Political Science - Fall 2011 Cycle

[adaptations]

Hey, congratulations. If I remember correctly, you've had a topsy turvy couple of years with apps, no? So it must be a relief to have such a breakthrough!

Two years ago I had some pretty good results, but personal reasons kept me from enrolling. It was hard to give up offers after working so hard to get them, but now everything is in order and I'm very eager to get back to school.

[interista]

Two years ago I had some pretty good results, but personal reasons kept me from enrolling. It was hard to give up offers after working so hard to get them, but now everything is in order and I'm very eager to get back to school.

Same here. Got into a solid program two years ago, turned it down because I wasn't sure if I wanted to do political science. Just got word as of 1:11 am that I'm in at UVa for political theory (I do the whole analytic liberal-democratic thing, so I'm pretty stoked...UVa is a great fit). I think they're gradually notifying admits; someone got in last week, and I think they'll be sending out more letters throughout the next several weeks.

[Calmein]

I applied to 11 schools, but UCLA was my top choice and I haven't heard anything. I think I need a drink...

[polisciphd]

Definitely not true, I received a very competitive offer.

UIUC has reduced the size of our cohorts, from 15-20 people (a couple of years ago) to 8-9, but everyone admitted still gets the same amount of funding as before.

[UVaSpades]

Same here. Got into a solid program two years ago, turned it down because I wasn't sure if I wanted to do political science. Just got word as of 1:11 am that I'm in at UVa for political theory (I do the whole analytic liberal-democratic thing, so I'm pretty stoked...UVa is a great fit). I think they're gradually notifying admits; someone got in last week, and I think they'll be sending out more letters throughout the next several weeks.

Congrats! Out of curiosity, did you get an e-mail from a prof or from the department? I'm still waiting on hearing from UVa, and their online thing still has my app at submitted.

[sunseeker]

I applied to 11 schools, but UCLA was my top choice and I haven't heard anything. I think I need a drink...

Calmein, I heard that UCLA is not done with admitting (a friend has had unofficial news (not from faculty member) of acceptance, but no email yet). Crossing fingers for you.

[firefly28]

Got the rejection letter from Pitt today. I'll check in with my contacts for confirmation, but my guess is that I wasn't a great fit for the program--my interest isn't one of the major fields at Pitt. So, I am accepted at one, rejected at another. 3 more to go.

[interista]

Congrats! Out of curiosity, did you get an e-mail from a prof or from the department? I'm still waiting on hearing from UVa, and their online thing still has my app at submitted.

Email from the department. Called them today to confirm; they said they made three nominations to the Jefferson Scholars fellowship and I was one of them. I don't know when the remainder of the offers will be sent out. I think they just gave us early notice since they're putting us up in Charlottesville in a few weeks (we apparently have to give a presentation in front of a panel, after which they'll select the recipients of the scholarship).

[JanuaryHymn]

Would anyone like to claim those Duke acceptances? Although I don't think they may be out of sync with the admissions patterns of previous years, I'm just curious about their authenticity since the program has thematic subfields (i.e. there is no comparative, like two of the three results submissions maintain)

[animadversion]

Just came home after a looong day in the university and then got the link to the admissions letter to Duke!! I'm shellshocked, Duke is one of my top choice :-)!!!

[2011]

Would anyone like to claim those Duke acceptances? Although I don't think they may be out of sync with the admissions patterns of previous years, I'm just curious about their authenticity since the program has thematic subfields (i.e. there is no comparative, like two of the three results submissions maintain)

Didn't post an acceptance, but definitely received one. PT. Ecstatic! 1/1

[secretly_yes]

I applied to nine schools (9 is my lucky number) but after reading all these postings from people to applied to more than a dozen schools, I am nervous about my decision to stop at 9. Maybe I should apply to more? If I don't get in this year I am not sure whether I would try again...

[firefly28]

I applied to nine schools (9 is my lucky number) but after reading all these postings from people to applied to more than a dozen schools, I am nervous about my decision to stop at 9. Maybe I should apply to more? If I don't get in this year I am not sure whether I would try again...

Calculate your probability of getting accepted at at least one. Say you give yourself a 15% shot at each one. That means that you stand only a .15^9 chance of getting turned down by every university.

I applied at five universities. But I applied to no reach schools (could've tried for Princeton, Yale), and no 'fallback universities.' I strictly applied to schools that I was very competitive at and that were also quality institutions. So far I'm 1/2 and the 1 seems like it will probably give me a fair financial aid package. I'm optimistic that I'll get accepted at at least one more university, hopefully 2. Well, hopefully 3.

I'm guessing that you're applying to schools whose acceptance rate is around 10%. That means that 9 is a better figure. After a certain point, mathematically each one gives you a diminishing increase in your overall likelihood of acceptance (you can see this is you graph it). So, I'd say it's not necessarily worth it to apply to more than 9. Of course, money was more of an issue for me than some other people.

[Rodao]

Didn't post an acceptance, but definitely received one. PT. Ecstatic! 1/1

For political theory? How did you learn of it? Through e-mail?

[slacktivist]

Calculate your probability of getting accepted at at least one. Say you give yourself a 15% shot at each one. That means that you stand only a .15^9 chance of getting turned down by every university.

