Advice from an actual PhD (redux)

[Bobb Cobb]

Here is the original thread from the Realist:

In reading through it, it went remarkably similar to this one although it did get a bit more interesting in a few places. There are also some good links regarding jobs and finishing the PhD that I had never seen before.

Edited February 11, 2010 by Bobb-Cobb

[Midwestern]

Realist, I just posted another thread probing what people thought of GW as a PhD program (if you want to focus on IR), but I'd appreciate your advice as well. It's not a top-20, but I've had quite a few profs tell me they think it is rising pretty fast in the rankings. What's your impression there? Thanks!

[The Realist]

Realist, I just posted another thread probing what people thought of GW as a PhD program (if you want to focus on IR), but I'd appreciate your advice as well. It's not a top-20, but I've had quite a few profs tell me they think it is rising pretty fast in the rankings. What's your impression there? Thanks!

GW is indeed a rising department and I have good friends on the faculty there. But I nevertheless would not attend GW for a PhD without full funding. Looking at their placement record online indicates that placement is OK but still a major concern.

[bhou]

I am a tenured associate prof in political science at a large state university. I posted this several years ago under the screen name "realist" when I first learned about this forum. At the time, I read through the threads and couldn't help but think about all the things that I wish that I had known before entering my PhD program. So with that, I thought that I'd give you all some advice from an actual PhD. I've made a couple small changes from the original version but this is basically the same as what I wrote before. While some of this may be hard to read, I offer it as-is, with only the thought that more knowledge is better than less knowledge.

CHOOSING GRADUATE SCHOOL

Your graduate school choice is probably the most important choice that you'll make in your career. Do not take this lightly. There are many reasons, but they boil down to some uncomfortable truths.

1. Only the best schools place students in academic jobs. While there are thousands of universities in the United States, there are many many many thousand more political science PhDs. 5-7 years is a very long time to spend in a low-paying job (which is what graduate school is) only to realize that you have very little chance for promotion. Even at top 10 institutions, a good half of entering students do not end up with a PhD and a tenure track job. Is it fair that this is the case? No. Are there very smart graduate students that are not at top departments? Absolutely, there are literally thousands of them. But this is how the world works. And you have no chance to change it from "the inside" unless you are already at a top department.

2. Advisers are fickle beings. Especially outside of the top institutions, they are busy and pressed for time, and they cannot offer you the type of guidance and support that you may believe that you are going to get. I had a very close relationship with a very influential adviser, and saw him for about 10 minutes once every two or three weeks. This is the norm. Do not assume or expect that you will have a different experience (although there is a small chance that you will). Moreover, good scholars are often terrible advisers. I think that one of the worst aspects of our profession is that at middle-range departments, top scholars often will not even acknowledge graduate students.

3. Graduate school is an unequal partnership between students, who receive very little and give very much, and faculty, who have many other things to do but rely on students to do things that are in the university's best interests. Graduate students are (1) essentially powerless and (2) extremely cheap labor. Universities have an incentive to keep a lot of graduate students around to fill instructor slots and TAships. This means that they will keep on a lot of graduate students who will never have a chance at a tenure-ladder job. This is a pathological system of incentives, and I find it repugnant, but this is the reality.

So what sort of advice does this lead me to give? First off, above and beyond almost anything, you need to go to the best possible graduate school. It doesn't matter if you don't like Ann Arbor as much as Athens or Austin, graduate school matters tremendously for your future ability to get a job. At nearly every university or college, a PhD from Michigan will get your file looked at when applying for jobs. I know that this sounds harsh, but for most jobs, a job file from a school out of the top 25 won't even be considered. It will just go on the trash. Let this sink in.

As a corollary, you need to think long and hard about graduate school if you do not have the opportunity to go to a top one. You should understand that you may not have a good chance of landing a tenure track job. The one's available to you, moreover, will likely be at "directional institutions" (think Northern X State) or small, low-ranked liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere. Even there, you will be competing with Harvard and Berkeley PhDs for a job. It's hard. It's not as hard as English or History, but nevertheless it's really hard. You should know this and plan accordingly.

