Welcome to the 2014-15 Cycle

[AuldReekie]

Phone constantly at my side...

 

Damn you OSU   (and other schools that interview  )

[esotericish]

Oh man, I just saw another Emory rejection posted. Anybody else get anything?

[puravidagg]

I think the GW posts on the results page are real-- PhD Orientation day has been put on the GWU's political science event calendar (scroll to see February)... http://politicalscience.columbian.gwu.edu/events-calendar

Edited January 20, 2015 by puravidagg

[AuldReekie]

Oh man, I just saw another Emory rejection posted. Anybody else get anything?

 

I see it, well now I know it wasn't just me rejected on the 7th.. 

[svan]

Damn you OSU   (and other schools that interview  )

Not to add to either your or the collective stress, but it looks like the first wave of Ohio State acceptances rolled out on [Wednesday] 1/22 last year.  Based on the timing between last year's first phone interviews and those acceptances [7-10 days], it seems reasonable that we could have action on that front by the end of the week. 

 

I'm surprised more schools aren't jockeying for position early on in the cycle with respect to their acceptance date, as I've been [even more] fixed on OSU since my interview last week.  I suppose deciding when to contact applicants is something like timing a formal announcement of one's candidacy for office insofar as there's a tradeoff between getting your name out there early and making sure you're fresh in the mind of voters [or prospective admits] when it comes to decision time.  I know admission committees model out the likelihood that an accepted student will matriculate--I wonder to what degree they consider this phenomenon.

[Duvergerian]

I'm surprised more schools aren't jockeying for position early on in the cycle with respect to their acceptance date, as I've been [even more] fixed on OSU since my interview last week.  I suppose deciding when to contact applicants is something like timing a formal announcement of one's candidacy for office insofar as there's a tradeoff between getting your name out there early and making sure you're fresh in the mind of voters [or prospective admits] when it comes to decision time.  I know admission committees model out the likelihood that an accepted student will matriculate--I wonder to what degree they consider this phenomenon.

 

We should do a study!

[Poli92]

Seeing that you all are starting to get decisions back is almost making me regret jumping ship over to Gov't Affairs. I don't know how I'm going to be able to wait until March. 

 

 

 

edit: English is hard. 

Edited January 20, 2015 by Poli92

[deltaqsquared]

First post in  a year. 

 

Can anyone claim the University of Washington PoliSci PhD interview? Getting antsy as I am feeling that I may not have made the cut for UW PoliSci again. 

[ssssss]

 

Hi everyone!

 

Finally biting the bullet and going to pursue my dream of a career in Political Science. My undergraduate was in Nuclear Engineering and then a post-grad from Cambridge in Nuclear Energy. Will be applying to schools who have a strong focus on nuclear security issues and nuclear security policy. Currently looking at MIT, Stanford and Berkeley among others. 

 

U Grad GPA: First Class Honours (UK) 

MPhil GPA: Pass with merit (not a distinction)

GRE: 168 Q, 167 V

Research Experience/Publications: Currently working at the leading think-tank in my country, Masters' thesis at Cambridge and a few online publications (nothing peer-reviewed)

Recommendation Letters: This is the real problem area in my application. I did not take any political science courses and I do not have professors who can attest to my interest or experience and ability in political science research. A recommendation from my undergrad will only be able to talk about my general academic and research ability and the recommendation from Cambridge will at the max be able to point to my Masters' thesis as evidence of quality research. Will be getting a third recommendation from a Senior Fellow at the think tank I now work at but it is unlikely to be earth shattering. 

What can I possibly do about this and will other aspects of my application be able to make up for it?

 

Other Questions:

 

1- How should I present my Academic scores? Try to convert them to a standardized GPA score using conversions like the Fulbright one or simply present them as they are in the UK format?

2- There are few schools with a focus on nuclear security issues in the pol. science department and fit is clearly important. Yet, all the advice I read on here is to apply to as many places as possible. Initially I was only considering 5-6 schools but should I be increasing that number even at the cost of compromising on fit? 

3- What do people on here think about this? http://chronicle.com/article/PhDs-From-Top/136113/ 

Is it worth considering a PhD program from a slightly lower ranked school? Which again links back to my question about applying to many schools. 

 

Thank you all

 

Hey, I also hold a UK bachelor degree and I don't know how to convert the grades into GPA. I have asked several universities and they said they won't convert them at all since their faculty are familiar with the UK grading system.

