#TruthfulStatementsOfPurpose

[gilbertrollins]

https://twitter.com/search?q=%23truthfulstatementsofpurpose&src=hash&f=realtime

[gilbertrollins]

lol @ everyone's thesis

[Dragon]

To be honest, I find these sorts of things pretty unkind.

[gilbertrollins]

Kind or not, the points are widely agreed on among leading sociologists.  Undergraduate training in sociology is generally poor (which is why sociology programs eagerly admit from other disciplines).  Personal stories are almost totally irrelevant to scientific qualifications.  Students rarely research sufficiently the faculty at programs they apply to.  Students often forget to customize the school name on form SOPs they've written.  Admitted students almost always choose higher ranked programs over ones that specialize more heavily in their field.  SOPs are often overly flowery and not written in the tone of tier-1 journal articles.  The absolute majority of students will not get academic jobs.  Sociology does not hire or promote armchair theorists whose preoccupation is with re-interpreting classic texts anymore.  Professorship is one of the worst ways to go about "making a difference," if one is interested in solving social problems.  Sociology has been overloaded with interview studies of racial, gendered, and national cultural issues and only rarely do extremely creative cases of these yield top tier employment anymore.  Students have a tendency to identify with and like seminal works they've been exposed to as undergraduates, and hence mistakenly apply to programs hoping to work with very old faculty rather than mid-career faculty.  Students often recapitulate and summarize sociological concepts and research in their SOPs, when the audience is a person who has been reading such research for decades.  Many students apply to graduate school because they like and were good at college, without realizing that primary research requires a set of skills almost totally removed from those required to succeed in undergraduate coursework.  Many people apply to graduate school for lack of imagination of where to go after college.  

 

I agree that these realities are unkind, but I think having a sense of humor about them and venting such information is a massive improvement over politely pretending that such realities don't exist while people invest enormous money and emotion into graduate applications, and while professors on the other side of the bargain spend enormous time vetting application packages.

[gilbertrollins]

and the lol @ my thesis website takes submissions from people making fun of their own work

[SocGirl2013]

I don't know if it is kind or not, but as an applicant I find it equal parts horrifying and amusing. Will have to agree with the Tweet about knowing everything I know from GradCafe (not in terms of my knowledge of sociology and primary, rather of the brutal application process itself). Nothing wrong with that. GradCafe is gold for students like me who are either international or from tiny liberal arts colleges where nobody knows the first thing about how to begin applying for a PhD program. I can proudly say, thanks to GC, I don't think I made any of the blatant blunders that are being mocked. Without GC, I certainly would have been victim to one or two. So I guess I just wanna say, whether or not I get in thanks to everyone at the Soc forum ! 

[SocGirl2013]

P.S. Dafaq, the #TruthfulStatementsOfPurpose seems to have caught on with an unexpected demographic of pseudo-philosophers. Hilarious plot twist.

Edited January 14, 2014 by SocGirl2013

[Sol_Barber]

I agree with the points that were made and some of the twitter posts are pretty funny (My favorite: I have many misconceptions but am willing to waste the rest of my 20s helping keep your Ponzi scheme going). None the less 'the realities' are narrated in a pretty one sided way and only few show hints of self humor or self irony.

 

What is about universities taking students with poor fits, due too high scores or high reputation of a persons undergrad university or due to the high reputation of letter writers (all mentioned diverse times on this board, for example (taken from the adcomm thread (great thread)): we could not accept students who would have been a perfect fit and would have been great in our department, due to too low scores for our amazing department.). Or what about not making the admission process more transparent and so make it easier to conform to the demands. Or what about being in charge of the admission process, the undergrad education (don´t know about that - studied abroad), the preparation for grad school etc. and structuring it in such a poor way that they themselves complain about it (related: why are so few departments doing interviews if it is all about fit).

 

I mean it is just pretty easy to turn the perspective around and make a truthfulgradadmissioncommittee twitter thing. For example:

 

We are happy to welcome you as a student - you are a perfect fit! And of course we know, that we are unable to recruit more qualified candidates.

 

Or:

 

You are too bad for our PhD program, but we would gladly take your money for our Masters program, where we do not care about you and promise to not prepare you for a PhD.

 

(yes, one sided and untrue) 

 

But than again - twitter might not be the right place for reflections on one´s own behavior, but just a place for quick laughs. That´s fine with me 

Edited January 14, 2014 by Sol_Barber

[Sol_Barber]

And more:

 

You should have known that ... is about to retire in two years, ... is on a sabbatical and that ... has offers from other universities and is likely to accept - but we refuse to update our website (since 2010).

 

On a a related note: we refuse to answer any email requests. WE ARE FACULTY! WE ARE BUSY!!!

Edited January 14, 2014 by Sol_Barber

[SocGirl2013]

I love it Sol! Here's one:

"We will charge you insane amounts of money to spend 0 minutes reading your application should an arbitrary number such as your GRE score fail to tickle our fancy." 

Edited January 14, 2014 by SocGirl2013

[meowth]

Beautiful hashtag, glad to have something else to look at on twitter now (I already follow lolmythesis). I think I'm going to have to retweet "sick of being a barista."

 

Yesterday I met a professor from the sociology department and she was like, "I've seen you somewhere... do you work at ____?" "Yes, did I make you coffee?" "Yes, it was good! And the other day you made me a smoothie!"

 

I mean, at least she didn't know me for BAD coffee.

 

But those inspiring quote images in the hashtag... It's amusing that they think "truthful statement of purpose" means a "statement full of purpose and full of truth" or something like that? Not quite right.

[Sol_Barber]

"And the other day you made me a smoothie!"   

 

But nice to hear that your visit went well - again: good luck!

[jacib]

I think my statement of purpose would have been like, "Man, aren't these so-called 'secular' states weird?  They're always messing with religion!  Why don't they just love freedom, like America?  Guys, I'm definitely studying Turkey, probably France even though I don't want to read a ton of French, and I feel like I have to make up a third country so let's just say India on this form and I'll figure out if that's actually a good case later on."  It would have been a sweet project, but someone already wrote a book on it (their third case was 'Murica) so I had to abandon it in my first year.

[SocInTheCity]

Wow. Just checked this out. I've worked in central administration for the last 6 years and I definitely see some familiar names/faces of professors. Way to put it out there, people. Ha ha.