expatbayern

Wrote a longer post that got deleted somehow, but I'll just say that the most obvious schools (in my mind) to add to your list for American institutions/PE are Duke, Vanderbilt, and Rochester.

Not really sure what you mean by "foreign policy theory." At Penn State, all of Scott Bennett, Doug Lemke, Glenn Palmer, and Phil Schrodt research stuff that fits under some definition of foreign policy (and they're all well-respected and accomplished scholars who would be excellent committee members). Paul Huth at Maryland and Paul Diehl at Illinois do similar sorts of stuff (though I would tend to regard all these folks as conflict scholars first). I think this will come down to what you really want to study. If you are leaning more toward conflict and foreign policy, Penn State is extremely well-suited. But if you do really think you're going to end up doing IPE, it's worth noting that they're not as strong as Maryland or Illinois for that.

This is about right, in my opinion (not associated with any of these programs). I'd put Maryland as the best IPE department on the list, possibly the best overall IR, and the best trajectory of late, with Penn State and Illinois stronger in conflict (basically I'd say the ordering goes UMD-UIUC-PSU in IPE but all three are very close in conflict). Indiana is (to my mind) a clear step down from the other three in any type of IR.

To share my experience a few years ago with trying to bargain for higher funding: At every place I visited, the DGS seemed totally prepared to have a conversation about this. The responses tended toward "let me know where else you're considering and how much they're offering you and I'll look into what we can do" (and I'm sure they gave that answer to many other students trying to do the same thing at the visits). What they end up doing is going to be some function of how much flexibility they actually have, how much they want you, and what the competing offers are. This will vary greatly among schools and applicants, of course, and be prepared for them to come back with responses like "well, you have to consider cost of living when comparing our stipend to theirs...," etc. Things I had happen at at least one place: -minor one-year bump in stipend (funding for latter years, which was my major concern with the package, remained low) -adding in a "start-up grant"/signing bonus (this was not a standard part of the package at this school, but they matched the largest one I was offered by a competitor) -offers of guaranteed summer money/RAships on top of stipend (these came from particular professors I was interested in working with, not directly from the DGS) Things I did not have happen anywhere: -major changes to stipend level over a period of years (except in cases where this came in the form of some university-wide fellowship, which they had said up front they entered me for, not something that happened due to bargaining) The major worthwhile advice I have to give (besides go ahead and ask--everyone else is doing the same thing and no one will be offended) is if there are senior faculty with large grants/pots of money that you're interested in working with, talking to them (and getting them to agree to take you on for lots of RA work early in grad school) can be much more effective than dealing with the DGS (who is probably limited in flexibility).

The "admit lots of students, only fund a few" approach seems mainly limited to the DC schools (at least among top-50ish grad programs)--from what I know, there's a lot of this at both GW and Georgetown. I think the idea on the schools' end is they get a lot of applicants who either: ( a ) have jobs in DC (military, policy, think tank, whatever) and are looking to add a credential on the side, or ( b ) have lawyer (or similar) spouses working in DC. Both lead to ability/willingness to pay and lack of alternate options (because of location requirement) on the part of applicants, so the schools simply charge what the market will bear. I would venture to say that almost any similar-tier institution in a lower-demand location (and for folks studying politics, it may be that all locations are lower-demand than DC....) funds better than these schools.

Is there a coherent way to cut the MA thesis to, say, 3 selected cases (indicate that such cutting has been done to avoid confusion--you could perhaps say that you've included the most representative case, the one with the strongest support for the theory, and the one with the weakest, etc.)?

You certainly wouldn't be selling yourself short with the introductory formal sequences at any of the big-3 Ivy schools: John Roemer teaches the first course at Yale, James Robinson at Harvard, Adam Meirowitz at Princeton (or at least each of these have held true at some recent point in the past). The bigger problem is that a year of grad courses in formal theory, even from the best folks in the business, only gets you to the "reading level," not to the "modeling credibly" level. It's tough to say what will move you past that point if you don't have the resources in your own department (ICPSR/EITM don't really go beyond the second course you'd have at one of the above places, either). How's the Econ department at your school? One path might be: 1. Go to one of the above programs and do their intro formal sequence. Make good impressions on and connections with faculty there, maybe convince someone to serve as an external member of your committee if there aren't people who can supervise formal work in your home department (or at least to be a person you can send your work to for comments). Let your professors there know that you intend to continue to pursue formal theory and ask them to recommend resources for advanced study. 2. When you return to your school, take the Micro sequence in the Econ department (as well as any grad-level Political Economy seminars). Similarly impress these faculty and communicate to them your desire to do formal work. 3. Spend LOTS of time reading the formal work coming out in top journals (and going to watch formal panels at conferences, making sure if possible you've actually READ the papers being presented in advance), seeing how models are employed, critiquing modeling decisions and asking "how would I model this?" Know that in terms of practical applied modeling, you're going to have to do most of the work/learning on your own. 4. When you start trying to write formal papers, get lots of feedback on them, including from both groups of professors you have networked with above. Ask people to be brutally honest, not just about "is the model solved correctly," but about "do the modeling decisions capture the political process they model" and "are my interpretations and conclusions compelling?" Actually, 3 and 4 above go for everyone trying to make it in political science, whether your doing formal work or not and regardless of the quality of your grad department. But regardless, I hope this helps.

