Admission Committee Notes

[natsteel]

this raises another question related ot my last post. there is clearly overlap in the applicant pools for many schools, especially the top programs. is there ever communication between admissions committees across universities in ordere to minimize overlap of acceptances of top applicants? that may be far-fetched, but have wondered if that ever happens....

I know a poster above said "Never," but one of my mentors told me that something like this goes on, at least between top programs (and this person has many personal contacts at those programs). They said that top programs might not admit someone that they know, from those types of communications, has a better offer (not just financially) from a competing program. I am not making a claim of veracity for this statement. Personally, I find it a bit unlikely, but I just wanted to say that I had been told something from a reliable source that contradicts the previous poster's response.

[skeedy]

Thank you Realist. I don't envy the admissions committee - what tough decisions they have to make. The time and energy you put into your posting is MUCH appreciated.

[informationbomb]

I just had a quick question for The Realist (and/or Penelope): do you know if international students (non-US residents/citizens) are at any kind of disadvantage? I know for some Canadian schools or depts there is often a percentage cap with regards to international acceptances (say, maximum 30% of the offers are made to international students), as they greatly prefer home-grown applicants. Does anything like this happen in the States as far as you know? Also, do minorities or women have any kind of advantage as far as you can tell?

Otherwise, thanks for your help and kindness - I really appreciate that you took the time to write all that out, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard.

[Penelope Higgins]

No disadvantage at all in my experience for foreign students, with 2 caveats: First, they may have more trouble generating recommendation letters from people that my colleagues and I know. Second (and this in my experience is limited to applicants from Chinese universities) one sometimes takes entire applications with a big grain of salt when 100+ applications from the same university with identical test scores and letters arrive. Certainly no percentage cap. Realist may want to disagree based on his/her experience, but that has been mine at a couple of institutions.

I just had a quick question for The Realist (and/or Penelope): do you know if international students (non-US residents/citizens) are at any kind of disadvantage? I know for some Canadian schools or depts there is often a percentage cap with regards to international acceptances (say, maximum 30% of the offers are made to international students), as they greatly prefer home-grown applicants. Does anything like this happen in the States as far as you know? Also, do minorities or women have any kind of advantage as far as you can tell?

Otherwise, thanks for your help and kindness - I really appreciate that you took the time to write all that out, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this regard.

[Wallerstein]

I am definitely not a qualified person to discuss this topic, but I have a strong feeling that there is a bias against international students. And I say this as an international student applying now, after a 2 years MA in the US... I can see three main reasons for that. First is the GRE. I have the feeling that committees do not properly weight the difficulty of taking this exam when english is not one's first language. Not only that, but also the structure of this exam is one that American students are already used to (from the SAT and so on) , while international students generally are not. Second is that I don't think committees have perfect knowledge about universities around the world. My undergraduate university is the best in my country and the admission rate is less than 10% for undergraduates... Even when adcoms know of this university, I doubt they would know that the average level of students there is super high (I think it is higher than the top 25 school where I did my masters), even though grades are generally super low (a 3.2 GPA was the highest in the history of the department). Third is the recommendation letter system. Not all countries make use of this mechanism for selecting students. Since in my school back home very few students go to the US for their PhD's , my professors had little experience writing recommendation letters and, ironically, avoided any excessive praising of my skills and abilities... nearly the opposite of the letters I've got from American professors.

I don't think adcoms intentionally discriminate against international students, but I have the feeling that this system is slightly harder on International students then it is against American students. And, given the same skill level of two students, one American and one International, I believe an American one would perform better on this application process simply because she would now how to work this system better and adcoms would know how to read her signals better.

Still, I think the US has probably the most welcoming educational system.... but it is a bit unfair to international students.

[informationbomb]

Thanks for the replies, Realist and Penelope. I forgot to ask one last question: if an applicant is applying, say, for the second or third time, what effect, if any, does it have on his or her chances? I'm guessing adcom members are aware of the fact that the student applied and was rejected before? Is that taken as a strike against the applicant, or is not much made of it?

Thanks!

