Welcome to the 2013-2014 Cycle

[BFB]

I was thinking that grad schools could easily tell people who have been rejected very early on. Especially those candidates who are rejected as they narrow the pile, from 400 to 100 for instance. Such a system would allow these candidates to go about their lives and start executing alternate strategies. Additionally, for those who have to wait while the professors trash it out, in 50 per cent of the cases, there will be the sweet reward of an admission.

 

 

Why don't they do it this way?

 

POI: "You know, I've had second thoughts about Smith."

 

DGS: "Uhhhhhh...."

[smallworld]

Do any UT Austin applicants have any idea when we might start hearing from them?

[sylark]

I went almost 10 hours without checking the site or my email! (But still nothing)

 

Also, I see congrats are in order for several of you within that time-frame I've been gone. You guys are so amazingly terrific, astute, intelligent, charismatic, bright, creative, hard-working, innovative, insightful, and any other accolades that will give me karma points so that I will receive some admission decisions soon, preferrably acceptances.

[mv0027]

I have officially memorized 6 different computer generate usernames and a series of sL1ghtly diFFer3nt passwords. 

[aecp]

I went almost 10 hours without checking the site or my email! (But still nothing)

 

Also, I see congrats are in order for several of you within that time-frame I've been gone. You guys are so amazingly terrific, astute, intelligent, charismatic, bright, creative, hard-working, innovative, insightful, and any other accolades that will give me karma points so that I will receive some admission decisions soon, preferrably acceptances.

You are hilarious!  Thanks for the laughs on a day I needed it.

[Nords]

Is anyone else regretting that they only applied to schools with historically relatively late decision times? It's starting to freak me out, honestly. Next year's applicants: Apply to at least one school with decisions in January so you won't get in the same position...

Agreed! Only one of the schools I applied to ever really responds in January. Most of them mid-February to mid-March. 

[IOGS]

Just a friendly reminder: If you are rejected by one school, it does not mean you will be rejected from schools X, Y, and Z. If you go and look at the SOP/Profile Thread from the 2011-2012 cycle, you will see what I mean. 

Also, to make myself feel better, I will be telling myself that all the schools that reject me just could not handle my awesomeness. 

[veritaserum]

Congratulations to all the recent acceptances!!

[astreaux]

mygrotianmoment, Yes that's right.  I won't lie and claim I loved PS800.  You're right that it's important and helpful, but at times it felt more like busywork than anything.  For instance we had a week for discussion on earning tenure.  Obviously tenure is an important piece of academia, but there are a few pretty big steps between now and then.  It was helpful as a way to get to know the cohort and learn some of the norms of the discipline and Wisconsin's department in particular, but I'm also glad to be past it.

I can understand why it would feel like busy work, but as eager as I am to dive into course work, I really want a formal introduction to political science as a profession. My undergraduate education gave me a good, solid introduction to the study of political science, but whatever I picked up along the way about life as a political scientist came primarily from informal comments from my professors. I am very eager to learn about life in academia in a more systematic way. I wonder if other programs do something similar? Among the fourteen places I applied, I only noticed it in Wisconsin's handbook.

Do you recall if you were notified by email or snail mail? Also, how big is your cohort?

[astreaux]

Also, dmet, thank you for stopping by to answer our questions! It's really nice to have a chance to pick your brain and hear about your experiences.

[jazzrap]

Absolutely loving it! The first couple of semesters include a good deal of introductory and methodology courses, which help to strike the right balance between diving right into research and getting your feet wet. We have some great teaching faculty here, who take their jobs as educators as seriously as their jobs as researchers and it shows. In my first semester I took two substantive seminars, the first course in the Stats sequence (required) an experimental methods course and the 1-credit welcome to the department course (required).  I did not come in with a broad understanding of political science literature, but on the other hand I think I had a better grasp of statistics than a lot of new admits.  Neither was an issue.  The early coursework brought us all up to speed.  I can only give secondhand anecdotal reports about later stages of the program, but later level grad students have similarly positive reports.

I think many schools do this, but Wisconsin's workshops and research groups are a major draw.  They meet regularly (weekly or monthly depending on the group) to hear a presentation about some current project by visiting faculty and offer comments.  Think of them like a really small scale conference.  Since a lot of seminar work cetera around the classics, it's a great chance to update yourself on cutting edge research.

Hi Dmet,

 

I appreciate your description. I am excited about the program. I wonder if you happen to know how many people Wisconsin usually admit.

