<p>I posted this in the grad school but I thought this might be a better place to get accurate information. Hoping someone can provide a little insight for me. I want to attend Cambridge for a part time PH.d program in International Relations. I'm a non-traditional student and that's why I'm not sure of my chances. </p>
<p>First a little background:</p>
<p>I am an Army veteran who received my undergrad degree from an online university while on active duty. my UGPA was 3.9+</p>
<p>I also received a Masters degree from University of Massachusetts in International Relations with 4.0 GPA</p>
<p>Scored in the top 5 percentile on the LSAT.</p>
<p>I'm currently attending Harvard Law School and we don't have GPA's (Like Yale, Stanford and Berkeley we use high pass, pass and low pass) but I'd guess I'm around median.</p>
<p>I'll be working at a firm in London after graduation, thus the need for a part-time program.</p>
<p>So my question is do I have a decent shot at acceptance since </p>
<p>1) I went to an online undergrad institution.
2) My Masters degree was from U. of Massachusetts.
3) The only elite school on my transcript (HLS), I'm only median at.</p>
<p>Also does Cambridge take "softs" into account such as veteran status, being the first in your family to go to college or underrepresented minority status. Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>I would suggest contacting your chosen college at Cambridge, outlining your qualifications and asking whether they accept online degrees.</p>
<p>I doubt that Cambridge would consider your URM status or being the first in the family to go to college as being relevant at this stage, since you are applying for a PhD and therefore your previous academic performance and capacity to undertake original research is the most important thing. </p>
<p>I also doubt that your veteran status, in and of itself, would be considered - but if your experiences on active duty mean you can demonstrate a unique insight into your proposed PhD project which strengthens your application, it would be wise to mention it.</p>
<p>ETA: Have you contacted a possible PhD supervisor at Cambridge yet? You should do so and run your research proposal past them before applying.</p>
<p>If you can make your veteran status relevant to your PhD application, then that’s good. However, being a veteran is not going to be seen as inherently valuable to your application; soldiers in the UK are not held in quite such (overly) high regard as they seem to be in the US. A British soldier could walk around his town in uniform, but he wouldn’t expect special favours simply because he is a soldier. Of course, you will still need to mention your veteran service to explain why you did a degree with an online uni. You would also do well to mention any credentials of this online university, just to emphasise that you didn’t just pay $200 for a piece of paper! </p>
<p>I would suggest sending an email to the relevant college, and gauging their reaction. It’s very difficult for us to start telling you what your chances are, as ultimately we’re not the admissions tutors! </p>
<p>You should be aware that what Cambridge is looking for, above all else, is academic rigour. Whilst they may run programmes for prospective undergrads who are the first in their family to go to uni, have been in state care, have been made homeless or have other special circumstances, ultimately they don’t sit there and make it easier for people from minority backgrounds to get in just because they are from a minority background as they do in the US. </p>
<p>Why are you particularly wanting to go to Cambridge when you will have to live in London? If it’s because there is a PhD supervisor there who specialises in the area that you want to research, then that’s all well and good. However, Cambridge is 1 to 1.5 hours away on the train, plus travel time at either end, plus you will have to pay a train fare (£23 return if you book in advance, having had a quick look, though this can vary). </p>
<p>Why not have a look at other excellent universities in London itself, such as UCL, LSE and KCL? You might also like to have a look at Birkbeck, which is a part of the University of London (like UCL, LSE and KCL) but specialises in mature students who are also working, so it teaches primarily in the evenings, and offers both full time and part time courses.</p>
<p>Do make sure that you understand exactly what is required of “part-time” students in the International Relations PhD at Cambridge, and whether you will be able to meet those requirements. But my suspicion would be that there are at least some part-time graduate students at Cambridge who live in London.</p>
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<li>1.5 hours? lol Cambridge is about 40 minutes by train from King’s Cross.</li>
<li>Perhaps he wants to attend to Cambridge because after getting a degree from Harvard Law School, it would be a massive setback to study at KCL, UCL, or even at LSE? (Don’t get me wrong, ULC and, especially, LSE are excellent schools, just simply not in pair with the Ivy League or Oxbridge)</li>
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<p>Part-time PhDs are very new at Cambridge, programs started only about 10 years ago, and the requirements are very strict (as this is not distance learning). With good results, I firmly believe you can get in. As you will work in London, I guess funding will not be an issue for you, therefore you can apply till this March if you want to start the PhD in this October.</p>
<p>As others mentioned before, you will have to choose a college (two, actually). Trust me, evern fro part-time students this is an impotant decision. The most important thing for you is, perhaps, to get into a college close to the faculty, as you will not go and have lunch in a college far away while you have to get back to London. (Other than that, there is a great variety of old and new colleges.) As the POLIS is in the Sedgwick site, the colleges you might consider are Selwyn (late 19th century college), Darwin (mid 20th century, postgrad only), and virtually all of the ancient ones, save Jesus and Magdalene, and perhaps Christ’s – these are a bit further from the center.)</p>
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<li><p>Having had a look at [National</a> Rail Enquiries - Official source for UK train times and timetables](<a href=“http://www.nationalrail.co.uk%5DNational”>http://www.nationalrail.co.uk) train times between London and Cambridge are between 47m and 1h39m. It’s likely that he will have to travel to Kings Cross by Tube, thus making the train journey even longer… </p></li>
<li><p>Questioning someone’s choice to study at Cambridge is far from unreasonable. Many foreigners will simply not be aware of the excellent options available to them that aren’t Oxbridge, just as someone going to the US might not realise that there are excellent options available to them that aren’t Harvard. </p></li>
