pcoj

Thank you all for your advice. I fully expect that I will need to do coursework in residence and take comps again. It will be worth it because no faculty member at my current institution is able to speak to my work. I have actually gotten more informed / more useful feedback on my work in 3 minutes from panel discussants than I was ever able to get from faculty who are still in my department. Regarding the professor who supervised my dissertation proposal, I'm not entirely sure that he's leaving "for good reasons." He was just tenured last year, but word around the department is that he has decided to leave academia. (I can't imagine why someone would do that after just having gone through the tenure review process and coming out an assoc., so I'm sure there's more to the story.) Any further insights will be appreciated.

I finished my MA in poli sci at a masters institution, and applied broadly to doctoral programs. I was accepted into two top-30 departments, but accepted placement at a much lower ranked program due to a multi-year fellowship offer. I am now one year into the program here, and I want out. This school does not place its candidates well, and the only two faculty members who do work in either my substantive or methodological areas are leaving the department. I have a completed a dissertation prospectus under the advice of one of these two, but because he no longer holds a faculty appointment in the department, I am left with no suitable candidates for chair, or even for readers. I plan to apply to the same two programs that accepted me for 2011 admission, as well as several others. Will the fact that I chose to accept an offer from a school that is so poorly regarded be counted against me? Do top departments generally reject applicants who have done post-MA work? If not, will these schools be looking for letters from my MA institution (where I conducted research with professors and wrote and defended my thesis) or from my current Ph.D. program (where I have only taken classes). I appreciate any advice you may be able to provide.