PhD Comparative Politics: Choosing Schools to apply! Please help!

[izabellaaung]

Hello,

I will be graduating from college with a degree in IR and a minor in Math in Spring 2017, and I would really really love to go straight into a PhD program. I go to a private liberal arts in Oregon, which is not too well-known nationwide, but very popular on the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest area. I have also studied abroad at the University of Nottingham in England, which ranks in the top ten for politics in the UK. So I am hoping I won't be seen as under-qualified for the schools I am planning to apply for! Haven't taken GRE yet, but taking it in October. GPA is currently at 3.67, so I am also a bit worried about it. It's not too shabby, but not considered great either. I do volunteer and intern extensively, and been doing research for the past year and plan to continue until I graduate. My main interest areas are ethnic and minorities politics in the post conflict regions, democratization pros and cons, authoritarian regimes pros and cons, feminism, and religion and politics. I am undergoing naturalization process, so currently applying as an international student. I don't know if it will affect the application process much or not.

So, here are the schools I am looking at.

Columbia

NYU

Rutgers, NJ

CUNY Graduate Center (This one, I am thinking of it as a safe school...)

Stony Brook

Syracuse

Penn State

University of Colorado, Denver

University of Denver

 

Any feedback will be very much appreciated! Thank you so much!

Bella

[PizzaCat93]

Hi! Sorry no one has gotten to this yet, usually the board is fairly active. I just went through the application process myself and ended up with 2 top-15 acceptances, as well as a few others, so hopefully some things I say will help. I have a few comments/questions - 

1) How did you choose the schools you want to apply to? You have a decent spread of schools, but I would recommend applying to at least a few top-15/20 schools as well. When you're deciding where to apply, make sure you think about fit specifically (professors you can work with as well as general department feel). 

2) Your research interests are fairly broad right now. I had the same issue, which was somewhat of a detriment to me, I think. I would recommend doing one of two things. Either pick one of your interests and really elaborate on it, or taylor your interests in your statement to each school you apply to, depending on how it fits. So one school may have someone working on ethnic conflict whereas another does not, but instead has someone working on religion and politics. Does that make sense?

3) Along these lines, if there is a specific region you're interested in working on, definitely say that in your statement. I was wavering between two regions when I applied, and from what I can tell, this confused a few departments, who assumed I wanted to continue with the region I studied in undergrad (which ended up not being true). 

4) GRE - two points here. One, I would recommend taking a practice test ASAP to see where you stand. So there is an official GRE practice software called PowerPrep that is available on the ETS website for free. It replicates the testing experience exactly, so you should definitely check that out. Also, your school may offer a paper practice test at some point; mine did. Anyway, after finding out how much you'll need to improve, take some time (summer, if you're not busy) to really focus on that. If possible, I'd recommend taking the test earlier than October so that if you don't get the score you want on the first attempt, you have time to study a bit more and take it again before applications are due. 

5) Make sure you have good recommendation letters as well as a good statement; numbers can only take you so far, and it's these two aspects that really set you apart from other applicants. In regards to your GPA, hopefully this semester you may be able to get it to 3.7, which would be a good position to be in. If not, you should still be alright for most places, I'd say. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any clarification or have more questions!

Edited March 30, 2016 by PizzaCat93

[izabellaaung]

9 hours ago, PizzaCat93 said:

Hi! Sorry no one has gotten to this yet, usually the board is fairly active. I just went through the application process myself and ended up with 2 top-15 acceptances, as well as a few others, so hopefully some things I say will help. I have a few comments/questions - 

1) How did you choose the schools you want to apply to? You have a decent spread of schools, but I would recommend applying to at least a few top-15/20 schools as well. When you're deciding where to apply, make sure you think about fit specifically (professors you can work with as well as general department feel). 

2) Your research interests are fairly broad right now. I had the same issue, which was somewhat of a detriment to me, I think. I would recommend doing one of two things. Either pick one of your interests and really elaborate on it, or taylor your interests in your statement to each school you apply to, depending on how it fits. So one school may have someone working on ethnic conflict whereas another does not, but instead has someone working on religion and politics. Does that make sense?

3) Along these lines, if there is a specific region you're interested in working on, definitely say that in your statement. I was wavering between two regions when I applied, and from what I can tell, this confused a few departments, who assumed I wanted to continue with the region I studied in undergrad (which ended up not being true). 

4) GRE - two points here. One, I would recommend taking a practice test ASAP to see where you stand. So there is an official GRE practice software called PowerPrep that is available on the ETS website for free. It replicates the testing experience exactly, so you should definitely check that out. Also, your school may offer a paper practice test at some point; mine did. Anyway, after finding out how much you'll need to improve, take some time (summer, if you're not busy) to really focus on that. If possible, I'd recommend taking the test earlier than October so that if you don't get the score you want on the first attempt, you have time to study a bit more and take it again before applications are due. 

