Looking for advice on how to use my summer to prepare for grad school...

[TyKohn]

Hello everyone,

 

I just finished my undergraduate studies last week and am accepted into a PhD program in the fall. I have the next four months off to prepare, and I want to use that time wisely. My plan as of now is to work a little every day on my skills in math and foreign language, as well as to begin reading the major academic journals. For math help, I got a couple of books on algebra, calculus and statistics for social scientists as well as a book on introductory econometrics. For my foreign language skills, I am just reading foreign newspapers online.

 

While I'd appreciate any advice on working with math and foreign languages for grad school, my real concern is with how to tackle the academic journals. There are so many journals, with such deep archives of material, that I find it a little daunting to just jump right into them. How would you all suggest I approach this? Where should I begin?

 

Keep in mind that I am working with these academic journals not just to familiarize myself with formal academic research in PoliSci, but also too help me narrow my research focus going forward. My research interests as an undergrad were in Conflict (particularly Democratic Peace Theory) and IPE (looking at the Eurozone crisis and the differing policy opinions of EU member-states). What are considered to be the major journals related to these subfields and my interests in particular?

 

Thank you in advance for all of your help!

 

--- Ty

[catchermiscount]

Congratulations on graduating.

 

For starters, this summer should generally be spent doing all that you can to be in a happy, healthy initial position for graduate school.  Many people are excited to begin, but graduate studies are best handled in graduate school.  You need not arrive at your campus with an exhaustive list of research questions and interests.  The point of sitting in seminars is to learn from and be influenced by your professors and fellow graduate students (likewise, you're supposed to help teach them as well!). 

 

You don't have to know everything in every journal in question.  It sounds like you're already quite familiar with some of the literatures in the field, which is a very good start.  Few articles feature a full, inclusive literature review with critical thoughts---you just cite the stuff you need to cite and then mention the gap that you're trying to fill.  So, for a favorite article, go back and look at all of the articles it cites in the lit review.  Surely you can add your own thoughts to the whole thing.

 

If you wonder which journals are most important in IR...for starters, the top three general journals (American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, and Journal of Politics) all have IR articles, though the Journal of Politics tends to be the least "generalist" of the general journals.  International Organization is clearly the leading IR specialty journal, and it features articles on both conflict and IPE.  The flavor has been especially IPEish of late.  International Studies Quarterly is a step down from IO.  The Journal of Conflict Resolution is roughly on par with ISQ and mostly features articles that study conflict using statistical techniques, though the occasional formal theory paper slips in.  If you stick to that set of journals, you'll have plenty of high-quality research to read.

 

If you're so inclined, you might pick up Jeff Gill's book on math for political science, the Simon and Blume book on math for economics, or some other foundational math book.  Also if you're so inclined, you might download R (it's free) and work through some tutorials.  Also if you're so inclined, you might learn a little bit about typesetting in LaTeX (it's free). 

 

But mostly, enjoy the people you care about and have fun.  Read some fiction or interesting non-fiction.  You'll miss the chance to do so soon enough.

[ThisGuyRiteHere]

Relax. I am the biggest person who is gung ho about all this, but I am taking a trip in 2 weeks. I won't have time to travel like this in grad school, unless I am doing research. Try and see if your old profs need help with research. I may have found something doing research for the summer. Something to put on the CV.

[CorvusCorvus]

Definitely relax. Going straight from undergrad to grad school without so much as a year off (particularly if you didn't take a year's break during your undergrad) can be intense for many people, and you don't want to burn out during your PhD. I have met many people who have struggled once they became ABD, so try to pace yourself.

 

I have my own favourite journals, but I find it much more fruitful to figure out what authors I like, who they cite, who cites them, and so forth. It is better to become an expert in a certain field of scholarship than an expert on the things published in a certain journal. In fact, although I do have journals that I follow closely and read each article in, I found those journals through the authors that I began to study in depth. That may not work for you, but it certainly did for me.

[polisci12345]

I'm with coach. Its great that you are excited about grad school. You'll want to remember this feeling and try to fall back on it frequently during the next few years when things feel overwhelming. That said, you are going to grad school to learn these things. Will reading a text book on econometrics change the set of classes you take next year? If it won't lead you to skip the multiple regression/OLS class and jump right into the MLE class, then why? Every OLS class I've seen is designed to start at zero and take you up to about the same point. You are going to learn all of these things within 12 months (or less) no matter what you do this summer. Do something that makes you happy, it may not seem like it, but I promise this will have more downstream and long term benefits.

 

Also, this is going to be your last real break for a while. Your summers after this aren't a break, they are "a great time to do all the research I couldn't do while I was taking classes." This summer, I will be working on projects for two of my advisors and spending the rest of my time getting some other projects started on my own and with other grad students. 

[ThisGuyRiteHere]

This is what I have been told:

Summer 1: Research camp at UMich or some other methods camp if you get the funding to go/teach summer classes/etc.

Summer 2: Comps

Summers 3 - Completion: Some form of Dissertation writing, reading or outlining.

So your time is booked.

[TyKohn]

Hello everyone, thank you for your replies!

 

Just want to let everyone know that I am definitely going to relax, I'm only talking about spending an hour or so a day reading and working on math. I won't have anything else major to do during the next four months, so I'll have plenty of free time. I was only part-time my last term as I finished up and took a year off earlier as an undergrad, so its not like I haven't had a break. And I am planning on taking a trip later this summer, which should be nice.

