Political Science

We take special pride in our Department’s high national ranking in the discipline — and in the shared determination of our faculty to continue to build an exciting intellectual community. Our graduate program combines outstanding faculty and students, a broad-ranging curriculum oriented toward research, and the resources of one of the nation’s great universities. In addition to housing many leading departments in the social science, humanities and natural sciences, UCLA offers one of the world’s foremost research libraries, exceptional computing facilities, and an extensive network of interdisciplinary centers and institutes that foster linkages across disciplinary boundaries.

Our Department is a fairly large one, staffed by approximately 45 core faculty. Each year we aim for an entering class of about 15 to 20, which allows for considerable personal attention to each of our students. Currently, we have about 150 students in residence. We consider ourselves a “full service” department: our large and intellectually diverse faculty offers coursework and opportunities for research in all of the major sub-fields of the discipline. In addition, our graduate students have found that our curriculum facilitates intensive study in a number of cross-cutting areas – empirical and theoretical, contemporary and historical. Among these interdisciplinary concentrations are political economy, American political development, race and politics, and the philosophical, historical, and literary dimensions of political theory. Because UCLA is home to a large number of centers for language and area studies our students often focus their doctoral research on the politics of specific world regions while drawing theoretical and empirical leverage from sources that transcend conventional boundaries.

Our emphasis on rigorous academic training and independent research creates a diverse and intellectually exciting graduate student community. Most of our doctoral graduates go on to careers in academic institutions, but many have also found challenging employment in the public sector or in private organizations that emphasize research and analytic skills. In the past decade or so, our graduates have obtained tenure-track academic positions at Princeton, Yale, Harvard, Harvard's Kennedy School, Stanford, Pittsburgh, Rochester, Michigan, UC Berkeley, and UC San Diego. Others have joined such institutions as the World Bank, the State Department, the Federal Reserve Bank, RAND, and the Carnegie Endowment.

The curriculum of the graduate program is divided into six general areas: American Politics, Comparative Politics, Formal Theory/Quantitative Methods, International Relations, Political Theory, and Race, Ethnicity & Politics. Prospective applicants are encouraged to visit the field websites and the faculty pages to explore the variety of research programs underway in the Department. We encourage our students to be well-rounded in their study of politics: the Department requires study in two major and two minor fields. One result of this is a collegial atmosphere among our graduate cohort.

The boundaries between these general fields are intentionally permeable, as are the boundaries between our Department and other academic disciplines. Formal theory and methods, for example, offers training that supports research across most of the subfields. Political Economy, an area of marked departmental strength, overlaps Comparative Politics and International Relations, and also invites interdisciplinary work with the Department of Economics. Similarly, the subfield of Political Theory is linked, through cross-appointments and the various interdisciplinary centers on campus, with a variety of departments including history, public policy, philosophy, classics, sociology, and literary & cultural studies.

COURSEWORK

The program requires PS 292A and at least 16 graded courses, including four in each of two major fields, two in a minor field, and six electives. There is also a language/methods requirement which students satisfy by taking whichever is most appropriate to their plan of research. Taken together, the major and minor fields work in tandem to provide breadth of background and depth of focus for crafting sophisticated research projects. The elective courses permit students to tailor their studies to their individual needs and interests. Needless to say, most students pursue significantly more coursework beyond these minimum requirements. Many students take classes outside the department as well. Generally, students satisfy course requirements within the first two years of study. At the same time, they take their preliminary exam and prepare to write their field papers.

PRELIMINARY EXAMS AND FIELD PAPERS

Students must pass a preliminary exam in their first major field.  Preliminary exams are given at the end of Winter quarter and focus on the topics covered during the Fall and Winter field seminars.  Ideally students pass their preliminary exam in the first year of study; they must do so by the second year.

Students also are required to complete a field paper before advancing to candidacy. Field papers resemble articles published in professional journals, not only in structure and format, but by making original contributions to the scholarly literature on their chosen topic. These papers often emerge from seminars and frequently serve as preliminary explorations of dissertation research. They also commonly serve as prototypes for conference papers and many eventually find publication in refereed journals. In multiple respects, then, they assist students in defining and developing their own professional agendas. Both papers are typically submitted no later than the third year of enrollment, though earlier submission is both possible and encouraged.

Both the field papers and graduate seminars provide many opportunities for graduate students to develop mentoring relationships with members of the faculty. Such relationships expose students to the informal lore of our discipline and prepare them to become active participants in a professional community of teaching and research. Mentoring relationships can blossom into longstanding intellectual collaborations, at the dissertation level and beyond, and play a basic role in developing young scholars at UCLA.

DISSERTATION

Once the coursework and field papers are completed, students proceed to the dissertation stage. The first step is to delineate an original research project in a dissertation prospectus. Presented to a faculty examining committee, the prospectus provides the principal basis for discussion during the qualifying oral examination which advances the student to PhD. candidacy. Sometimes the dissertation emerges directly from earlier field papers; but students often extend themselves in unexpected directions as they open new avenues of discovery. Either way, we take it as our obligation to try to provide constructive guidance without usurping the student’s intellectual autonomy. In the usual course of things, we expect students to complete their graduate training in five to seven years.

Requirements

• The application fee is $90 for U.S. citizens and permanent residents, and $110 for all other applicants. The application and all supporting documents must be submitted by December 1, 2015. No extensions will be granted. 
• Statement of Purpose: 3-5 double-spaced pages, 12pt font. Only one statement of purpose is required.
• Writing Sample: 5-25 double-spaced pages, 12 font.  Only one writing sample is requried.
• Resume or CV.
• Upload transcripts
• Mail offical hard copy transcripts to department
• Official Graduate Record Examination (GRE) score report from the Education Testing Service.
  UCLA’s institution code for this exam is 4837, and the department code is 1902. All prospective students to the Department of Political Science should take the GRE exam by November 1st. If scores are not received by December 1st, your application will be considered incomplete. Please plan accordingly.
• Three letters of recommendation—done via online access.
  The website will lead you through the instructions. You will submit three names and respective email addresses of your recommenders. These individuals will then be notified by email and asked to complete the recommendation online. You will be able to ascertain via the Internet who has completed the recommendation and when. All recommendations must be submitted by the established deadline in order to be considered. Recommendations are completed and submitted online.
  DO NOT SEND HARD COPIES OF YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS.
• Applicants from abroad whose native language is not English must take either the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) exam and have the results reported directly to the department. UCLA’s institution code is 4837 and the department code is 89.