CooCooCachoo

Just relaying what I have been told by friends in the Oxford course. I assume(d) they would know. But I have very limited knowledge of the field, so I'm answering based on hearsay.

I'll post my reply here as well, since you submitted your query in two threads: Your choice for Oxford is completely nonsensical if you want to specialize in comparative political economy. You will be at the wrong department entirely. The department is also not known for its theoretical or methodological rigour. It also has no focus whatsoever on the USSR. This doesn't mean the MPhil isn't good - most people that I know in the MPhil are quite pleased with it - but it strikes me as out of tune with the rest of the programmes you listed. If you want a thorough grounding in methodology, applying for the MPhil in Comparative Government at the DPIR is a much more logical move. I can't tell you much about LSE or Cambridge, but I suspect that the same holds true there. Cambridge, in any case, is not held in high regard when it comes to Development Studies. Other than that, your stats are difficult to perfect, but I presume you know this already.

Your choice for Oxford is completely nonsensical if you want to specialize in comparative political economy. You will be at the wrong department entirely. The department is also not known for its theoretical or methodological rigour. It also has no focus whatsoever on the USSR. This doesn't mean the MPhil isn't good - most people that I know in the MPhil are quite pleased with it - but it strikes me as out of tune with the rest of the programmes you listed. If you want a thorough grounding in methodology, applying for the MPhil in Comparative Government at the DPIR is a much more logical move. I can't tell you much about LSE or Cambridge, but I suspect that the same holds true there. Cambridge, in any case, is not held in high regard when it comes to Development Studies. Other than that, your stats are difficult to perfect, but I presume you know this already.

This topic is not about the discrepancy between practice tests and the actual test, but about the score range that the first few batches were given upon having finished the GRE under the new format. We had to wait a couple of weeks before these score ranges (in the old format) were translated into actual scores (in the new format).

I was given a 740-800 score range for verbal, yet according to the official concordance table my percentile (97%) corresponds to a score of 700 on the prior version. While the score is still decent, it is both problematic and unprofessional to be giving score ranges that are way off the mark.

V 740-800 Q 750-800

A friend of mine is there now, working with H&M, so I'm not too sure. The only downside for you would be that, as far as I understand, their research is shifting away a bit from elections. But their research has always been somewhat eclectic, so I doubt that that should hold you back.

I'd say UNC-Chapel Hill is a very good fit, actually. Many Europeanists, and some of the most renowned scholars working on the topics you mentioned (Hooghe & Marks, with Vachudova undoubtedly being able to offer useful insights as well). For other universities you might want to combine one scholar working on European politics/elections, with those whose substantive focus is applied to areas other than Europe (e.g. WashU, which has Matthew Gabel). I'm also a Europeanist who is applying this cycle, so I am to some extent grappling with similar problems. I think we will have to think logically and creatively in order to arrive at a fit that perhaps isn't immediately apparent. Good luck!

The Princeton Review completely screwed up on a lot of things in my case. It changed some answers; it counted answers that were correct as incorrect, even though the explanation showed that the answer was correct; and it counted some answered questions as unanswered. After spending about three hours on a practice test, finding out that the reported scores were pretty much useless was extremely frustrating and I'll be sure to steer clear from PR in the future. To be fair, it might have been a browser incompatibility (sometimes it took forever for questions to load, and some pictures in the quant sections would not load at all), which, since I didn't bother to check whether PR supports Google Chrome, would be my fault entirely.

I'm also looking to apply to Princeton, and the Politics Department website indicates that "in recent years, admitted students have typically had 700 or above on the quantitative and verbal sections of the GRE". That would mean your score on the verbal section is unfortunately not cutting the mustard. This might be all the more true if you are not even planning on doing any quantitative analysis in the PhD, which your research focus suggests. I haven't sat the GRE yet myself (since I haven't done maths in a long time, and am not naturally gifted at it, I need more preparation for the quant. part), but I have decided that I will not even bother applying to Princeton should I score lower than 700 on either section. If you have the resources (time-wise as well as financially) to allow yourself more intense preparation, then you seem to have a lot to gain from resitting. In any case, best of luck!

There seems to be a lack of congruence between the title of your topic and the content of your message. Are you seeking advice about doing an MA in European "Affairs" on the Old Continent more generally, or have you really narrowed down your choice to Sciences Po? If the latter is the case, I would strongly urge you not to apply until you have actually acquired the necessary language skills. A degree at Sciences Po is way too demanding to just be learning a new language while studying (and you will find this reflected in the entry requirements, such as for the double degree with LSE). More generally, it is unclear to me what you want to be studying: are you interested in European history, European culture, comparative European politics or European Union politics? This makes an important difference with a view to the programmes, departments and universities that are recommendable.

http://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/prepare/powerprep2 It's the first thing that comes up when Googling Powerprep Additionally, my version of Barron's comes with a CD-rom that includes the software.

