Profile Evaluation -- your feedback would go a long way

[sethbwa]

I am two years out of undergrad, and for a confluence of reasons, I've become very interested in joining the professoriat.

Thing is, I really don't know where to start, so your feedback would be incredibly helpful. (FYI, I'd be for fall 2018, so I have a year to prepare.)

My goals are fairly modest. I'm attracted to the teacher-scholar model, and would prefer to work at a small state college -- nothing fancy -- where I can still do some research. However, I do want funding for my graduate years, and decent placement for when I get out. As such, I'm focusing my search on the US News 30-60 range. I'm based in Philadelphia, so Penn, Penn State, and Rutgers are all obvious options.

Here's my profile . . .

Undergrad: Top-10 liberal arts college. 3.74 GPA, thesis, departmental honors. I took a light course load senior year, as I was running for public office.

GRE: 162 / 162

Letters: Quite average. My professors remember me as smart, but I stood out more for my civic engagement than for anything academic. (Of course, I'd show them that I'm serious about this when reaching out.)

 

What do you think?

Assuming I study up and write a good statement, are schools in this range attainable? Am I selling myself short? Or do I have work to do?

[CarefreeWritingsontheWall]

It's not uncommon to work (either in government or the private sector) for a number of years before applying into a PhD program. I wouldn't say it hurts you - my cohort is balanced between people who came straight through, people who took time off, or people who took some combination of time off and did an MA in a related, or unrelated field. The first thing i would encourage you to do is reconnect with your professors, particularly if you had a thesis advisor who directly oversaw your work. If your letters are average, there are things you can do now, while a year out, to strengthen them. It wouldn't hurt for one to come from someone you've worked for as well who can speak to  your personality, and traits that make you suited to a career within academia. Your GPA is okay, but your GRE helps. If your AW score is a 5-6 I would say your raw statistics line up well with the average. Research experience is useful, as is programming knowledge but it's not essential. 

What I would direct your focus to is less a matter of "studying up" and more so reflecting on the profession, and where you think you can and want to make a contribution. This needs to be clear in your statement, as well as your writing sample. You need to show that, not only do you know what political science research is, but that you have a clear research agenda coming in. If you wrote a senior thesis, a portion of that would be fine as a writing sample but it might be worthwhile to edit it, and beef it up a little. Showing that you have a sense of what graduate school entails is really important, as well as what studying political science as an academic means. You're transitioning from internalizing information to producing it. Most people I know who were out a few years before applying went back to the top journals in their subfield and read up on current work. If you can login through a university (your undergrad login should still work on any campus eduroam network) then you won't have any issue getting access to those for free.

When it comes to rankings, I wouldn't hesitate to aim higher than you currently intent to. Top programs still tend to place the best at LACs and state schools - though it will be important to focus on teaching opportunitie, which are not equivalent across programs. Here researching programs that have people working on things you are interested in will be very important, as will be a few feeler emails to potential POIs. Some of the programs you mentioned might be convenient in terms of location, but there may not be any faculty there who work on the topics you want to cover. A portion of your statement should cover who you intend to work with and what about the program you like. It's about showing them that you're the person they're looking for, and that their program is the one that's best for you.

Hope this helps.

[sethbwa]

Thank you so much for your feedback. It is very helpful.

Two follow-ups:

First, you suggested I focus on teaching opportunities. That's encouraging to me. Though I'm eager to contribute to political science, I'm probably more driven by a desire to teach undergrads, and am a little anxious about having to "fake it" in a publish-or-perish type program.

Surely, some programs have more teaching than others. Are there any that actively embrace such a balance? And how central can I make my desire to teach in the application process?

Second, you mentioned that programming knowledge is useful. Of what sort? I have some very rudimentary data science skills that, separately from grad school, I loosely plan to develop more. Would that be a good idea?

[CarefreeWritingsontheWall]

On 2016-11-25 at 0:22 PM, sethbwa said:

Thank you so much for your feedback. It is very helpful.

Two follow-ups:

First, you suggested I focus on teaching opportunities. That's encouraging to me. Though I'm eager to contribute to political science, I'm probably more driven by a desire to teach undergrads, and am a little anxious about having to "fake it" in a publish-or-perish type program.

Surely, some programs have more teaching than others. Are there any that actively embrace such a balance? And how central can I make my desire to teach in the application process?

Second, you mentioned that programming knowledge is useful. Of what sort? I have some very rudimentary data science skills that, separately from grad school, I loosely plan to develop more. Would that be a good idea?

When it comes to teaching, it highly varies. Some require you to be a TA every year from the get-go, with the opportunity to teach summer courses or take on a lecturer position in your 4th or 5th year. These tend to be larger public institutions, because it allows them to give you better funding options in return for work. Some require a combination of TA and RA work, with some "fellowship" semesters where you're off and able to focus on your coursework. Others don't require teaching at all (exceeding rare) or only that you act as a TA for a limited number of students (e.g. leading tutorial sessions for two groups of  5-15 students) for a few semesters. Every program is different, so researching that is really up to you. As an example, UW-Seattle fits the first category, GW the second and Princeton the third. If you're at an R1 that doesn't offer a lot of teaching opportunities, some get summer positions at LACs and state schools to build up their resume. Your preferred career trajectory is something you should mention in your SOP (most prompts will ask you to state what you hope to accomplish with their program's training). Your research agenda should be the core of your SOP, alongside why you're the best fit but a paragraph at the end as to your career ambitions is useful. I wouldn't say that all you want to do is teach though (otherwise they might wonder why you aren't just going to teacher's college).

By programming knowledge, I mean knowledge of R or Stata, and a background in applied statistics. It's difficult to pick up without previous exposure to it, though Stata is more like SPSS in terms of simplicity/ease of use. R is far more common in North American statistical applications to political science though, and it's worth the investment IMO.