<p>You know, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately and I intended to get my list up to 10, but I just don't think I have it in me. There are not a lot of schools on my list now and I don't think there will be because there just are NOT many programs that appeal me that much. I have looked and looked and looked with no success...in fact, I ended up taking schools OFF my list. I may just go ahead and apply to the 4 to 6 schools originally on my list and just hope for the best. It's all one big crapshoot anyway...if I don't get in anywhere....maybe I could work in the meantime.</p>
<p>tenisghs,</p>
<p>Talk to a professor you trust, and be honest with your stats. Most of the time, professors in the field have a good idea of who gets admitted where (since they do admissions themselves.)</p>
<p>It also depends on your interests.</p>
<p>But I had a prof. who, back in the late 90s, applied to 2 PhD programs after his master's because he knew exactly who and what he wanted. I'm not saying that his route is the best either, but if you have a good idea of what you want and where you stand, you may be able to pass on a couple programs that wouldn't serve you well anyway.</p>
<p>Well, UCLAri, if I wanted to apply to top PhD programs, I would only apply to a maximum of six schools. There are only five schools out there I really want to attend (Penn, Wisconsin, Michigan, Harvard, Duke). Outside that list would probably be Chicago, Yale, Indiana and Columbia. But I really wouldn't want to go to those schools.</p>
<p>Well then you've narrowed down your list a bit. ;)</p>
<p>Not to be discouraging, but if history is anything like poli sci, then admissions is a total crapshoot. People with amazing stats and essays will get into no programs, and the guy with one miserable hook will get into a million. The rest of us, well...</p>
<p>:p</p>
<p>I've read a number of posts on here and lots of people are emphasizing getting into the top school or the top program...now granted I'm making some assumptions here but it comes across as if that is the one major factor of how your basing your school choices on. Personally, yeah I want to make sure I get into a good, credible and challenging program but I'm also going to go visit, meet the people, do some networking...the people, the atmosphere, the experience and the meaning behind the program-values, ethics, etc are will be the deciding factors for me. I felt the need to make that point.</p>
<p>To be totally honest, I felt like the differences in culture between the schools I visited and interviewed with to be fairly minor. Grad students in a given discipline anywhere are reasonably similar -- smart, ambitious people dedicated to a particular subfield of knowledge -- and there were certainly more similarities than differences between the programs.</p>
<p>I think it's silly to choose a school based solely on rank -- it would be strange, for example, to choose the "#2" school over than "#3" for rank reasons alone. But I also think that in terms of future job prospects, it's completely reasonable to choose #3 over #30.</p>
<p>mollie,</p>
<p>So true. I've decided that because of my personal prediliction toward hating cold weather, there's no really good reason for me to go East Coast for my graduate work. Now, to many of the rank-obsessed youngsters on this site, that sounds crazy. But why should I? 5 of the top 15 poli sci programs are in CA. Works for me. :)</p>
<p>Of course, if you take into account the typically better funding that a lot of the East Coast schools have, there are mitigating circumstances...but oh well. I'll take some debt over 6 years of cold misery anyday! :p</p>
<p>Penn, Michigan, Columbia, Duke, Chicago, NYU, Wisconsin.....thats my ultimate list if I were applying today.</p>
<p>I feel the same way. I've been taking my list up and down depending on what I read here or hear there, but I have five programs that I have researched thoroughly and that I think are really what I'm looking for. </p>
<p>For me, it's NYU, Northwestern, Columbia, Boston, American-- in that order</p>
<p>Anyway...just wanted to share. You're not alone!</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>It depends...if you're top 5 caliber, then maybe you could get away with only applying to the top 5 or 6, but everyone else should aim for about 8-10 in my opinion.</p>
<p>My advice would be to apply to as many as you possibly can. Atleast 10, more if you can afford to do so. I applied to 8 schools, this was a few years ago. I applied to 4 that were basically some of the top programs in the country, therefore out of my range, realistically. And I applied to another 4 programs that were within my range, or so I thought. I had my professor/advisor look over the list of schools that I applied to and she thought it was unlikely that I would get into the top 4 on my list, but the bottom 4 she said I would probably get into 2 or 3 of them. Well, unfortunately, she was wrong and I was wrong! I didn't get accepted into any of them! To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. The main reason I didn't get accepted, I think, was the GRE scores. The PhD Psych programs are generally very heavily GRE weighted, so if you are not above their minimum cut-offs, (1100 for most schools) you have no chance. You need 1200 or higher for many of the better schools. I read somewhere that Clinical Psych is more competitve than Medical School! So you should be applying to as many as you possibly can, and also have a back-up plan in place. If you don't get accepted into any PhD programs, have a couple of master's degrees lined-up as well. Fortunately, I did get accepted into a couple of Master's programs in Psychology, which is not as great as the PhD program, of course. But atleast it still gives you some options within the field of Psychology.</p>