firefly28

With late night stuff it depends on where you live; some routes go very late into the night. Some areas aren't exactly the type that you want to be coming home from late at night though. There are a bunch of grocery stores around and several within bus range.

It depends on where you're living. You can do a lot through public transportation, but if you're living out of the city I'd definitely get a car. That being said, some of the best places (eg the Strip) are absolute nightmares for parking and actually easier to get to through buses. Just be aware that port authority buses are old, tend to smell, and often are populated by crazy people. In three years, I've seen a guy pee on the floor of a bus, a drug deal, semi-regularly people talking to themselves, and most recently, a guy bragging to his friend how he intimidated a witness into not testifying against him in a jewelry robbery case.

I just turned down one super great package to accept another. Both departments were really good, slightly different strengths but both suited toward my interests. With the departments and financial offers roughly even, I ended up considering the respective locations, and this is where one school prevailed over the other: one location is definitely nicer than the other. Also, one location is much easier to get by on public transportation than the other, which is a major issue for me since I don't drive. But turning down a terrific offer from a school that made a wonderful presentation is still very hard to do

If anyone was waitlisted by ASU, a spot just opened up as I declined their offer of admission. Beautiful campus, good faculty, just not financially competitive with my other offers.

Yes, I definitely wouldn't advise choosing American if you're a qualitative researcher. Comparative can be ok, as can IR.

So, I'm considering one school that has the CCES and one school that doesn't. I'm entering as an Americanist so if I attend the school that has it, I'd be using it. How good is it? Is it a big advantage for the schools that have it? Is it used for journal articles in the top journals? Etc.

I agree. My interest is more topical than field, but I'm entering as an Americanist. I will say this: I think that currently IR is the most popular field. Even schools who are a bit stronger in American are getting tons of very good IR students. That's not to say that you should give up IR if that's your thing, just know that the competition is the strongest and in 5 years, the jobs will probably be the most competitive. Well, unless you choose theory.

I agree with the folks who've already replied. If you check faculty listings at some universities, you'll find that some professors have undergrad degrees in math, or economics, or psychology. I actually know of one doctoral student whose undergrad is in theater(!). A math background gives you a nice head start on the quantitative end of research, and I'd STRONGLY suggest applying to quantitative-heavy departments. And yes, leaving out the CR part--depending on who reads your file, they could junk it just due to that. So the question to ask really is "given my interest in (x), where should I apply?" I'm guessing you're one of those IPE people.

Not bad advice, but the methodological concentration issue is one factor in my decision-making process: one of the two schools I'm considering has more folks with a background in experimental, the other has more of a focus on other methodology.

I'm thinking about what avenues of research to concentrate on once I start my doctorate in the fall. I already have a collection of ideas, about half of which are experimental in nature and half of which are not. Think it's better to concentrate on the non-experimental research topics? Experimental is costlier and harder to do, and I'm not sure if it's harder to get published in the better journals.

I also use Ubuntu. I can use R but I won't be using any proprietary stats programs that might come up in classes, at least not on my own computer. Which doesn't matter since R is better than them anyway.

That does help. Are you familiar with the area that is the FSU graduate apartments?

One of the worst parts of waiting: fear that someone will come out with a very similar research design as you have in mind. It's happened twice already :\

This is anecdotal, but I spoke with an MSU graduate not that long ago who said that they would not recommend the program. I did not inquire as to why but I get the impression that there might be some hostility and ego issues in the ranks of the dept.

Behavior, possibly with methods as a minor field. Have you heard anything about likely turnover at FSU? I've heard that it has a bit of a reputation as a school with high faculty turnover, which is a bit discouraging.