Constructing your "fit"

[Zahar Berkut]

Now that we're in our summer loll, I'd like some of our veteran forum-goers to weigh in on how to tell if a school "fits," along with some related issues. Let me offer a few questions I've been wrestling with:

1. How important is it to identify potential advisers who work in your region of study? (As opposed to identifying someone who shares your thematic interests, and then finding a history professor to make sure you've got your maps straight.)

2. If you want to work in a relatively new or niche field, or want to innovate in an established field, how do you deal with the paucity of people who worked on your research interests? (How do you define who is "close enough" to those interests? Is pulling faculty from a different subfield who have taken your desired approach a smart call? I'm thinking mainly of approaches drawing from political psychology.)

3. If you have several different research interests, would you recommend emphasizing one over the others and letting your "fit" rest on that one set of interests?

4. Pragmatically, how important is it for your future career that your adviser pull some weight in the field-- being famous, well-connected, well-published, etc?

5. What are the risks in identifying junior, untenured faculty members? (Aside from them-- horrors!-- not getting tenure.)

Feel free to take on any and all of these, or offer your own Q and A for that matter.

[GardeningGrad]

The best 'fit' advice I've received was to identify people I'd like to be like, research I'd like to join in, and ideas that are thematic in my life and interests. Then, find out what connections those people, research projects, and ideas have with universities. Like a puzzle, in which you start with the answer and work backwards to find the pieces that fit.

Specific responses:

1. How important is it to identify potential advisers who work in your region of study? - This depends on your field and the existing programs. I'm interested in a particular and subfield that could be addressed from an ecological, geographical, or social science perspective. For that reason, I looked for professors who worked interdiscipline, even while grounded in one specific field. You do want someone who easily 'gets' where you're coming from and see where you want to go. In undergrad, I had to battle some well-meaning but cloistered politics and biology profs to keep my research from becoming about their discipline.

2. If you want to work in a relatively new or niche field, or want to innovate in an established field, how do you deal with the paucity of people who worked on your research interests? - It would make your life so much easier to find a like-minded advisor who has experience in your proposed field. Again, look for the keystone paper, idea, or professor and see where they came from. Perhaps you can at least find an advisor who is well-read in your emerging field? Or see if they've advised students in the past who are playing with similar ideas? Also, ask the professor directly if you'd be a good fit with their research, their program, and the school. If they say no, they may recommend elsewhere.

3. If you have several different research interests, would you recommend emphasizing one over the others and letting your "fit" rest on that one set of interests? - Ah, that's a personal decision. Compromise is necessary, especially if you're having trouble finding an advisor. However...when I visited grad schools, it was remarkable how almost every student in my field said that they came in focused on one subject but, as they learned and researched, their interests shifted significantly. Professors, too, have multiple research interests. Don't get hung up on exclusive fit... a good atmosphere, a helpful advisor, and interesting research prospects would be more important to me. You can make your grad degree experience what you want - even as your interests change.

4. Pragmatically, how important is it for your future career that your adviser pull some weight in the field-- being famous, well-connected, well-published, etc? It makes life easier... having a well-respected advisor will help you get published faster, get better grants, and be better networked.

5. What are the risks in identifying junior, untenured faculty members? (Aside from them-- horrors!-- not getting tenure.) I think you know the risks - they leave. Don't go to a school to work with them. But definitely talk with them and ask for guidance.

[alphazeta]

Well, I'm not exactly an expert but I'll weigh in with my opinions.

As an initial observation, I'd suggest that there are multiple (and not entirely compatible) senses of the word "fit". First, there is fit from your perspective - Are there people in this department I could work with and could I pursue my research agenda successfully here? Second, there is fit from the admissions perspective - Does this applicant match the interests of our faculty and what we're looking for? Finally, there is some sort of objective "fit" concerning how tightly your interests and predispositions correlate. Ideally, the answers to the three sets of questions would be the same, but this is not necessarily so. You might be a poor admissions fit, but a good fit objectively and from your own perspective, or you might be a good fit from your perspective and the admissions perspective, but not from an objective perspective - and find out with tragic consequences (A friend of mine went to a graduate program - non polisci but the experience is applicable - prinicipally to work with Prof. X who appeared to be a great fit for him, but found out that Prof. X was a jerk and could not work with him).

1. How important is it to identify potential advisers who work in your region of study? This appears to be mostly an issue for comparativists, so I won't presume to answer, but I'd suggest that it depends on the region and the extent to which you're devoted to an in-depth study of the specifics of region X as opposed to broader thematic issues.

2.If you want to work in a relatively new or niche field, or want to innovate in an established field, how do you deal with the paucity of people who worked on your research interests? (How do you define who is "close enough" to those interests? Is pulling faculty from a different subfield who have taken your desired approach a smart call? I'm thinking mainly of approaches drawing from political psychology.) First of all, to be successful you need to be grounded in the broader methods and approaches of the field. Having advisors who are strong scholars even if they don't work specifically in that niche is very valuable, provided they aren't openly hostile to your proposed line of research/innovation. If you're doing something in a methodological niche, then bringing in people from other subfields is absolutely fine. Also, with an approach like political psychology that's interdisciplinary, you can draw on the expertise in other departments. Having someone working in your niche is definitely nice, but it's not necessary. If you're facing a choice between a strong program with no one doing your specific niche and a weak program with someone in your niche, pick the strong program. Reading on your own, working with people in other subfields/departments, summer training, etc. can make up for the deficiencies of not having someone in your niche.