I'm afraid you have your math backwards, as .15^9 would be the odds of being accepted by all nine universities, not rejected. You have to take the rejection rate (.85 in the above example) as the basis for calculating the probability. Given a rejection rate of .85, applying to nine schools leaves a 23 percent chance of an applicant being shut out, ceteris paribus. Applying to 14 schools reduces the likelihood of a shutout to 10 percent,19 schools to lower it to less than five percent and 29 schools to make it less than one percent.

[GopherGrad]

Damn. First school out the post for me. Whiff.

[balderdash]

Damn. First school out the post for me. Whiff.

That sucks, apologies. Where, if you don't mind sharing?

[GopherGrad]

Sorry. Duke.

I didn't get an actual rejection, but it appears that DukeAcceptanceBot sent out it's burst of Happy Robo Mail today and I wasn't on the list.

[foosh]

Any claim to the other UC Davis wait list?

[UVaSpades]

Sorry. Duke.

I didn't get an actual rejection, but it appears that DukeAcceptanceBot sent out it's burst of Happy Robo Mail today and I wasn't on the list.

C'mon, man, there's still hope. I'm still feeling good, if only because it doesn't seem any IR folks have been accepted there...

[GopherGrad]

Anything's possible, but with 5 claimed acceptances out of a normal class size of 8-12 it seems unlikely. (Frankly, I'm really surprised that the proportion of Duke admitees that read gradcafe is so high, so I suppose some could be trolls.)

[balderdash]

Anything's possible, but with 5 claimed acceptances out of a normal class size of 8-12 it seems unlikely. (Frankly, I'm really surprised that the proportion of Duke admitees that read gradcafe is so high, so I suppose some could be trolls.)

Keep yield in mind - 8-12 in the class means they accepted 20-25.

[Purled]

Just thought I'd jump in and introduce myself while we're all sitting around watching our inboxes.

Theory here, as well (seem to be a lot of us); 6 applications, but clearly should have been double that.

Congrats to the UVA admit!

It's almost painful, or at least a bit scary, to know that they're beginning to roll out decisions.

[RWBG]

I'm afraid you have your math backwards, as .15^9 would be the odds of being accepted by all nine universities, not rejected. You have to take the rejection rate (.85 in the above example) as the basis for calculating the probability. Given a rejection rate of .85, applying to nine schools leaves a 23 percent chance of an applicant being shut out, ceteris paribus. Applying to 14 schools reduces the likelihood of a shutout to 10 percent,19 schools to lower it to less than five percent and 29 schools to make it less than one percent.

It's been a while since I've taken math stats/probability theory, so this might be a bit off, but I think it's a bit misleading to consider the probability of acceptance at different universities as independent events. I think the better way to think of it is in terms of conditional independence; your probability of being accepted by different universities is independent conditional on a third random variable, namely the quality of you as an applicant/your application. or Pr(H∩P|G)=Pr(H|G)Pr(P|G), where H represents chances of getting into Harvard, P represents chances of getting into princeton, and G represents the quality of your application.

The main implication this has is that during the process, once you have acceptances/rejections, you should update your probability of admission accordingly based on new information about G. You can't consider the events independent, given imperfect information about G. For example, if I'm rejected by Rochester, the probability of being accepted by HYP is reduced substantially, because new information changes my G-distribution. If you were close to certain that your G was at a certain level, you could probably treat the events as independent, and calculate probabilities the way you've been doing (i.e. 1-p^n). As it is, even ex ante, I think you probably have to consider your G-distribution when considering the number of schools you want to apply to, and how many in each tier you want to apply to. For example, if I thought my G distribution included a 1/5 chance of being an excellent applicant, 3/5 chance of being a mid-tier applicant, and a 1/5 chance of being a low tier applicant, and if I thought that being an excellent applicant meant I would have a 100% chance of being accepted to any given university I applied to (assuming for the sake of argument, all universities were of the same tier), being a mid-tier applicant meant I had a 20% chance of being accepted, and being a low-tier applicant meant that I would have a 0% chance of being accepted, then your probability can't be figured out from 1-0.8^n, but has to be (1/5) + (3/5)(1-0.8^n) + 0. This would have implications on the appropriate structure/number of your applications, dependent on your utility/cost function.

This is probably just a formalization of what people are already doing intuitively, and may not actually contradict what you said, but insofar as we're calculating explicit probabilities as in the previous posts (even rough ones), it's probably a good idea to keep in mind how it works out formally.

[GopherGrad]

Hi, purled!

I agree. I almost liked waiting better. Lucky for me there's at least a month left.

balderdash,

It still seems more likely that Duke emailed all current admits today; unless the letters are somehow personalized there is no reason to delay the others.

I imagine that there is some waitlist (whether announced or not), but I have no idea how long a school waits to pull from the maybes or the ratio of acceptances that go out in the first batch versus the total. I'd keep my fingers crossed, but I only have so many and I'm saving those for Princeton, Harvard, Berkeley, N'western, UCSD, ... I am I on to toes yet?

Edit:

I think it's a bit misleading to consider the probability of acceptance at different universities as independent events.

More or less what I was thinking, but I'm not math-y enough to spell it out. Each rejection should erode the estimated chance at remaining schools based on relative competitiveness of the schools and fit.

Edited February 2, 2011 by GopherGrad