gilbertrollins

On the left axis of the chart on the first page of the document I cited are the median dollar wages of men and women, represented per year by the blue bars in the graph. They have risen steadily.

Why are employees more substitutable in larger firms? Retraining employees for positions is costly no matter how many there are, and in fact as the firm gets larger, so too does the division of labor and particularity of the native skill set any one worker will acquire within the firm.

As more workers demand these amenities as part of their compensation in the labor market, they will appear. Given that wages rise along with economic growth and labor-saving technology, we should expect to see more of these amenities.

No, the gender wage gap, according to the BLS data cited in the chart on the first page of the report I posted, has decreased by over 50% since 1979. And that's before controlling for the important factors here discussed like occupation and whether or not the individual has children, after controlling for which the gap nearly disappears.

So none of this undermine's ohgoodness' claim that statistical discrimination is exactly the same thing as deliberate (unfair?) discrimination. You're talking about an employer correctly assessing the probability that a woman (or man) who takes substantial time away from the job will depreciate in terms of productivity and skills. I don't disagree, but think we should confront the issue of whether or not statistical discrimination is unfair. Personally, the first time I heard about the distinction between statistical discrimination and "real" discrimination I thought it was bunk. But we have to think in terms of general behavior -- not just particular cases of politically-weighted things like racial and gender discrimination. And in general terms, it would appear people make discriminating choices on who to associate and group with -- constantly -- inside and outside the market. To your second point about their being a difference between Fortune 500 companies and small businesses -- there is no prima facie reason to suspect that competition among Fortune 500 companies is insufficient to drive price down to marginal cost, and that they thus have boatloads of cash to play with in the back. Note that corporate profits are a teeny tiny fractional of gross national product. There is thus no reason to suspect larger firms of discriminating unfairly against women than smaller.

MOOOAAARRR!!!!!

Women and men definitely sort into different careers based on gender identity. I believe gender scholars are calling this job segregation -- a term which is I think extroardinarily innapropriate considering actual segregation was a state policy enforced violently against American Blacks. People sort into myriad bins socially, in terms of the organizations they join and identities they adopt thus. On the definition of "job segregation" we can start to define just about any social sorting as discriminatory segretation. There is quite a bit of contention, as I understand it, in behavioral economics and social psychology about the degree to which cuing people in terms of their gender or racial identity can influence their performance on standardized tests and things. One related, and often-repeated result, from an experiment where subjects were cued to think about "old things," and then reportedly walked down the hallyway away from the experiment on average more slowly than those who had not -- has been shown to be wrong. The magnitude of difference was vanishingly small and could have happened at random. I haven't read the paper Aaron linked, but the points that he, amblobo, and mbrown made seem to be the last remaining explanations for the aggregate wage gender gap -- women have children; and women choose different jobs than men. I think this is compelling evidence that the era of deliberate discrimination against women in the labor market is largely over -- I could be persuaded otherwise on more argument.

Apparently there is evidence that men who try to do early-childhood staying at home or flex time take a hit in salary disproportionate to the actual time they took off. To the degree that making any choice incurs costs, all choices by amlobo's language "force" people. What's particularly interesting about career choices and motherhood, is that we might be tempted to see mothering as a duty, right, or social obligation for which women should be duly compensated for. This logic would deny, though, that on the other hand the choice not to become pregnant, that is the choice to abort a pregnancy, is fiercly defended by advocates of choice. There seems to be a contradiction in this logic, where we view a planned and wanted baby as a duty, burden, or obligation, and an unplanned and unwanted baby as a fluid choice of a free agent. It would be interesting to see if we could come up with an observational or experimental criterion to measure whether women self-select out of time-abolishing career paths into top-tier administration because of the time constraints, or to what degree they are deliberately selected against by boards of directors. I suspect that raw, macro-level descriptive statistics about the number of women in these roles do not tell a complete story. Overall I find that the degree to which significant portions of academics violently argue that there exists massive discrimination against women in the labor market is unsupported by the data.

Keep emails to faculty you're interested in very brief. Three or four sentences at the most. If they open up the throttle - that's their move to make. Also, I wouldn't take a letter from a graduate student. This person's opinion likely won't mean anything to a graduate committee. You say your project isn't strong. Why don't you discuss that with a third faculty whose work you're interested in, in order o aim at another letter and relationship.

If you look at this chart, and observe the lower left quadrant, you see that mean scores are pretty low for sociology and psychology. Then if you trace down and to the left from there, you see how much they drop off for public administration and social work programs. To the degree that those fields correlate with a criminology masters being an application of sociology and psychology, semperfi 101's experience with scores probably does not say a great deal about where cutoffs peg for sociology PhD programs.

*tumbleweed rolls across the forum* So let's have a chat. The St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank notes that the wage gender gap has been in significant decline for thirty years. http://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/es/11/ES1125.pdf Discuss.

Those scores are awful, and will like other posters said dramatically impact your file at schools well outside the top 10. If they're not indicative of your abilities, which it appears they are not, I recommend you drill hard and retake the test. Remember that many schools have cutoffs enforced by the graduate school, and not the department. Moreover, many departments have cutoffs for GREs that an admissions secretary uses to sort the files before they even get sent to reviewers. Your application, with that score, has a non-zero probability of ending up in a pile when going out to reviewers that will only get a second glance to make sure there isn't anything monumentally stand-out on your CV, among the names of your letter writers, or transcript. Committees are under significant time constraints and consider the GRE an appropriate signal of ability. People are correct to note that the GRE is an insufficient criterion for admissions -- bear in mind that it is still necessary.

