Advice For Late Starter

[Scalia]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering if I could get some advice for applying to Phd. programs for Fall 2010. I am a junior at a small state university and I have just decided to major in political science at the end of my sophomore year. I've declared my majored in everything under the sun until I took a political science course because it was required for my economic program and I loved it. My interests are American Politics and more specifically political behavior, institutions, etc. My question is what I can do to increase my opportunity for admission into Phd. programs. I have a near 4.0 gpa and I was already planning on taking the gre so am in the process of taking a full length course and so far its going very well. However, I have a couple problems foresee being issues on my application.

1. I go to a mediocre state school. I attend school here because I have a scholarship for tuition for 4 years but I've read that quality of an applicant's undergrad makes a difference.

2. I haven't done really any research. I'm hoping to TA for a prof in the Spring but I don't really think that's a game changer.

3. I feel like I'll have strong letters of recommendation but they won't be from anyone particularly well known. One has his degree from Columbia, one is an Associate Prof, and the other is a Visiting Assistant Professor.

My question is if you were my position with what I hope will be very good gre scores and gpa, what would you do to make yourself a better candidate for admission in the fall?

[SuddenlyParanoid]

Hi Scalia,

Welcome to Political Science! I found this forum really helpful for applying and hope you will too. Another great resource is the site, Political Science Job Rumors, which has a forum with advice for prospective grad students. It can be pretty catty and elitist, so be warned.

First, are you an econ major? If so, your coursework has definitely not been wasted. It will show that you can handle quantitative work. If you have taken or are going to take statistics or econometrics, that will help too. (I happen to know more about quant-heavy programs, hopefully someone else will fill in the qual side.) It would probably be easier if you could wait another year before applying so you could have an entire year heavy in poli sci, but you may not want that. Take any methods courses/game theory your school has.

Your grades are great which helps and means you won't be thrown out right away, but GPA alone doesn't get you into the top places. Study for the GRE. Since you didn't go to a top undergrad, the GRE will be a bit more important for you because adcomms won't take your near 4.0 as seriously. Aim for high 600's on the verbal, and breaking 700 is all really need anywhere. For the quant, you want as close to 800 as possible. If you get a 790 instead of an 800, you're already down to 92 percentile because of all the engineers taking the GRE. You don't need to get that high but it helps. REALLY try to at least pass 700.

Try to replace the visiting assistant professor with someone with tenure if possible. That may mean taking a fall class with few other students just so you can get to know someone and make them like you.

Do a senior thesis. It will give you research experience and you can use an excerpt of it as your writing sample and your thesis advisor can write you a really good letter. Try to be a research assistant instead of a teaching assistant this spring. Apply for research fellowships this summer as well.

You'll need a good statement of purpose. Make it clear that you know a phD is for a lifetime of research, that you enjoy research, and that you are not getting a phD because you love current events, watching Olbermann/Bill O'Reilly, and working on campaigns. SOPs help screen out people who seem clueless about grad school, don't be one of them.

Extracurriculars don't matter at all.

Apply to a bunch of schools. I applied to 13 and think it would be risky to apply to less than 8. Try to get a few reaches and a few safeties because grad admissions are hard to predict. Given your research interests, I would suggest any of the schools I applied to in my signature as well as MSU, Wisconsin, UIUC, UNC Chapel Hill. Keep rankings in mind because they DO affect placement but also pay attention to location, WEATHER, quality of life, fit.

It's hard to predict your chances but you definitely have a good chance and I think you should be able to hit a top 20 for sure and maybe as high as 1, depending on your writing sample and SOP.

[brouhaha]

1. I go to a mediocre state school. I attend school here because I have a scholarship for tuition for 4 years but I've read that quality of an applicant's undergrad makes a difference.

Don't worry about this! Like SP said, just do well on your GRE (600+ verbal, 700+ math) and you should be fine. I'm in the same spot as you as far as that goes and I'm being considered for a master's at Yale.

[ipsqq]

Much good advice already, here's a little more.

Stick with your econ major, it is looked upon favorably. But at this point, you will have to write an honors senior thesis on a political economy topic for admissions committees to believe you are serious about political science and not just looking for backups because you cannot get into econ programs.

Being a research assistant IS a game changer. DO IT! Impress the professor, get a great letter. This letter should be a POLITICAL SCIENCE (ideally, econ is OK but not quite as good) professor from one of the schools you are interested in, ideally, or another highly ranked program.

Your SOP is not a place for you to talk about yourself, it should be written like a research proposal, addressing a question that is important and exciting in the literature (which you will know because you will have read the last 2 years of APSR or whatever your subfield journal is.)

