natofone

Those area studies programs are usually funded through FLAS fellowships, but I'm guessing that the date to apply has passed. Maybe for the second year if Yale has FLAS fellowships in Russian or Georgian or whatever you study.

Ha, I used the spreadsheet approach too, but mine is insanely more detailed than the one you linked. It really helps to organize things.

I wonder if they will accept earlier and then process the rejections on Monday. This is the only school left that I might consider over my current acceptance. It'll be nice to have this part done.

I am assuming so based upon last year.

Another Cornell huh? I'm guessing that they sent them out. Now if we can get Minnesota out of the way tomorrow I'm done with this phase!

Anyone else at Cornell? It would be nice to cross this one off of the list.

Cornell is a great match for your interest in South Asia. If I remember correctly, a South Asianist placed very well last year and got a slew of offers.

Awesome! Congrats - any specifics on how you were notified?

I'm not suggesting that this approach will kill or hurt your statement at all. I just don't think that this approach adds much, which can be important when space is limited.

I wouldn't put too much into what these schools say on their websites. They don't always take the time to update them, so the information can be quite old.

AP is correct. (source: The DGS at the school that waitlisted me)

That is nice of you.

The guy at my work claims that the overnight deadline is 4pm, so more should arrive tomorrow.

Fed ex comes separately. Plus, don't worry until tomorrow. Maybe they dropped them off late in the day and didn't make the overnight deadline. We have only seen about three posts, but last year about 10 posted acceptances on the results board.

Right, but I think that most of us have done this type of research. Obviously don't apply to Northwestern if you want to study formal theory. But, beyond that, it is important to apply to enough places to make sure that you account for the factors outside of your control. Unless you have a very, very specific topic (Central Asian political economy), then you should have a wide range of schools to apply to.

Last year MIT overnighted the packages - is this how they sent it? You should be able to tell from the package. This means that everyone in the states should get their package today. I believe that FEDEX delivers overnight packages by 3pm (we use it at work).

I was specifically told to just dive right into the heart of the statement because at some of the very competitive programs they are looking at 400-500 applications and don't want to dig through the entire statement to see what your potential research area is.

Last year they accepted 31.

Obviously you should only apply to schools with a good fit. That goes with out saying. Much of this process is out of your hands and very random. You don't know ahead of time who will be on an admissions committee, which prof is "due" to get more grad students, how well a department is doing this year in regards to funding, what direction the department wants to go in, which faculty actually choose to work with graduate students, how many other candidates in your subfield (or specific research area) applied that year, how competitive the applying class is, or really even what kind of expectations each school has in terms of strength of application.

I would caution future applicants against using the highly personal "since I was a kid" approach. (I should say that both of the above statements that employ this approach are very good overall - this wasn't a knock on them. Just a suggestion based on what some professors at Chicago suggested to me.)

You just didn't apply to enough schools to account for the randomness factor. This process isn't logical or something that you can easily predict.

Based on the number of acceptances we have seen across several subfields, I would guess that UCLA is done with acceptances. I know that they are reducing their normal class by about 1/2 to 1/3.

Also: PhDs.org (based on the 1995 NRC): http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/political-science/rank?w7=5 Chingos (placement): http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~chingos/rankings_paper.pdf Another good thing to look at is how schools have moved over the past several US News surveys (98,01,05,10) to see if schools are on their way up or down.

Much of this boils down to "fit" and luck so you need to apply widely. If you ran out of schools that you would be happy going to, then the main problem is that you didn't apply to enough places that you'd be happy with. Columbia is a top 10 program. NYU and Northwestern aren't top 10, but they are both incredibly selective programs that you can't expect to get into because they take so few students. I think that it is very likely that you'll get into a few of your remaining programs, but if you aren't happy with them you can always apply again next year and apply to more schools.

No, I don't think so. I don't believe that anyone has actually been rejected from Columbia. They just don't prioritize telling those of us that have been rejected.