YAGSA, thank you very much for posting your SOP. I am just wondering whether it is common practice to include footnotes in such a statement?

Ha, yes, that was me. Time has passed so quickly, so only one year into the MPhil I'm already having to look beyond that. Did you end up making it to Cambridge? I just did a sample test (Powerprep II) of the revised GRE, without having ever seen a complete test, and without having done any preparatory work. I scored 710-800 on the verbal and 680-780 on the quantitative section. I was completely at a loss for some of the quantitative questions, so there is a lot of work to be done in that area. I'm quite confident in my vocabulary, so with some studying the verbal component should pose no obstacle. All in all, I find these scores quite encouraging! I just ordered a practice book as well, so fun summer weeks are coming up :/ Do you have any recommendations re: the 'killer personal statement'? For previous graduate applications my personal statement has always been a bit unconventional in form, which so far has served me well, but it might be that in the States a more template-like approach might be better? And any tips concerning contacting faculty? Congrats on your admission to Stanford, by the way. Amazing feat.

Thanks for the heads up. I am not yet at the stage of writing application letters, so I'm sure I would have spotted Meunier's non-teaching position. I'm sad to hear Keohane is about to retire though. I find a lot of his work extremely fascinating, and his work straddles the quantitative-qualitative divide quite nicely. I recently attended a lecture by him at St. Hilda's College, which I found extremely inspiring (this was, incidentally, a sentiment that I found refreshing, as I'm used to being borderline disillusioned when attending talks by academics whose written work I greatly admire). Do you know when he will leave Princeton?

Hey guys, I'm looking to start a PhD in Political Science in Fall 2012. I'm of Dutch origin, hold degrees from European universities only (BA in the Netherlands; two-year MA in Austria and Germany, with a semester abroad in South Africa; and am currently enrolled in a two-year MPhil in the UK) and have only recently started considering continuing my graduate education in the US. The considerable time commitment notwithstanding, I find the set-up of most PoliSci PhD programs at high-ranking US grad schools very appealing, because of the combination of a large, interdisciplinary taught component, hands-on experience in teaching and thorough grounding in research methods. Since I have no first-hand experience with the US system, however, I'm a bit unsure about how well placed I am to make it through the admission process. I'm particularly anxious that my age (25) and my rather eclectic academic background, in terms of interdisciplinarity, the unorthodox nature of the programmes I have completed and the lack of a focused background in political science, will prove a hindrance vis-à-vis the altogether more conventional and highly qualified applicants that have come through the American system. Based on my details, set out below, I would be grateful for any advice and insights that you're willing to share: Academic background: BA in Liberal Arts and Sciences (US-style Liberal Arts College in the Netherlands), GPA 4.00, Minor in Methods & Statistics MA in Global Studies (Erasmus Mundus programme, with courses taken at the Universities of Vienna and Stellenbosch), summa cum laude (highest honors), awarded 'Best Graduate Student' and second-best MA thesis MPhil in European Politics and Society (University of Oxford); awarded a competitive scholarship by the Dutch government; current degree with no insight, as of yet, into the expected GPA, but I think a distinction is unlikely. US universities of interest: Princeton and Georgetown, for two reasons: Because of the people working there (Christensen, Meunier, Keohane and Moravcsik for Princeton; Bennett, McNamara and Voeten for Georgetown).Because I'm looking to combine international relations with European politics, and have a particular affinity with normative/constructivist approaches as applied to LGBT-related issues. I'm therefore looking for programmes that a) attribute considerable time to qualitative methods, preferably on top of rather than in lieu of quantitative methods, and b ) have leading scholars working on EU politics. I'm also looking at other places such as Yale (Stone Sweet, Scott would be great to work with), Stanford (Fearon, Goldstein), GWU (Adcock, Finnemore) and Cornell (Katzenstein), but in all these cases I think the fit between the respective politics departments' expertise and my research interests is not ideal. GRE: I have not taken the GRE yet, but I am confident that I can meet the requirements for the verbal component. The quantitative and verbal reasoning parts will require more practice, so GRE prep is one of my main summer projects. Other: Internship at the European Parliament;Participated in a selective youth leadership and social entrepreneurship programme;Working as a research assistant to a professor of European politics in Oxford (and did some research assistant work in Vienna);Presented at two conferences, with one more forthcoming;Co-authored a book chapter in an edited volume of one of the leading British publishing houses;Student representative on the university management board (as undergrad). In short, I feel that I'm a strong candidate in many ways and, conditional upon a good GRE-score, I should have no trouble meeting the admission criteria. I fully appreciate, however, that the pool of qualified applicants is considerable for the universities that I'm interested in applying to, so I'm curious to see, with a view to my perhaps unconventional profile, how you would estimate my chances. Any advice, insights and feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!