[dmet]

No problem, it's still syllabus week, so there's only a lot of reading instead of the usual mountain.  My first notification came by snail mail, but I got a follow up email two days later from the then-associate dean.  The other two schools that accepted me both sent emails first IIRC.  Rejections came in a variety of different ways, but most were either email or an online system.  It's going on a year now and I still have not received any official response from UVA after being waitlisted.

My cohort is 9 people with 3 Americanists, 2 Theorists, 3 Comparitivists and 2 doing IR.  That's 10 total, because one person who came in planning on IR as her first field and has since switched to Theory.  The cohort above me came in with 21 total.  I don't know the breakdown other than that 3 were Americanists.  As a note, Wisconsin and probably a number of other programs require that you take prelims in both a first field and a second field.

 

Edit: I'm afraid that my comment about UVA came across badly.  I received an email notifying me that they were considering my application and asking where else I was considering attending.  The implication seemed to be that they were asking whether or not UVA was my top choice.  I responded honestly that I had been accepted into two strong programs and would probably give them more consideration than UVA, but if accepted I would visit and fairly consider all my choices.  That was the end of our correspondence.  I'm sure that if I pushed I could have gotten a firm answer (presumably a no).

Edited January 24, 2014 by dmet

[jazzrap]

Hi folks,

 

To those applied to Madison, what is the latest date shown on your admission status check page? Mine is Jan 23, 2014. I wonder what this means. 

[IOGS]

Hi folks,

 

To those applied to Madison, what is the latest date shown on your admission status check page? Mine is Jan 23, 2014. I wonder what this means. 

Mine says the same. I don't think it means anything.

[jazzrap]

Mine says the same. I don't think it means anything.

Haha how stupid I was. It means I checked the page on that date, which is today.

[dmet]

Jazzrap, the simple answer is no I don't. I can tell you the less interesting information that typical enrollment for a year is 12-15, mine is particularly small and the one above me is unusually large.  If I had to ballpark a figure I'd say somewhere around 40 acceptances, but don't attach too much weight to that guess. 

[jazzrap]

No problem, it's still syllabus week, so there's only a lot of reading instead of the usual mountain.  My first notification came by snail mail, but I got a follow up email two days later from the then-associate dean.  The other two schools that accepted me both sent emails first IIRC.  Rejections came in a variety of different ways, but most were either email or an online system.  It's going on a year now and I still have not received any official response from UVA after being waitlisted.

My cohort is 9 people with 3 Americanists, 2 Theorists, 3 Comparitivists and 2 doing IR.  That's 10 total, because one person who came in planning on IR as her first field and has since switched to Theory.  The cohort above me came in with 21 total.  I don't know the breakdown other than that 3 were Americanists.  As a note, Wisconsin and probably a number of other programs require that you take prelims in both a first field and a second field.

 

Edit: I'm afraid that my comment about UVA came across badly.  I received an email notifying me that they were considering my application and asking where else I was considering attending.  The implication seemed to be that they were asking whether or not UVA was my top choice.  I responded honestly that I had been accepted into two strong programs and would probably give them more consideration than UVA, but if accepted I would visit and fairly consider all my choices.  That was the end of our correspondence.  I'm sure that if I pushed I could have gotten a firm answer (presumably a no).

Thanks a lot Dmet. So maybe they will admit 25-35 this year?

[dmet]

Thanks a lot Dmet. So maybe they will admit 25-35 this year?

 

Finally figured out the quote function. I'd guess on the upper end of that range, but that's pretty fair.

[astreaux]

No problem, it's still syllabus week, so there's only a lot of reading instead of the usual mountain.  My first notification came by snail mail, but I got a follow up email two days later from the then-associate dean.  The other two schools that accepted me both sent emails first IIRC.  Rejections came in a variety of different ways, but most were either email or an online system.  It's going on a year now and I still have not received any official response from UVA after being waitlisted.

My cohort is 9 people with 3 Americanists, 2 Theorists, 3 Comparitivists and 2 doing IR.  That's 10 total, because one person who came in planning on IR as her first field and has since switched to Theory.  The cohort above me came in with 21 total.  I don't know the breakdown other than that 3 were Americanists.  As a note, Wisconsin and probably a number of other programs require that you take prelims in both a first field and a second field.

A couple more follow-up questions, if that's okay. Is there any particular reason why your cohort is small? I noticed fewer '13 acceptances here than among the results for the previous year. Do you chalk it up to natural differences from year to year, or something more? Also, how big is your typical reading load each week?

