So what is "fit?" How do I find it? And how do I know if I have it?

[Nozistin]

Hey Grad cafe community,

So I keep hearing this word "fit" when people talk about applications, acceptances, and decisions but I'm not sure I fully grasp what it means. I know it's based on whether your research interest "fit" well with the school's department but to be honest most departments don't seem to stand out much for me. They really don't seem to be that different when reading about them. Columbia for example has an interesting MPP/PHD dual degree that seems unique and captures my interest but based on department websites I can't see a significant difference between Cal, UCSD, UofM, and etc. I'm interested generally in Urban Politics and all larger departments seem to have 2-4 professors in this area with the research of most being of equal interest to me. Maybe this is because my interest are not super focused yet? I guess I'm just wonder how other people are finding "fit?' Or making themselves "fit" in their SOPs? Is it really that important? My top choices are UCSD, UCLA, Berkeley, and UofW mostly because they have good placement, I hate the cold, and am used to and happy with larger public research institutions but I feel like I'm missing something pretty big here because people seem to be making much deeper decisions than I am. Thanks in advance.

[Determinedandnervous]

The way you're doing it is exactly how we all did it - find the schools with 2-4 professors in your research area of interest. The fact that you're finding said schools is good - keep them in mind as you'll likely apply to at least 7. With your research interests, I would also suggest looking into PhD's in public policy and look up the faculty in those programs.

[alphazeta]

Fit has several components:

1) Topic: Are there faculty in the department actively researching the topics that you want to study?

2) Methodological/Theoretical Orientation: Is the department open to the types of methodological and theoretical approaches that you anticipate employing? That is, even if the people are studying exactly the topics you want to study, you don't "fit" if they do formal modeling and you want to do ethnography.  I don't know enough about urban studies to comment on it, but in some research areas there are also theoretical fault lines that it's difficult to work across.

3) Fit with Department: This is a bit more complicated, but are you planning to work with faculty who are in the mainstream of the department? This can be hard to know, but you won't fit well if your proposed advisors are black sheep within the department.  Partly, this is about assessing whether you see a match between yourself and other faculty.

4) Fit with Orthodoxy: This is largely a combination of #2 and #3 but you assess it differently.  Do you like you will do the kind of research that the department wants to promote? Mostly, this means do you look like the grad students coming out of the program? There are, for example, senior scholars who do mostly qualitative research but who expect their students to do mostly quantitative research.  Check out the webpages of recent graduates/job market candidates.  Does the work they are doing look like the work you want to be doing?

[rising_star]

You're on the right track for "fit" but, it would probably be easier for you if you were able to narrow your interests. "Urban politics" is really quite broad. Knowing what kind of research you want to do (methodologies, theoretical frameworks, location, etc.) should help you figure out where your fit is best. If you want to be doing qualitative comparative work, then there are going to be departments where that work fits in and departments where it doesn't, for example. 

My advice is to figure out what you want to study, why, and how, and then look for people who either do the same kind of studies or are interested in the same thing. That's where your "fit" will be best, in many ways. You don't want to try to contort your interests to fit those of the faculty. Rather, it should be the other way around such that in the "fit" paragraph, you're showing them why they'd be the perfect person to advise/supervise your research project.

[kronos16]

All the responses so far have hit it pretty well. The hardest thing for me personally was narrowing down what my "fit" actually was. Once you know what you want to work on, finding schools that "fit" you is much easier. Try to narrow down your research idea to 2-4 very defined topics, then find articles that are similar to your idea. By doing this you find professors that you could potentially work with. The tricky part is finding programs that have multiple people that have people that are working on similar topics as your research ideas. 

For me I started as IR, then security, then terrorism, and then came down to this idea of threat/risk. Any school can teach you IR, most schools  can teach you security, some schools can teach you terrorism, not many schools do work on threat/risk.