 you want to break 700 because IR programs are shifting quantitative.

Definitely let the department know by contacting the admissions secretary. The information should be added to your file.

Any ranking that doesn't have Rochester in the top 10 is flawed.

Because of the selection problem you describe, your question (as you know) can't be answered without specific knowledge on individual grad students. The answer is also complicated by the fact that placement is subfield and specialty-specific, even in top 10 departments and especially as you move lower in the rankings. I can think of some Emory grads who placed very well (like Dan Slater at Chicago) and certainly the funding and training seem strong (I have no connection at all to that department) so I don't see the downside to applying. But that's me: if you really believe you will only be happy at an Emory once you've taken your best chance at an NYU, there is a downside because if you get into Emory this year and turn them down, it may affect your chances in applying there the next year (I have not seen this situation much at the departments where I have done grad admissions, so I don't know how it would play out to be honest).

What? Why would you include Hopkins on that list? Columbia and (less so) Brown make sense, but why Hopkins?

First, nobody on admissions committees looks at the writing score of the GRE. Your scores alone are probably not competitive for top-20 PhD programs, but that's because of the Q and V scores. You've got lots of time to retake the exam before applications are due, so that should be easy to fix. And it sounds like you have research experience (though I would not mention the high school experience in any detail in your application) and potentially strong letters, including one from someone whose opinions I would take seriously were your file to land on my desk.

But I wonder how carefully you've constructed your list of schools. Unless there is something I'm missing (which is certainly possible!) the schools you list have nothing in common in terms of ranking overall or in any specialization I can think of in the field of political science. This suggests you've got some work to do in refining your list of departments to apply to - and my sense is that this and the GRE retake should be your focus in the next 4-6 months as applications come due.

Having served on admissions in poli sci programs at 2 universities, I can honestly say that I've never seen the writing score matter. It can't save an application from a bad personal statement and writing sample, and it won't sink a good one. After all, we can read your work quickly rather than relying on some weird exam. In fact, at my current department, our admissions spreadsheet doesn't even include a column for the writing score.

I actually agree with much of what the previous poster wrote. My point was that the list of schools seemed completely random to me. It is neither a list of top schools (Irvine? Penn? Davis?) nor a list of schools strong in a particular area (unless, for example, Chicago and Rochester have something in common I can't think of), and this suggested to me that the original poster had not yet put enough thought into the application process.

I can't emphasize how wrong this post is. I had well below a 2.7 and got into two top-25 schools both with fellowships and guaranteed funding for 5 years. Your personal statements and GRE scores go a long way in compensating for a bad GPA.

I can't emphasize how wrong this post is. I had well below a 2.7 and got into two top-25 schools both with fellowships and guaranteed funding for 5 years. Your personal statements and GRE scores go a long way in compensating for a bad GPA.

Law school is not academia. Being a law professor is academia. Law school is a vocational school where lawyers train to become professionals.

"This thread though is generally pointless, since you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what the business of political science is. You may disagree all you like, but numerous people on this thread have noted that teaching is rarely a priority goal and that research is our number one priority. For example, "best teacher" awards are often given to faculty before they are denied tenure as a CONSOLATION prize. So your premise that JDs are qualified to teach is all well in good, but it ignores the fundamental reality of the discipline that teaching is not particularly highly valued."

It's amazing how this argument seems dumber each time I encounter it. The argument essentially says one who calls himself a professor does not profess, as that is not his/her priority. By the same logic, I guess I am to understand that for a baker, baking is hardly ever the priority. Then, perhaps for a physician treating people is hardly ever the priority, or a teacher, teaching is rarely ever the priority (wait...mentioned that one already). To make such an argument as justification for why a JD should not be on political science faculty, at least to me, seems ridiculous!

As far as research goes, no one seems to have stated, yet, why this is so important. Why should research in political science be more important than teaching in political science. Historically, a professor has primarily been about teaching (as was stated earlier). What is the groundbreaking discovery that has been achieved with all the research in political science in the last few years, or ever for that matter? In other words, what's the point? If you can't answer that, should you really be supporting such a system?

"This thread though is generally pointless, since you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what the business of political science is. You may disagree all you like, but numerous people on this thread have noted that teaching is rarely a priority goal and that research is our number one priority. For example, "best teacher" awards are often given to faculty before they are denied tenure as a CONSOLATION prize. So your premise that JDs are qualified to teach is all well in good, but it ignores the fundamental reality of the discipline that teaching is not particularly highly valued."

It's amazing how this argument seems dumber each time I encounter it. The argument essentially says one who calls himself a professor does not profess, as that is not his/her priority. By the same logic, I guess I am to understand that for a baker, baking is hardly ever the priority. Then, perhaps for a physician treating people is hardly ever the priority, or a teacher, teaching is rarely ever the priority (wait...mentioned that one already). To make such an argument as justification for why a JD should not be on political science faculty, at least to me, seems ridiculous!

As far as research goes, no one seems to have stated, yet, why this is so important. Why should research in political science be more important than teaching in political science. Historically, a professor has primarily been about teaching (as was stated earlier). What is the groundbreaking discovery that has been achieved with all the research in political science in the last few years, or ever for that matter? In other words, what's the point? If you can't answer that, should you really be supporting such a system?

"This thread though is generally pointless, since you seem to fundamentally misunderstand what the business of political science is. You may disagree all you like, but numerous people on this thread have noted that teaching is rarely a priority goal and that research is our number one priority. For example, "best teacher" awards are often given to faculty before they are denied tenure as a CONSOLATION prize. So your premise that JDs are qualified to teach is all well in good, but it ignores the fundamental reality of the discipline that teaching is not particularly highly valued."

It's amazing how this argument seems dumber each time I encounter it. The argument essentially says one who calls himself a professor does not profess, as that is not his/her priority. By the same logic, I guess I am to understand that for a baker, baking is hardly ever the priority. Then, perhaps for a doctor treating people is hardly ever the priority, or a teacher, teaching is rarely ever the priority (wait...mentioned that one already). To make such an argument as justification for why a JD should not be on political science faculty, at least to me, seems ridiculous!

As far as research goes, no one seems to have stated, yet, why this is so important. Why should research in political science be more important than teaching in political science. Historically, a professor has primarily been about teaching (as was stated earlier). What is the groundbreaking discovery that has been achieved with all the research in political science in the last few years, or ever for that matter? In other words, what's the point? If you can't answer that, should you really be supporting such a system?

Law school is not academia. Being a law professor is academia. Law school is a vocational school where lawyers train to become professionals.

Law school is not academia. Being a law professor is academia. Law school is a vocational school where lawyers train to become professionals.

Law school is not academia. Being a law professor is academia. Law school is a vocational school where lawyers train to become professionals.

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.

Umm....hello? They are ALL specializations (subfields), regardless of which are most common. Why not make them all available and let the student decides which courses s/he would like to sample or concentrate in? Also, last time I checked most poli sci students take courses like con law, admnistrative law, law and society, international law and organizations than "political psychology." No, I am not mistaken. The study of law is more central to the study of political phenomena than you recognize it to be. Moreover, JDs are equipped with the skills to teach institutions by virtue of their exposure to government institutions and public policy.

It also seems pretty ridiculous to suggest that one who can teach a reasonably more advanced courses such as constitutional law, state and local government or a topics course such as Federalism, cannot manage an easier, more introductory, core course such as American national politics.

In the cases that there are JDs teaching political science, core and law-related courses, why do you suppose then that universities allow them to teach it?