Berkeley Grad School Hates Berkeley Undergrads?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>UCLAri, you think that most top poli sci departments are filled with people from large state schools?</p>

<p>I'm thinking of people in my subdiscipline for the year behind and year ahead of me:
Harvard (1), U New Mexico (1), Kenyon (1), Carleton (2), Swarthmore (2), Princeton (2), Johns Hopkins (1)
In my massive department I can think of a ton of people from LACs but only 1 from UC Berkeley, 1 from UNM, 1 from Michigan, and 1 from Wisconsin. (I'm sure there are more but proportionally... not so much.)</p>

<p>Or do you mean people from private universities like the ivies?</p>

<p>PS are you starting a PhD in the fall?</p>

22

<p>Rinzee,</p>

<p>No no, I mean "big schools" as in big research unis. Like UCs, Columbia, Penn, etc. My experience with grad students in poli sci has been that a fair number come from the big names in poli sci. Those, for better or for worse, are also big name, big schools. </p>

<p>I was going to go for my PhD, but I decided on getting my MA at UCSD IR/PS first to work a bit on my quantitative skills. Unfortunately, I sorta switched my interests late in my undergrad career (theory of comparative to more IR/political economy) so that means I need some econ/mathy stuff under my belt.</p>

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<p>i know plenty of people who have continued on at berkeley. many of my family friends are currently working on their masters there. my uncle and a professor i worked with at UCI went straight from undergrad through PhD there...</p>

24

<p>Sure, you can. But why would you want to, unless there was a particularly compelling reason to stay?</p>

<p>I loved UCLA. But I wouldn't want to do my PhD there. It'd be weird having to change relationships with my profs, anyway.</p>

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<p>UCLAri, interesting. Maybe the Berkeley poli sci department tends to favor liberal arts colleges more than other schools?</p>

<p>For the record, I would segregate out places like UCLA, UCSD and UCB from other schools like Columbia and Penn, which I would put with Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Rice, etc. Not liberal arts college but not the same degree of anonymity that you see here (at least with the professors -- the students in my sections aren't anonymous to me.) </p>

<p>What I'm saying doesn't apply to professional schools, however -- I think they evaluate applications very differently. Before coming to Berkeley I was in a professional program in a big, big university and there were a ton of people from the UCs there.</p>

<p>PS I have a few friends who went to the UCSD IR/PS program and really liked it. They have some great faculty there.</p>

26

<p>Rinzee,</p>

<p>Well, in the end, I had three definite choices- LSE, NYU, IR/PS. One was being worked on- Chicago</p>

<p>LSE was too expensive, and didn't offer enough quantitative training. But man, the location!</p>

<p>NYU was also expensive. And none of the faculty sounded thrilled about having an East Asian guy.</p>

<p>IR/PS is focused on the Pacific Rim, offers language courses, is cheap (CA resident), and is known for its quantitative training.</p>

<p>Chicago was looking good, but I decided to hold off. Besides, I hate the cold...</p>