Fall 2010 applicants

[applying12010]

One proposal for this thread for the future generation of applications - do people mind stating where they earned their undergrad and/ or grad degrees? I think we are actually saying very little when we say that we went to a top program in political science, a good liberal arts school or a good public school. It is not always clear how to interpret "top", "good" or "well known". Do we judge whether a school is a top school based on its USNEWS ranking, the Jiaotong ranking or the LSE ranking (there is a recent ranking of PoliSci departments done by Simon Hix)? And when we say that we went to a top political science program, we are not really distinguishing among different subfields, which can make a difference. What do you guys think?

[polecon09]

One proposal for this thread for the future generation of applications - do people mind stating where they earned their undergrad and/ or grad degrees? I think we are actually saying very little when we say that we went to a top program in political science, a good liberal arts school or a good public school. It is not always clear how to interpret "top", "good" or "well known". Do we judge whether a school is a top school based on its USNEWS ranking, the Jiaotong ranking or the LSE ranking (there is a recent ranking of PoliSci departments done by Simon Hix)? And when we say that we went to a top political science program, we are not really distinguishing among different subfields, which can make a difference. What do you guys think?

agreed

[ladedodaday]

One proposal for this thread for the future generation of applications - do people mind stating where they earned their undergrad and/ or grad degrees? I think we are actually saying very little when we say that we went to a top program in political science, a good liberal arts school or a good public school. It is not always clear how to interpret "top", "good" or "well known". Do we judge whether a school is a top school based on its USNEWS ranking, the Jiaotong ranking or the LSE ranking (there is a recent ranking of PoliSci departments done by Simon Hix)? And when we say that we went to a top political science program, we are not really distinguishing among different subfields, which can make a difference. What do you guys think?

Personally, I don't think specific rankings make that much of a difference, and I'd prefer to retain a little bit of privacy. For example, if someone says they went to " an elite liberal arts school," there might be a little bit of debate about what that means, but most people have an idea of what schools fall in that category. For example, I would feel equally knowledgeable about your application if you had said that you went to a top liberal arts school, did research at a top ivy league school, and received a masters from one of the top 3 schools in England. I can't see an admissions committee caring that much about whether those schools were Swarthmore, Yale, and the LSE; or Amherst, Columbia, and Oxford. Also, with so many other unknowns (recommendations, SOP, writing sample), these posts aren't particularly instructive anyways. I'd be more curious to know what you mean when you say that you "briefly studied at Yale."

But anyhow, that's just my opinion. If other people want to share where they went to school, I'd certainly be curious (in a voyeuristic way), but I don't think it's really that useful.

And with that, I am off to mail the last of my applications!

Oh, but as a last note: Does anybody really take the Hix rankings seriously? Anything that puts Michigan St at 11 and Duke at 51 seems ridiculous. There are an enormous amount of problems with his approach. And talking about grad school admissions specifically: Is an admissions committee really going to favor an applicant from Florida State (24) over one from Brown (124)? It seems like the general strength of an undergrad institution would be more important than its specific departments. Rant over :-)

[Ziz]

Oh, but as a last note: Does anybody really take the Hix rankings seriously? Anything that puts Michigan St at 11 and Duke at 51 seems ridiculous. There are an enormous amount of problems with his approach. And talking about grad school admissions specifically: Is an admissions committee really going to favor an applicant from Florida State (24) over one from Brown (124)? It seems like the general strength of an undergrad institution would be more important than its specific departments. Rant over :-)

I think for undergrad especially the strength of the institution would be more important. At my undergrad school, a major was 10 credits and you needed 20 credits to graduate. That means that half the courses I took weren't even in the department of my major. Therefore, to me, the strength of the school in general is important in determining the quality of my overall education. For graduate school, I think that it's probably the reverse.

[applying12010]

Personally, I don't think specific rankings make that much of a difference, and I'd prefer to retain a little bit of privacy. For example, if someone says they went to " an elite liberal arts school," there might be a little bit of debate about what that means, but most people have an idea of what schools fall in that category. For example, I would feel equally knowledgeable about your application if you had said that you went to a top liberal arts school, did research at a top ivy league school, and received a masters from one of the top 3 schools in England. I can't see an admissions committee caring that much about whether those schools were Swarthmore, Yale, and the LSE; or Amherst, Columbia, and Oxford. Also, with so many other unknowns (recommendations, SOP, writing sample), these posts aren't particularly instructive anyways. I'd be more curious to know what you mean when you say that you "briefly studied at Yale."

