Welcome to the 2012-2013 cycle

[rkmattson]

My Northwestern account still says the same message as well. Chances are it just takes them days to change the status of all accounts. Last year the spread was over six days.

 

BTW, is the gradstatus.northwestern.edu the place to go to? I ask this because someone posted something about knowing the decision from applyyourself and I wonder if these are the same thing. 

 

My rejection was up on the Apply yourself page this morning - I haven't checked the gratdstatus one

[Cesare]

"Go to a top ten program, or don't go"

I have no idea what the field of IR would have been like if Alexander Wendt did not go to graduate school. Just a thought. 

[TTP25]

"Go to a top ten program, or don't go"

I have no idea what the field of IR would have been like if Alexander Wendt did not go to graduate school. Just a thought. 

 

This is a great point, though I may be a bit biased as it is looking increasingly likely that I'll be attending Wendt's old program. However, my favorite professor in college, who has an intimidating intellect, went to a school ranked in the 50s. He's now fully tenured on a beautiful campus in a wonderful town. While I understand why people advise going to the highest ranked program you can, I really have trouble believing that personal intelligence, ability, and motivation count for nothing if you attend a program outside the top 10.

[Maxx]

My rejection was up on the Apply yourself page this morning - I haven't checked the gratdstatus one

 

 

I've been using the gradstatus site. Just checked applyyourself and there's nothing there either. 

 

thanks.

[CGMJ]

My rejection was up on the Apply yourself page this morning - I haven't checked the gratdstatus one

 

Thanks! Did it just say "rejection" somewhere or was there a message in the message center?

 

Edit: (It would nice to have one fewer place to refreshrefreshrefresh.)

Edited February 22, 2013 by CGMJ

[goforbroke33]

This is a great point, though I may be a bit biased as it is looking increasingly likely that I'll be attending Wendt's old program. However, my favorite professor in college, who has an intimidating intellect, went to a school ranked in the 50s. He's now fully tenured on a beautiful campus in a wonderful town. While I understand why people advise going to the highest ranked program you can, I really have trouble believing that personal intelligence, ability, and motivation count for nothing if you attend a program outside the top 10.

 

 

"Go to a top ten program, or don't go"

I have no idea what the field of IR would have been like if Alexander Wendt did not go to graduate school. Just a thought. 

 

There's another point to consider here.  While it has suffered a bit in the last decade for many of the same reasons that UC Berkeley has, the University of Minnesota had been top 10 (or even top 8) from as far back as I've seen rankings, which is from the early 1950s, until it dropped into the top 15 and then 20 sometime in the late 1980s or 1990s.

[CGMJ]

Congrats to Washington people!

[chaetzli]

Maybe I should do the same to get off the wait list  

 

Edited February 22, 2013 by chaetzli

[RiffRam]

I guess I should take it that I am officially out at Washington.   Congrats to those who were accepted!

[Azruel]

Same here.   Congratulations to all Wash admits!

[Maxx]

Maybe I should do the same to get off the wait list  

 

 

wow, quite a refresher amidst an otherwise very quiet day!

[ThisGuyRiteHere]

People lie on the results and post misinformation. SMH

[midwest513]

Hey Eponine997, lots of great points here. I'm sorry to hear that things haven't panned out. It also sounds like you've got a really solid take on it and aren't getting discouraged which is awesome. i thought I'd respond to a couple specific points here.

1) I am a person who had a professor say, in his loveably austere British accent, "Go to a top ten program, or don't go." I mostly took that advice when applying to programs. My thinking was, given the competitiveness of the academic job market, grad school really only makes sense if you go somewhere with a strong placement record. Top 10 was a reasonable stand-in for that (and I didn't apply to Rochester because I'm a baby).  Although my SOP was quite specific to my particular research plan, I customized no more than 3-4 sentences of it to each school and its professors, and contacted no one prior to admission. I've gotten into Chicago, Cornell and Columbia. (It also helped to come from an undergrad institution with a strong record of placing people in Ph.D programs). And FWIW I got waitlisted on funding at U Penn, which is the only school I applied to by virtue of fit rather than ranking.

 

2) my best friend is applying to econ Ph.D programs this year. He works as an RA for a professor who was recently drafted by Stanford from Harvard; his take, from talking to his supervisors and college profs, was that the very top econ programs barely look at your Statement, because a] they think you'll probably change your research interests a lot in grad school and b] they've got enough people to cover a broad range of possibilities. So I wouldn't be too skeptical of programs that don't care much about fit. They might know a lot more than we do about the typical trajectory about an academic-to-be.

 

Good luck!

 

Economics is very different from Political Science in this case, for a variety of reasons and also because they are less specialized and everyone takes the foundational courses. Also, your friend has little to worry about if he was RA'ing for Imbens or Athey. In a sense your personal statement is probably half signal, half actual plan.

Edited February 22, 2013 by midwest513

[BornAndRaised]

Congrats to all the Washington admits! Guess it means another rejection for me. 

[Doorkeeper]

Where's the Ivy deluge? I don't want another anxious weekend.

[setgree]

"Go to a top ten program, or don't go"

I have no idea what the field of IR would have been like if Alexander Wendt did not go to graduate school. Just a thought. 