 

I obtained Mathematics bachelor degree with a second upper class in a Top 4 UK university and an MPhil in Social Science degree with a GPA of 3.8. I am not sure whether my GPA reaches the threshold for applying top PhD in Political Science programs in United States.

 

Many thanks in advance!

[ani11]

Hey, I also hold a UK bachelor degree and I don't know how to convert the grades into GPA. I have asked several universities and they said they won't convert them at all since their faculty are familiar with the UK grading system.

 

I obtained Mathematics bachelor degree with a second upper class in a Top 4 UK university and an MPhil in Social Science degree with a GPA of 3.8. I am not sure whether my GPA reaches the threshold for applying top PhD in Political Science programs in United States.

 

Many thanks in advance!

 

Well I just gave in my scores as they are because of the same reason you mentioned, all the schools I contacted said they are familiar with the UK system and asked me to NOT convert into a GPA.

[ssssss]

Well I just gave in my scores as they are because of the same reason you mentioned, all the schools I contacted said they are familiar with the UK system and asked me to NOT convert into a GPA.

Hey,

 

Thanks for your reply!

 

Have you got any ideaS that whether my GPA can pass the first round?

 

Thanks again!

[ajayghale]

I see it, well now I know it wasn't just me rejected on the 7th.. 

Eeeeeyyyy, Emory-rejection sibling *high five followed by dejected glance at the ground*

Few things more disheartening than getting rejected a week after the year starts.

Also got rejected from GW. I seem to be first on the chopping block for not a few schools...

[Robes]

Well I just gave in my scores as they are because of the same reason you mentioned, all the schools I contacted said they are familiar with the UK system and asked me to NOT convert into a GPA.

 

You know what? GWU did convert my UK grades (Pass with Merit) into a GPA: they made the conversion directly on my uploaded transcript.

 

Well, my file was pretty strong, but I just got rejected. Good start.

[Robes]

Really? Is that the first response you have got? Don't worry! You might get into even better ones!

 

Is a Merit good when converts to US scale GPA?

 

Thank you! Well, at least in my case, they don't look at all at the final grade but at each exam's grade, which is converted into the American grade system. And since the two systems are pretty different, the result is pretty unfair. I hope other institutions are more familiar with the UK system.

[Robes]

I mean, a 65, especially from one of the best institutions in IR of the Russell Group, cannot be translated straight into a B!!! This is just delusional. That's what happened to me.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Robes

[ssssss]

I mean, a 65, especially from one of the best institutions in IR of the Russell Group, cannot be translated straight into a B!!! This is just delusional. That's what happened to me.

70 is already an A in UK.....

[Sartori]

I mean, a 65, especially from one of the best institutions in IR of the Russell Group, cannot be translated straight into a B!!! This is just delusional. That's what happened to me.

There are several ways in which the application process seems to be skewed towards students with US qualifications, unfortunately. LOR writers from US institutions are more familiar, US acadenics are better able to contextualise US than international institutional reputation, GRE prep is bizarre for a UK student (it covers stuff I studied age 14), less of a culture of RAing and TAing before PhD in the UK. The semiotics of marks in the 60s in the UK, especially at Oxbridge, could be the subject of an anthropological study. And, of course, we study "Politics", not "Political Science".

On the other hand, UK students (but not IB students) must specialise from age 16, and BAs are more focused. School level maths covers some undergraduate US maths.

Presumably it is even harder to evaluate students who study outside of the Anglosphere.

I'd be interested to hear whether faculty think it's an issue or not, how they contextualise data from international students etc.

The differences may be marginal... But the percentages of int'l students -- especially when you exclude Canada -- suggest that there may well be an issue.

Edited January 21, 2015 by Sartori

[ssssss]

There are several ways in which the application process seems to be skewed towards students with US qualifications, unfortunately. LOR writerss from US institutions are more familiar, better able to contextualise institutional reputation, GRE prep is bizarre for a UK student (it covers stuff I studied age 14), less of a culture of RAing and TAing before PhD in the UK. The semiotics of marks in the 60s in the UK, especially at Oxbridge, could be the subject of an anthropological study. And, of course, we study "Politics", not "Political Science".

I'd be interested to hear whether faculty think it's an issue or not, how they contextualise data from international students etc.

We can post it to the topic of "From the Faculty Perspective".

[omerow]

I think the GW posts on the results page are real-- PhD Orientation day has been put on the GWU's political science event calendar (scroll to see February)... http://politicalscience.columbian.gwu.edu/events-calendar

 

Yeah they are. I didn't think they were. But I got an e-mail last night. First rejection. Fit wasn't bad. I was hoping to be at least wait-listed. Oh well. 