[oasis]

The answer to (1) is no, with one exception: as Penelope Higgins notes, Chinese students face hurdles that non-Chinese students do not face. In our experience, a non-trivial proportion of applications from Chinese students are either partial or complete forgeries. That means writing samples and statements of purpose that are plagiarized, and letters that are made up from faculty who do not exist (or who do not know that they have written a recommendation for a particular student). On the whole, we do not trust GRE scores or TOEFL scores from Chinese students. This does not mean that we do not accept Chinese students, we just have to be more careful with them, and we often have slightly different application procedures for them (we will almost always insist on speaking to a Chinese student on the phone before making a decision).

One would think that fraud would be done in a more convincing manner. Identical scores, letters, essays and statements? That's just sloppy. Whichever agency they paid to manage the admissions game is ripping them off big time.

[wtncffts]

I am definitely not a qualified person to discuss this topic, but I have a strong feeling that there is a bias against international students. And I say this as an international student applying now, after a 2 years MA in the US... I can see three main reasons for that. First is the GRE. I have the feeling that committees do not properly weight the difficulty of taking this exam when english is not one's first language. Not only that, but also the structure of this exam is one that American students are already used to (from the SAT and so on) , while international students generally are not. Second is that I don't think committees have perfect knowledge about universities around the world. My undergraduate university is the best in my country and the admission rate is less than 10% for undergraduates... Even when adcoms know of this university, I doubt they would know that the average level of students there is super high (I think it is higher than the top 25 school where I did my masters), even though grades are generally super low (a 3.2 GPA was the highest in the history of the department). Third is the recommendation letter system. Not all countries make use of this mechanism for selecting students. Since in my school back home very few students go to the US for their PhD's , my professors had little experience writing recommendation letters and, ironically, avoided any excessive praising of my skills and abilities... nearly the opposite of the letters I've got from American professors.

I don't think adcoms intentionally discriminate against international students, but I have the feeling that this system is slightly harder on International students then it is against American students. And, given the same skill level of two students, one American and one International, I believe an American one would perform better on this application process simply because she would now how to work this system better and adcoms would know how to read her signals better.

Still, I think the US has probably the most welcoming educational system.... but it is a bit unfair to international students.

I don't want to speak for the US educational system for many reasons, not least of which is I'm Canadian and have never attended a US institution, but I think many of these points also apply to Canadian schools.

First, the GRE. From everything I've read, GRE scores aren't a very significant part of admissions decisions; used as a cut-off, perhaps, but not much more. Believe me, I'm the last person to defend the GREs use as a measure of anything meaningful, but to the more general point, if you're going to a US university you have to be expected to communicate in English at a roughly equal level with domestic students. That's just the way it is. I TAed at a school where many students had English as their second language,and while I admired their courage at trying to write and speak in their non-native tongue, I could not 'relax' standards of, say, proper syntax and semantics on papers. They chose to attend an English-speaking school, as you have.

Second, of course US schools don't know everything about every university around the world. I don't expect that they should, and they couldn't even if they tried. It works the other way around, too. There may well be, for example, a state university which has a great reputation but which a top school in, say, Germany, has never heard of because it isn't Harvard or Princeton or the like. It's only common sense that schools will know the most about other schools in their own countries, in the US as in everywhere else.

Third, the recommendation system. Again, I'd just say that that's the way it is. That's how US schools do things. They can't tailor their admissions processes for every particular international context.

I seem to be reiterating the same basic point, which is that it's only "unfair" if you expect US schools, or any other institutions, to account for every educational practice and make admissions uber-individually tailored. That's logistically impossible and I see no need for it. I understand that a lot of international students want to study in the US; I'm one of them. But I don't see the system as being "biased" or "unfair"; if it is, then I fully expect it to be. I understand that, given equal 'skills', I would likely have a lesser chance than a native German of getting into a German university, simply because they've been immersed in that particular educational system for much longer. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. International students make an intentional choice to 'subject' themselves to the American educational system. Noone forces them to.