[dmet]

A couple more follow-up questions, if that's okay. Is there any particular reason why your cohort is small? I noticed fewer '13 acceptances here than among the results for the previous year. Do you chalk it up to natural differences from year to year, or something more? Also, how big is your typical reading load each week?

 

I went ahead and plugged a line of code into R to see how weird a cohort of 9 is and it turns out it's pretty weird, but not out of the question for random variation.  Assuming that 40 students are accepted each year and 15 of them enroll on average, the cohort size should follow a binomial distribution with size 40 and rate parameter .375.  The p-value for a cohort of a size at least as extreme (small or large) as 9 people is .066.  Add on some arbitrary amount of uncertainty given that I made all of those parameters up and I think we can claim that nothing more than random chance is needed to justify my cohort size.

 

2*pbinom(9,40,15/40,lower.tail=T)

^That paragraph will make sense next year if it doesn't already.  The gist is, I don't have any specific reason to explain my small cohort, it just sometimes happens that way.

 

Last semester my reading load was about 300-500 pages a week.  Figure something like 4-6 articles or a book for each substantive seminar.  It should be a bit lower this semester, but supplemented by a healthy amount of game theory and statistics problem sets.  Grad school is a lot of work, but don't get too afraid by those numbers.  If you budget your time well, there's no reason you can't maintain a decent social life, pursue your own research and keep up with coursework.  Maybe I shouldn't say this here, but no one reads every word they are assigned.  You quickly learn how to distill the important parts of your weekly reading and focus most of your effort on those pieces that are the most important for your own interests.  Ok, I definitely shouldn't have written that here.  Read everything.

[IOGS]

Congrats to the new admits!

[astreaux]

^That paragraph will make sense next year if it doesn't already. The gist is, I don't have any specific reason to explain my small cohort, it just sometimes happens that way.

Oh, thank God!

Don't worry about corrupting us-- I think most of us have learned to scan and distill at times in order to manage a heavy reading load.

Are you enjoying life in Madison? Other than the polar vortex, I mean.

Edited January 24, 2014 by mygrotianmoment

[BFB]

My cohort is 9 people with 3 Americanists, 2 Theorists, 3 Comparitivists and 2 doing IR.  That's 10 total, because one person who came in planning on IR as her first field and has since switched to Theory.  … The cohort above me came in with 21 total.

 

This, by the way, is my nightmare. The way our budgeting works, it's designed for a steady stream of people. That kind of variation causes real problems.

[dmet]

Oh, thank God!

Don't worry about corrupting us-- I think most of us have learned to scan and distill at times in order to manage a heavy reading load.

Are you enjoying life in Madison? Other than the polar vortex, I mean.

 

Haha, it really is amazing how much I've learned in just one semester.

Today might not be the best day to ask about life in Madison. It's -4 degrees and dropping. There's a saying around here that Madison would be the best place to live in the country if it weren't for the weather. On days when you have to blink to keep the surface of your eyes from frosting over, you can see where ideas like that come from ( I hope I'm exaggerating, but I haven't kept my eyes open outside long enough to find out.)

Really though, Madison has a lot to like. There's a wonderful microbrew culture if you're into that. The farmers' market in the spring through fall is a big attraction. The capitol building is just a few blocks from campus and there's always some group protesting something with widely varying positions and levels of knowledge outside of it. It's also a very walkable place, with a solid bussing system. I don't own a car and I have no problem getting around or even grocery shopping. Also, people make fun of cheese curds, but if there's a better bar food than a tray of deep fried cheddar curds with some chipotle ranch dipping sauce, I have yet to find it. With the obvious exception of the thermometer (and the wind chill, dear god the wind chill), I really have nothing bad to say about Madison.

Edited January 24, 2014 by dmet

[sylark]

Congrats Boulder Admits. Nothing yet for me. Though I already knew I wouldn't be one of the top choices admitted during the first of the first round decisions given I don't have much publishing/research experience beyond my Senior Thesis. Plus my scores are EXACTLY their median of ENROLLED students last year. For me, it is a close-call. Another thing I noticed is that the theory students tend to be admitted a few days afterward according to the information on the results page from the past two years. Though, some people don't specify their subfield. Really though, I will be relieved if I am even considered on the waitlist. Funding is not a huge issue for me since I have a loan for service opportunity in the event of little to no funding.

Edited January 24, 2014 by sylark