I lived in Madison for seven years. Madison is full of smart people, and most are very politically involved and concerned. It's a huge hippie town, and party town as well, so you'll have to get used to that if it's new for you. It's very liberal - obnoxiously so. It's also pretty reasonable in terms of cost of living, but certainly not cheap. Schools are very good there if you have a family.

Werd, sun. Have fun down there. You earned it!

What is that then? (Fail)^12 or 12(fail) ? If my experience online is any indication, I'd say the fail function is not merely a linear combination of fails. (Fail)^12 it is.

I suspect your "lack of passion" is merely some confusion about which fields and programs are most tuned into the questions you find interesting and meaningful, and you're right that more exposure will give you that. You're right to have questions about whether you want to be a professional academic. It's a circus, and mostly thankless. But you're asking mature questions, so I don't suspect you're naive about what it might entail. Like Splitends said -- meet with professors and get a conversation going. If the ball starts rolling, ask if you can assist research over the summer. If you enjoy that and mount a line of literature you enjoy a lot over the summer, apply to graduate school in the Fall. If you get to graduate school and it's not for you - leave. There are worse ways to experiment in life. Edit: Whoops -- just noticed this issue is over a month old. Fail.

Chicago it is. Couldn't have done it without you guys.

My writing sample was used to evaluate departmental and disciplinary fit. I don't agree that it's merely a demonstration of writing and critical thinking ability. Though in cases where the sample clearly cannot serve to evaluate fit and affinity for sociology, it may reduce to a matter of writing and critical thinking where fit considerations are just taken out of the equation without reducing impact.

I didn't get Stanford, but I did meet a Stanford grad through a friend, and this person was one of the nicest and most supportive people I've talked to -- wicked smart too. I get the impression they're a pretty tight family in the department, and have heard specifically that the faculty do a great job of professionalizing students. Hope that helps.

I've reassured myself that I can transfer out of X program if I pick the wrong one, by doing well on quals and switching around year 2 or 3? Are you arguing that it would be precisely the poorest time to switch? And if you're absolutely married to a project you're working on with an adviser you're infatuated with, who is going to help you build strong work, isn't it kind of a no-nonsense decision to move with that person if there is any opportunity to? I want to qualify for OP again that what I'm saying here is pure speculation. I know a guy who's transferring this year with his adviser, and it was a no-nonsense decision with him. I wouldn't doubt that the program brought the student in with the adviser, in the same way they would consider a spousal appointment. The student is virtually guaranteed to graduate honorably and smile on the school's placement record. Extrapolating there a bit, potentially unreasonably. I really think this is something you need to discuss with all your potential advisers -- I just talked to a buddy today in our math PhD program who is hitting bumps and I really just pushed him to talk to his adviser. They're human beings, and almost always appreciate honesty from students, I think.

Happy for you!

It's hard to say how many there are, but if Michelson reached out to you without prompting -- it's a very good sign. He's definitely still building the cohort. Don't worry about the phone conversation. He's the nicest guy ever. You might also consider proactively emailing the faculty you are interested in and saying something like, "In the even Professor Michelson is able to offer me admission, are there some tentative times we might have a phone conversation about the department -- I have limited time to make my decisions, but would be extremely interested in speaking with you." These kinds of scheduling details can take some time to hammer out, so it might be good to get a jump.

Email Michelson; he's extremely generous and transparent and will likely tell you what the probability of you getting an offer is. You can also visit as a waitlister -- I did. I was at the top of the waitlist, and decided it wasn't the right place for me -- so you're likely one step closer depending on how much declination they've gotten. If there were a time to contact him about a potential offer it's now. Just because you're on the wait list doesn't mean you're not still a commodity, and expressing sincere and continued interest in the department will bump your chances of getting an offer quite a lot I imagine. As far as more impressions of the culture, the campus and department are similar I imagine to what you're going to find at any state school. The grad students are pretty hip in terms of fashions and attitude; very laid back (to say nothing about their intelligence). In fact the graduate cohorts are one of Indiana's strongest assets. They get along extremely well and are very supportive of one another. When I was walking back to Rojas' office with him from getting ice cream, he stopped a student and demanded the guy come see him asap -- you're not going to get that kind of attention at other departments -- in fact usually the opposite (chasing people down yourself). Were Indiana stronger in my interests I would have gone in a heart beat, but Rojas is their only economic sociologist. And coursework isn't my taste -- I'm an awful student and look forward to hanging myself with the long rope of independent, aimless reading. Rojas and Michelson were some of the most down to earth and supportive faculty I've met anywhere, and I got a similar vibe from Scott Long and Clem Brooks. Unless there is a compelling reason to substitute toward another department in terms of your research interests, or unless you're considering offers from much higher ranked schools where you feel the faculty and students will be stronger, there is veritably no reason to not go to Indiana. Kill placements. Awesome culture. Rigorous methods training. Exciting research. In the event Michelson says he can consider giving you an offer, you can probably get really good gut impressions over the phone with faculty and students. I talked to Duke faculty on the phone before I went down for a visit, and the personality and affect of those conversations matched that of our in-person conversations on a one-to-one map.

There isn't a more supportive department in the country. If I understand Rojas' statement on orgtheory the other week correctly, they place 100% of the outgoing cohorts in jobs last year. I doubt they were all R1, but it's a mind blowing statistic regardless. A senior grad student reported that it gets a bit more competitive in year 4-6, but keep in mind that after almost three full years of coursework and proseminars where they lean hard on you and meet with you regularly to help you publish. Usually the ASA awards one faculty a year with a mentoring award -- the entire department received it last year (or the year before?).

There are vanishingly few graduate students whom have been in school longer than you on this board, and only one faculty. I would discuss it with the professor you're close to, discuss potentially moving with her, and discuss it with the other faculty you're working with.