Graduate school is a serious academic commitment. Graduate coursework is substantially harder and very different than undergraduate-level coursework. If you have not received top grades in your undergraduate courses, then you should ask yourself whether you are prepared to take on the academic challenges of graduate school.
I strongly recommend that students seek letters of recommendation from professors they know the best and in whose courses they performed the best. I will agree to write confidential letters of recommendation for students who have demonstrated a high level of academic achievement in my courses and/or in independent research projects overseen by me. Typically, this means you will have gotten a high A in my US course(s) or a high distinction in my UK course(s).
For Ph.D. applications specifically, I will only agree to write confidential letters of recommendation for students that meet the following minimum requirements: (1) they were supervised by me for their honor's thesis or their master's dissertation, (2) they received very high grades/marks in multiple classes taught by me, and (3) they received a top grade/mark in at least one advanced quantitative methods course taught by me. Moreover, I will only write letters for students who have provided clear evidence of high-level preparation for the academic and professional rigors a Ph.D. program, as demonstrated by a holistic evaluation of their academic and professional records.
If you believe this applies to you and you would like to request a letter of recommendation from me, then please send me an email including (1) transcripts from all of your previous degrees, (2) your best piece of work from each course you took with me, (3) your research statement outlining your goals for graduate school, and (4) a list of all programs you are applying to. If I agree to write you a letter, you should use my LSE contact information to make the request and you must waive your right to view my confidential letter or recommendation. I will let you know in advance if I do not think I can provide you with a strong letter.
There are important differences between pursuing a Ph.D. at a US institution and pursuing a Ph.D. at a UK institution. The following guidelines pertain to students who wish to pursue a Ph.D. at LSE under my supervision.
I will only consider supervising Ph.D. students who meet the following minimum criteria:
The student's "intellectual discipline" is either political science or economics, and their methodological approach is either formal theory or advanced quantitative methods. By "intellectual discipline" I do not mean the offical subject of their Ph.D. (which can be, for example, methodology), but rather the community of scholars they intend to join and the journals they intend to publish in.
The student received very high grades/marks in their undergraduate courses and, if applicable, their master's courses. For students coming from the US, this means a home discipline GPA of at least 3.85 (and high honors, if applicable). For students coming from the UK, this means either a first or a distinction in the home discipline.
The student has pursed high-level training in math and quantitative methods. This includes coursework in calculus, probability, statistics (including advanced regression), and causal inference. Students who wish to do formal theory should have completed—or plan to complete—real analysis and calculus-based game theory courses.
The student is moderately proficient in either R or python, and preferrably both.
In addition, I will typically expect the Ph.D. students I supervise to have a research interest in either political institutions or formal theory, and be prepared to work hard and take feedback well. I will occasionally supervise students working on topics that are not related to political institutions or formal theory, but whose research profiles align with mine on another dimension (e.g., methdologically).
I take Ph.D. supervision seriously, and so I will only supervise students for whom I think I can be maximally useful as an advisor. This means that I generally expect my supervisees to be intellectually engaged with the same topics, literatures and methodological approaches as I am. In particular, this means that I have a very strong preference is to supervise students who have a strong theoretical orientation using either formal economic modeling or game theory, and who are interested in doing methodologically rigorous theory building. I am less keen to supervise students who are purely empirically-oriented, or whose theoretical approach is more informal and/or ad hoc.
If you believe that you meet the criteria above and I would be a good fit to supervise your Ph.D., then please send me an email with (1) transcripts from all of your previous degrees, (2) your best piece of academic writing, and (3) a research statement outlining your plan for the Ph.D. If I decide that you are a good fit based on these materials, then I will arrange to meet with you for an informal interview.
Jack T. Rametta (chair)
Ipek Çineli, Max Weber Fellow, European University Institute
Jonathan Colner, Faculty Fellow, NYU Center for Data Science
Gento Kato, Senior Assistant Professor, Meiji University