AmericanQuant

You ask them about their research, their relationship with students, culture of the department, etc. You share details about yourself like what your academic background and research interests are in the interest of eliciting responses that might inform you about whether you're a good fit with that prof or the dept. They'll also tell you about new people coming and going from the dept., recent students that had interests similar to yours and where they ended up, etc. This is not their first time doing this, so they'll lead the discussion (unless they're extremely socially awkward, which is somewhat rare.)

Publications in top economics journals are extremely well-respected in the profession and will do a lot to help your career. They might also help you transfer to a better program, if you're interested in doing that later on. I should also add that development in polisci has a lot of overlap with development economics, so top people in the field like Chris Blattman and Steve Haber often have joint appointments in econ or econ phd's.

Admits are welcome to pm me for info about Stanford. Just don't count on me to know things about theory.

Simon Jackman has a nice description of Stanford's system in his 2005 Political Analysis piece. http://jackman.stanford.edu/papers/pa04.pdf

Ya, I got called by Paul Sniderman last year on Valentine's day, at around noon eastern.

I can confirm that Yale did not do interviews for all of their admits last yr.

uh... I think the point of political beharior / psych is to identify universal truths about how humans work politically. Studying it in comparative perspective just sounds like a lot of extra work. In any case, I can't think of anyone that does work like that in poli sci.

Markdown can be a quick and easy way to get an academic website up and running. With a nice CSS theme, it can look pretty nice too.

A quick email thank you is appropriate for anyone that contacted you personally (i.e. not with a form letter). No need to send something to someplace that rejected you generically.

Someone signing just their first name is absolutely an invitation to call them by their first name. It's often a conscious choice to sign off using one's own name: they want you to use it. Honestly, I would do the same if anyone called me Mr. Quant. Calling Profs by their first name is a strong norm in a lot of departments, one that this person was trying to politely inform you of. On our orientation day, the department chair explicitly told us to call professors by their first names and it's a universally accepted norm. Any grad student that called someone Dr. Horrible or Prof. Farnsworth would be mocked and corrected. You got an invitation to be on a first name basis. Accept it!

If you're starting a PhD program, it's a really bad idea to ask this question. Professors want to train their PhD students to do work in academia: they basically get no prestige at all for producing industry people. If you want to move to industry, I'd suggest keeping it to yourself for as long as you can, so that you don't get abandoned by the faculty.

I basically agree with everything that's been said here, but to add a few things: 1) Don't be afraid of visiting at times other than the planned visit. Sometimes because you're traveling to schools far away or because you can only take so much time away from work/school/etc., it's convenient to hit up multiple schools on the same visit. Schools are used to this and should be able to set you up with accommodations and faculty meetings. It can be a little harder to talk with grad students or sit in on classes during those visits, but you should make an effort to do so anyway. If there's something or someone in particular, ask for/about it. The department wants you to come. 2) Talk to grad students. Because the dept schedules 1-on-1 time with professors, it can feel like that's the most important part of your visit. But you're going to spend a lot more time with other students (esp. those in younger cohorts) than the faculty, so you should make sure you feel like you'll fit in. Ask about money (but try not to be a jerk about it). Are they taking out loans? Do they have a lifestyle that would be acceptable to you? 3) Talk about the department culture with respect to student research. Are students up to their own thing? Is it a mentoring system, where you're (officially or unofficially) attached to one or two faculty members? 4) Talk about grad student research productivity. If you have the choice between two comparably ranked departments, but one has a culture of grad students publishing, go there. It'll help you get a job. 5) Ask about teaching. Especially at top programs, there are huge differences in the amount of teaching assistant work you'll have to do. Esp. if you want to end up at a research university, you need to have time to do research.

Department email. There's a committee meeting on the 13th.

You will absolutely positively not hear anything from Stanford until after February 13th.

To the best of my knowledge, all of the schools I listed posted TA requirements on their websites. Here's my recollection of them. In each term, you're only TA-ing one class. Berkeley: TA each semester years 2-5 (i.e. 8 semesters) Columbia: 6 semesters Princeton: "9 precepts." It's been described as like 3 semesters of TAing. Stanford: 5 quarters (though it can be reduced to 3 with RA or fellowship support) Yale: 4 semesters (years 3 and 4) This was just what I remember. YMMV.

Their is no doubt in my mind that an undergraduate education in economics would offer superior preparation for a poli sci phd (unless you're doing political theory) than a degree in political science, all else being equal. For whatever reason, undergraduate political science involves much less quantitive reasoning and formal theorizing than economics. Since these are the bread and butter of modern political science, it's better to have been exposed to them. Another approach would be to pair a very quantitative field like math, computer science or one of the physical sciences with a political science degree. I've found that the folks with less of a quantitative background struggle relative to those that do. Even if you're doing theory, most programs require you to take some methods courses. If you're hopeless with math, you'll have some problems there.

I think the committee will only read 3, so choosing which three letters they read increases your chances that they're good letters. Also, most schools only let you submit 3.

First, there are large differences in the costs of living among those programs that need to be taken into account. Of the 5, Yale's seems the most generous, but if you don't want to live in New Haven, you might not find the $$ persuasive. I am confident that one could live on all of the stipends, but I think the culture of consumption in Berkeley or Manhattan might make you want to spend more than if you're living a less urban existence at Princeton, Yale or Stanford. Given that Columbia and Berkeley also have lower stipends, one might be more hesitant to go there, especially if one doesn't have savings or parents to fall back on. Everyone I know at the school I chose (one of PSY) feels fine with their finances and lives comfortably, but I still think stipend should play some role in your choice.

My understanding is that grad students get half of the full-time-equivalent GSI salary (~$17k), plus additional money from the research funds of the American faculty to make Berkeley more competitive.

Here's a summary of my 2013 offers: Berkeley 25k + 3k for 4 summers Columbia 24.5k + 3k for 4 summers Stanford 29k + 3500 for 2 summers Yale 28k + summer funding (I don't remember details) Princeton 28k + 2k for working on a project of "mutual interest" for the first 2 years.

No one will care that you're not a PoliSci major. It's possible that most of the people in my top-6 program were not political science majors.

This is sort off-topic for this thread, but in polisci, we usually talk about a top 5 rather than a top 6. Berkeley is just as good as (and in American, probably better than) Yale and Michigan. Secondly, student in question has a fellowship from Harvard (which he declined) on his transcript. He also turned down Stanford.

Really? Who?

I doubt anyone will care about your writing sample at all, but they definitely won't care who you was teaching you when you wrote it. As for letters, I'd really suggest limiting them to 3.

I share Peter's concerns about focusing solely on theory, it's definitely not a field with a lot of jobs. If that's what you want to do, however, Princeton's Politics department will basically let you do only theory for 5 years. I don't think that's particularly wise, but if that's what you're gonna do, you can't do much better than Princeton.