The academic job market has gotten much harder in the two years since I first wrote this. There are thousands of students right now chasing a couple hundred jobs, and every year it gets worse because most people who strike out in one year go back on the job market the next year. Do not assume that the academic job market will get easier in 5-7 years, when you are going onto the job market. First, there will still be a substantial backlog of unplaced PhDs. Second, trends in academia are leading to more adjunct and lecturer positions and fewer tenure-track positions in all but the very best schools (and it's starting to happen there too). I would not still be in academia if I didn't have a tenure-ladder job.

Let's say you don't want to go be professor. Maybe you want to work in a think tank or a political consultancy. OK, fair enough: but in this case, I would recommend against getting a PhD in political science. There is little that you can gain from a PhD in political science that a think tank will find attractive that you cannot also have gotten from a good MPA/MPP/etc. program. Outside of academia, the PhD has little value-added over most professional masters degrees. Given the opportunity cost, the only people who should get PhDs in political science are people who have a passion for college teaching, or those who have a passion for academic research AND who are willing to settle for college teaching if the academic research thing doesn't work out.

Do not choose graduate school based on one individual who you "want to work with." Instead, you should choose the best program (by subfield) that you can. Why? Let's say that you identify one faculty member whose research interests match yours perfectly. For this to be the person upon whom you rely for your entire PhD course of study, it must be the case that (1) your research interests don't change (which is rare), (2) that your potential adviser is a nice and approachable person (which is about a 50-50 shot to be honest), (3) that your own research is interesting to that potential adviser (which you should not assume, regardless of what is said on recruitment weekend), and (4) that that adviser doesn't leave (which is common, especially for productive faculty at top-50-ish departments). If you chose a program based on that individual and any of these don't work out, you're in trouble. If you've chosen the best program, you'll be OK because there are other options; if you've banked on one faculty member, you're out of luck.

You should be flattered by faculty who are nice and approachable during recruitment weekend. But recruitment weekend is not like the other 51 weekends a year. Remember, faculty are approachable during recruitment because you provide them with an unlimited supply of discount labor. They have their own worries and incentives, and these rarely align with yours.

Likewise, funding matters. My general advice is that outside of a top 25 institution, you should not go to graduate school unless you have a full ride and a stipend large enough to live on. Without these, graduate school is a long and expensive process with little reward. There is a constant demand for doctors, so doctors can pay for medical school and still come out ahead. $200,000 in debt and only qualified for a very low paying job is a terrible situation that many PhDs find themselves in.

It is tempting to think that a potential adviser's kind words mean that you are special. You are special, but so are many many others. Wherever you are, you will likely not even be the smartest or most successful member of your cohort. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you are the one who will buck the trends that I have described. It's just not likely.

Finally, I have made a big point about top 25 schools. We all know that Stanford is and Purdue isn't, but what's the definitive list? Simply put, if you have to ask, your school is not in the top 25. And of course subfield matters more than overall ranking. Emory is not a top-25 theory department so think long and hard about going there for theory. JHU is not a top-25 American politics department but it's a different story altogether for political theory. If you need to convince yourself that your program is a top-25 program, it's almost certainly not.

YOUR CAREER

If you decide to go to graduate school, congratulations. I mean this sincerely. You are embarking on the most intellectually rewarding period of your life. (Of course, intellectually and financially rewarding are not the same, as I mentioned previously.) Here are some brief tips.

The best political scientists are the following five things: smart, creative, diligent, honest, and nice. Smart is obvious. The rest are not.

The best political scientists are creative. They look at old problems in new ways, or they find new problems to look at. A good way to land a middling job (or no job) is to find a marginal improvement on an existing estimator, or take lessons from Paraguay and apply them to Uruguay. The best political scientists show us how our estimators are incorrect, or better yet, find new things to estimate.

