vitaminquartet

I submitted my form several minutes before the deadline...which I realize was ridiculous...but it was nonetheless time stamped as having been submitted on December 15, 2017, with a time stamp in PST indicating it was still December 15, 2017 eastern time when it was submitted. I do not not see any "checklist" on applyweb either.

Its really great to see a lot of people posting GREs/GPAs in the results since this is extremely useful information to future applicants. Can I again seriously ask people though: post subfields. If someone posts a desirable school acceptance with low Quant GRE scores but without a subfield, applicants wont be able to know whether to infer "this school not care about GRE scores" or "this school does not care about Quant GRE scores for Theory students." Useful to theory and non-theory students alike (and same for verbal GRE and methods, political economy, potentially). Likewise if a school sends out acceptances in batches (but perhaps rejections at the same time) it would be at least a bit useful to know if those batches were grouped by subfield or if it was something less clear than that.

So about program rank, you've referred to top 5, top 10, and 15-25. What are the top 5? What are the top 10? What are the top 25? Are you just going by US News and World Report rankings or what? Are those rankings stable over years? Whats the practical difference between a 'directional' and a 'regional'? Just the name?

Yeah then one troll will just post multiple times. The results page is useful for looking at past years concerning when notices came out and what kind of GRE/GPAs were accepted. If a school made a decision about your application, it will send you notice. If you applied and haven't gotten notice, probably no one else has either.

When people post results, can they please post GRE/GPA and subfield?

The Berkeley acceptance is listed as "Accepted via E-mail on 17 Jan 2017". Which is to say that if the report was accurate...they got an email after 9pm CA time on a holiday? I don't think so. These are all big departments and we have enough 'data' from previous years to see that almost all of these departments send out large numbers of acceptances and rejections on the same day. "1.) This forum (and the results page) are not a representative sample of all the people who apply to grad school. The shoe-in candidates who aren't worried about getting in probably don't check this forum or post, (and thus we would never know if they got admission early in January)." There is no one who is a "shoe-in" to the point of not being worried about admission for top 5 departments. Thats just not a thing. There are too many elements of randomness. And anyways, even if some people are functionally "shoe-ins", they still wont be notified early because departments don't want to let people know where they stand in their order of preference since this would undermine recruitment efforts. "2.) The early bird gets the worm. Admissions committees outside of the top 15 want good candidates too, early offers = higher likely hood they get those candidates to sign on." But every research university signs up to the same pact that requires them to set their acceptance deadline on April 15. I don't see much of an advantage in early admissions for the departments.

Deadline was extended to Monday.

This is the political science version of this thread. You should ask here: http://forum.thegradcafe.com/forum/33-computer-science/

Send another reminder! Call his office! Call his assistant! Show up at his office! It is okay for a professor to decline to write for a student it is not okay for a professor to agree to write for a student and then not submit recommendations to all of their schools, and they know this.

Philpot, you should just send a reminder to your recommender. It was surely just an oversight.

What faculties do you consider to be the strongest in political theory and why? What professors influence program strength the most? What programs place the best in political theory, which is obviously a very hard field.

As the title states, what are your top choices for political science department, and why? What programs are most desirable and whats most desirable about them? If you're already a political science graduate student, what do you like about your program and what do you dislike (please name it or it is not very helpful information!)

I have heard in lots of places that book review writing is 1. good to do for phd students 2. doesn't 'count' for anything 3. but teaches you about publishing! I am not sure how to reconcile these bits of advice. Writing a book review and having it published is totally different than writing an article or even a response paper and having it published, so I don't see how the former informs the later - and since only the later counts - I don't know why anyone should spend time writing book reviews (unless it is purely for personal enjoyment or because they want to promote or undermine some book - but not for self-development or career reasons).

You have to do what is best for you - a PhD is a huge commitment and no professor is going to be as sad that some student withdrew after accepting, even after april 15, as a student will be to spend 5-7 years of their life in a sub-optimal program. If you need to withdraw after April 15 you can do so by requesting a release from the program that accepted you - no one wants to keep a student who doesn't' want to be there. Yeah, its not a nice thing to do, but its your life and the stakes are too high to sacrifice it out of not wanting to hurt any feelings.

I published 4 single authored law review articles and two minor academic publications prior to beginning my PhD (next year)...however I am 1. manic 2. in law which is an easier field to get published in then probably any other.

lol I am pretty sure I was the one who made that point actually while Ktel made a completely different comment .

