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Placement and Time to Completion

People considering a career in political science often have basic questions about their prospective department—questions like, "Where am I likely to end up if I come here?" or "How long am I likely to be here?" or "What are the odds that I will complete my program?" Many graduate programs, surprisingly, either don’t publish that information at all or publish it in disaggregated form as a way of hiding information in plain sight.

Our commitment to transparency begins before students even enroll at our University. Graduate students who are deciding whether or not to choose our program should have the clearest possible answers to these questions. Those answers are below.

Ph.D. Placement

The OSU Department of Political Science has an excellent placement record. Our graduates have been very successful in securing positions in major research universities and liberal arts colleges, while others have pursued non-academic careers in government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and private industry.

Rather than providing a sample of notable placement successes, we provide below a comprehensive list of our placements. This includes all the data we have regarding where all of our Ph.D.s since 2004 were placed or are currently employed. All academic positions are tenure-track unless otherwise noted.

Department of Political Science Placement, 2004 - 2011


View Political Science, The Ohio State University Placement in a larger map

2011 Ph.D.s          
  Quintin Beazer   CP   Post-Doc, Yale University
  A. Burcu Bayram   IR   McMaster University, Canada
  Soundarya Chidambaram   CP   University of Arkansas – Fayetteville (visiting)
  Christopher Devine   AP   Mount Vernon Nazarene University
  Erin Graham   IR   Post-Doc, Princeton University
  Marcus Holmes   IR   Fordham University
  Todd Makse   AP   Susquehanna University
  Steven Nawara   AP   Valdosta State University
  Scott Powell   CP   University of Tennessee – Knoxville
  Allyson Shortle   AP   University of Oklahoma – Norman
  Dana Wittmer   AP   Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO)
2010 Ph.D.s          
  Daniel Blake   IR   Post-Doc, Princeton
  Dino Christenson   American   Boston University
  Eric Grynaviski   IR   George Washington University
  TongFi Kim   IR   Purdue University (visiting)
  Kyle Kopko   American   Elizabethtown College
  Daniel Langfield   Comparative   College of Wooster (visiting)
  Todd Makse   American   Radford University (visiting)
  Sarah Sokhey   Comparative   University of Colorado-Boulder
  Byungwon Woo   IR   Oakland University
  Christina Xydias   Comparative   Union College (visiting)
  Kadir Yildirim   Comparative   Post-Doc, Princeton
2009 Ph.D.s          
  Richard Arnold   Comparative   Muskingum College
  Lakeyta Bonnette   American   Georgia State University
  Tom Dolan   IR   Rochester; Univ. of Central Florida
  Delia Dumitrescu   Comparative   Post-Doc, Univ. of Montreal
  Nanaho Hanada   Comparative   St. Olaf College (visiting)
  Erin McAdams   American   College of Charleston
  Zachary Mears   IR   Analyst, Private Sector
  Banks Miller   American   University of Texas-Dallas
  Dag Mossige   Comparative   Davidson College (visiting)
  Autumn Payton   IR   Post-Doc, European Univ. Inst.
  Tina Pierce   American   Denison University (visiting)
  Amanda Rosen   IR   Webster University
  Michael Reese   IR   Univ. of Chicago/CIR (visiting)
  Yusuf Safarti   Comparative   Illinois State University
  Anand Sokhey   American   University of Colorado-Boulder
  Konstantin Vossing   Comparative   Humboldt University (Berlin)
2008 Ph.D.s          
  Kuskridho Ambardi   Comparative   Gadjah Mada University
  Samuel DeCanio   American   Yale University
  Ryan Kennedy   Comparative   University of Houston
  Katja Michalak   Comparative   American University of Bulgaria
  Christopher Moore   IR   Bethel University
  Bradley Nelson   IR   Analyst, Private Sector
  Eric Russell   American   Auburn University
  Anna Shadley   Comparative   The Ohio State University (Administration)
  Corwin Smidt   American   Michigan State University
  Yohanes Sulaiman   IR   Analyst, Ctr for Dem., Int. Peace and Sec. Stud. (Jakarta)
  Srdjan Vcetic   IR   Post-Doc, Cambridge; Univ of Ottawa
  Sean Williams   American   Analyst, Private Sector
  Unislawa Wszolek   IR   Spelman College
2007 Ph.D.s          
  Dinissa Duvanova   Comparative   SUNY Buffalo
  Roman Ivanchenko   American   Analyst, Joint Welfare Analysis Center
  Natalie Kistner   Comparative   James Madison University
  Nathan Toronto   IR   Analyst, Foreign Military Studies Office, Ft. Leavenworth
  Linda Trautman   American   Ohio University, Lancaster
  Dinna Wisnu   Comparative   USAID, World Learning Respect Program, Deputy Director
2006 Ph.D.s          
  Brandon Bartels   American   Stony Brook Univ; George Washington Univ.
  Ray Block   American   Florida St. Univ.; Wisconsin -- LaCrosse
  Jong Kun Choi   IR   Post-doc, Yonsei University, South Korea
  Bridget Coggins   IR   Dartmouth College
  Paul Fritz   IR   Hofstra University
  Yoav Gortzak   IR   Arizona State University
  Amu Oakes   IR   College of William and Mary
  Brent Strathman   IR   Dartmouth (visiting)
2005 Ph.D.s          
  William Anderson   American   University of South Dakota
  Brett Curry   American   Georgia Southern University
  Gregory Gwiasda   American   Analyst, Private Sector
  Andrew Holbrook   American   University of New Orleans
  Hiram Irizarry-Osorio   Comparative   Analyst, Kirwan Institute, OSU
  Robert Kelly   Comparative   University of the Pacific
  Jeffrey Martinson   IR   Meredith College
  Scott Orr   Comparative   Texas Lutheran University
  Justin Taylor   American   Analyst, Private Sector
2004 Ph.D.s          
  Eileen Braman   American   University of Indiana
  Andrew Farrell   American   University of Oklahoma (visiting)
  Yoram Haftel   IR   University of Illinois - Chicago
  Blair King   American   Analyst, National Democratic Inst for Int. Affairs
  Gregory Miller   IR   College of William & Mary; Univ. of Oklahoma
  J. Quin Monson   American   Brigham Young University
  Kenneth Mulligan   American   Southern Illinois, Carbondale
  Jason Mycoff   American   University of Delaware
  Mary Outwater   American   Director, Oklahoma University Poll
  Julie Anne S. Peterson   American   Analyst, Private Sector
  Kevin Sweeney   IR   Analyst, Department of Defense
  Wendy Watson   American   Univ. of North Texas; Southern Methodist University
  Margaret Williams   American   James Madison University; Goucher College