I respect that some people would want to retain some privacy! But as someone who read the grad cafe posts from earlier years to try to come up with a reasonable list of schools to apply to, I know that I benefited the most from posts that contain very specific information. Of course, we cannot really reveal some information such as recommendation letters and SOP, but we should still try to be as specific as possible on the other dimensions of our applications. I just hope to make this year's thread as useful as possible for the future generation of applicants.

Undergrad institutions actually matter quite a lot according to what I've read (including an article by Gary King gking.harvard.edu/files/PS93.pdf). Also you can check out some posts from Political Science Job Rumors (not the best source...but still some insights). I remember that there are some discussions on this topic too, but maybe not on the prospective students section.

About Yale, I took history and political philosophy classes there as a high school student. I only mentioned it so that it won't sound really strange that I did research for a Yale professor. I need to explain why I know a Yale professor if I went to Swarthmore for my undergrad.

[LordNorth]

Hey Brouhaha, looks like we're applying to IR at the some of the same schools (Georgetown, UVA, UT-Austin). You get all your stuff submitted OK? I was a bit worried that one of my LoRs wouldn't come through in time for UVA and UT-A, but it did. *Phew*. Let's hope the same happens for Georgetown

And Ziz - interesting that you're applying to some UK schools. Do you have any preferences out of those three? I studied at Edinburgh, great place! What are the ESRC allocations like for those schools? I hope they're OK! I'm applying to three in the UK too - but only one will have any ESRC funding even available. For the other two I'll have to rely on university-wide or departmental cashish...

[Ziz]

Hey Brouhaha, looks like we're applying to IR at the some of the same schools (Georgetown, UVA, UT-Austin). You get all your stuff submitted OK? I was a bit worried that one of my LoRs wouldn't come through in time for UVA and UT-A, but it did. *Phew*. Let's hope the same happens for Georgetown

And Ziz - interesting that you're applying to some UK schools. Do you have any preferences out of those three? I studied at Edinburgh, great place! What are the ESRC allocations like for those schools? I hope they're OK! I'm applying to three in the UK too - but only one will have any ESRC funding even available. For the other two I'll have to rely on university-wide or departmental cashish...

Hmm unfortunately I'm not eligible for ESRC because I've been out of the country too long. I know Edinburgh has AHRC money and so does Oxford, but I am going to have to rely on department/uni funding too. Scary possibility!! I think my top choice at the moment is Oxford but the prof who is interested in me at Edinburgh seems really great and would probably offer great supervision, so I don't know what my top choice is now :S.

[LordNorth]

Ah, that's annoying. I didn't realise that there were nationality/residency restrictions on Research Council studentships. Oxford would be great, of course. And I imagine they'd have more funding to dish out, too. But having lived and studied in Edinburgh, I really can't recommend it enough. I have no experience of their philosophy department but I'm sure it's very switched on. I wish you the very best of luck with that!

[FentonForche]

I remember being impressed by how very few people in my cohort, if any at all, came from what you would call an "elite" undergrad university. I went back and looked at the school ranking, and it was 19th at the time that I entered. We had one woman who had gone to Berkeley, and that was it...Almost all of us, myself included, had gone to quality liberal arts colleges that were in Princeton's top 300, but not on the same level than the schools that most of you are referencing.

[JMoo]

If you name your undergraduate school here, be very careful what else you say on the boards, because you will be identifiable to the places you are applying.

[applying12010]

Well, we shall never abuse the shroud of anonymity in the first place!

[Ferrero]

Nor shall we abuse the One Ring to rule them all.

[brouhaha]

Hey Brouhaha, looks like we're applying to IR at the some of the same schools (Georgetown, UVA, UT-Austin). You get all your stuff submitted OK? I was a bit worried that one of my LoRs wouldn't come through in time for UVA and UT-A, but it did. *Phew*. Let's hope the same happens for Georgetown

And Ziz - interesting that you're applying to some UK schools. Do you have any preferences out of those three? I studied at Edinburgh, great place! What are the ESRC allocations like for those schools? I hope they're OK! I'm applying to three in the UK too - but only one will have any ESRC funding even available. For the other two I'll have to rely on university-wide or departmental cashish...

