saltlakecity2012

So I thought this would probably be useful as people get ready to start visiting campuses. I'm hoping to get other people (including current grad students) to chime in regarding impressions of various departments from personal experience, letter writers' opinions, previous visits, or general word-of-mouth. Obviously everyone will have different types of information, as we all have different things we're interested in, but hopefully some of it will be universally useful. So here's an example for one of the schools I'm interested in: Yale - great internal funding options, poor placement record among CHYMPS (and some others) although improving as changes made in 2006 start impacting the students on the job market today, access to schools in the tristate (NY, CT, NJ) area, stronger methods training given recent hires but has a pretty high rate of attrition for good faculty, relatively young senior faculty, heavy focus on comparative pol econ, strengths in Africa and Latin America UCLA - strongest area is methodologically sophisticated comparativists, wide regional focus, relatively competitive environment, strong formal theorists UCSD - excellent IR scholars and IR training, regional focuses primarily on Asia-Pacific and the Americas, department is on the way up, reputation for close engagement with faculty Clearly somewhat sparse - there is more that I can and will add, but it's a beginning at the very least. I'll be visiting 2 schools next week and will add them at that point. Edit: I should also add, I would like help debunking any commonly held myths about various graduate programs. So if there's anyone out there with friends currently at a program, or who went somewhere as an undergrad, or who is currently studying at a school, please contribute.

There's also the option of doing linear algebra. If you don't have a background in multivariable calculus, which at some point you should probably get, you can still do lin alg. whereas ODE would be pretty difficult, especially if you haven't done calc in a few years. It's a good signal, as it's not just number-crunching but rather also theoretical mathematics, proof-based. So it signals strength in logic as well. Edit: Also, it's nice to see you again!

This is excellent. Nonsense! Rejections are always disheartening, and this forum (at least, this is what I think) is about mutual support during this extremely challenging and sometimes depressing process. I'm sorry about the news, but there's no need for you to apologize!

Rejected at U Chicago PhD program, but accepted to MAPSS with full scholarship. Definitely pleasantly surprised, although I won't be taking it. Also a very nice letter.

I'm assuming like any other school all additional funding gets considered when they put together your fellowship offer, so even if you were awarded the UDF you wouldn't make out like a bandit (or rather, like a reasonably well-paid person). Edit - I don't mean fellowship offer, I mean the amount disbursed for each year. If you get NSF grants, for example, normally your school's funding drops (and your school will eat most of your NSF grant anyway ).

Man, do I feel you. I didn't get into Berkeley, where I thought (and apparently they agreed) that I had a really good shot based on fit, approach, etc. And Columbia, too, based on fit as well as my having 2 LORs from professors there! And about the spreadsheets... I don't think I need to comment. You all know how OCD I am by now

Dear X, I write with great regret to inform you that you have not been admitted for graduate study at UC Berkeley's Department of Political Science. Thank you for your patience in waiting to hear from us while we made this difficult decision. Your application was among those of the very best candidates in our applicant pool this year. Unfortunately, due to strict limits on enrollment, we were not able to admit several candidates who were among our top choices. Members of the committee along with other members of our department faculty were impressed with your application and feel that you would have been a great fit for our program. We are sorry that we do not have enough slots to offer you admission, but are confident that you will have great success wherever you decide to study. We retain application materials for two years should you decide to reapply. The application for Fall 2013 will be available on-line in September, 2012, at http://www.grad.berkeley.edu. We thank you for your interest in Berkeley and sincerely wish you the best of luck in your future academic plans. Sincerely, See? Nicest rejection letter ever written!

So a friend of mine who is now doing an econ PhD at a top 5 school told me that during his application cycle he went 10/11. His assessment was that in his discipline, there are very situations in which someone will get into a few of the top programs and get rejected by the others, as there's a relatively high degree of uniformity. I mention this because I'm amazed by how disparate the results seem to be in poli sci (based on grad cafe) - people get into Princeton but not Berkeley, Yale but not Chicago, Harvard but not Columbia... I just thought I'd bring this up given how frequently the question of how much fit matters pops up on this forum.

Claiming a Berkeley rejection, too, but it was a lovely letter!

Congrats! Did you apply to the MA programs separately, or do they automatically consider you if you tell them to, like Columbia? I can't remember.

I LOVE Sherlock!!! I can't wait for the next season. Good call!

