UndraftedFreeAgent

No problem. That's what these forums are for, right?

I just posted an entire description of how they go through it under the applications topic in a thread about someone being devastated about gre scores.

I have more that could be included about the further rounds, as well. Once the initial round of cuts have been made, that's when the rest of the committee gets involved. This is the painstaking process of which most of you were thinking, where details start to matter. The director of graduate studies forwards the "reasonable" applications to the other committee members. All members of the committee get all applications. The job is then to go through and rank the top applications based on what the committee member is looking for in students. Ranking is generally limited to 3x the number of slots available. Each member has his or her own idea of the ideal student profile, so this is when the committee gets together to discuss applications. The first step is to compare the rankings. Naturally, any consensus on top students means an admit, while an agreed low ranking means a rejection. What happens next depends largely on the program in question. Some committees will go through and argue for/against certain applications until a set of compromise rankings is established. Others, particularly those with a strict pecking order, default to the opinions of the senior members of the committee. Usually 40-50% of the admits are on the consensus admit pile and the remaining 50-60% are chosen subjectively. Here is where "fit", unique parts of your profile, having worked with a professor/someone the professor knows, and things like that help. Your best shot is if someone picks up your file and is willing to fight for your admission. Otherwise, it's the crapshoot we've been talking about for months. I think he explained it told us because he never dreamed that any of us would leave and apply to another program. Not like it's any big secret that must be hidden at all costs, but the entire process seems like a black box mechanism to outsiders (meaning we throw in our apps, something mysterious happens, and then we get our result).

In my first semester in an Econ PhD program, our director of graduate studies explained how they went through the process of choosing who to admit and claimed that it was quite standard throughout the social sciences. Their first run through, directly after the deadline, is spent removing woefully unqualified applicants. He said that roughly half of all applicants had multiple major problems in their profile (no/negative recommendations, GPA 2.5 or below, GRE scores below 400 in every catagory, and so on), not just one poor section. He said that this problem was even more pronounced at top schools, as every student has a "stretch" school and many of these overlap. As application fees have apparently dropped significantly over the years, mediocre students feel the extra application, as unlikely as an admit may be, is still worth it. He also told us that, unlike the pure sciences, social sciences get a lot of applicants who apply simply because they were afraid of going out into the real world or didn't know what else to do with their degrees. These were often less driven students with relatively poor credentials. This is all before the applications ever make it to the committee. Granted, I'm sure that none of the people on this forum will find themselves on the immediate drop pile (aside from myself, of course), but the point is that there really are many unqualified applicants out there. On another topic, Penn State, Emory, and WashU are beginning to review Poli Sci applications, though we still won't hear back for quite a while.

Hey, I'm eagerly anticipating the possibility of getting a dog once I find out where I'll be going. Dogs, unlike cats and goldfish, are completely non-judgmental and don't think less of you if you only get a "pass" rather than "pass with distinction" as long as you bring food.

It still depends on your field. Some aren't as GPA obsessed as others. While the top top schools in any field will have plenty of applicants with perfect 4.0s, most seem to be more interested in your fit with the program. My grad GPA wasn't stellar, but it seems like my profile makes me a much stronger prospect for poli sci phd programs than I ever was for econ ones. It really is your overall profile and ad coms seem to know which schools are known for grade inflation and which are tougher.

Dibs on "Commodore"! What's worse is that our internet usage at work is obsessively tracked, so I can't even check my personal email, let alone go to the status sites.

Speaking as someone who currently works as an economist, the housing market is expected to bottom out in the 3rd quarter of 2008 in most areas. Incidentally, this is exactly when we will be heading off to our respective programs. Certain areas are not seeing any significant drop in prices. Generally these are the obvious places like big cities where housing is always in high demand. Towns with a heavy industrial (specifically non-durables) or agricultural base will see the largest decline in home prices, as those industries will suffer due to energy prices and weak consumer spending. I'm going to stop now. I'm not at work and don't have to be there til 8:30

Barnes and Noble cafes (or really just any places with coffee and space to study) are pretty much singles clubs for nerds. I make my own white boards out of a sheet of copy paper and one of those heatless laminating sheets and bring those with me to work through equations with dry erase markers. You'd be surprised how many "tutoring sessions" get set up when ladies see you working through a multivariate based econ problem in public. It also helps if you can talk intelligently about wine and fair trade anything.