The best political scientists are diligent. They think about problems for years and years, they rewrite their draft papers repeatedly, they collect giant datasets from scratch, and they go into the field, learn the language, and stay there until they have learned something. There are no quick research trips, there are no obvious philosophical points, and there are no datasets that you can download with results you can write up in a week.

The best political scientists are honest. There are many points at which you might fudge your work: creating a new dataset from scratch, during fieldwork, in writing up your results. You will be astounded at how frequent this is in our profession. Don't do it, for it always hurts you in the end. Being wrong and honest about it is OK. Being wrong and hiding it never works.

Finally, the best political scientists are nice. It is tempting to be prickly to make yourself seem smart or to protect your ego. But the same person you criticize today might be in a position to give you a job tomorrow. As they say, make your words soft and sweet, for you never know when you may have to eat them.

************

I hope this helps you all. I wish you the very best of luck with your careers.

[readeatsleep]

hello realist;

thanks for offering your frank advice. you mention that one should go to the best school "by subfield" that one can. i am wondering if a school that is stronger in one subfield than any other is still a wise choice in that subfield. specifically, i am thinking about northwestern for theory (northwestern is not terrible in other subfields, just not as strong). it is ranked high for theory, and even still this is probably not high enough given its faculty and strength in critical/continental thought in particular. but, when applying to jobs comes around, will i be evaluated in terms of my 'well roundedness' as a political scientist in general, or mostly with regard to political theory in particular?

[Keller65]

hello realist;

thanks for offering your frank advice. you mention that one should go to the best school "by subfield" that one can. i am wondering if a school that is stronger in one subfield than any other is still a wise choice in that subfield. specifically, i am thinking about northwestern for theory (northwestern is not terrible in other subfields, just not as strong). it is ranked high for theory, and even still this is probably not high enough given its faculty and strength in critical/continental thought in particular. but, when applying to jobs comes around, will i be evaluated in terms of my 'well roundedness' as a political scientist in general, or mostly with regard to political theory in particular?

I think if your final two options end up between Notre Dame and Northwestern, the ranking difference is negligible. Remember standard errors when looking at rankings; the difference between 50 and 40 is about 0.4 points on 1-to-5 point scale. Given that, if you want good training in continental thought, I think Northwestern, Duke, or Social Thought are all excellent bets. I have lots of positive things to say about NW; Bonnie Honig is great and Mary Deitz has been placing students for decades. Decent interaction between Chicago and NW too, so there's that -- Patchen Markell could be an outside committee member.

[Bobb Cobb]

I think if your final two options end up between Notre Dame and Northwestern, the ranking difference is negligible. Remember standard errors when looking at rankings; the difference between 50 and 40 is about 0.4 points on 1-to-5 point scale. Given that, if you want good training in continental thought, I think Northwestern, Duke, or Social Thought are all excellent bets. I have lots of positive things to say about NW; Bonnie Honig is great and Mary Deitz has been placing students for decades. Decent interaction between Chicago and NW too, so there's that -- Patchen Markell could be an outside committee member.

Lol @ the standard errors. PSJR anyone?

http://www.poliscijobrumors.com/topic.php?id=21722&page=3

[readeatsleep]

I think if your final two options end up between Notre Dame and Northwestern, the ranking difference is negligible. Remember standard errors when looking at rankings; the difference between 50 and 40 is about 0.4 points on 1-to-5 point scale. Given that, if you want good training in continental thought, I think Northwestern, Duke, or Social Thought are all excellent bets. I have lots of positive things to say about NW; Bonnie Honig is great and Mary Deitz has been placing students for decades. Decent interaction between Chicago and NW too, so there's that -- Patchen Markell could be an outside committee member.

hmm, that is encourging but not what I expected. I would think NU to be well above ND not only in terms of general rank, but in theory specifically. USNWR aside (NU = 21, ND = 36 overall; 7 and 10 respectively for theory), NU is top ten on the Schmidt/Chingos list, with few Departments that can match it's reputation for theory above it. It's clear to me that NU is a superior program, but I am wondering what the tradeoffs are for going to a 'specialty program' that focuses it's resources not only on one subfield, but on a particular tradition within that subfield.

