Canadianpolsci

I am going to learn to brake dance. Key skill for department mixers. A different kind of affirmative action. sababa

I will be doing a PhD in political science next year, but I have friends who went to SAIS, and a friend who has been accepted to KSG-Harvard. It occurs to me, as I am in contact with the SAIS grads now looking for jobs, that many people who do a MPP or M.A., etc., end up applying for jobs they did not envision when they entered the school. I have, therefore, a general question: if the MPP/MA is not for an absolutely clear career path, wouldn't Princeton and KSG beat SAIS and Georgetown, because of name recognition and cache? Chicago and Berkeley are also good schools, but not ranked quite as high as the four I listed first (or that was my impression). Georgetown and SAIS are usually the top to in rank for IR and policy issues. But I told my friend: if you get Harvard or Princeton, remember the name counts ALOT. Was my advice reasonable? That the name, the ivy league name, is in the long run very important as employers who don't know so much about the rankings see the ivy league name as the most solid of all basic credentials, etc... ?

My advice: LTRs either always last and never work, or they work but never last. Confused? You shouldn't be. Advice from a graduate admissions blog on your relationship, from people you never met, is bound to help you. My girlfriend and I have been in a long term relationship for 10 years. We have never met. But via her fan club mail address, Britney and I stay in touch. I fear sometimes I am just dating a woman (or man?) paid to write back to adoring fans. But even that is ok. What is the matter with lip-synced emotion? People stopped liking Milli Vanilli when they found out those two metrosexual 80s icons were faking. I still liked the music. An older, less lamo, black man was singing all their songs. But so what, it was the same stuff. This is how I feel about my correspondence with Britney. Good luck in grad school. If s/he dumps you, well, don't despair. One things for sure, you live in a college town, or a town with a college. Or a city, a big city. And you can get over the despair these blog posts. I did (to hell with you Britney. I see that purple forwarded-text email. I can see I'm not the only one...) Remember but Groucho Marx said -- he was an expert on grad school: "There are two secrets in this life -- hard work, and honesty. If you can fake both, you've pretty much got it made."

Embark emailed me. They actually offered me a job spam emailing millions of others. They read my many posts on this forum, liked what they saw, and signed me up. Next time you get an email with this phrasing: "Are you excited to go, hopefully, to a school near the top of your list with OK funding and where your spouse can get a job? Embark can help you do so effectively. Ready to get accepted or rejected with just one click? Ready to bite your nails? Hate the GRE? Embark is here!" not.

The verbal score is a touch low, just a touch. 680 would be fine, 700 just fine. The quant score. is great. I don't think your GREs hurt you. They were not the issue.

I appreciate the comments and advice, thanks. I think Harvard has a very serious edge placement-wise, in pol. science. That is what stands out. thanks again. and good luck to all.

OK gradcafe people. I need your help. I did really well with admissions, so I'm almost embarrassed to ask for advice about the following wonderful set of options. But still, I'm curious what people think. I want to study political theory with an emphasis on 19th century German thought, Rousseau, and early-modern thought. I have to choose between Harvard Government, and the Committee on Social Thought. Funding is good from both places and is more or less not the issue (there is a slight edge to Harvard, though). The main issue with Social Thought is it is not a traditional political science department, and my most likely goal is to apply to and hope to get a tenure track post as a pol. theorist in a political science department. There are wonderful people at Chicago, and, on the surface of it, a slightly better fit. But Harvard also has good people and fit. So, what do people think? I know it's hard to really give advice this specific, but I want to know what people think. Thanks in advance.

Toronto's political science department is excellent. York's is so-so, even by Canadian standards. York is a second rate school. Be warned.

the SOP jost posted was, again, way too personal. You inserted a poem (puke!). This is not the peace core. It is much closer to a cover letter for a job -- I mean, that is what you need to write.

I can confirm that my friend was admitted yesterday via email.

I will not give as detailed responses. I will just say that by far the largest problem with the statement is that it only very briefly describes the thesis you wrote, and then does not use that as a springboard to describe your FUTURE research project(s). What a strong statement needs from someone with an MA is a sort of mini thesis-proposal. You spend a lot of words saying you are interested in teaching, in culture, in travel. Buy ANYONE can say such things. Try to avoid saying things that are cliched like this. Teaching abroad is nice, but worth only, I think, 1-2 sentences tops. Put your research and your senior course/seminar learning, as well as your future research plans, in the center. This is academia not the peace core. Your SOP is not bad. But it is not great, in my opinion -- considering the many interesting things you have done, you could have presented it all better.

What incentive does he have not to? Besides, the advice he gave was pretty universal and well known to any graduate student currently on the job market.

I think that a short and polite email to each of the professors who you have been in close contact with, plus the department chair or contact, is in order. And that is all. Look, its a personal and professional decision, and these are professors, experienced in these matters. Tell them it was a tough decision. Thank them for the generous offer. And that's that. Don't lose sleep over it. No one else will.

Then: Toronto is without doubt the better option.

In IR I have no clue about McGill. For a long time (in the 1950s-80s) McGill was considered the, I quote, "Harvard of Canada." Even then this, I think, more an insult to Canada than a compliment to McGill. But the point was that McGill was a elite top school. Today, this is no longer the case. U of Toronto has, for at least 10 years now, been far and away the best school in Canada, the best school for science, the best political science grad program by far, has the best medical school, and the best law school. It is a large public university, so some students prefer other schools in Canada. And really smart students still like to go to McGill (undergrads, I mean). But as a general matter of reputation, McGill is not all that high and you better really carefully consider their placement rate (which I don't know much about). Also, you should know that McGill may place some Canadian grads in Canadian schools. Canadian schools still have a slight bent towards hiring Canadian citizens as professors. So be sure to factor this in. McGill has some interesting people in political theory. Other than that, I don't know of its IR program. What is more serious, perhaps, is that, as a Canadian and a graduate of the University of Toronto, I have never once heard McGill touted as a place to study IR, ever.