 

Here's how I think of it. 1)Wendt graduated in 1989; 700 poli sci doctorates were granted that year, whereas there were 900-1000 in the 2000s  (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf08321/pdf/tab44.pdf) (I can't find data on 2012 poli sci grad numbers?). 2) In 2009-10, there were about 400 "assistant professor openings," according to the president of APSA (http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/shrinkage-in-political-science/). 3) Those spots tend to be dominated by people from top 10 programs (http://chronicle.com/article/PhDs-From-Top/136113/ ; take away is that Harvard/Stanford/Princeton/Michigan produce 25% of all tenure track profs, then next 7 produce the next 25%, and the remaining 100 or so account for about 50%). 

 

Conclusion: it made more sense for Wendt to go to a non-T10 program in 1989 than it does now. fact 5): attrition and/or dragging-on rates are pretty high in poli sci as a whole, http://themonkeycage.org/blog/2008/02/29/post_64/ - only 27% finish in 7 years or less, and only 45% have completed their degree within 10 YEARS. even at top programs, average completion times are high (http://polisci.osu.edu/graduate/placement/completion) - about 6-7 at most with Chicago the outlier at 9. 

Having said all that, I still strongly agree with the following:

 

 I really have trouble believing that personal intelligence, ability, and motivation count for nothing if you attend a program outside the top 10.

 

Superstars are going to stand out no matter where they are. A different professor told me "If you have questions you want to study, study them! The point of graduate school is not to get a job, it's to write a dissertation. You won't understand the opportunity costs of a decision until way later," and then told me about a recent star grad from Amherst who was getting a lot of attention. I too believe in pursuing our dreams! But let's be real about how hard the road is going to be. A well-ranked program is a head start, nothing more. But it is a head start.

[xcrunner]

In at UW - it was my first choice! So glad that I've got one acceptance under my belt. Now that the fear of across the board rejections is gone the fear of being unprepared is already setting in!

[phdhope2013]

Don't mean to change the conversation, but has anyone heard anything from Maryland? I don't think they can be done with admissions yet (or at least I hope not). Also, for UNC there seems to a lot of people on the IR wait list. Does anyone know how many IR people they are actually accepting?

[CGMJ]

Maybe I should do the same to get off the wait list  

 

 

 

AMAZING. PEG might be slightly harder to rhyme with, lol. 

[GopherGrad]

A different professor told me "If you have questions you want to study, study them! The point of graduate school is not to get a job, it's to write a dissertation. You won't understand the opportunity costs of a decision until way later,"

 

I'm really inclined to disagree with this. For a 22-year-old with the uncertain prospects of a social science BA and plenty of time to change course if the present one is unsatisfying, maybe.

 

But I'm a single 30-something with a solid career and some debt left over from a previous round of grad school. I'm sorry, but joining the VAP circuit for four years hoping a liberal arts school in Podunk, Indiana will notice me is not a responsible or realistic way to pursue a good future. If I'm going to have a family, I need to find someone soon and I can't expect to drag her all over the country or subject her to years of separation. I need to think seriously about retirement planning. Etc.

 

Lots of people posting on this board are older and have some reasonable constraints to the dream of studying the questions that animate them. The younger applicants will have fewer parts of the equation to fill in, so there's a lot more uncertainty and flexibility. But you would still do well to engage in the same calculus. Waving away disciplined decision-making because some random interventions make the results impossible to determine is foolish. Use the information you and think about probability.

[teamind]

FINALLY my admission decision status was updated for Northwestern. I hate that they don't send out an email; if it wasn't for grad cafe I wouldn't have even known to check it (well, as often...) nor would I have expected the rejection. Thank god for grad cafe!

Also, to the person who wrote "I don't understand how I was rejected. I have a 4.0 GPA, did pretty well in my GREs and had excellent letters of recommendation. I got into other schools with funding. Northeastern isn't ranked high, so I assumed I'd get in": Have you learned nothing from this forum??? I don't even know where to begin.

[doctoralgrad23]

Don't mean to change the conversation, but has anyone heard anything from Maryland? I don't think they can be done with admissions yet (or at least I hope not). Also, for UNC there seems to a lot of people on the IR wait list. Does anyone know how many IR people they are actually accepting?

I am waiting for Maryland but no news..

 

IR subfield...

[ThisGuyRiteHere]

I'm really inclined to disagree with this. For a 22-year-old with the uncertain prospects of a social science BA and plenty of time to change course if the present one is unsatisfying, maybe.

 

But I'm a single 30-something with a solid career and some debt left over from a previous round of grad school. I'm sorry, but joining the VAP circuit for four years hoping a liberal arts school in Podunk, Indiana will notice me is not a responsible or realistic way to pursue a good future. If I'm going to have a family, I need to find someone soon and I can't expect to drag her all over the country or subject her to years of separation. I need to think seriously about retirement planning. Etc.

 

Lots of people posting on this board are older and have some reasonable constraints to the dream of studying the questions that animate them. The younger applicants will have fewer parts of the equation to fill in, so there's a lot more uncertainty and flexibility. But you would still do well to engage in the same calculus. Waving away disciplined decision-making because some random interventions make the results impossible to determine is foolish. Use the information you and think about probability.

Im only in my early 20's and I am considering everything that you said.

[GopherGrad]

Im only in my early 20's and I am considering everything that you said.

 

It has always seemed from your posting like you have a plan tailored to match the range of opportunities out there for you.

[TakeMyCoffeeBlack]

Rejected at UNC.