Average Time to Degree

Time to Completion by Sex ChartThe National Research Council (NRC) cites an average time-to-degree of about 6.5 years in Ph.D. programs in political science. In order to determine where ours fell relative to the national average, we looked at median completion times for all cohorts from 1990 (when the first reliable data exist in our dataset) to 2005 (at which point missing data make the answer unreliable). We also broke the data down by sex of student. The average answer, consistently over time and across the two sexes, generally hovers between six and seven years—a number that corresponds very closely with the national average. It appears that there might be a slight downward trend in recent years, but there are too few students to say definitively whether that is the case.

Time to Completion by Cohort Chart We also broke the same data down by subfield, and here the results are considerably more nuanced. As one often hears, comparativists tend to take longer to complete their dissertations due to the requirements of language classes and fieldwork. Americanists are generally the fastest to complete theirs, and students of International Relations fall somewhere in between. What is most interesting, however, is the fact that, since the late 1990s, time to degree across subfields has converged considerably: the most recent cohorts all show far less variance, completing their degrees in something close to six years regardless of subfield.

Attrition and Completion

Attrition by SexAttrition—whether due to spousal considerations, an attractive career opportunity elsewhere, or personal reasons—is far more common in Ph.D. programs than entering students realize. Many professors tell stories of entering graduate school, being told to look at the students to their left and right, and then being told that only one in three entering students would end up with a Ph.D.

Regardless of the reason, the classical "one in three" statistic is not far off in general for political science programs, nor is it for ours: our actual attrition rate varies widely from one year to the next due to small cohort size, but a smoothed series over time moves roughly between 50% and 60%. (We should note for the sake of comparability that this figure captures all forms of attrition, including simply dropping out and taking a terminal M.A.; in many departments’ official statistics, these figures are disaggregated.)

For comparable data from other Universities external link

The Program In Statistics and Methodology (PRISM) provided the research assistance necessary to collect and visualize these data.

 
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