[The Realist]

I am definitely not a qualified person to discuss this topic, but I have a strong feeling that there is a bias against international students. And I say this as an international student applying now, after a 2 years MA in the US... I can see three main reasons for that. First is the GRE. I have the feeling that committees do not properly weight the difficulty of taking this exam when english is not one's first language. Not only that, but also the structure of this exam is one that American students are already used to (from the SAT and so on) , while international students generally are not. Second is that I don't think committees have perfect knowledge about universities around the world. My undergraduate university is the best in my country and the admission rate is less than 10% for undergraduates... Even when adcoms know of this university, I doubt they would know that the average level of students there is super high (I think it is higher than the top 25 school where I did my masters), even though grades are generally super low (a 3.2 GPA was the highest in the history of the department). Third is the recommendation letter system. Not all countries make use of this mechanism for selecting students. Since in my school back home very few students go to the US for their PhD's , my professors had little experience writing recommendation letters and, ironically, avoided any excessive praising of my skills and abilities... nearly the opposite of the letters I've got from American professors.

I don't think adcoms intentionally discriminate against international students, but I have the feeling that this system is slightly harder on International students then it is against American students. And, given the same skill level of two students, one American and one International, I believe an American one would perform better on this application process simply because she would now how to work this system better and adcoms would know how to read her signals better.

Still, I think the US has probably the most welcoming educational system.... but it is a bit unfair to international students.

These are all good observations, but I don't consider any of them to amount to a bias.

Regarding GREs, we do understand that performing well on them will be more difficult for students who do not speak English as a first language. But we also understand that graduate school will be more challenging for them; if the GREs are that challenging, then graduate school will be too. You are punished no more, and in fact probably a bit less, than a domestic student with similar GRE scores.

Regarding foreign universities: From my own experience, I can tell you that if you come from one of the 30 or 40 largest countries in the world--and in addition to that, every country in Europe--we are familiar with your university system and whatever ranking it might have. If you're from Laos we might not be able to rate universities against one another, but very, very rarely do we even encounter an application from a foreign student whose university we are not familiar with. What you also forget is that we do not much care about the name of your university, we care how you did there. We are not wowed by an Oxford degree. We know that first class honors at, say, Bristol is more impressive. We know that many European students attend the local university rather than searching out the "top ranked" one in any particular field. We know that University of Hong Kong is first, CUHK is second, etc. And so on.

Regarding letters: we know how to read the signals from foreign universities. We know that LoRs from England are really short, and those from the US are really long. We can factor all of this in.

[Malumat]

I know for certain that this conversation happens between professors in my department and professors in departments of other top programs. These professors know each other personally, as my field is quite small, and they do this in order to maximize acceptance rates. I don't know how widespread this is, though.

this raises another question related ot my last post. there is clearly overlap in the applicant pools for many schools, especially the top programs. is there ever communication between admissions committees across universities in ordere to minimize overlap of acceptances of top applicants? that may be far-fetched, but have wondered if that ever happens....

[Ashlett]

With what I'm reading about GREs, I'm glad I'm not the only one. I absolutely despise the GRE, and it is very little, if anything, that the scores tell you of how an applicant will perform in undergraduate/graduate school. But of anything, it is what I am most worried about affecting my application.

Do GRE scores weigh heavier for undergrads coming straight from ungrad than other applicants? I read somewhere that it is, but I would really like another perspective. I'm just afraid that it is my GRE scores that will kill my chances of getting into a school.

[liaozhoub511]

There are two questions here. (1) Do international immigrants face any disadvantage. And (2) do minorities or women have any kind of advantage?

The answer to (1) is no, with one exception: as Penelope Higgins notes, Chinese students face hurdles that non-Chinese students do not face. In our experience, a non-trivial proportion of applications from Chinese students are either partial or complete forgeries. That means writing samples and statements of purpose that are plagiarized, and letters that are made up from faculty who do not exist (or who do not know that they have written a recommendation for a particular student). On the whole, we do not trust GRE scores or TOEFL scores from Chinese students. This does not mean that we do not accept Chinese students, we just have to be more careful with them, and we often have slightly different application procedures for them (we will almost always insist on speaking to a Chinese student on the phone before making a decision).

I felt terrible when i saw this information since I am a Chinese student in political science who have applied for several phd programs without any admissions so far, and i guess i am probably going to end up with nothing this year. really depressing...