You may have a point there

The programs I'm looking at actually seem to be quite different, and they're all top 10. Funding packages are pretty different, although some of the schools have offered to increase their funding offers. Location is hugely different (LA vs. Ann Arbor, for example). Size is very different. The demographics of the departments are different. Some are huge, some more IR, some more CP, some more methods/pol econ. Some have very high profile professors in one area but not many in the others, blah, blah, blah. I'm also struggling with the fact that I would really like to go to School A (funding, location, brand name, overall intellectual environment, etc.), but School B has people in my region of interest while School A only has a couple, and one of them is going to Singapore! So I need to evaluate my attachment to my region of interest, and see whether since I want to do some cross-regional comparisons it's more important for me to go to a school that can get me good training in the other regions I want to study but don't have any background in. Gah. I'm trying to remind myself that when differentiating between 2 top schools it is probably more important to choose based on "lifestyle" stuff... Edit: Ironheel! - yes. I agree.

I'm eagerly awaiting my Chicago rejection, and perhaps even one from Berkeley, too! This is going to be a lovely day.

On the topic of kitchen sinks, I'm trying to rank the criteria we've listed by importance (for me, that is). That would probably be a good way to eliminate a few variables - figure out which ones are most important for you, and evaluate based on those.

I don't know, man. I'm not holding my breath...

On the other side of the "democracy is bad because people are stupid argument" - http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1449594 Can't find the PDF of the paper, sorry.

I don't know if I'm any funnier to anyone other than myself, but I definitely take life less seriously, and my friends tell me that I am more ridiculous every day.

I absolutely agree - you may have noticed by now that I'm a bit obsessive, and I like to be systematic, so I thought that I would put together a list of criteria and rate each school that I'm looking at (and all 5 of the schools I've been accepted to are serious options for me - there are 3 frontrunners but no one is out of the race) along those criteria, and then try to create an overall rating for each one so I could systematize my decision-making. I am definitely aware that I might show up on visiting days and absolutely hate or love some of the schools, but for now I'm trying to build up as much background as I can. Vibe is very important, but so are all the other things that I mentioned in the OP (at least, they are to me). Edit: RWBG - we think alike.

I would not say that democracy allows new ideas to be implemented eventually. In fact, dictatorships, or authoritarian regimes if you prefer, are much better equipped to adopt new ideas. I would say that democracies tend to allow for the development of new ideas, but that is not inherent to the structure of the system - that's just because today we find that most authoritarian regimes clamp down on the generation of new ideas in order to keep control of political development. After all, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Back to the original purpose of this thread - check out the dissertation titles of current job market candidates. During the visiting days, talk to current students at varying stages of their studies, especially if the department seems to be changing. The perspective of someone in year 2 will be very different from the perspective of someone in year 6 in that case. Ask about required courses. How many fields do you need to qualify in? Does the program do exams, or papers, or a combination? Is the training geared towards putting you ahead on the job market, or towards work in your particular area of focus? What are students' track records winning prestigious fellowships (not just NSF or SSRC - also think about topical fellowships or fellowships at research institutes/think tanks)? How rigid is the program's structure? Do people do a lot of cross-subfield work, or are they encouraged to remain within a specific area? Do the faculty do interdisciplinary work? Are there excellent departments in other areas you're interested in? If not, does the school allow you to have faculty from other universities sit on your dissertation committee? Does the university offer internal funding for research trips? If so, this can save you a lot of time and energy. Just tossing ideas out there as they come.

Oh.my.god.

Congratulations!!!!! That's awesome - what a fabulous surprise! Edit: So I'll see you in late March in NY?

Oh boy. Anyone want to pull out their Aristotle or de Tocqueville? Tyranny of the incompetent majority and all that. Edit: I disagree with the statement that the only effective difference between dictatorships and democracy is that democratic institutions prevent the below-average leaders getting power. Most democratic nations have a pretty wide distribution of sovereign power, meaning that the "leader", no matter how brilliant, is limited in his or her ability to effect change. I suppose one could say that the ideal outcome would be a system of distributed power where the most competent candidates in each position of power were elected, but then we get back to the word "competence" and what it really means in this situation. Many politicians are great movers and shakers without necessarily having the most discerning eye for policy, and many politicians who really know their shit on taxation, for example, would probably be relatively easily frustrated in any attempt to implement the best policy. Even if a democracy doesn't elect the best leaders, at least its structure allows for different ideas to come through, too.

Great minds and all that... I was just about to put up ability to practice one's beliefs and find a community in your faith or philosophy. Also, why does it say that Google (Adsense) is reading this thread?