Yeah, I made it fine with everything except UVA, actually...their letter to applicants said the due date was Monday, December 4, 2009 (wtf, it was a Friday), another part said the due date was the first Monday in December (the 7th), and I got everything in on the 4th...only to look at the main graduate website, which said the due date was the 1st. Bah. The link to contact information was also broken raaaaaaaaawr

Love your Yellow Submarine avatar btw

Hopefully we'll both get some good news from at least one school!

[nervouscomparativist]

Hey there

now that the most important deadlines have passed, I'm quite relieved. I didn't imagine the process would be so stressful and nerve-wrecking... Because I have benefited immensely from the people that posted their profiles in previous years, here you go:

GRE combined 1520, distributed almost equally between V and Q

GPA ~ 3.8 from a mediocre public school, major in Economics (took statistics, econometrics, graduate courses in economics, and some advanced polisci courses).

study abroad, three languages, no truly independent research experience

applied to: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, MIT, Duke, UNC, UW-Madison, Berkeley, UCLA

Good luck to everyone!

Edited December 16, 2009 by nervouscomparativist

[natofone]

Now if only there was a way to figure out how Duke's average GPA for accepted students was 3.4.

New stats have been posted:

http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/admitpols.htm

This (and the 3.4) are for PhD only and do not include any MA students.

694V, 693Q, 3.7 GPA

[Certain_Entropy]

all applications are submitted! whoot! this has been the most painful application process. ... hands in the air now, just gonna let it ride

[natofone]

So we have about 6 weeks until we start hearing from schools. What do we do to keep from going crazy?

[Ziz]

Is it really only 6 weeks?? Geez, I was gearing up for 3 months!

[natofone]

Some of the notices start coming in on January 28th:

http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=(political|government|politics)&t=a&pp=250&o=&p=6

It looks like UC-Davis, Emory, UIUC, Duke, Texas A&M, and Rochester started it off.

FYI, bookmark this as a way to filter down to just political science:

http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=(political|government|politics)

[readeatsleep]

natofone-

those statistics for duke are very interesting. do you have similar statistics for any other programs?

[natofone]

Here are some averages from school websites:

UCSD 3.62 710V, 745Q, 4.5AW

Duke 3.7 664V, 693Q

Michigan 3.66 667V, 729Q, 6.0AW

Wisconsin 3.7 681V, 747Q, 5.5AW

George Wash 3.7 670V, 720Q, 5.1AW

Minnesota ??? 661V, 687Q, 5.2AW

Other schools, like Princeton and Stanford, say vague things about 700/3.8 and above.

[readeatsleep]

Chicago's website says:

638 Verbal, 698 Quantitative, and 4.85 Analytic, and 3.6 gpa

[ladedodaday]

I wonder why Chicago's Verbal and Analytic scores are so low. I guess the Quant is on the lower end, as well. Though it makes me feel a lot better about my chances there ...

btw, don't get too crazy about worrying about your GRE scores, if they're on the low side. As long as your scores are around the average for the school (and, I think, you can use a range of about 20 points on both sides of a score to determine what "around" means), the committee should read your app. Once your app lands in the pile of apps they read, I doubt you'd be rejected (or admitted, for that matter), solely based on GRE scores.

Yeah, I think that's the big thing to understand about all the scores; they get your application read, but not much more. One of my professors, who had been on a top-10 graduate admissions committee, told me that he didn't even look at GRE scores unless the applicant came from a lower-ranked school (just to check whether his/her grades were a fluke).

I guess the average scores above just prove how important the recommendations/SOPs are. Haha, although I'm not sure if that's comforting or not!

Edited December 18, 2009 by great joy

[goukaku suru you ni]

sorry, a bit off topic but still about the applications...

do you think the selectors print the documents we have uploaded (SOP, writing sample, etc) or do they view them from their respective computers? I'd like to add html links to websites but im not sure if I should spell them out (i.e. www.google. com) or if I can make it simpler like Google. If they print the documents, then the shortened weblinks will be rendered useless. what do you think? thanks in advance.

Edited December 18, 2009 by goukaku suru you ni

[brewski]

cpaige:

you mentioned that you called harvard to talk about their admissions process. if so, did you happen to call anyone at princeton?? did they say anything about the gre or about their process more generally?