5) Make sure you have good recommendation letters as well as a good statement; numbers can only take you so far, and it's these two aspects that really set you apart from other applicants. In regards to your GPA, hopefully this semester you may be able to get it to 3.7, which would be a good position to be in. If not, you should still be alright for most places, I'd say. 

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any clarification or have more questions!

Hello!

Thank you so much for your reply! Yes, my research interests are really broad right now, but I am leaning towards religion, women, and ethnic minorities, and how they interact each other in politics. Specific area of interest is Asia, but since Asia is so diverse, I don't know if I might need to narrow it down even further. What do you think?

About the top 15-20 schools, I am a little bit nervous about rejection... But I guess I'll never know if I never try! What schools would you recommend? I am looking for something on the East Coast and New England area.

I am really hopeful that I can graduate with a 3.7-3.75. I think that sounds a lot better than a 3.67 on PhD applications!

I just downloaded the GRE powerprep, and will start working on it this weekend.Thank you so much for your reply!

Bella

[kwils76]

Hi!

I've just gone through this process; I ended up getting into a few schools for Comparative so hopefully this will be of some help for you!

I would definitely try to pick a specific research area that you'd like to focus on (women in politics, for example) at least for each school, as suggested above.

With regard to picking out specific schools, first I made a big list with 2-3 schools from each ranking "decile" (3 from top 10, 2 from top 20, 3 from top 30, etc. up through the 60's) that I would be happy to go to location-wise. From there, I tried to pick out two faculty members from each school whom I would be happy to work with and who shared my regional focus of Western Europe. If I couldn't come up with 2 professors from a specific school, I dropped it from my list. 

If you still have too many schools, pare it down with the goal of having a good spread across ranking deciles. And keep in any schools where they build the data sets you are hoping to work with.

I think your list looks good - though I would look at CU Boulder rather than Denver as it's ranked higher and has a really good comparative program, and drop Penn State unless you want to be seriously pushed into intense quants (this is advice I got from my advisor). I would also check out Arizona State as their Women in Politics program is GREAT and they focus on regions close to what you're looking to study.

Hopefully this is helpful to you!

[PizzaCat93]

On 3/31/2016 at 2:09 AM, izabellaaung said:

Hello!

Thank you so much for your reply! Yes, my research interests are really broad right now, but I am leaning towards religion, women, and ethnic minorities, and how they interact each other in politics. Specific area of interest is Asia, but since Asia is so diverse, I don't know if I might need to narrow it down even further. What do you think?

About the top 15-20 schools, I am a little bit nervous about rejection... But I guess I'll never know if I never try! What schools would you recommend? I am looking for something on the East Coast and New England area.

I am really hopeful that I can graduate with a 3.7-3.75. I think that sounds a lot better than a 3.67 on PhD applications!

I just downloaded the GRE powerprep, and will start working on it this weekend.Thank you so much for your reply!

Bella

Asia - okay. Asia is not my area, so maybe someone else can speak more to this point, but I would recommend at least choosing between East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, etc) or Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Vietnam, India etc). Since you're wanting to work on religion and minorities, you probably would want to mention what religion(s) as well. 

I second the above point about CU Boulder instead of CU Denver. Northwestern has people who work on ethnic conflict and religion, although I don't think they have anyone working on Asia. Ohio State has just hired someone who works on Cambodia, and they also have a few working on ethnic minorities and conflict. I don't know of anyone working on women, specifically. You may want to look into the U of California schools (although you said you mostly wanted East Coast), as well as Columbia and WashU St. Louis. 

 

[ultraultra]

As others have said, fit is very important. You should definitely think hard about what you want to study and mainly apply to departments where those needs would be supported. I applied to (and got into) Stony Brook and you should know - its basically only Americanists and methodologists there, with almost everyone self-identifying as a political psychologist. So I'm not sure that it makes sense for your interests unless you want to study those substantive topics from a political psychology perspective. I also think its worth it to throw an application or two at top schools where you have reasonably good fit - they sometimes admit people with lower numbers if the rest of their profile is good and their fit with the department is good. Definitely pour over the results threads, they're very informative.

[GradSchoolTruther]

CU Denver is only a master's program.

[Syas]

If you are looking at the intersection between ethnic politics and conflict, I recommend the University of Maryland's program in Political Science. The department has produced the well-known MAR dataset, which analyzes the ethnic conflict worldwide.