The advice you've received to apply to more top-tier programs is good. Your file is conceivably good enough to get you into the Stanford/Berkeley-level programs, but there's such a large stochastic element that you want multiple draws. Add the other elite full-service departments (ie Harvard/Michigan/Princeton, etc.) to your list. The advice not to apply to the other programs on your list is NOT good. You've listed a great set of choices for top-30ish programs with strengths in your areas of interest (there are not any that immediately come to mind for me as missing). While you could certainly end up getting into some/all of the top-10 schools, you could also very well get into none of them (you might also get into one or two top-5 schools while being rejected from multiple schools ranked 20-30). Your list consists of other places you could do very well, though. I would just add a few schools at the top end and consider that a good starting point. Always note, however, that no one here can give you a very good idea of your chances anywhere. The information observable to us is much less important overall than your writing sample, statement, and letters. If you took all of the information on this message board about GRE/GPA and admissions results, you'd probably find the numbers to be moderately predictive at a very coarse level (above/below 700/3.7) but not strongly predictive for any finer-grained differences. If you're really interested in contributing something in return for these responses, I'd point you to this list. That's Charity Navigator's top-10 for efficiency, sound financial management, accountability, and transparency. There are a lot of charities out there that give you pretty poor bang for your buck, but a contribution to anything on that list is pretty much sure to actually go toward the ostensible cause. Or browse around their site for information on others (you can sort by cause and then order by their ratings, etc.).

Everyone I know (faculty and students) with school-aged kids lives outside the city in the southeast suburbs (Brighton, Pittsford, etc.), precisely because the quality of these school districts far outpaces City of Rochester (I'm going to be done with PhD and out of Rochester before my child is in school, so I live in the city). These (or Henrietta, the first suburb to the south) are all only a ten minute drive from the University (or from downtown, Park Ave, etc.). Rochester has a world-class children's museum, lots of great parks, good music, cultural festivals, many good day-trips for sight-seeing and outdoor activities, etc. I personally think it's a great place to raise kids.

Do you think constructivism and qualitative methods are among a set of valid and valuable approaches? Or do you think they're the ONLY valid and valuable approaches? Most large, top-tier, full-service US departments have multiple scholars who do primarily qualitative work and and are able to support qualitative dissertations. Self-described constructivists are somewhat rarer but there is still a presence at many top schools. These schools will, however, in general ask you to at least expose yourself to positivism, quantitative methods, rational choice approaches, etc. to at a minimum be able to read the leading journals in the field. If you are willing to learn some alternate approaches, even if you continue using the ones you are now most familiar with, you will do fine at most large departments. I find, however, that the qualitatively and informally inclined are much more likely to dogmatically reject quantitative and formal work (refusing to learn what's going on in the models or how to read the papers) than the other way around. If this describes you, you probably would have a better time at a non-US department, where there is much less emphasis on broad-based training.

Not all 3.5s are created equal. What's your major GPA? What's the trend? What type/rank of undergrad? A former advisor who has sat on admit committees at a top 10 told me he wanted to see one semester where the applicant had taken multiple upper-level courses in poli sci and cognate disciplines and gotten all As. He didn't care about the rest of the transcript because that semester showed the applicant could hack it. But others who read your application will have different rules of thumb (maybe some like consistent performance, maybe some like to see improvement over time, etc.). As in nearly all circumstances, the best advice is to make the rest of your application (statement and letters) as strong as possible, apply widely, and see what happens.

Amit, I am currently a PhD student at the University of Rochester in Political Science. Here are my best answers to your questions: 1. As far as classes actually go, fall semester goes from the beginning of September to mid December and spring semester goes from mid January to the beginning of May, so you technically have one month off in the winter and three in the summer. I have always been working as an RA during summers, but have managed to find work that I can do away from the office in order to get away, visit family, etc. In your field, I don't know if you'll be working in a lab all summer--you'd do best to ask current students in your program what their summers are like. 2. I support my wife (who does not work) and infant daughter on my fellowship stipend plus RA work. We bought a house when we moved to Rochester (real estate is extremely cheap, in my opinion even less expensive than the rental market here). I would not be surprised if your fellowship is larger than mine, given your field. 3. No idea. This is a question to direct to your program's graduate placement director or similar.

I was at Chicago 07-08; I did not apply for a second-year and don't remember anyone else from my cohort doing so (I did know people doing a two-year dual-degree MA from CIR and MPP from Harris). I am now in my second year at Rochester.

I took two formal modeling/game theory courses down at the Harris School while I was at Chicago. One of them was automatically on the approved list of courses that fulfilled CIR requirements; one of them I had to get permission (but this was pro forma, as long as you have a good justification for it, they won't stop you from doing what you want to do). I didn't know anyone in my cohort who took them, but the methods sequence in the Department is on the approved list. As to the questions about application timing, only one person from my cohort applied to PhD programs that first fall: he's at OSU now. The others of us who waited to apply until we were finished are at similar- to higher-ranked places.

I was at CIR and while I didn't work with Mearsheimer (since I do formal and quantitative IPE, there wasn't really much call to), I had multiple friends who had him as their advisor on their MA theses. He absolutely does really work with "mere MA students"--ie they had regular meetings, he read their drafts, gave intensely detailed feedback, pushed them on their logic and argumentation, etc. I also think you'd find he isn't just looking for people who agree with him; he's happy to advise people who do things completely at odds with offensive realism as long as their arguments are novel, well-formed, and compelling. I can't speak for everyone else on the faculty--there were a couple professors who looked down their noses at MA students, but this tended to be junior people, not the real "big names" in the department (who I always found accessible).