3. If you have several different research interests, would you recommend emphasizing one over the others and letting your "fit" rest on that one set of interests? Going back to my earlier comment, this is essentially an admissions fit decision. I think it depends on how closely related the interests are. If your interests are medieval political thought and comparative political economy, then just pick one. I think trying to present both will make you seem unfocused - and I'm not aware of anyone who has successfully combined those two into a productive research agenda. On the other hand, if you have a way of linking your interests, it may be better to put them all out there. You might want to innovatively link two different areas of research, and if you can make a compelling case for doing that, I think it would be productive.

4. Pragmatically, how important is it for your future career that your adviser pull some weight in the field-- being famous, well-connected, well-published, etc? Generally speaking, at stronger departments, your advisor will tend to have more pull in the field - otherwise that person wouldn't be teaching at that school. There's a reason that top departments go after those top scholars, and you'll benefit in many ways from being associated with one. I guess the real question comes from comparatively rare cases where a very prominent scholar is at an otherwise little known school - I don't have a clear answer to this, but my general answer is that you should pick a department that is stronger overall - that big name might leave or turn out to be a jerk and you want solid training not just a star advisor.

5.

[catchermiscount]

"Fit" need not be tight. When I received a phone call of admission from my current home, the professor simply said "oh, you want to do quantitative and formal conflict stuff, so you'll fit right in." He did NOT say "oh, hot damn! You're like a mini-version of eight of our faculty members, and you guys will be writing identical articles on identical subjects with identical arguments!" A "fit" is somebody that is generally interested in the kind of research associated with a department on both substantive and methodological lines---which is to say, it's somebody that stands the most to gain from the training that a given department offers.

Observe that some of the best-known advisors in the discipline's history did not necessarily match their students perfectly. One example from here is Dick Fenno, whose family tree in Congressional studies is as good as it gets. He was famous for soaking and poking (which is to say, actually TALKING to Congresspeople), but some of his most accomplished students used formal theory, and others used quantitative methods. Coming from the other direction, the methodologist Gary King often has little substantive overlap with his students (and they study just about everything you can think of), but they all have a desire to get the best possible statistical training. Or, I am reminded of two of my friends in political philosophy at Michigan State. One studied technology and Francis Bacon; the other studied the ancient Greeks. They had the same advisor, and the three of them happened to be united under the banner of Straussianism.

To "fit" in a department, you need (1) at least one person on the faculty that can serve as an advisor; and (2) a desire to do the kind of work that the place is known for (e.g. it's better to tell Rochester that you like game theory than it is to tell them that you like thick description).

What kind of potential advisor can help meet criterion (1)? You need somebody that (a) is in the same general field as you; and ( is sympathetic to the kind of methodological approaches you intend to employ.

For (a), it varies by field. If you are a comparativist with a strong area-studies bent, then you will need somebody that studies the same area. Alternatively, if you are in public opinion, just about any behavioral Americanist can meet criterion (a). I am in international conflict, and my own (substantive) advisor and I do not really study anything all that similar---that is, we generally aren't involved in the same literatures.

For (, it's trickier. You'll have to read would-be advisors' work to get a sense of what kind of work they do. That's really only a best guess as to how "sympathetic" they'll be---just because somebody does a lot of quantitative empirical work doesn't mean they're opposed to qualitative, formal, computational, or other approaches.

These are bare minima, and discussing what makes a good advisor could comprise another thread. An advisor should be relatively established---at the very least, having a tenured person is a good idea just in terms of how the incentive curves overlap. A well-known advisor is helpful come placement time, but a very well-known but very old faculty member might be a detriment if you intend to do cutting-edge methodological or formal work. You, the applicant, should be thinking about both an advisor and the rough composition of a dissertation committee. That's generally less important to the adcom member reading your file.

(2) is pretty simple. What kind of work do recent graduates do? What kind of methodological training does the department offer? Having even one qualitative methods class is a pretty strong signal that there will be people open to qualitative work, while it takes a relatively extensive sequence in either methods or formal theory to send a similar signal for those approaches. Some places are even a bit more nuanced: Stony Brook is known for political psychology, which in turn means that you can expect some training in scaling and other psychometric approaches.

Generally, I agree with alphazeta in that it is better to think about departments than it is to think about fit. You will have to convince an adcom, not necessarily a would-be advisor, that you are a good fit. Your primary job is to show the adcom that you stand to gain a lot from their training (both substantive and methodological). That's the essence of fit.

