Fall 2010 Admission Results

[Rory]

Not being a US or Canada or EU citizen, I do not think any program that is not fully funded would work for me, no loans available.

Besides, faith is the least thing I need now, since my extremely religious dad has started the "god gives us what is good for us. maybe grad school wasn't good for you" talk

I'm being given the same kind of speech, minus the explicit god references....I have now accepted that my cycle is pretty much over - so either I make a new life plan, or try again next year....

[Cantabrigian]

"maybe grad school wasn't good for you"

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/

In 5 years you may be THANKING God you didn't get in!

[Keller65]

Entering the second week of March as traffic on the Grad Cafe beltway slows to a crawl. Sundry users waiting on Brandeis, WashU, New School, Brown...who else?

Expect departments to be pressed with increased urgency to get decisions out (e.g., MIT Fed-Ex-ing letters overnight). 4/15 is (almost) a month away.

[gravityflyer]

I'm still waiting on what are presumably rejections from UCLA, Columbia WashU, and NYU. We also haven't heard from the DC caucus, i.e. GW, G-Town, and American. Above all, I'm still waiting on USC - the deadline was Dec 1 and I know several of us still haven't heard anything!

[Keller65]

DC caucuses (caucii?) have a difficult time being timely.

[Ziz]

Oxford...Toronto...

[APGradApplicant]

Keller- isn't it kind of sad how it's so dead? I knew I would miss the excitement that the month of February brought, even if it wasn't all good news (for myself and others on this forum). I can tell you that I won't be claiming the second-highest number of posts for the month of March.

Anyhow, I know that some people are indeed still waiting and I'm keeping you in my prayers. USC btw has a prospective students visit coming up next week I believe? I'm basing this on what I heard from a couple of people at my UC-Davis visit. Anyways, don't know if they're doing a second round of admits but I'd most definitely call at this point.

I do have one result I'm still waiting on- will I or won't I be offered at a spot at University of Rochester? Thus, I'm not a total lurker at this point, but close to it. I just hope to see everyone end this cycle with some success .

Best of luck!

[brewski]

Oxford...Toronto...

Soon! A few weeks at most.

[grissom]

i have not heard anything from nowhere...anybody's got news from nebraska, hawaii manoa, utah, oregon, tennessee, mississippi, wayne state?

[reader]

Did anyone look into the "second field" option at Cornell? Tina Slater suggested that we e-mail the dept. first, and then she'd forward our materials. So I e-mailed the philosophy dept. to see if they are still accepting applications, but no one has responded. Anyone else trying this option?

[APGradApplicant]

i have not heard anything from nowhere...anybody's got news from nebraska, hawaii manoa, utah, oregon, tennessee, mississippi, wayne state?

This guy Irishfan11 (or something like that) I believe applied to some of those programs. If you scroll back through the posts on this forum, you should be able to find him (if he doesn't come up in a search...I may have gotten the numbers wrong, but I know it's definitely "irishfan(insert numbers)". Other than that, I don't know of anyone who has applied to those places. Hope that helps a little bit...

[curufinwe]

Political Science is not part of the humanities. There are options outside of academia for us.

Think tanks?

(I would say government as well but I doubt they employ foreigners such as me )

[SBL]

Private sector.

Look up any number of private intelligence firms and private security firms with analytical components. Also political risk (and increasingly violent risk) analysis units within investment banks (both in research departments and in their global security offices) and within the larger insurance companies. Also strategy and security offices within energy firms. Anybody who has money riding on what is happening somewhere in the world and is large enough to require their own analytical arm.

Of course this is all directed at IR students and comparative students with regional / area foci. Someone coming in with theory or methods will likely not be appealing (nat least not for this kind of role - the numerical competency of very good quant methods students will probably help open doors into all sorts of other areas of finance).

[curufinwe]

If it was all up to me, I would get into CIA and even leak intel from my home country lol.

But at this point, with people writing bitterly about the job market in academia, and how adjunct is the new thing, paying people $3000 a semester... I would be content by teaching English in private schools in Brazil

[SBL]

Of course the government employs foreigners! As long as you have a work visa, you can absolutely work for the US government. We actually would be at a huge disadvantage if we didn't employ foreigners in agencies like the State Dept (which, incidentally, also employs many political scientists, as does the CIA and any other agency in need of political analysis).

Think outside the box, people!

"Foreigners" in State and the agency are naturalized US citizens. It's a requirement for getting the requisite security clearances. Therefore you need more than your generic H1-B. Maybe there are other arms where this isn't required (USAID?), but for intelligence and/or political roles this isn't the case. Where this doesn't always apply is in contracting, and usually assuming you are off-site (e.g. temporarily consulting the USG on say, Chinese military expenditure).

Economics / finance is different because of the less sensitive nature of the work.

[curufinwe]

Bottom line is, if a foreigner can't get a tenure track job, the prospects of working in the US is bleak at best.

[Scarlet]

Entering the second week of March as traffic on the Grad Cafe beltway slows to a crawl. Sundry users waiting on Brandeis, Notre Dame, New School, Brown...who else?

Expect departments to be pressed with increased urgency to get decisions out (e.g., MIT Fed-Ex-ing letters overnight). 4/15 is (almost) a month away.

+ UMass

[Ziz]

Curfinwe, tell me you are the Brandeis acceptee on teh results page!

[Scarlet]

Curfinwe, tell me you are the Brandeis acceptee on teh results page!

Well, it's not me

[Ziz]

Well, it's not me

Fingers crossed for UMass for you .

[APGradApplicant]

Congrats to whomever received the Brandeis admit. Because it is such a delicate situation that they seem to have with admissions (assuming what poster in results bank said is true...), it would be great if you'd identify yourself for all the nervous applicants here...pretty please?

[allevolve]

I claim the UDelaware rejection.

[Scarlet]

I claim the UDelaware rejection.

Sorry, man. I'm right there with ya. No acceptances yet and it's looking grim. Why does it seem like IR is especially hard to get into?

[anxiousapplicant]

Sorry, man. I'm right there with ya. No acceptances yet and it's looking grim. Why does it seem like IR is especially hard to get into?

Me three! I'm in theory though.

[anxiousapplicant]

On another note, I contacted Yale, on a whim, asking what was wrong with my application. Apparently I never made it to the second round of applications because of either my GPA or my GRE. My GPA is >3.98, so I really hope it wasn't my grades. My GRE, though, was 730V, 600Q, 5.0AW. It must have been those scores that did it, esp. the math. It really disheartened me because their average scores are 550-800 for both sections. I know it's all a money-making enterprise, but they should have been more clear about the cutoffs. Yes, yes, I know, if I am serious about grad school then I should study for the GRE harder because that's part of playing the game yada yada yada. I know. But to have my application basically thrown out because of math scores when I am applying for political philosophy, after I worked my ass off for four years resulting in all kinds of physical/mental issues because of the stress, really hurts. And the person who emailed me had the nerve to say "work harder."

Edit: Sorry for whining. I know it isn't useful except for my own selfish cathartic purposes. It just sucks that we have to play the game, no matter how stupid the rules are. I thought I didn't have to study for math b/c I thought my grades and coursework and the fact I want to study political philosophy would speak for themselves. But they don't. I bet our hair would curl if we saw how our applications are really treated--i.e., thrown out on the basis of numbers which say little about who we are as people or as scholars. I know someone will disagree with me, saying that math skills involve logic and it implies something about my thinking ability, but I haven't suffered in any philosophy courses yet due to lack of mathematical training.

Second edit: I reversed my scores by accident. Should make more sense now.

Edited March 8, 2010 by anxiousapplicant