I am just trying to get a head-start so I do not get overwhelmed once I am in the program. In particular, I have not really had to use any math as an undergrad since my freshman year courses in Calc, Stat, and Research Methods, and I have forgotten a lot of it in the years since. My GRE scores were way lower in Quantitative than Verbal and Writing, not low enough to hurt me apparently, but I still viewed it as a red flag. So if it is going to take me extra effort to understand the methods courses I am taking, I'd rather do some of that now while I'm laying around the house watching sports than later when I will already have plenty to do.

 

--- Ty
 

[catchermiscount]

So long as by "laying around the house watching sports" you mean "watching Sid raise the cup" and "watching Taillon and Cole take us to the promised land," it sounds like we're simpatico.

[TyKohn]

Haha, that is exactly what I mean  .

 

So long as by "laying around the house watching sports" you mean "watching Sid raise the cup" and "watching Taillon and Cole take us to the promised land," it sounds like we're simpatico.

[RWBG]

If you want to spend time learning things the summer before your first year, my recommendation would be to focus your time on the kind of stuff that you'll need for your first year courses, but which aren't necessarily covered in detail in those courses. Things like learning LaTeX, math, etc. can help you engage with your first year courses better, and they won't necessarily be repeated during the year, with the expectation being that you'll pick it up yourself. Also, insofar as learning math is like building a muscle, even if you do end up repeating some of the stuff, it won't be a waste.

 

In addition to Simon and Blume, working through a book on proofs like Velleman's How to Prove It may be useful, depending on your inclinations. Also, getting comfortable with matrix algebra can't hurt for the stats sequence; I've heard good things about this book (although I haven't looked at it myself yet).
 

http://www.amazon.com/Matrix-Algebra-Econometric-Exercises-Vol/dp/0521537460/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367557803&sr=1-2&keywords=exercises+in+matrix+algebra

[catchermiscount]

I feel so embarrassed to ask this...but can someone describe to me the function of LaTex? Beyond condoms, that is...

 

This is not embarrassing at all.  LaTeX (pronounced LAY-teck) is a document preparation system that builds on the old TeX type setting program developed by Donald Knuth (a giant in computer science).  Many folks in the field---but definitely not all---use it for their papers.  There's a bit of a learning curve, as it isn't WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) like, say, MS Word is.  So, instead of sitting and typing in what you'd like to write, there's a bit of technical formatting going on.  For example, suppose that you wanted to italicize a word.  In MS Word, you'd type the word, highlight it, and click a button.  In LaTeX, you just type \emph{word}.  And then you have it compile and it spits out a .dvi or a .pdf or whatever.

 

It produces beautiful documents, and once you get over the learning curve, it's a lot easier for writing papers that involve any amount of mathematical notation.  As such it's become something of a signal among folks that do technical work---if it's not in LaTeX, it must be dumb.  Yet, some of the very smartest technicians still use MS Word, so it shouldn't be taken TOO seriously.

 

It is also possible to incorporate your LaTeX code and your R code with one another so that you dynamically update your documents as results change.  That comes from a package called Sweave.

 

To use LaTeX, you'll need to download a distribution (e.g. MiKTeX).  You'll also probably want to get a text editor (e.g. WinEdt or the cult favorite, emacs). 

 

We teach LaTeX to the first years through our computing lab.  You can find old lecture notes here.

[GopherGrad]

In LaTeX, you just type \emph{word}.  And then you have it compile and it spits out a .dvi or a .pdf or whatever. ... As such it's become something of a signal among folks that do technical work---if it's not in LaTeX, it must be dumb.

 

Oh. My. God.

 

Maybe I'm just being cranky, but what on earth could possibly be the advantage of replacing hot-keys in Word and Pages with manual macros? Am I really going to have to learn a new way to word process in addition to everything else?

[catchermiscount]

Oh. My. God.

 

Maybe I'm just being cranky, but what on earth could possibly be the advantage of replacing hot-keys in Word and Pages with manual macros? Am I really going to have to learn a new way to word process in addition to everything else?

 

Ha, well, you quickly learn that you don't \emph{have} to do anything.  If you \emph{want} to learn LaTeX, it's not that hard.  In general, it's much easier to demonstrate craftsmanship with the more flexible tool.  How much you value craftsmanship is a function of your own subjective taste parameters; the same goes for your willingness to take on costs of learning.  The same will go for learning techniques not explicitly taught in classes, learning a given literature more thoroughly than one does in any given class, and so on.

 

You're right in general, though: LaTeX's advantages aren't going to be on things like ease of use or "hot-key"-ability.  But that doesn't mean it isn't faster a lot of the time.  Here is a quick example of a situation where using LaTeX is preferable, and here is the TeX file I used to make it. 

 

There are other benefits.  It's easier to manage very large documents (like if you're writing a dissertation or a book).  It's easier to make high-quality presentation slides through the Beamer environment.  It encourages a more structured writing process.  It gets theorem, propositions, and lemmata right.  You can embed vector graphics with ease.  It's much easier to get bibliographies right with BiBTeX.  You can use fancy, high quality fonts with XeTeX.  It gets ligatures right.  And so on.  So, while you lose a lot of the front-end ease, you get a lot of value on the back end.

Edited May 6, 2013 by coachrjc

[IRToni]

Also note that there's editors around that help you, especially at the beginning. I found TeXniCCenter amazing for the beginning, because you can do pretty much everything with the point-and click method, it will automatically display the LaTeX "code", and thus make learning a lot more natural, at least for me. After a couple thousand words, I didn't want to klick any more, because it was a lot faster/easier to just write the command. If you don't want to loose out all the WYSIWYG component, also look at editors with automatic compiling (where you see both documents on your screen) and LyX.

 

That said, if you're thinking of only doing qualitative work, it might not be worth it. In addition, it can be a bit of a headache to collaborate, since many people don't use latex, and I haven't found a really reliable Tex to word convertor yet.