CGMJ

This. The ideal department will have people who work on the regions you're interested in and people who work in your substantive area. This gets trickier for people working on the Middle East and South Asia., since (based on my unscientific impression) most polisci departments seem to have far more Latin Americanists, Africanists, people who work on East Asia, etc. If your goal is to be a regionalist who works on politics, this could be problematic, and you'll want to find a department with strong regional cred. If you're more interested in being a political scientist who works on a specific region, it may be fine to be in a department with people who focus on the issues you're interested in, but who work in different countries. However, this means you won't get much regional training (so hopefully you have it going in) and you may have to look outside the department for contacts, research support, etc. Whether or not this works depends on you/the particular department.

Hi all, as a current female student at UCSD, this report is troubling! Assuming the PSR poster is real, I hope she brought this to the attention of someone she feels comfortable with (her hosts, the DGS or the Women in Political Science group); if not, I would encourage her to do so. Obviously, behavior like this is inappropriate and we would hope to prevent it. Speaking from my own experience (n=1 of course, but I believe I'm modal!), UCSD in an extremely welcoming place where I feel supported and invested in as a scholar, despite the resource challenges that often face public universities. Both faculty and students (male and female) are attentive to and proactively working to address the gender imbalance in academia. Respect and encouragement have been the norm in my interactions with professors, staff, and fellow students. If that culture is not coming across to prospective students, we clearly have work to do---so please give feedback formally as well as online! If anyone has questions or concerns, please feel free to PM me.

FWIW, I think the UCSD honest grad numbers haven't been updated recently. Here are the stats updated through this year (although the market isn't quite over): http://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/placement/Placement%20table%202.27.141.pdf.

Can't say for all schools but I would assume yes, with the goal to impress (or at least not disappoint) you. As one of our professors frequently jokes, recruitment events are the only time you will feel special in grad school I feel like there is a phdcomics about this but I can't find it right now.

Lolz dude. As long as you're sharing with me...

That would certainly be very nice but not expected in any way (at least not by me or others I know). Just be a considerate house guest, as I'm sure you would be anyway!

Also seek out and talk to advanced grad students. Most recruitment events are overpopulated by us first-years. We can tell you a lot about what the first seven months of grad school are like and some general things about the department, but advanced students will be able to give a much more complete picture of comps, starting and funding your research, faculty advising, etc. I'm not saying be a jerk and brush off first-years, of course, but just know that our experience is only one particular window into the overall experience.

I'm not an Americanist so I can't really speak to this, but people in the department will likely be upfront about expected departures if you ask them!

Despite the sketchy link, I can confirm that this is a real document cc'ed to the department.

UCSD here, happy to PM.

I think there is an informal wait-list, but not sure how it works. There may also be a different timeline for the joint PhD with IRPS.

Yes!

This is correct! Drop in American was mostly due to the loss of Cox and McCubbins (professor's citations are a big driver of rankings).

Sadly I have no inside info on this one. If they're doing them individually there may be more to come today, but not sure.

Congrats to everyone who got offers today (and previous days too)! UCSD people feel free to PM me if you have any questions---hope to see you in March

Yes, the UCSD reject was a troll. Word around the department is that the adcom is meeting later this year then they did last year, so I wouldn't expect to see results for at least another week. Also, I think posting rejections last year before admissions was a fluke (word has it that the department got extra money right as decisions were about to go out, so they still sent the rejects but waited to redo the offer letters for the acceptances before sending them).

Sounds about right!

Also note that some offers are full fellowships (you don't have to do anything for the money), while others are TA-ships (meaning all or part of the money comes from working as a TA or RA). Different schools may have different names for this, but it's something to pay attention to. For example, a 25k offer contingent upon 20 hours of work per week may be less desirable than a 20k fellowship, depending on your situation. For UCSD in 2013, there were two basic packages of funding for polisci: 25k: 1st year fellowship, years 2-5 require 20 hrs/week TAing 22.5k: 1st year 10 hrs/week TAing, years 2-5 require 20 hrs/week TAing

Is your friend a PhD student in polisci? I personally have no idea, but it's quite possible someone else does. We are still in the first week of classes, so I wouldn't be surprised if that the adcom is just getting into the swing of things. Good luck!

FYI, if I remember correctly, the early Columbia postings from last year were deemed to be trolling (and thus aren't on the spreadsheet). No one here claimed them and I believe we got some inside info that Columbia hadn't started notifying yet.

Sure! I kept neurotically going back to check when things had been posted in 2012, so it seemed easier to put it in a spreadsheet and then neurotically update that... It was so cold today that I almost regretted wearing sandals

I can't speak to public policy, but if it were me I would take classes in statistics/econometrics. The more exposure the better, even if you aren't planning on being a methodologist. At the entry level at least, you need minimal calc and linear algebra, so if you're already familiar with calculus I think stats courses would be much more useful.

This is a great tip. Also in case it's helpful, last year I (somewhat psychotically) compiled this data on the 2012 and 2013 Grad Cafe results postings for the schools that I applied to. I make no guarantees about accuracy (and looking at the file, it seems I never updated the final results of two of the schools), but perhaps it's a good approximation. Polisci PhD results data.xlsx Last year results for these schools started to come out the first week of February---if the pattern holds, you have a few more weeks of sanity! I know it's crazy and anxiety-ridden (I lost about a month of productivity at work last year hitting command-R on Grad Cafe a thousand times a day) but I wish you all the best of luck. Once notifications come out, I'm also happy to talk with anyone about UCSD.

As someone who was working during open house season last year, I would have much preferred option B; I had a supportive boss and taking time off was no issue. Even for those with less understanding jobs, it seems like the trouble of taking time off is worth making sure you have as much information as possible when making a decision that determines your whereabouts for the next 5-7 years and likely impacts your career trajectory for long after.

To echo the above, my sense is that in most cases this information is used by the graduate admissions office--not the department's admissions committee. This means that it should have no bearing on whether you are admitted, but is a helpful statistic for the school. I'm sure there have been exceptions to this, but in general I wouldn't worry about it.