[meteora]

I mean, a 65, especially from one of the best institutions in IR of the Russell Group, cannot be translated straight into a B!!! This is just delusional. That's what happened to me.

 

After having a BA in the United States, I finished a master's degree in the UK. In my master's program, only 6 percent of students got higher score than 70 averagely. No matter I received a high merit or low merit, they converted them to Bs. And a pass class was converted to C...... In the UK, professors consider that high merit students are eligible for doing PhD work. 

[BFB]

I'd be interested to hear whether faculty think it's an issue or not, how they contextualise data from international students etc.

 

In some ways it's a nontrivial issue. Our Graduate School's Fellowship Competition, for example, requires waivers for students with anything less than a 3.6, and they don't take different national baselines into account. This can get completely absurd: if I remember correctly, one of our past applicants had gotten an award for best undergraduate GPA in [country X]—the whole country—and they still required a waiver because, when you converted it to the US system, it was below a 3.6.

 

Anyway. The other way in which I think it matters is that non-US applicants are sometimes socialized differently when it comes to the discipline. That might make applications seem a bit less "professionalized" to people outside of that applicant's subfield—which is one of the reasons that it's wise to pass along applicants' files to their POIs.

 

It's true that letters are different. Letters from the UK tend to be more evenly balanced and accurate, frankly, while US letters tend to be more one-sided and positive. There are individual exceptions, whom one gets to recognize over time. In our case, the impact here probably mostly comes at the stage of financial aid: most of the political scientists are probably familiar with these broad differences and read letters accordingly, but the physicists and chemists and English professors who comprise the University-wide financial aid committee may not be.

[BFB]

Damn you OSU   (and other schools that interview  )

 

For what it's worth, most if not all of our phone calls should be done by now. (That said, if you get a phone call from a strange number in the 614 area code, please do pick it up....)

 

Not to add to either your or the collective stress, but it looks like the first wave of Ohio State acceptances rolled out on [Wednesday] 1/22 last year.  Based on the timing between last year's first phone interviews and those acceptances [7-10 days], it seems reasonable that we could have action on that front by the end of the week. 

 

I'm surprised more schools aren't jockeying for position early on in the cycle with respect to their acceptance date, as I've been [even more] fixed on OSU since my interview last week.  I suppose deciding when to contact applicants is something like timing a formal announcement of one's candidacy for office insofar as there's a tradeoff between getting your name out there early and making sure you're fresh in the mind of voters [or prospective admits] when it comes to decision time.  I know admission committees model out the likelihood that an accepted student will matriculate--I wonder to what degree they consider this phenomenon.

 

I have to say, while the collective angst on this board inspires lots of wild speculation, it can also produce some very sound analysis. Well done, svan. Admissions decisions aren't far off.

[AuldReekie]

In some ways it's a nontrivial issue. Our Graduate School's Fellowship Competition, for example, requires waivers for students with anything less than a 3.6, and they don't take different national baselines into account. This can get completely absurd: if I remember correctly, one of our past applicants had gotten an award for best undergraduate GPA in [country X]—the whole country—and they still required a waiver because, when you converted it to the US system, it was below a 3.6.

 

Anyway. The other way in which I think it matters is that non-US applicants are sometimes socialized differently when it comes to the discipline. That might make applications seem a bit less "professionalized" to people outside of that applicant's subfield—which is one of the reasons that it's wise to pass along applicants' files to their POIs.

 

It's true that letters are different. Letters from the UK tend to be more evenly balanced and accurate, frankly, while US letters tend to be more one-sided and positive. There are individual exceptions, whom one gets to recognize over time. In our case, the impact here probably mostly comes at the stage of financial aid: most of the political scientists are probably familiar with these broad differences and read letters accordingly, but the physicists and chemists and English professors who comprise the University-wide financial aid committee may not be.

 

I remember an old article by Dan Nexon on the Monkey Cage which really emphasised the need for international applications to get their referees to put grades into a useful context. Even within Britain itself it can be a nightmare.

 

At most British universities there's a completely difference incentive structure with many courses (or even whole years) not counting towards the final grade and this can really alter how one studies. Interstingly my alma mater is introducing a GPA system now...

 

Still I'll not moan. The US system is still much more open, at least from a financial aspect, than many others.

[esotericish]

just got an interview invite from Emory!

[Toucan]

just got an interview invite from Emory!

Congratulations, esotericish!