Save personal stuff for your personal statement. This is where you talk about why you had to go to your school for financial reasons. This can be a tipping point for your if you are competitive on everything else (high GREs, lots of math classes, great letters and SOP etc.)

[ipsqq]

I agree, of course. My point was more that he/she needs to get caught up in the literature of a discipline that is new to him/her. Writing a great SOP is kind of pointless if you are proposing to answer some question that was answered 20 years ago. Someone in this position is slightly vulnerable, and risks looking like they don't know what they are getting into with political science.

[yellowshoes]

I'm slightly confused about some of the advice offered here. Most of the schools to which I applied only asked for a PS or a SOP, none of them asked for both. In that case, is one supposed to combine the personal and research into one?

To the original poster: I am somewhat in your position. I go to a relatively small state school that only offers a BA for Political Science. I got a fully paid scholarship plus stipend to come here, so at the time I felt it would be foolish to turn down the offer.

I haven't officially heard back from any school (although around half have already admitted students, so it's not looking good) but this is what I've learned from this whole process.

To begin, undergrad instution DOES matter, but it DOES NOT mean you can't get in. You will simply have to work a lot harder than whose who went to known schools.

1. GPA IS RELATIVE. The truth of the matter is that a poor GPA will hurt you, but a poor GPA from an unknown school will be deadly. The coursework may not necessarily be easier (I have a friend who graduated from my program, went to the best law school in the nation, and claims that it really just wasn't that hard) but it WILL appear so.

2. THE GRE IS, THANK GOD, OBJECTIVE, BUT ONLY WORTH A LITTLE. I spent the majority of last summer working to get a good score. I ended up with a close to 700 verbal and a little over 700 quant. These are average or below average at most of the schools I've applied to (and I didn't touch the top 10). Don't fool yourself into believing that getting these types of scores will make you competitive with those kids making the same scores from the big leagues. The only thing this does it not get you immediately thrown out.

3. GET THE BEST LETTER WRITERS YOU CAN AND WHO LOVE YOU. The benefit of coming from a smaller school is that your may be getting more one-on-one time with professors who will bend over backwards to help you out. This is good. It is also good if you hapen to be one of the smarter kids in your state program. However, make sure that your profs are full professors and make sure that they really do love you. Be forwarned, however, that adcomms know the competition at your schools isn't that tough, and a mediocre letter from a well-known prof at a big school is worth more than the best letter any of your profs could write, even if they are super smart and nice and awesome. So, mediocre letters from yours profs is a MUST AVOID. Be a TA or an RA. Take a least a couple of classes under them where you write term papers (not just have exams). Have one of them advise you on a thesis.

4. GET SOMEONE WHO KNOWS SOMETHING READ YOUR PERSONAL STATEMENT. This is perhaps what will ultimately kill me in this process. The majority of my profs have been out of school several years and don't know what is expected these days. One of them told me "just say you like poli sci, that's all I did." They were floored when I said, "No, I think they want to know what I want to research in grad school." It doesn't help that only rarely do kids from my program apply to grad school, so they don't see many of these. Furthermore, my school doesn't offer a MA or PhD so none of my profs are reading applications yearly. It's not that they won't want to help, they do, but they simply are out of the loop.

5. SEND YOUR THESIS OR PART OF IT IF AT ALL POSSIBLE. I am currently writing my senior thesis, so I had to send a term paper in my application. If you can, start your senior thesis NOW, or this summer. If your program works the way mine does, the first semsester is for research and the second for writing. You want to be writing the fall of your senior year if you plan to apply then. And you ideally want to be writing immediately that term in order to have any of it ready to go by December. I don't care if you made an "A" on your term paper, either. An "A" at your school likely was not that hard to get. And more than likely you wrote it knowing those standards. You need to write your thesis for the adcomms. A kid from Harvard may be able to get away with submitting an "A" term paper, but you likely won't.

Here's the deal: you are probably very smart and comparable to many kids who went to better schools, but you are going to have to prove yourself to the committess more than those kids will. The only paces you can really do this are in your Personal Statement and your Writing Sample. It's not that they don't want kids from schools like yours, but you haven't already been "approved" so to speak by the big ones. I'm not in any way discouraging you from applying. I'm simply preparing you for what may come as a shock down the road. You go along thinking, "okay I have a great GPA, GRE scores, and my profs LOVE me, I'm totally in," without realizing how much of an uphill battle you really face. I may have to wait until next fall to reapply and submit my then-finished thesis. I think I will stand a much better chance then. For me it was a very sad wake-up call when I realized that being at the top of my program isn't nearly as great as I had been led to believe. I love my professors and their work dearly, so it is very unnerving to think I may never be able to get where they are, even at their level.