I actually got the academic coordinator of the school in question to allow just that. My recommender is going to send both versions tomorrow. At this point, I would've been willing to get myself fired for skipping work to drive the materials to her myself and then escort the letter to its final destination in person. I still have no answer about why their deadline is suddenly the 15th of January rather than the 1st of February. I guess it's just their prerogative to be arbitrary.

I just found out that my final recommender never sent her letter to one of my top choice schools. The school sent me an email Friday saying that I needed to have it in by the 15th of January in order to be considered for full funding. What's more, the school's website says the funding deadline is the 1st of February. This is the same recommender who agreed in September to write these letters, yet missed a Dec. 3 deadline and barely made a number of mid-December deadlines. I pride myself on being a very patient person, but she has stolen my time and with it, my sunny disposition. My other two recommenders responded to requests within 24 hours. This last prof was my advisor and I'm told she wrote a phenomenal letter for me to attend the program from which I just received an MA. What can I really do, aside from just shake my fist in the direction of my undergrad and write polite emails?

Well, if you do end up at West Chester University, I can tell you that it's really a beautiful town. I currently work as an Economist there and commute from a town a bit North and West of Philly.

Happy New Year everyone. Best of luck to you all, as we now enter the months where we could feasibly begin to hear back.

Hahaha. I can just imagine the GRE turning into the academic version of the "combine", where students will showcase their verbal, quantitative, analytical, and 40 meter run skills. The draft could be televised on the Discovery Channel. What's more, given the wide demographic appeal of grad school, it could be shown in as many countries as the Olympics. "Welcome to day two of the graduate combine, as we enter the opening round of the computer use competition. Stepping up to the PC is John Doe from the University of Somewhere, placing his coffee mug deftly to the side of the monitor away from the mouse. He powers on the computer and comes to the log in screen. What's this?? He has mistyped his password! Surely this will cost him a half-point deduction. He corrects his error and the OS loads. Doe opens GAUSS and starts programming. This is truly a bold move, as few in the field are still using this now archaic program. Perhaps he is trying to impress the judges with his ability to navigate an obtuse user interface, but this is a real gamble, as working in GAUSS is much slower than in other programs. Doe is a former silver medalist from the Turino Nerdlympics and is clearly falling back to his comfort zone. Crunch time approaches now and the official checks his watch. OH, and look at this! Doe has stood up and walked confidently away from the desk. What is he doing?? He is... yes, he is cooking a bowl of Ramen! John Cup-o-noodles Doe has just pulled off a truly professional move. TWEEEEEEEEEEET!! That's it! Time is called. It's now in the hands of the judges. We'd like to take this moment to thank our sponsor: Mudder's Milk. Mudder's Milk: all the protein, vitamins, and carbs of your grandma's best turkey dinner, plus 15% alcohol. And the judges are ready. All scores out of 6.0. Here we go: 5.5, 5.5, 5.0, 5.5, 4.5, and from the French judge 2.0, for a combined score of 28. Not good. 28 out of 36 will not even put him on the podium. Such a disappointment. The French judge was clearly displeased with Doe's arrogance in cooking Ramen during a computer event. After this, Doe may have played himself out of the first round of the draft. We'll have to see how the rest of the day carries out. From ESPN studios, this is Nerdcenter.

I got a real job type job (analyst with a research firm), so I no longer have time to freak out about the wait. There's nothing like starting a job by taking over someone else's overdue assignments to take your mind off admissions related stress. It brings back memories of my brother punching me in the arm to get me to stop thinking about a sprained ankle.

When I was applying to econ programs a few years ago, ETS sent me someone else's scores. I called every school to which I applied, because the guy's scores I got were in the 2nd and 5th percentiles for verbal and quantitative, respectively, with a 1.0 in the writing section. Fortunately, all of the schools got the right scores, it was just the report to me, that was off.