Anyways, it's all very encouraging and I appreciate the advice.

Edited February 22, 2010 by readeatsleep

[Keller65]

Quite right; I thought it was lower than it is. That is indeed a statistically significant difference.

Edited February 22, 2010 by Keller65

[The Realist]

hello realist;

thanks for offering your frank advice. you mention that one should go to the best school "by subfield" that one can. i am wondering if a school that is stronger in one subfield than any other is still a wise choice in that subfield. specifically, i am thinking about northwestern for theory (northwestern is not terrible in other subfields, just not as strong). it is ranked high for theory, and even still this is probably not high enough given its faculty and strength in critical/continental thought in particular. but, when applying to jobs comes around, will i be evaluated in terms of my 'well roundedness' as a political scientist in general, or mostly with regard to political theory in particular?

You will be evaluated by a hiring committee whose job is to find the best theorist, and they will take their cues from the theory subfield where you came from, not from the overall department or university. That's why I say that you should go to the best school by subfield that you can. Of course, knowing what you should do about Northwestern depends on what your other options are.

It turns out, of course, that most top schools are great at all subfields. But there are certainly exceptions in the top 15-25 range--for example, places like NYU and Cornell are very uneven across subfields. Outside of the top 25 or so, some schools (like JHU) are great at one subfield and ordinary at others.

[ladedodaday]

hmm, that is encourging but not what I expected. I would think NU to be well above ND not only in terms of general rank, but in theory specifically. USNWR aside (NU = 21, ND = 36 overall; 7 and 10 respectively for theory), NU is top ten on the Schmidt/Chingos list, with few Departments that can match it's reputation for theory above it. It's clear to me that NU is a superior program, but I am wondering what the tradeoffs are for going to a 'specialty program' that focuses it's resources not only on one subfield, but on a particular tradition within that subfield.

Anyways, it's all very encouraging and I appreciate the advice.

I'm not entirely sure where you get the impression that NU is a "specialty program." As with ND, it has a strong comparative politics program, including one professor (James Mahoney), who literally wrote the book on comparative historical research. If you look at their current job candidates, over half are comparative (and the other half are theory). Also, I can't imagine living in South Bend over Chicago.

[Keller65]

Lol @ the standard errors. PSJR anyone?

http://www.poliscijo...id=21722&page=3

Lol. I authored that post.

[Bobb Cobb]

Lol. I authored that post.

I will take you word for it. It was funny to me as I had no more gotten through reading that thread there and then I saw your post here.

[readeatsleep]

I'm not entirely sure where you get the impression that NU is a "specialty program." As with ND, it has a strong comparative politics program, including one professor (James Mahoney), who literally wrote the book on comparative historical research. If you look at their current job candidates, over half are comparative (and the other half are theory). Also, I can't imagine living in South Bend over Chicago.

I stand corrected. I suppose I get the idea of a 'specialty program' from my own, relatively insular perspective on Northwestern and political science in general.

[curiousgeorge84]

I totally agree that Yale's system isn't a meritocracy, but neither is any school's system. And I feel you on people who are less qualified than you are getting into places they probably shouldn't have. One of my high school friends didn't graduate with honors (I did) from high school, but got into Princeton, Yale, and Columbia. She then proceeded to whine about the fact that it was all bittersweet because she got waitlisted at Harvard. I can't help but think that she might have done as well as she did at least in part because she's a hispanic female.

Oh well, affirmative action and flukey systems are part of life; there's nothing we can do about it.

I think the race bashing on this thread is disgusting. I happen to be half black female and got into an ivy league school based on my grades and activities. I also graduated from my undergrad with a double major with honors and because of my high standing was appointed to a university search committee. While I do understand that there are minorities at top schools that don't deserve to be there, there are also football players, pianists, white New York Upper East Side kids with connections and money, and many more who didn't have the top academic qualifications. I had to tutor a white football player who used one period at the end of a long paragraph and separated sentences with commas. Having the highest SAT scores does not necessarily point to academic creativity or depth of thought, or maybe your essay wasn't good enough. All I'm saying is stop pointing only to race and see all the other people who got in ahead of you for reasons other than pure academic merit.