[catchermiscount]

One more idea about looking for fit: my ex-officemate, who is far smarter than I, posted an idea here once (I don't know if it's his or not): peruse the last few issues of top general political science journals (American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics) and the top journals in your particular field (e.g. for IR/security, you'd look at International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, International Security, etc.). Take note of the people that do work that you like, and check out the rest of their work. If they are a full or associate professor, consider applying to the department where they work. If they are an assistant or young associate professor, consider applying to the department where they got their PhD. While nuances make this approach less than perfect, it will yield a set of candidate schools that more or less meet the "fit" criterion.

[kaykaykay]

"Constructing" fit is not a really good approach, if you do not fit in a department you will feel miserable, and there is a big chance you will want to get out. Sometimes departments will do you the favor to turn you down (sounds bad but it is true) but it is in your biggest interest that you found the department which you can teach you what you want to study and be successful in it.

As coachrjs said above you should find out the general approach of the department and try to see whether the approach you want to take fits with it. If you have read and liked more people's work there ( not necessarily in your subfield) it is a good start. If you are still in school pick the prof(s) whose interest is closest to yours and ask them about their suggestions ( they will have probably more information on who is busy, who will likely get tenured, who will likely move, what is the department's financial situation, what files were shortlisted in the last search to your department etc).

Sometimes it is hard to tell who will want to have students and who will not. In my department there are established professors who are extremely busy and have no time for new students but there is an untenured faculty who will get like 3-4 students next year obviously because he will be tenured soon. Anyway it is always risky to go to a department for one person. There is a chance that they will move (maybe they do not fit there?), they are going to be very busy (likeminded students have no other place to go) , they may get hit by a bus (god forbid), you may not like them etc. For CP this is a trick question. I think fit of approach is more important than fit of area. In an ideal case you will find both and your new advisor will celebrate the same way as you will. But if not a lot of great scholars know a surprisingly lot about other areas than their own , and they are happy to offer a comparative perspective on your research. This may even lead to co-authorships etc.

One thing however: often when there is an area specialist in a department, there may be extra funding for the area (a research institute, area specific collection, reading groups,lectures etc), so you may want to consider that aspect.

I would not necessarily try to reinvent the political science field in my SOP. You can do that once you are accepted. It is one thing to present interesting ideas and show that you have imagination it is another thing when the adcoms are not sure whether polisci is a good home for you (and here we get back to the fit problem. If your ideas ARE different than most of the political science and there is a field that your ideas fit better maybe you would be much much happier working in that field) .

[gradcafe26]

One more idea about looking for fit: my ex-officemate, who is far smarter than I, posted an idea here once (I don't know if it's his or not): peruse the last few issues of top general political science journals (American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics) and the top journals in your particular field (e.g. for IR/security, you'd look at International Organization, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Studies Quarterly, International Security, etc.). Take note of the people that do work that you like, and check out the rest of their work. If they are a full or associate professor, consider applying to the department where they work. If they are an assistant or young associate professor, consider applying to the department where they got their PhD. While nuances make this approach less than perfect, it will yield a set of candidate schools that more or less meet the "fit" criterion.

This sounds really brilliant, and I just checked a few ones you mentioned. Do you know some top journals for comparative politics (Asia)?

Thanks

[Penelope Higgins]

For comparative politics in the developing world, the top non-region specific journals are usually thought to be the list below. I can't speak to Asia-specific journals, but most people seem to aim to publish in these.

World Politics

Comparative Political Studies

Comparative Politics

Studies in Comparative International Development

[Helix]

Re: Asia specific journals and articles. You'll find some of the best stuff in the journals Penelope mentioned (and I would also check out the list APSA keeps: http://www.apsanet.org/content_5376.cfm ). Beyond that I would first look at some of these: Asian Affairs, Asian Survey, Pacific Review, and the Journal of East Asian Studies with the caveat that they are very interdisciplinary and also international in perspective (by that I mean, keep in mind that the way that Europeans do political science is different from how Americans do it).

Because Asia is so broad and expansive, you might have to modify the above approach a bit to get a sense of where folks are going. Pick a few professors who do work on Asia that you know you like and see where they have published (look for tenured professors if possible), then review those publications for additional articles by names you aren't as familiar with. Also check out the papers being presented at conferences or in smaller journals (take a look at the Association of Asian Studies, for example) if you want to get a handle on what some recent department grads are up to.

I think your main sense of the work that you would find interesting should come from the broader polisci journals irrespective of the region of focus, since these are the articles that are getting noticed and shaping the field. Really I think the aim with the regionally focused journals should be to see whether anyone has applied those ideas in countries you're most interested in already. If not, you've set yourself up well to make an argument for "fit" (e.g., "Prof X wrote an article about this concept in the Middle East which is great, and no one has written about it with respect to China so I want to do that and Prof X is the perfect person to help me do it.")

[gradcafe26]

Big thanks to Penelope Higgins and Helix, both of you offered great suggestions. I guess if I knew these one year ago, I would have a bigger chance in this cycle. But anyways, there are still three months left, I will just try my best

Edited September 24, 2011 by gradcafe26