CafeAuLait12

Congratulations to the new admits, and hang in there to all the rejects! Either way, it's Friday; enjoy it!!!

Wow, $30 thousand would be nice! Full funding generally means tuition remission, health insurance, and some sort of stipend, which depends on the offer. The base offer is for a TAship which varies from school to school. Many of the graduate school main sites will list what the base pay is for that. Other than a TAship, you could be offered a research assistantship or a fellowship, both of which frequently pay more than a TAship. Some schools even have a signing or moving bonus, but those are pretty rare in our field.

This is all correct. Usually you stay with a current grad student to get a feel for grad life. There is a night out to one of the bars to hang out with all the current students as well as your future cohort-mates. At my visits, I met with a few of my POIs to discuss our interests and ask any more academic/professional questions. None of the schools I visited had campus tours because you really are only in the Political Science building and maybe a few others that you can find on your own. In general, I really enjoyed my visits and I think that they are crucial to making your graduate school decision.

This is a difficult question for a direct answer. Is the professor at the slightly farther down program well known in the field? If so, that can help make up for the difference in ranking. Although, 18 to 25 is not that big of a difference between the two, so it likely doesn't matter that much for future job prospects. In terms of the higher ranked school, most of the time it is okay to not exactly match up with a POI because 1) you are not going to be doing the exact same work, and 2) your interests might change. Being at a higher ranked school allows you to potentially work with a group of better professors and graduate students. You training and connections might be better. In addition even if you know that the POI you have a 100% match with isn't likely to leave, it is still advisable in my opinion for you to have multiple professors to work with and bounce ideas off of. Remember that there is more than one professor on your dissertation committee. I feel like I didn't explain this very eloquently, so feel free to ask me to clarify anything.

I would like to congratulate all of the recent admits!!! If anyone has any questions about visits or anything less, please let me know. I am here to help!

Congratulations to all of the admits, and especially to the UW-Madison ones! I am very surprised that they are notifying by mail, but whatever I suppose.

Congratulations! Getting that first acceptance makes all of the difference in the world!

Congratulations, Lemeard!!

It is an interesting adjustment. I am came straight out of undergrad, so I guarantee that I teach students that are close to my age and some that are older. The trick is always staying one step ahead and making sure that you know the most in the room. If you don't, figure out a way to fake it til you make it.

It varies depending on fellowships, research assistantships, and the needs of the department. I expect that I will be teaching probably a little over half the time that I am here, but who really knows.

Weeks are busy in general. I am taking 2 methods classes, one seminar in my field, one statistical computing class, and a field colloquium. The work for that occupies about 10 class hours and probably about 15-20 reading, researching, problem set, and writing hours. I taught last semester, and between teaching, attending lecture, grading, and class prep I probably spent at max 8 hours during a usual week. When there was an exam, double for the week before and the week after. Since I am a first year, my own projects are more in the up-in-the-clouds stage, so mostly that is thinking time that comes at random. And then comes family time, which I am still working out how to make enough time for. I am getting married this summer, so I have that on my plate. My fiance is a first year in chemistry, we are working on balancing his lab time, my reading time, and then our time. Mostly our time involved the gym, cooking dinner every night, and watching whatever sporting event is on. In short, grad school can be kinda hellish. Your time is mostly not your own in that you have a lot of masters, but your time is your own in that you have to figure out how to please all of them yourself. That being said, it's actually pretty nice. We are getting paid to think and explore new ideas. We get to teach (even though it can be a pain), but we are not the ones at the top of the totem pole. We are in a unique position, but one that I think is actually pretty nice.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to pop in to give my support to everyone on the forum. This was really helpful to me last year, and I hope that it is just as useful for all of you as well. As someone who just recently went through all of this, I am happy to answer any questions that you might have about the process, visits, the decision, or just grad school in general.

Congrats! That's awesome!

Decision made! I will be attending the University of Wisconsin - Madison in the fall! Message me if you are too!

Declined funded offers at the University of Maryland - College Park and Vanderbilt University.