[curiousgeorge84]

That's not at all what I was saying. You don't know this girl. I will readily admit that there are people who got into schools I didn't because they're just smarter than I am. That's fine; I'm secure in my own abilities. In this particular case, I think this girl benefitted from affirmative action. This does not mean that I think minorities in general don't deserve the place they have; please don't make assumptions. You don't know me.

I didn't mean to offend. I wasn't implying you were a racist or anything I just wanted to make a point. It is very difficult for successful minorities in higher education because the first thing people think is that we are in a school because of affirmative action and not because of our abilities. I wanted to point out that there are many more athletes than minorities getting in not on merit, but everyone points to minorities and affirmative action first. You know a person is a minority just by looking at them but you don't know someone is an athlete right away. I'm not judging you, I'm just sick of people using minorities as the go to example. It's hard enough to get into a top school by working hard and achieving, but when you're a minority you feel like you have to constantly prove you deserve to be there and you aren't a charity case. Maybe that's because affirmative action is used too much incorrectly and hurts those who truly do succeed. I don't think that athletes or some other groups get singled out as much in the same way. By the way I'm not bashing athletes. One of my best friends was a basketball player with a 4.0 GPA.

[ladedodaday]

I didn't mean to offend. I wasn't implying you were a racist or anything I just wanted to make a point. It is very difficult for successful minorities in higher education because the first thing people think is that we are in a school because of affirmative action and not because of our abilities. I wanted to point out that there are many more athletes than minorities getting in not on merit, but everyone points to minorities and affirmative action first. You know a person is a minority just by looking at them but you don't know someone is an athlete right away. I'm not judging you, I'm just sick of people using minorities as the go to example. It's hard enough to get into a top school by working hard and achieving, but when you're a minority you feel like you have to constantly prove you deserve to be there and you aren't a charity case. Maybe that's because affirmative action is used too much incorrectly and hurts those who truly do succeed. I don't think that athletes or some other groups get singled out as much in the same way. By the way I'm not bashing athletes. One of my best friends was a basketball player with a 4.0 GPA.

If you don't mean to offend, you probably shouldn't accuse people of "race bashing." That doesn't merely imply that someone is racist, it accuses them of being racist. Let's be more civil than that and not dig up posts from weeks ago to make tangential points.

[curiousgeorge84]

If you don't mean to offend, you probably shouldn't accuse people of "race bashing." That doesn't merely imply that someone is racist, it accuses them of being racist. Let's be more civil than that and not dig up posts from weeks ago to make tangential points.

I truly apologize for using words that put it in the wrong way. I wasn't digging up posts but had just found the thread and was so interested that I read it from beginning to end. I know that affirmative action can be frustrating. Personally I am opposed to race-based affirmative action and am in favor of socioeconomic considerations due to the unequal U.S. system where property taxes pay for education. I believe a poor white person from a bad school district should get consideration over a wealthy black person. I only think that just as I should have thought before using the words 'race bashing,' which is not exactly what I meant, people should also stop and think before jumping on the bandwagon of pointing out all the minorities who get priority without acknowledging that there are so many others without academic qualifications who do as well.

On the topic of the thread, I disagree with the concept that if you don't get into a top 25 you won't get a job. I just accepted at Rutgers before even hearing from Columbia and a number of other schools because it truly is the best fit for my research and besides great funding, they are offering me a lot of professional support. Before accepting, I asked for not only the placement statistics for the past ten years, but also the schools and types of positions graduates obtained. Rutgers is a top 50 but not a top 25. They have a fantastic placement rate and at least 1/3 of the students each year obtained tenure track positions right away. Last year a Rutgers graduate beat out a Princeton graduate for a position.

