AmericanQuant

That depends. What sorts of methodologies are you interested in? If you're looking to be a super-quant, I'd say that the other CHYMPS departments are all more diverse in terms of their quantitative methods (read: statistics) training than Yale. If you want to do Qualitative work, that might be a different story.

No one will care about your 2 years out of school. I could imagine things you could do with those 2 years that might be a benefit, but just about anything else is value-neutral. I don't think you have to explain away what you were doing, just say you were a LSAT tutor on your resume and leave it at that. No need to explain your family situation or identify it as part-time. While it might explain a few things, I could also imagine it being viewed as a negative, as adcoms might see having a child as a drag on your productivity. People seem to think that one's GPA trend matters. My instinct would be that it's more compositional–they care about some grades than others. If your bad grades were in math and econ classes and your good grades were in english, that matters a lot more than when they happened. Of course, I don't have data to back up my theory, but I don't think anyone else on here does either. What is your quant and language background like? I think strengths in those areas can really help make up for an average GPA. As for whether you can get into the very top programs, it seems plausible, but it really does seem like the SoP is the most important piece. Being able to articulate an interesting idea and make an argument for how your research interests fit a few identified faculty at a particular program seems to be a big part of the game. If you can do that well, you will probably get in somewhere good. Also, the best piece of advice I was given was to only apply to the places I would be excited to go to. A lot of folks wait a year and re-apply after striking out the first round, so you can always apply to the top-tier places and then, if you get bounced, mix in some less competitive programs the next time around.

And even if you don't major in polisci, you should at least take enough polisci classes to know what you're getting into.

Stanford has a 2 course sequence in probability, math stats and generalized linear models that everyone has to take. I think there could be some concern on the adcom that someone with a weak quant background wouldn't be able to get through the sequence. But also, when I look at the results page, I don't see any Stanford admits with a quant score below 160. Though again, there's some reporting bias.

You guys are taking those FAQs too seriously! If you look up those scores in the GRE concordance tables, you'll notice that a 166V and a 155Q both map to a 700 on the old scale. My guess is that it used to say that you needed to have a 700 on both (which was a ridiculous rule of thumb), and then, when the scales changed, someone translated it to the new scale without giving further thought to whether those cutoffs made sense. No one really cares about anything but your quant score, BUT even if they did care about the verbal, a 166 is way too high to set as a minimum (though it could plausibly be the average verbal score for admits.) On the other hand, a 155 in quant is probably way too low. About 40% of all GRE test-takers score better than that on the quant section, so I'd be surprised if anyone in Stanford's incoming class had a 155. Indeed, Simon Jackman's 2004 PA paper on Stanford's admissions put the mean Q score for applicants at 680 (see p41). The only other believable official source on GRE scores for Poli Sci admissions that comes to mind is on the UCSD website. If the average admitted UCSD student has a 162Q, then it seems unlikely that 155 is useful either as any kind of a guide. A much better source of scores is the results page on the grad cafe. There might be some reporting bias but at least you get to see the distribution.

I can't really say what your particular course will be like. But I don't think jazzrap is exactly correct, formal modeling is more like real analysis than calculus.

Anyone want to claim the Harvard admit?

I don't want to bum you out or anything, but I think that Columbia is probably done admitting PhD students, at least until they start pulling people off of the waitlist. Based on correspondence from the department, it sounds like hotel rooms for their admitted student visit, which is only a week and a half away, have already been finalized.

Anyone want to make some predictions about the rest of the week? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Harvard and Princeton come out tomorrow.

Meh, It looks like POI's are the ones sending out emails, so they'll probably trickle out throughout the day. Could even be a Yale situation where POIs send out a few of the early emails, while others have to wait for official notice.

Claiming a Yale admit. Do any of you know when their open house is scheduled to take place?

I also haven't heard anything.

Was there a url associated with your decision?

Has anyone in American heard from Yale?

Have any of the Berkeley admits received any written correspondence (either by email or snail mail) from the department? I got calls from POIs, but am hesitant to book airline tickets without something in writing.

I'm in American. The fact that Sniderman called makes me think it's possible that they were just notifying Americanists, but I couldn't say for sure.

Did you contact them recently, or is that just a blanket statement they've made in the past?

On the one hand, the FAQ's on their website say early March. On the other, in 2010 and 2011, decisions came out ~17th.

I'm not a comparativist, but both my Americanist self and my theorist friend were on the same admit email, so I'd bet all of the admits heard at the same time. Also, to everyone else, check out the results board right now. So much green!

Couple of items: 1) I'm the American/Methods guy from the results page who got accepted to Berkeley. I was notified by the American arm of the committee, and I got the sense from the call that I was not the only applicant they were notifying. That shouldn't be taken as a guarantee that they notified other American applicants, but I find it likely. 2) Lame prediction time! I think Yale and Stanford will come out this week, with Harvard and Princeton slipping to next week.

Anyone want to claim one of the Michigan rejections? Seems strange that they would have sent out so few.

I opted against applying to Rochester this cycle, but I know that if I were considering going, it'd take a lot of persuasion to get my partner to come with!

With the caveat that I haven't actually been admitted anywhere, can you guys tell me a bit more about how visits for admitted students work? Does the department cover travel and hotel costs? Do they usually happen during the week or on a weekend? I mostly applied to CHYMPS, in case that's relevant. Also, does anyone have experience having partners join them on visits? She's not really interested in visiting the department, but it would be good to feel out where we might be moving to together. Will there time to explore the area? Thanks for your help and good luck to all the applicants! -Q

UCSD publishes good statistics about GRE and GPA. I assume they are for admitted students, but I'm not sure. http://polisci.ucsd.edu/grad/prospective-students/admissions-statistics.html

I'm a little surprised to hear that. I thought that Fowler, Hill (who I recognize is just an AP), Zheng and Jacobsen would all be good fits for me. Or do you know something about UCSD's program that I don't?