But Realist,(i don't know whether you can see my post, but i do want to ask you several questions) 1.what if I have a master degree in a top American university, can this degree increase my "reputation" or "credibility"? Or in general, to what extent a master degree can help those phd applicants? 2. what if all my LoRs were written by American professors? Should that be credible enough for adcomm? 3.What if both my toefl and gre were taken in the US? Still cannot be trusted?

Anyway, I really appreciate that you can share your information with us. Although it cannot change my final results, at least I know what's going on.

[Wallerstein]

Realist:

Don't get me wrong, I think adcoms and faculty members in the US are very competent. And I am sure it is out of their interest to select the best candidates regardless of their nationality. That is why I am working so hard to get into a PhD here. But I still feel that as hard as they try, it is always difficult to get rid of that bias. Maybe, as you say, for British and some European countries adcoms can read all signals. Or even for South Korea or Canada. But for countries that send less students to the US, I think that lack of information can still be a problem... I think there should be less than 10 people from my country doing a PhD in Political Science in the US right now. And probably many schools that I'm applying to have never read an application from someone who studied at my school...

Concerning the GRE, I totally understand that it is important and if it is that difficult for an international student, then the PhD is going to be hell. I had an ok score on my GRE (650v and 800q) but it took me about 6 very precious weeks of study to get there. During that time I could have been working on my writing sample, SOP or bonding with professors... I am certain that a native speakers can have a similar performance with less work, leaving more them free time to work on other aspects of their applications. Or, if I was a native speaker, other aspects of my application would have been better, given a constant GRE.

I think all educational systems are biased towards their native population. Getting in a PhD in Germany, for example, is very hard for people who have not attended a German university. And the same applies for the Netherlands or Switzerland, for example. Well, and in my country it is certainly very hard (if not impossible) to get in a doctoral program without a domestic degree or a degree from an internationally famous educational system.

Concerning Wtncffts arguments, I have the feeling that you are stating that the system should be biased ("that's the way it is. That's how US schools do things.") which is not absurd at all...But in that case you agree with me that the system is kind of biased, you just don't think its is bad (which I also don't think). Ultimately I just think it is a bit biased, but also it is almost impossible for it not to be (at least for every country) and that it is not that bad that it is biased... It would be a horrible system if it was biased against domestic minorities.

[Charlie2010]

On the Chinese student's question: Probably the only aspiring PhD students for whom a US MA has value are foreigners, since it gets you grades and recommendations from known people.

To the person complaining about 6 weeks spent studying for the GRE. Is it a waste of time learning to use and read English grammar correctly, or understand basic mathematical logic? Admittedly, the multiple choice and timed aspects of the test make it an imperfect test of these skills, but really any indicator we have short of a completed dissertation is an imperfect indicator of the relevant skills.

[Ashlett]

On the Chinese student's question: Probably the only aspiring PhD students for whom a US MA has value are foreigners, since it gets you grades and recommendations from known people.

To the person complaining about 6 weeks spent studying for the GRE. Is it a waste of time learning to use and read English grammar correctly, or understand basic mathematical logic? Admittedly, the multiple choice and timed aspects of the test make it an imperfect test of these skills, but really any indicator we have short of a completed dissertation is an imperfect indicator of the relevant skills.

See, I disagree with the "use and read English grammar correctly" portion of that. Because that's not what it is. It isn't a GRAMMAR test, it's a VOCABULARY test. And either you know it or you don't. And it's not mathematical logic, it's geometry equations that people haven't used since they were sophomores in high school and will never be relevant in their field. The GRE is an all-around awful test (as are most standardized tests) that favor a certain portion of the population.

I just wouldn't call knowing the synonym of some archaic word "relevant skill."

[oasis]

I felt terrible when i saw this information since I am a Chinese student in political science who have applied for several phd programs without any admissions so far, and i guess i am probably going to end up with nothing this year. really depressing...

But Realist,(i don't know whether you can see my post, but i do want to ask you several questions) 1.what if I have a master degree in a top American university, can this degree increase my "reputation" or "credibility"? Or in general, to what extent a master degree can help those phd applicants? 2. what if all my LoRs were written by American professors? Should that be credible enough for adcomm? 3.What if both my toefl and gre were taken in the US? Still cannot be trusted?