[gezzloume]

I truly apologize for using words that put it in the wrong way. I wasn't digging up posts but had just found the thread and was so interested that I read it from beginning to end. I know that affirmative action can be frustrating. Personally I am opposed to race-based affirmative action and am in favor of socioeconomic considerations due to the unequal U.S. system where property taxes pay for education. I believe a poor white person from a bad school district should get consideration over a wealthy black person. I only think that just as I should have thought before using the words 'race bashing,' which is not exactly what I meant, people should also stop and think before jumping on the bandwagon of pointing out all the minorities who get priority without acknowledging that there are so many others without academic qualifications who do as well.

On the topic of the thread, I disagree with the concept that if you don't get into a top 25 you won't get a job. I just accepted at Rutgers before even hearing from Columbia and a number of other schools because it truly is the best fit for my research and besides great funding, they are offering me a lot of professional support. Before accepting, I asked for not only the placement statistics for the past ten years, but also the schools and types of positions graduates obtained. Rutgers is a top 50 but not a top 25. They have a fantastic placement rate and at least 1/3 of the students each year obtained tenure track positions right away. Last year a Rutgers graduate beat out a Princeton graduate for a position.

You have excellent insight curiousgeorge84 and I am glad that you made your points. I was disturbed at how quickly some people pointed to race as the sole reason someone was accepted to a school even though that is not what affirmative action is all about. It's supposed to be about looking at all the great factors that make an applicant an ideal student and NOT using their race as a reason to discount their ability. Besides, I would say MONEY and PRESTIGE are the most common way many universities choose their students without little or any academic merit (compared to the non-rich and or prestigious applicants).

That being said, whether you choose the top 10 or bottom 100, university is a business and many of them want to get noticed, so hiring people that they perceive will give them that attention (in academic circles and even beyond) will likely be the single most important factor determining and securing the ideal teaching position.

BTW, as much as I like the discussion in this thread I think its kinda of ridiculous to assume that one can predict or perfectly map out their future based on current or past trends in a handful of cases (compared to the millions of students applying to graduate school around the world). I say learn as much as you can now to make informed decisions in the present and leave future worrying...well in the future where it belongs.

Peace to you all!

[CarbonBasedLifeForm]

I received my Poli Sci B.A. at a public university (top 5 for what it's worth) nine years ago. At that time I was seriously considering a PhD in political science. I was turned off by "tough love" advice similar to that given by The Realist. It was from an Ivy League professor who only in retrospect strikes me as an oddball and not a good source of advice. (I'm not comparing the Realist to that professor.) That advice coupled with the fact that many teaching jobs are in small towns turned me off from even applying to PhD programs. I went to law school instead and I've been practicing for 5 years.

The "top 10 or bust" advice is remarkably similar to what can be found on law school admissions boards. There, people will often advise that if you don't go to a Top 15 law school your chances at getting a job are dicey. Now that I've been in the practicing I realize that is mostly hogwash. It's true that if you want to work at one of the most prestigious law firms, it helps to go to a very prestigious school. But most of the attorneys in the world did not go to those schools. A lot of working attorneys went to downright crappy schools. Whether they are happy or not really does not have to do with where they went to school. I rarely think about where I went to law school (Top Tier but not Top 15, again for what it's worth). It's all about whether they actually fit in with the work and like their job. And furthermore, your status is largely derived from your performance after law school.

Doesn't this also apply to the tough love advice in this forum? Sure, if you want to teach at Harvard, Stanford or Yale it's probably helpful to go to a top 10 program. But as some posts suggest, many are happy or even happier working at less prestigious schools. I would imagine that many professors around the country did not go to top 10 programs. I imagine that for those that are employed, their job satisfaction depends in large part on whether they fit into academia and like their work and less on where they went to school. Finally, I suspect a PhD's "success" is based in large part on what they've done after their schooling was completed. I'm happy to consider any rebuttals though. I don't pretend to be an expert on the world of political science PhDs.

