MA in PolSci - Which school?

[serret1993]

Hi!

I am a recent graduate with a BA in Political Science and International relations from a university outside the US.

I applied and have been admitted to NYU Politics MA, George Washington University Political Science MA, and CUNY Political Science MA. What would be your comments for these programs? 

1. I aim for an academic career. I probably am going to choose Comparative Politics as my sub-field. I do not particularly like quantitative methods but feel obliged to learn them so that I can have a stronger PhD application. CUNY seems to be heavily qualitative, and NYU seems to be very quantitative. Not sure about GWU. 

3. I want to have easy access to professors as an MA student - I've heard that master's courses at NYU are given by adjunct fac., and that since CUNY is a public university reaching professors can be a bit of a challenge. GWU sounds better at this because master's and doctoral students are taking the same courses.

4. Currently I live in a lively city that has lots of social opportunities. I enjoy being stimulated by my environment, and I'm sure NYC will provide that. What about DC? This question may seem irrelevant to many but I used to live in a relatively populated Northern European city, and got very depressed... 

Edited April 4, 2018 by serret1993

[MrsPhD]

I think you should have applied to more specific MA rather than a general political science MA. If you want to do comparative, something regional or topical would have been better. That said, the goal of the MA at this point (given your options), is to get letters of recommendation. It will be hard to get a letter if the MA is only one year. I have read the worst type of letter of recommendation (e.g. I have known X for 2 months. X participates in class. I cannot say anything else about X.) If GWU allows you to attend classes with PhD that is better; but DC is super expensive, you will have to wait until 2019 to apply for PhD (if you manage to get RA work so that professors can write you good letters, but they have PhD students to advisor and work with). 

Can't you do an MA in your own country and apply for PhD directly the next round? I guess I am not sure why you want to spend so much money (tuition + cost of living) to do an MA that is not really going to give you that much of an advantage. The best letters are the ones in which a professor mentions how you were an RA and did X and Y, and that you know about your research agenda. Having quantitative background or some indication that you will work through the courses (instead of whining) is a necessary.  For CP, depending on your region of interest, language could be important and even some type of fieldwork/research experience in your region or topic of interest (e.g. World Bank).

 

[diter91]

Choose whichever program that's offering to fund you.

If you have more than one funded offer, I agree with @MrsPhD that your goal should be to get strong letters of recommendation. I went to a smaller department to do a one-year MA for this reason and I have no regrets. 

If none offering you money (assuming money matters in your case), I would consider doing another round of applications.

Edited April 4, 2018 by diter91

[serret1993]

Thanks for your answers!

Money is not an issue at the moment, I have received the Fulbright Scholarship for master's. The Fulbright Commission is very strict in terms of application - I could only apply to terminal PolSci master's programs (which are very few in the US, most universities have only PhD programs), and the programs I'm applying to had to be general political science, and not regional studies. So, I didn't have much choice. 

P.S.: These three programs are two years.

[serret1993]

No comments anyone?

[MrsPhD]

4 hours ago, serret1993 said:

Thanks for your answers!

Money is not an issue at the moment, I have received the Fulbright Scholarship for master's. The Fulbright Commission is very strict in terms of application - I could only apply to terminal PolSci master's programs (which are very few in the US, most universities have only PhD programs), and the programs I'm applying to had to be general political science, and not regional studies. So, I didn't have much choice. 

P.S.: These three programs are two years.

Actually, Fulbright does allow you to apply for PhD. They just pay for the Masters and then, the department would pay the rest. I have several friends who had Fulbright and they applied for the PhD, Fulbright covered 1 or 2 years, and then the department paid for the rest. Others got more funding through the department and declined Fulbright.

You should also be careful because in some countries Fulbright does not cover 100% of tuition for private universities because they prefer that you go to a public university. I had friends at Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton who had to get loans or additional fellowships to be able to cover all the tuition.

Did you know that with Fulbright you will get a J1 visa which means that you will have a 2 year residency requirement? 

 

 

 

[serret1993]

No they don't, not in my home country. Fulbright terms and conditions change according to the country, each country has a different arrangement. Mine required me to apply to a terminal master's, and I did so. There were others who applied to the PhD scholarship initoally, which is also given for two years, but I chose the masters scholarship. So, these two are different.

They don't have any preferences for the type of school (public or private), but they only give 50k at maximum, thankfully I received tuition remissions so I do not have any problem in this case.

Thanks for your answer but I know the terms and conditions of my scholarship. In the end, it was I who read all the documents, discussed the terms with the commission, and put my signature eventually. Here, I am asking about the schools, and not my situation

[guest56436]

Go to the program where you can get into Ph.D. level seminars. I've heard that's not the case at NYU, but I don't know for sure. You may also want to use this opportunity to 'tech up' as much as possible; NYU might be better for this (all depends on the program structure really). 

You should try and take at the bare minimum a graduate/Ph.D. level stats sequence. Or maybe formal modelling instead. 

[serret1993]

Thanks for the comment!

Yup, NYU offers a separate track to MA students, and the courses are given by adjunct faculty. And yes they have looooots of stats or formal modelling courses, but GW is not bad either. I feel like everything indicates that I should go to GW

[Sartori]

One possible benefit of GW is that your tuition/scholarship is "portable" among the Consortium universities. I'm a Georgetown student but take methods at GW. In principle you could take stats/methods classes anywhere in the Consortium. And there are a lot of them. The catch is that you need instructor permission / it can take time to get to know people to get instructor permission / it's hard to do a coherent stats "sequence" in two semesters. If this is something you're interested in, Pm me and we can discuss ways to navigate the universe of DC-area stats options! 

Personally I think DC is great, conditional on having enough money for yuppie-level rent and yuppie-level cost of living.