He is clearly referring to applicants who are Chinese in the sense that they are applying directly from universities on the mainland (beida tsinghua etc), and not by their ethnicity or nationality. Of course your MA in the states would obviate those concerns. The usual caveats apply: reputable school, relevant program, doing well, getting good letters etc. As for TOEFL/GRE, the scores probably come with test center codes or test dates that fall within your MA period.

Finally, chill out. It is still February. Let the sorting process trickle down and you should see some offers materialize sometime before Apr 15. Realist and PHiggins can probably tell you that people do get offers off the waitlists in late March and April and beyond.

[wtncffts]

Concerning Wtncffts arguments, I have the feeling that you are stating that the system should be biased ("that's the way it is. That's how US schools do things.") which is not absurd at all...But in that case you agree with me that the system is kind of biased, you just don't think its is bad (which I also don't think). Ultimately I just think it is a bit biased, but also it is almost impossible for it not to be (at least for every country) and that it is not that bad that it is biased... It would be a horrible system if it was biased against domestic minorities.

Alright, I think we pretty much agree then. I took more issue with the 'unfairness' claim than the 'bias' claim; I certainly could concede that the system may be 'biased' in that it might inherently favour domestic students, but, as you say, that's not unfair at all.

[surprisecake]

I don't understand how you can cast suspicions on someone's GRE or TOEFL scores. The testing centres are so strictly monitored, you need a passport as ID and the scores are sent by ETS. Where's the room for error?

Edited February 21, 2011 by surprisecake

[balderdash]

I don't understand how you can cast suspicions on someone's GRE or TOEFL scores. The testing centres are so strictly monitored, you need a passport as ID and the scores are sent by ETS. Where's the room for error?

You don't take the test, then pay someone to forge the "official" report. Or you send a cousin to go take the exam for you, and (s)he slips an envelope of money to whomever is doing that "strict" monitoring.

[Penelope Higgins]

While I agree with all this, I will say that some departments, including mine, pay quite a bit of attention to math GRE scores for theorists. But then again our theorists are quite analytic-normative.

Also, as noted above, our concerns about Chinese students only apply to those with degrees from Chinese universities, letters from Chinese faculty at those universities, and generic-seeming applications.

I do not think that your description of the GRE math section is quite right. Yes, geometry is part of it, but it is elementary geometry, and is not difficult. Much more relevant are the other components of the math section, things like basic arithmetic (fractions, exponents, etc), algebra (inequalities, linear expressions, etc.), and elementary statistics (mean/median/mode, elementary probability, etc.). This is essential to any first-semester research design course. If the GRE math section gives you substantial difficulty, that suggests that you do not have the tools that you need to make sense of empirical political science research. We start out at a very basic level in our research design courses, but we do not teach fractions, exponents, and how to think about linear equations. (We actually do teach elementary statistics from the very beginning, though.)

I note that for political theorists these considerations are less important, so we don't pay much attention to GRE math for theory applicants. In our experience, though, most of the students in political theory do extremely well in GRE math anyway.

Edited February 21, 2011 by Penelope Higgins

[firefly28]

I do not think that your description of the GRE math section is quite right. Yes, geometry is part of it, but it is elementary geometry, and is not difficult. Much more relevant are the other components of the math section, things like basic arithmetic (fractions, exponents, etc), algebra (inequalities, linear expressions, etc.), and elementary statistics (mean/median/mode, elementary probability, etc.). This is essential to any first-semester research design course. If the GRE math section gives you substantial difficulty, that suggests that you do not have the tools that you need to make sense of empirical political science research. We start out at a very basic level in our research design courses, but we do not teach fractions, exponents, and how to think about linear equations. (We actually do teach elementary statistics from the very beginning, though.)

I note that for political theorists these considerations are less important, so we don't pay much attention to GRE math for theory applicants. In our experience, though, most of the students in political theory do extremely well in GRE math anyway.