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<p>Now, going to UCL, KCL or LSE might be a (small) step down from Harvard, but it’s not a step down from the Ivy League, and it’s a step up from Massachusetts or an online university. They are all research intensive institutions which are (like Oxford and Cambridge) members of the Russell Group, the group of the top universities in the UK. LSE specialises in the study of economics and political science. It’s hardly unfair to suggest that he has a look at the supervisors available at each university.</p>
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<li><p>Oh dear. I seem to recall that I’ve made it in 42 minutes from Cambridge to King’s Cross on a few dozen occasions. Indeed, you have to travel to King’s Cross, but here are people who commute 3 hours a day despite they live and work in London </p></li>
<li><p>There are indeed many excellent options in the US, such as Stanford, Princeton, Yale, MIT, Columbia, Chicago, CalTech and Berkeley (for grad studies, not for undergrad). Also, there’s Penn’s Wharton if you are into business. After a Harvard JD, it can easily be justified why one would choose these institutions to do a PhD. Anything else would be a massive step back. As I said, Im fully aware that the schools you mentioned are great, but this hardly changes the fact that they are simply not in pair with Oxbridge, nor with the Ivy League. And outside the UK, nobody, truly, nobody has ever heard about the Russell Group. In several areas (research) UCL easily surpasses two Ivy league institutions, namely Brown and Dartmouth, but, again, this is not a deciding factor. No matter what the QS and TIMES World Rankings say, nobody on Earth thinks there are European schools other than Oxbridge that belong to the world top 10. </p></li>
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<p>Im also quite aware that in the UK its perfectly normal that one goes to do a PhD at UCL, Imperial, LSE, or, God forbids, St.Andrews, after graduating at Oxbridge. After all, from a UK perspective, all of these universities belong to the national top 10. However, please understand that people outside of the UK dont care with national top 10s and, as mentioned, while LSE and UCL (one might add Imperial too) are well respected across the globe, nobody sees them as peer institutions of the Ivy League, let alone Oxbridge. The main difference between our views is that you see things thru the lenses of British higher education, while my view is that of the global community.</p>
<p>As other have alluded to, by far the most important thing in obtaining admission to a PhD program in the UK is finding a supervisor you wish to study with and who is willing to take you on. I don’t know if you want to go to Cambridge because you know of a supervisor (or even more than one) there, or if it’s the only UK uni you have heard of, or if you love the city or something else? It may be the best place for you, but it may not.</p>
<p>All Cambridge are interested in is your academic ability. Anything else is utterly irrelevant (except I guess ability to pay, and it is very expensive for non-EU students).</p>
<p>Part time, the PhD will take at least 6-7 years. Are you even going to be in London for that length of time? Will the supervisor and the uni be happy to keep you enrolled if you leave the country (or are you looking for distance learning as opposed to part time, which does require your physical presence at least some of the time). Also if you are working for a London law firm, you are going to be working very long hours and may have very little time to devote to further study (if you intend to sleep). </p>
<p>Travel could be a significant factor. From where I live (west of London) it takes more than 2 hours to drive to Cambridge. Public transport would take longer. You could of course live in Cambridge and commute to work in London. Thousands of people do this, but it is very expensive.</p>
<p>If I were you, I would spend a year in London first to get used to the place and your new job. You could also use this time to visit some potential supervisors and research scholarships.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies and I’ll attempt to answer a few of the questions. The reason I want to study at Cambridge is the faculty. There are two people in particular that I would love to work with. They are leaders in the area of research I want to pursue. Secondly, I’m also aware of the connections and doors that open with a school like Cambridge. Much like Harvard, Cambridge can get you into places that other schools can’t. </p>
<p>As far as travel. Cambridge is about an hour away (according to the train website) from where I will live so I don’t think it will be that big of a problem. Plus I enjoy reading on the train anyway. I don’t really care about the cost.</p>
<p>Also thanks for letting me know that UK schools don’t value “softs.” I think American schools only care about academic achievement as well but they believe having a diversity of opinions and viewpoints leads to greater scholarship. I will make sure to focus almost entirely on my academic achievements instead of my professional or personal achievements. </p>
<p>Thanks guys for all of the help. I feel better informed.</p>
<p>King’s Cross to Cambridge is about 50 min to 1.5 hours depending upon the train you catch. I take this regularly.</p>
<p>Broadly speaking, Cambridge does have “the name” factor. But if your goal is a career in academia, the folks that will hire you won’t be glossy-eyed at the mere name of an institution. They’ll want to dig in further, much further, to specifics such as who you worked with, and most importantly, your publication record.</p>
<p>In the field of IR, a U.S.-dominated field, LSE is as respected (probably more) as Cambridge. LSE, Oxford, and Warwick are very Americanized IR departments - with methodological positivism dominating their approaches. At Cambridge, other approaches (e.g. historical, legal, diplomatic, philosophical) significantly compete with positivism and therefore, in the eyes of the knee-jerk and unreflective positivism that dominates academic IR, suffers in “reputation” for that reason. </p>
<p>So don’t discount LSE or other programs. That said, a good friend of mine who got his PhD at LSE admitted to me that he wished he had gone to a place like Cambridge since it has the ability to inspire “awe” in a way that other institutions don’t. The grass is always greener, and he can say that comfortably having a tenured position that LSE helped him get.</p>
<p>Cambridge seems like a reach… but you should always try… I guess I’m just a little offset with the “online degree” and the average results at Harvard. It’s not being at a great school that’s important… but having great results using all the resources available to you. If I had to take a look at your app as a very very angry/tired/sick person I would probably draw the conclusion that after getting in at HLS you were so satisfied with your acceptance that you didn’t really feel the need to work too much…</p>
<p>LSE is an amazing school, becoming larger and larger every year… Plus they have the largest Political and Social Sciences library of Europe… Bigger than Sciences Po’s Paris’ :O</p>