Soshiant

If you have funding then you should definately take it! GW actually has great faculty and a very respectable reputation in policy circles.

I assume from the two schools that you want to work in critical theory/critical race and pos-colonial theory for which both schools obv have many people you can work with. They are very comparable places as far as theory but maybe UCLA is a tad better, However although within the subfield they are quite similar, I think you should also look at overall departmental philosophy toward Theory. I know that UCLA and UCSD both focus so much on quant methods and core training that some theorists complain that they really cant delve into the material as much as they would like while they are taking coursework so that a PhD takes more than 6 years to complete simply because they dont have as strong foundation as they would like (and you would get at a more qual dept such as Northwestern). So my advice is to see which dept as a whole is more congenial to the study of theory and this prob goes to your personal impression. If you find the two dept to be on par on this point, then I would go to UCLA because it has a better location, weather, etc and you are gonna be stuck with your decision for the next 5-7 years. Good luck!

I think it would be very helpful if you shared what the two schools actually are. so we can discuss our impressions of their trajectories down the road. Its hard to give productive advice using abstractions.

Just accepted my fully funded offer to Georgetown for theory! The package is 11000 per semester for 5 years in addition to tuition and health insurance! Moving back to DC in the fall.

Sorry I thought I was on the 2011-2012 topic!

Its funny but this is the very reason Chicago was my first choice!!! Because of its culture of standing up for the theoretical and the normative! I dont say this because I have anything against math and the quant stuff (game theory is great) but I deeply believe that the study of politics Should be about the big picture and Qualitative analysis first and foremost. Do you happen to know what kind of theory the faculty are partial to though? you mentioned feminist theory? Do they believe in a plurality or like a specific tradition like critical or analytic/liberal? On another note, as a former SAISer I have to say Mearsheimer Is awsome!

I'm also waitlisted for funding at georgetown. What's your subfield?

I got to say I completely agree with Bdeniso. I find the direction of polisci in the US away from qualitative and textual inquiry to be unproductive in the long run and will hinder asking and answering of macro questions. I talked to a chair at Georgetown (which is where Im probably going come Fall) who told me that senior faculty at Georgetown have decided to emulate places like Cambridge and Oxford and reintroduce textual/interpretive study of politics as they rebuild the program which is frankly very encouraging to me. Chicago to me still has that sense of intellectualism that really sets it apart from other top places (Kolja- I would have loved to go there had i been accepted but my research interests were too specific). I do want to reiterate that I certainly value the importance of Game theory in IR and Quant methods in American and pol econ but I feel like there is an overexaggeration of the role of quant in study of politics to make the discipline seem more "scientific"! What do you guys think of Princeton and its direction?

Summarizing the programs in a few sentences sounds like a very productive exercise! What's everyone's impression of Chicago, Princeton, and Georgetown?