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Ditto what Max Power said. Feel free to post or PM me anytime, I'll be around.

Turning down offers from Yale, Vanderbilt, and Duke. (Also accepting Stanford's offer).

Did anybody go to the Duke visit? Anything to report? I wasn't able to go but am still considering it, so I'd love to know the impression anyone got from the department.

I have turned down offers from UNC-Chapel Hill, Wisconsin-Madison, and Texas A&M. My subfield is American and all of those offers were funded.

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I actually did adhere to the 500 word limit for the one school that requested it, and I got in, so it can be done. Mine looked like this: I wish to pursue an academic career researching public opinion and mass political behavior in American Politics. My current research interests include identifying which characteristics lead individuals to behave in ways that better correspond to elite behavior. I have been able to do research in this area in the context of a senior thesis under the direction of Professor X. In this paper, I show that issue public membership has become a strong and statistically significant predictor of ideological extremity, which indicates that members of issue publics have better mirrored elite trends in ideological polarization than the rest of the mass public. I am also interested in how interactions between elites and the electorate have compounded polarization over time. I recently explored this interest in a paper for a course on the American Congress, in which I found that while mean ideological position of the electorate is predictive of a Senator’s ideological position on the DW-Nominate scale, electoral polarization also has a positive and statistically significant effect on the extremity on the Senator’s DW-Nominate score. In addition to developing my research interests, my undergraduate education has afforded me the opportunity to acquire skills and experience which will assist in my pursuit of graduate study. For instance, my thesis has been a useful exercise in framing a research question, independently seeking out and reading the relevant existing literature, formulating hypotheses, and testing these hypotheses using quantitative analysis. I am also currently working as a research assistant for Professors X and X. This project has primarily fostered content analysis skills, but upcoming assignments will consist of collaborating with other research assistants on an essay and annotated bibliography. Finally, several courses I have taken, such as Applied Quantitative Methods, have allowed me to acquire skills in quantitative analysis and become comfortable using Stata software. I would like to attend University X to obtain my Ph.D. for several reasons. Perhaps most importantly, I feel my research interests fit well with those of a number of faculty members. Specifically, I believe I would benefit from the tutelage of both Dr. X and Dr. X, given their extensive work on public opinion. The presence of these faculty members, in addition to others, makes me confident that I could build a dissertation committee to help me become a well-rounded scholar on the study of public opinion and mass behavior. Furthermore, I feel the department’s emphasis on developing teaching as well as research skills will help me become a professor who succeeds both in research and in the classroom. After completion of the Ph.D., I intend to pursue a career in academia. I aim to be productive in my graduate work in order to obtain a tenure-track position at a highly regarded research university, which will provide me with the opportunity to teach some of the nation’s top students as well as engage in a research agenda with access to the resources necessary for that work.

I do think that the importance of fit varies not only by department, but also based on the individual applying. I have pretty mainstream research interests (public opinion and behavior and the connection between the masses & elites), which I think lessened how much fit mattered in evaluating my application. There were any number of professors I could conceivably work with, especially at the bigger departments, so even if the people I mentioned in my SOP are unable to take on new students or leave for whatever reason, I'll have plenty of reasonable fallback options. For instance, in the last 2 weeks I've had about 5 professors at Stanford mentioned to me by faculty here based on my interests--none of whom are people I listed I'd want to work with. I think people with more interesting and specific research interests are more likely to be admitted or rejected on the basis of fit. Just my two cents added to the fit debate.

Yep--it was made clear to me that they have the authority to match other offers. I was very taken aback by the willingness to volunteer that information.

Beat me to it! I didn't know much about changes in other fields. I've had professors criticize Vandy's attitude toward getting people with money, but I think it's one of the ways to attract the right people (I'm not sure why they think I'm a right person, but that's beside the point). By comparison, I think Wisconsin is seriously hurt in terms of getting the best grad students because they aren't very competitive with funding.

I think Vanderbilt is making moves in American Politics at least. Obviously there were a lot of issues in the department in semi-recent years, but they're bringing in some great scholars and are recruiting hard for the grad students they want.

I would update them, but I would guess that they will find a way to contact you if they can't reach you by phone, especially with an international number.

Great to know; where'd you find this information?

I posted earlier, but I'll claim one.

For what it's worth, I don't think the Yale posts are necessarily trolls. I got am email from a POI saying I should expect a formal offer of admission soon. I also never had an interview, which is quite frankly confusing.

Valid point. However, I refuse to make any major decisions until after visiting or AT LEAST having funding information. This is going to be a long couple of months of pro-con lists. However, I admit that I have no room to complain/whine. Forgive me?