I fond this to be more representative of the GRE test I took, though the composition of the test, in terms of question focus, may vary year by year. I actually spent some time reviewing over geometry formulas etc. leading up to the test, but found that the test was seemingly aimed at gaging how intuitive your feel for mathematical concept was. I scored a 730, so I was plenty satisfied (I took nothing beyond a college algebra course and a course in basic statistics while an undergrad, though I've been teaching myself calc through the Khan Academy).

Whether or not it was wise, I used the GRE-Q as a measure of how good my chances were at each university. I mainly applied to unis whose average of admittees were 50 or so below mine (but who still had good faculty).

[FingersCrossedX]

Since the discussion has moved towards the GRE, I do have a question. Is the writing portion taken into consideration? I ask because of two things. First, when schools give an average or cut off GRE score it doesn't include a writing score. Then when you apply you write a SoP that should let the admissions committee judge your writing abilities for themselves.

So is the writing score of the GRE even evaluated?

[alphazeta]

I don't understand how you can cast suspicions on someone's GRE or TOEFL scores. The testing centres are so strictly monitored, you need a passport as ID and the scores are sent by ETS. Where's the room for error?

There's a substantial difference in practices between American and foreign testing centers. A few years back they even suspended administration of the computer-based version because of widespread cheating, see "Jig is Up for GRE Cheaters"

Since the discussion has moved towards the GRE, I do have a question. Is the writing portion taken into consideration? I ask because of two things. First, when schools give an average or cut off GRE score it doesn't include a writing score. Then when you apply you write a SoP that should let the admissions committee judge your writing abilities for themselves.

So is the writing score of the GRE even evaluated?

I'm just another applicant, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I've heard that the writing section matters, just not very much. Obviously, committees have an SOP (and often a writing sample) so they can evaluate your writing on their own, but it still boosts an applicant to have a high score and it's a red flag to have a low one.

[cpg]

I lived in a foreign country (not China) where I became familiar with the higher-educational system there. This is in a small country that sends very few students to the U.S. to study and I knew some students who worked very hard to study for the TOEFL and GRE, and one person who went to Harvard and did well. Nevertheless, grades and recommendation letters were basically a joke; there wasn't a lot of forgery, as far as I could tell, but cheating (in upper-division, major classes, even!) did not disqualify students, glowing letters were written for any student that asked, and so forth. That is likely different at the top university in the nation (although I seriously doubt anyone who isn't pretty familiar with this country would know which one this one is), and if so, in part because it's in the capital, rather than in hometowns where everyone knows everyone (and hence there is pressure to give higher grades, nice letters, & so forth, because you know all of their relatives). If I were evaluating such applications, it would be very hard to be certain that the application file actually accurately reflects the student at all (and, sadly, this applies to students with graduate degrees in this country as well). I suspect this problem isn't limited to this country, but rather is endemic to any country where there is, a) widespread tolerance of corruption or tight-knit community structures where getting jobs, grades, etc. is more based on who you are than what you can do.

[wtncffts]

Back to the admissions process, I'd like to ask what determines the timing and manner of notifications of decisions. The 'Fall 2011 cycle' thread, and, indeed, most of the rest of these forums, consists in a whole bunch of anxious and nervous people waiting for news. So, why? I know you can't speak for every school, perhaps, just yours.

1) Why do some schools not send out all decisions at the same time? I recently commented on that other thread that there were some schools which sent out some acceptances but no rejects, thus leaving those, like myself, in limbo and perpetual hope. If the department has already made such decisions, I'd humbly submit that it would be much kinder to let people know at the same time.

2) Couldn't there be a fixed date of notification? That is to say, couldn't a department send out an e-mail once the application deadline has passed, saying, in effect, "We've received all applications, will begin the process of reviewing them, and will notify all applicants on March 1", or whatever day. That would also alleviate a great deal of nervous waiting and worry, waking up in overinflated hope every day, and checking e-mail every ten minutes. If we knew the date, we could all relax, and, god forbid, get some work done?

Perhaps there are logistical reasons for all of this; I'd like to hear them, if possible. I hope this doesn't sound rude or whiny, it's just that there seems to be a whole lot of unnecessary emotional distress as a result of this process.