Bdeniso

I have 0 idea about adcoms, but I have heard that this can sometimes hurt in hiring.

Late Feb, early march for me at least.

Best thing to do is call the graduate admissions office or whoever handles the online application. This way they know your situation and may be able to let the department know before they send it to them.

you are interested in Civ Mil relations - Duke should be on your list as well. Very well, just the perceptions I have heard, apoligies for misrepresenting.

As a security studies person, you should look at Chicago, Georgetown, George Washington, and WashU. In addition, all of these places are very open to policy interests so that should be helful. Side note, I wouldn't call Rochester too quanty. They do formal models, which is slightly different than quant. Quant usually refers to statsitics. Now, if you want to do qualitative work, some of those schools you list may not be too open to qualitative methods, so just be clear what you are wanting.

I was also going to link this today but from a different blog http://politicalviolenceataglance.org . As a side note, many should follow these blogs to keep track about the current scholarly agendas, debates, and tips often discussed.

Can't help much, but I know of gender scholars in American, Comp, and IR, so it might help to know which subfield you would like to focus in, because even if you think gender issues cut across the subfields, most departments will want you to be in at least one nominally.

I have no idea about American (IR sorry) but some good advice is only apply to schools you could see yourself at, safety school serve no purpose for a PhD. You should figure out the top programs for your interests and apply to any you feel you could do well at. Hope it all works out!

I think it is important for you to decide what you would like to do and move from there. Honestly, I think the best Sec Studies work is done with mixed methods, but all departments are different. And don't let what you think of as good rankings sway you. For example, some departments have high or low total rankings, but specifically in sec studies or latin america comparative etc... they are very good. Unless you know that there is someone there who would help and encourage you at that school, it is not worth going. Don't just apply to schools based on tiers but ones you know you could do the work you want to do and have faculty who would be open to it. Of those you list, Brandeis sounds good for what you want but A&M I am not sure about for your interests. For the others I know nothing about them. Do your research and then make a list!

GT and GW would be good choices I agree. In terms of total poli sci many of those listed are rated over Georgetown. They are not elite schools for Poli Sci Phd like applying for undergrad would be. Do you have any idea what type of methodology you want to use? That would also determine some other places you may want to apply. For example you wouldnt apply to UCSD if you hated game theory and if you wanted to do game theory you wouldnt want to go to Brandeis. The key is to find what you want to do and schools that will help you with that. Honestly, off the top of my head Ohio State would be a good place as they are doing some great stuff on foreign policy decision making, also if you are interested in security studies Notre Dame would be a great place to go as well. As for A&M, if you want to do qualitative, it would be a bad choice, but if you like quant and game theory, it would be good, but they don't do much in security studies per se. The rest of the schools you listed I have no idea about because they did not have a security studies program I was interested in when applying. Hope that helps.

All I have to say is that don't assume CHYMPS are the best programs for what you want to do. UC Berkely, Michigan, U Chicago all are top tier for different things. Since I really don't know more I can't say what is the best but I feel it would be folly to think that those schools are the best just because of reputation and not look at what the poli sci departments are known for and are best at.

I dont know about American, but I know that places like Ohio State are doing things on decision making including looking at fMRI scans and seeing how the brain reacts when making political decisions. So there are places out there doing things you seem to be interested in.

If you want Qual IR, I am not sure those are the only/best schools to be looking at. Also with the GRE, your math may in fact be higher than your verbal, but almost everyones is so that would make the percentiles different. For example, you could have a 750 math and 700 verbal, but that 700 verbal would probably be in a higher percentile. Just an FYI,

I dont know about other think tanks but I do have some good knowledge about RAND. You can get a job at RAND with just a Master's, but it will be only for three years and you won't have any chance to move up, run your own studies, and just will basically be a RA the whole time. You need a PhD to be a full researcher at RAND. However, another aspect to this is that you have to find people to fund studies so you don't just get to right about what you want, but instead have to find funding from different agencies to pay for your studies, and often they won't have the exact interests in studying what you want. There is also some bias I feel in the organization as it initally was developed for the Air Force and most their studies (at least in the Project Air Force side) just come down to "Air Power is Awesome". That being said, I do know a few people who have worked there as both RA's and full researchers, some love it some hate it so it depends on the person. Hope this helps!

That is one experience. I know at my undergrad theory classes were not highly demanded, and at Notre Dame it seemed that Theory students had to TA IR classes because there were more studented in IR than theory. That said, I think there may be more diversity in theory classes with just less students in them.