Hey, I am (baring unforeseen circumstances) planning to start my phd at Cambridge this autumn. I'm in my late 20s. Where is the *nicest* place to live in terms of access to bars/pubs stores and stuff with good access to the Sidgwick site where the law faculty is? What are the busiest/liveliest streets? I have lived in London and loved it and have never lived in a small town/city before so I really want to be in the most central places that would be the liveliest/least-sleepy.

Political philosophy is studied in philosophy depts, political science depts, government depts, and law depts (and probably some sociology depts.) but not as a separate department anywhere i know.

Questions like this likely have discipline specific answers. Frankly in some fields (e.g. sciences and law ) I think its relatively easy to get things published and in others it is extremely difficult to get publications in respectable journals (e.g. philosophy ).

Few points: 1. As mentioned - presenting at conferences is fun. You get to meet people, talk about your work, talk about other people's work, read interesting stuff, listen to interesting talks, ask interesting questions, look at literature academic publishers bring, probably go to a fancy conference banquet, probably go to a nice conference cocktail hour, etc, its really a good time, enjoy it. 2. I can understand being nervous about giving a conference talk (which is what i think of when i hear "presentation" ) but for a poster, there is totally no need. You most certainly do not have to stand near your poster for 3 hours straight, thats crazy. Even if thats a requirement (which it wont be) you can just leave and look at other people's posters or go to the conference talks. No one is going to grill you - the more likely result is that people wont read your whole poster or any of it at all, if they aren't already sympathetic to your approach and position. 3. Try to make it visually appealing. While I've given talks at many conferences, I have only presented a single poster (in my fields, philosophy and law, posters are rare to non-existent, it was an interdisciplinary conference) and I so regret how I presented my paper: I basically just pasted up a summary of my arguments in three vertical columns and only a handful of people read it. Posters should look attractive and present information in a way that isn't tiring or time consuming to read. People just don't have the patients to deal with posters that they do to deal with articles and talks.

On the other hand, in law, where co-authors are uncommon, law student research assistants routinely write substantive footnotes and do extensive (or even most or nearly all) of the research for an article - and they are never given co-author credit (only acknowledgment). On the other hand law professors making extensive criticisms and suggesting ideas to student papers would never be given co-authorship either - they would rather be thanked in the initial footnote and then referenced any time they contributed something.

It is just too late to ever take a GRE like the one you took - the new verbal section is completely different (and seems to be less rewarding to people with big vocabularies who do so well on the old GRE verbal) - only take it again if you have reason to think it would play to your strengths. Frankly, I don't think humanities departments ever use GREs as the basis for admitting an applicant, only as the basis for rejecting an applicant - so while it makes sense to retake if scores are too low (i.e. 500s) it makes little sense for a humanities applicant to retake in the hopes of getting a higher score since it will confer minimal advantage.

I have no idea - i took my GRE today too and they didn't list my (British) undergraduate university - so i just skipped it.

Age doesn't really matter for academics, and it shouldn't matter in general, but the fact is that it matters a lot for social interactions. The younger you are, on average, the more university will be at the center of your life socially. The bigger the age gap, the more varying of experiences and social expectations and the harder it is to form really close relationships (either romantic or platonic). People who are older might feel excluded if their cohort is mostly young, but then they're also more likely (though not necessarily) to have other family and friendship commitments (though if they move for grad school, this might not be the case and might pose a real problem for them). So I do think its important to think about...

I did think there was something a bit offputting and even a bit trollish for someone to say, basically 'I only have a perfect 4.0 in my philosophy courses and a nearly perfect 3.92 in my other classes, I also have all of these other wonderful things going on and I could have been published in a professional journal! - is perfection good enough to have a shot at a top 30 program, or should I consign myself to a loserly career as a lawyer?' The original poster obviously knew his/her grades were good enough because he/she couldn't have done any better in philosophy - its not he/she is asking about his/her chances of overcoming some academic disadvantage or mixed record or marginal record. Posting something like that, might be motivated by genuine if unwarranted lack of confidence, or it might somewhat motivated by bragging, and have the effect of making people who lack those perfect statistics (who perhaps have mere 3.8's or 3.7s and didn't publish in an undergraduate journal, which is btw, not something that I've ever heard as a plus factor, though I doubt it hurts) feel insecure, or even like they ought not to apply so highly.