Hope I haven't scared you away from trying! Just letting you know some things I wish someone would have told me a year ago.

I'll be sure to let you know if I do get into schools.

[Scalia]

Hi Scalia,

Welcome to Political Science! I found this forum really helpful for applying and hope you will too. Another great resource is the site, Political Science Job Rumors, which has a forum with advice for prospective grad students. It can be pretty catty and elitist, so be warned.

First, are you an econ major? If so, your coursework has definitely not been wasted. It will show that you can handle quantitative work. If you have taken or are going to take statistics or econometrics, that will help too. (I happen to know more about quant-heavy programs, hopefully someone else will fill in the qual side.) It would probably be easier if you could wait another year before applying so you could have an entire year heavy in poli sci, but you may not want that. Take any methods courses/game theory your school has.

Your grades are great which helps and means you won't be thrown out right away, but GPA alone doesn't get you into the top places. Study for the GRE. Since you didn't go to a top undergrad, the GRE will be a bit more important for you because adcomms won't take your near 4.0 as seriously. Aim for high 600's on the verbal, and breaking 700 is all really need anywhere. For the quant, you want as close to 800 as possible. If you get a 790 instead of an 800, you're already down to 92 percentile because of all the engineers taking the GRE. You don't need to get that high but it helps. REALLY try to at least pass 700.

Try to replace the visiting assistant professor with someone with tenure if possible. That may mean taking a fall class with few other students just so you can get to know someone and make them like you.

Do a senior thesis. It will give you research experience and you can use an excerpt of it as your writing sample and your thesis advisor can write you a really good letter. Try to be a research assistant instead of a teaching assistant this spring. Apply for research fellowships this summer as well.

You'll need a good statement of purpose. Make it clear that you know a phD is for a lifetime of research, that you enjoy research, and that you are not getting a phD because you love current events, watching Olbermann/Bill O'Reilly, and working on campaigns. SOPs help screen out people who seem clueless about grad school, don't be one of them.

Extracurriculars don't matter at all.

Apply to a bunch of schools. I applied to 13 and think it would be risky to apply to less than 8. Try to get a few reaches and a few safeties because grad admissions are hard to predict. Given your research interests, I would suggest any of the schools I applied to in my signature as well as MSU, Wisconsin, UIUC, UNC Chapel Hill. Keep rankings in mind because they DO affect placement but also pay attention to location, WEATHER, quality of life, fit.

It's hard to predict your chances but you definitely have a good chance and I think you should be able to hit a top 20 for sure and maybe as high as 1, depending on your writing sample and SOP.

SuddenlyParanoid,

First and foremost, thanks for the helpful post. I'm already finding this an invaluable resource.

I am not an economics major but I have taken quite a few econ courses. As far a quantitate work, Ihaven't taken econometrics and I haven't even taken calculus yet because itisn't a required course. I'm thinking about continuing my math studies next quarter so I can prove my abilities to do quantitative work in grad school.

I've also considered staying in undergrad for another year to beef up my research experience and math skills. Wouldn't I be better off in pursuing a Masters degree instead? I want to get into a top 20 department if possible and I'm not sure if another year in undergrad will demonstrate my research potential.

As far as the GRE goes I'm already taking a full length GRE course. I know lots of people think thatits a a waste of time but I think that its been helping thus far. I think I'm doing well so I anticipate that I will have a relatively strong score (crossyour fingers).

As far as my letters of recommendation, I choose the professors based on their familiarity with my career goals and research interests. I will try to find a tenured professor though.

Unfortunately at my school we don't have a departmental option or requirement to do a senior thesis. Also, since I attend such a small school we don't have a graduate program and research assistants. I think that being a TA might be the best that I can do. Also, I am looking for summer research fellowships but unfortunately some of the application deadlines have passed. If you know of any that are still accepting applications please let me know!

As far as extra curriculars, it's unfortunate they don't count for much because I have a ton. When I started undergrad I thought I was going to be an attorney so have alot of activities related to that. I wrote a comparative paper in a Constitutional Law class and the professor advised me I might be more interested in the academic side of studying law (and politics) opposed to the side of practicing.

As far as applying to schools, I might apply to the top 25 and hedge my bets so I'm not too worried. I was thinking that OSU might be a good fit though.

Anyhow, thanks for the advice and if anyone else has anything to add I would be morethan grateful for the insight.