Wooo! We've survived a month since I started this topic. That's one month closer to realizing the dream. My last recommender finally submitted letters on my behalf yesterday... three days before the deadline... after having agreed to do it in September. Now I can sit back and enjoy freedom... until Monday when I start exile in the private sector.

We economists got it, and we're basically applied mathematicians who occasionally use letters for things other than variables. hahaha.

I suppose it depends on your area of research, just how much the MA in religion might help, but given the connection between German history/literature and the Church, I would have to say it's a rather large point in your favor. Maybe someone more familiar with GRE scores/GPA targets for German programs could be more helpful. Viel Gluck!

I don't think the raw numbers get much better than yours, so I'm sure you will get in somewhere quite nice. It makes me glad that I'm not competing against you hahaha.

I suppose I should probably mention that I know for a fact that professors monitor forums like this during the admissions process, so be careful just how much and what you say about yourselves and the programs to which you are applying. When I started the grad program I was in last year, one of my professors asked me if I was (insert name I used to use on testmagic a couple of years ago).

I'm gonna have to take back what I said about the Ivy's and placement. My info was based on rankings presented to me by a professor at a recruiting event, but now that I'm searching online, I can't find them. The rankings that I do find online, however, are curiously inconsistent and significantly contradict what I was given. Econ rankings have some level of variation, but nothing like what I'm seeing in Poli Sci departments.

While the name "Miami" still conjures images of Florida, rather than Ohio, don't underestimate the quality of the university. That's one of the interesting things about the transition that's going on right now in Political Science. Over the last ten years or so, there has been an increasing emphasis on game theory and empirical methods. The schools that are embracing this, publishing and teaching those methods to their grad students, and requiring a math background in their admits are taking a major step up. Meanwhile, traditional powerhouse programs that aren't adapting quickly are having more and more trouble placing their PhD's in academia. If you look at rankings in placement, you'd be surprised how many of the ivy's don't even make the top 20. Until I started researching various programs, I vastly underestimated Florida State. But not only do they have amazing facilities, very friendly faculty, and a winter climate you can't beat lol; they also have an excellent placement record. It would be interesting to see if there's a correlation between quantitative focus of a program and that program's placement record.

15 apps in the mail. Now what do I do with myself for the next two (possible) to four (more likely) months? Bears have it easy. They can just hibernate until acceptance season, AKA Spring. Ways you know you've spent way too much time on grad school applications: - You have ETS' Pittsburgh address for score reports memorized. - You have records of your application fee payments in both alphabetical and chronological order. - You stop trusting Microsoft Word's spell checking feature and double check using a dictionary, just to make sure that a spelling error won't cause your rejection. - Every time you meet someone new, you feel obliged to provide a CV, personal statement, and writing sample. - You have fretted over which GRE departmental code to use when a given department's name doesn't match anything that ETS lists. - You feel no pity for your friends going into the real world who have to wait a whole week to hear back after an interview. - You start looking at housing and transportation options for various schools, but don't want to read any potential professor's articles, because that would be "jinxing it". - You feel torn when two schools to which you've applied play each other in sports. - You feel the need to apologize to your friends for applying to your undergraduate school's rival for grad school. - You have developed a true hatred for people who post fake admissions results on forums like this, but still rest assured, knowing that they will be reincarnated as dung beetles in their next lives. - You remember, with a chuckle, how "stressful" it was to fill out three college applications as a high school senior. - You've never actually been through the process before, but feel qualified to answer people's questions about the quality of their profiles and ability to gain acceptance to top programs. - You look at your monthly budget and realize that you've spent more on app fees and GRE score reports than on rent and food combined. - You've realized that if you spent all of the time that you spent on applications instead watching television, that you could have watched the entire (new) Battlestar Galactica series on DVD. (Additionally, you realize that your impatience for your admissions decisions is even greater than that for what could be the final season of Battlestar Galactica) - You watch movies like "A Beautiful Mind" and wonder what Dr. Nash would have scored on today's GRE. - You can spit out admissions statistics for various programs, Rainman style, but still have no clue how good a shot you have at getting in yourself. - You make lists like this to keep from going crazy, even though the waiting has just started. Dang. It's still November.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what is known as a safe school, but one after which it is still possible to get a job.