Thanks for everyone's advice btw, including the tough love advice.

[curufinwe]

Here's what my advisor claims about this job market and school you graduated from discussion:

"As long as you have a kick-ass (my description, not his ) thesis and good relations with good professors that have connections (and by -good relations-, he means they think you are bright and they like you) from your phd institution, it is not that impossible to find jobs. If you are not bright, a Harvard degree won't save you, your thesis will be the most significant sign of this".

[GopherGrad]

Okay, so in hopes of coming to some better understanding of the OP's advice I've been looking at the placement history at a few of my potential schools. It's not helpful because I can't really see if anyone wasn't placed. There's a list of jobs, but no stats. Am I looking in the wrong place?

[Wesson]

Some departments are very selective in what information they post. If they only post jobs rather than full stats, you can devise rough estimates of placement on your own. For example, if a department takes in 12 new students each year, placement averaging 5-6 per year would be approximately full placement (assuming 50% attrition along the way). So, if they're only listing 1-2 placements, that's a red flag. If you don't know the size of their incoming cohorts, you can count how many students are listed as current graduate students, and divide by 4 or 5 to get a decent estimate.

[expatbayern]

I received my Poli Sci B.A. at a public university (top 5 for what it's worth) nine years ago. At that time I was seriously considering a PhD in political science. I was turned off by "tough love" advice similar to that given by The Realist. It was from an Ivy League professor who only in retrospect strikes me as an oddball and not a good source of advice. (I'm not comparing the Realist to that professor.) That advice coupled with the fact that many teaching jobs are in small towns turned me off from even applying to PhD programs. I went to law school instead and I've been practicing for 5 years.

The "top 10 or bust" advice is remarkably similar to what can be found on law school admissions boards. There, people will often advise that if you don't go to a Top 15 law school your chances at getting a job are dicey. Now that I've been in the practicing I realize that is mostly hogwash. It's true that if you want to work at one of the most prestigious law firms, it helps to go to a very prestigious school. But most of the attorneys in the world did not go to those schools. A lot of working attorneys went to downright crappy schools. Whether they are happy or not really does not have to do with where they went to school. I rarely think about where I went to law school (Top Tier but not Top 15, again for what it's worth). It's all about whether they actually fit in with the work and like their job. And furthermore, your status is largely derived from your performance after law school.

Doesn't this also apply to the tough love advice in this forum? Sure, if you want to teach at Harvard, Stanford or Yale it's probably helpful to go to a top 10 program. But as some posts suggest, many are happy or even happier working at less prestigious schools. I would imagine that many professors around the country did not go to top 10 programs. I imagine that for those that are employed, their job satisfaction depends in large part on whether they fit into academia and like their work and less on where they went to school. Finally, I suspect a PhD's "success" is based in large part on what they've done after their schooling was completed. I'm happy to consider any rebuttals though. I don't pretend to be an expert on the world of political science PhDs.

Thanks for everyone's advice btw, including the tough love advice.

From quick wikipedia/googling, there are 200 accredited law schools in the US. There are fewer poli sci PhD programs than that, but probably still more than 120. There are something on the order of 1.1-1.2 million lawyers in the US alone. APSA has "more than 15,000 members residing in over 80 countries." The fact that you can get a job as a lawyer after graduating from a bottom-tier law school does not automatically imply the same goes for political science.

[APGradApplicant]

It is very difficult for successful minorities in higher education because the first thing people think is that we are in a school because of affirmative action and not because of our abilities.

Curiousgeorge84- This is why race-based affirmative action was a bad idea to begin with and an even worse idea in this day and age when we have a black president. I'm glad to hear that you're opposed to it although I disagree with socioeconomic affirmative action as well. I'm not, however, opposed to taking one's "life story" into account in college admissions, which in many cases will result in socioeconomic affirmative action. When I say I'm opposed to socioeconomic affirmative action, I mean that I don't think parental salary taken by itself without context should be a considered factor as much as what the applicant has gone through themselves...