Edited February 8, 2010 by Scalia

[yellowshoes]

I think going to undergrad another year, if you can stand the wait, is a really smart move. Here are the reasons:

1. You won't waste 1,000 in app fees.

2. You won't waste a ton of time you could be devoting to doing research.

3. You will have your thesis completed before app season even stars. You say your school doesn't offer thesis, but I'm sure you could do an independent study with a prof which would result in a paper. If you wrote it the best possible, not just to get an A in relative standards, that would serve the same as a thesis and the prof could write you an exceptional rec.

It is hard to wait, though. I was told to but didn't listen.

[Scalia]

I think going to undergrad another year, if you can stand the wait, is a really smart move. Here are the reasons:

1. You won't waste 1,000 in app fees.

2. You won't waste a ton of time you could be devoting to doing research.

3. You will have your thesis completed before app season even stars. You say your school doesn't offer thesis, but I'm sure you could do an independent study with a prof which would result in a paper. If you wrote it the best possible, not just to get an A in relative standards, that would serve the same as a thesis and the prof could write you an exceptional rec.

It is hard to wait, though. I was told to but didn't listen.

It would probably be cheaper to go to undergrad than get into a masters degree and spend a couple years there. It does feel kind of depressing to spend another year in undergrad when I could already be on the path towards my PHd. Its something to think about and I thank you for the advice.

[yellowshoes]

It would probably be cheaper to go to undergrad than get into a masters degree and spend a couple years there. It does feel kind of depressing to spend another year in undergrad when I could already be on the path towards my PHd. Its something to think about and I thank you for the advice.

No problem, and I completely understand not wanting to hang around for another year. I just don't want someone else to end up in my situation. If I don't get in, I'm stuck going to undergrad another year regardless, and I'll have wasted 1,000 dollars and a ton of time I should have been writing papers so I could submit them the next year. If I get in to my safety school (which isn't even really a safety) I'm not sure I'll even accept the offer because going another year at my school would be much cheaper than getting a MA at that program. It's a tough spot to be in, and I don't recommend it.

That being said, though, if you really feel ready to apply in the fall then go for it. In the end, I may be happier having tried and failed the first time then not having tried and wondering forever if it could have worked out without the 5th year.

[Scalia]

No problem, and I completely understand not wanting to hang around for another year. I just don't want someone else to end up in my situation. If I don't get in, I'm stuck going to undergrad another year regardless, and I'll have wasted 1,000 dollars and a ton of time I should have been writing papers so I could submit them the next year. If I get in to my safety school (which isn't even really a safety) I'm not sure I'll even accept the offer because going another year at my school would be much cheaper than getting a MA at that program. It's a tough spot to be in, and I don't recommend it.

That being said, though, if you really feel ready to apply in the fall then go for it. In the end, I may be happier having tried and failed the first time then not having tried and wondering forever if it could have worked out without the 5th year.

Just a bit of an update. I was discussing some of my dilemmas with my advisor and he informed by he is teaching a methods class fall quarter that results in the completion or a research project that must be submitted for review. This will at least give me an opportunity of refining my research interests a little more and getting a good paper to submit for my writing sample. I was also expecting an excellent letter of recommendation from my advisor anyway so maybe this will push my LOR over the top.

I've read in other threads that have a solid mathematical background is important and I was just wondering what classes would be the most beneficial to take? I've only taken Pre-Cal I because it was the only math required for my major, but now I'm considering working towards Calculus or taking some statistics next quarter and in the fall. Any suggestions?

I also talked to the department chair (Top 15 school) that I took for my 101 class and he said that I should take one my class with him and he'll write me a LOR.

Anyhow, thanks to those who have posted thus far.

[ipsqq]

It sounds like you are definitely on the right track. I echo the advice to stay in undergrad - it will be cheaper and no one will notice you spent an extra year, although they will notice the better writing sample and extra classes. As for math classes, take both calculus and statistics. If your school offers econometrics, take that, as it will jump right out to quantitatively-oriented programs. When you take that class with the department chair, go to office hours every week prepared with really interesting questions. They will note this in their LOR and it looks good.

I also went to a small school and I think there are opportunities to be a research assistant if you are persistent. If your professors do research at all, they need research assistants. Whether or not they can pay you is another question, but I would argue that it is worth it to work as an unpaid research assistant to the right person. It will give you actual research experience, which makes you look like you know what you are getting into with grad school. If it goes well, it would look even better in a LOR that you not only were a great research assistant, but you were unpaid. Finally, it could turn into a co-author opportunity, which is really valuable. A good professor will figure out a way to get you paid eventually if you are doing a good job.

The only way to do this if there is no formal program is to walk into professor's offices, ask them about their research and tell them you want to work for them. Since very few if any students do this, you will stand out right away.