kameldinho

I fail to grasp how I am mean-spirited: this all started when someone posted about placing in the 52% percentile in verbal and doing even more atrocious in math and everyone was providing "encouragement" by telling this person how wonderfully diverse sociology departments are and how they will understand subpar GREs because the process is holistic--and the minute I suggested this was wrong for a myriad of reasons beyond the control of the sociology department and advised the person to retake the GRE that's when the attacks started. I recognize that I write in a pretty matter-of-fact way but to call it mean spirited is just beyond me. My tone isn't harsh, the truth is harsh. I'm sorry I don't cuddle you guys and lie to you through words of encouragement. If I ever decide to become active again I promise to use more emojis

bulls**t. I never once posted about Jeffery Alexander, I don't even know who the bloke is. If you actually read my posts instead of jumping on the "bashing kameldinho" wagon you'd know this. Its blatantly obvious a lot of you don't read my posts because I regularly get accused of stuff I never did, unless I have a schizophrenic alter ego who posts from my account. That's what truly annoys me here, I don't even need to say anything controversial to get attacked by you guys. It automatically happens the minute I post in a thread and the evidence is right here in this thread, with someone else posting the exact same thing I said over a week ago without any backlash or retaliation.

No worries. I stopped caring about contributing to this forum. Even after I clarified my initial post (which in my opinion was already pretty clear if people took the time out to read) I was still vilified. I probably will deactivate this account soon. Honestly if you think the tone of my posts are harsh wait until you start presenting papers at conferences and submitting them for review. This is especially true if you do anything quant related: there is always some problem with your model/data and no matter how minor it is people will nitpick and use it to sink your entire paper even if the results are valid. Good luck to you folks.

I'm surprised its been 24hrs and no one has commented on this. I said the same exact thing in another thread and was downvoted, ridiculed and eventually blocked from viewing/commenting on that thread. Maybe I need to create a sockpuppet called faculty and post from that account? The sad thing is that I do get my info from a very credible source but whenever I mention any of the harsh truths of what goes on behind close doors I get attacked because I'm crushing the idealistic notions people here have that sociology (and the academia in general) is this ultra inclusive place with a reward scheme that is meritocratic and favors diversity.

Sigh, it never ceases to amaze me how trigger happy you all are and eager to one up another poster. First, noticed I prefaced the post with the qualifier "this early". Second, what is it, like a handful of LRM programs who do these mandatory interviews for everyone? Interviews still won't happen for the vast majority of North American applicants, unless you are disproportionately applying to these LRM places...which i guess everyone on this board is doing. Anyone wants to take a guess as to why applicants to top programs don't post here?

I don't think you guys should worry too much about interviews especially this early in the cycle; its mainly done to verify the level of english speaking proficiency in foreign applicants, especially from China. IELTS/TOEFL cheating is rampant in developing countries, and there are numerous services that will prepare (not proofread, but actually prepare from scratch) a SOP + LORs for students in these countries. It was not common for a foreign student to look perfect on paper only to show up the first day of classes with limited english proficiency and no discernible understanding of academic research

How does one accumulate 320+ credits over the course of a single degree? Surely at some point the university must have forced you to graduate, either through cutting off your financial aid or rejecting your deceleration of an umpteenth major/minor. In any case if you have four papers in the works and three full professors backing your application you have nothing to worry about, except possibly adcoms viewing your number of credits as a negative; it communicates that you have difficulties finishing things in a timely manner and they'll worry that it will extend to graduate school.

This will vary substantially between departments, but in most cases the GRE scores are certainly more than just a cutoff. X + [high number] may not necessarily significantly improve your chances of acceptance, but can affect the type of funding package you are offered as stipulated by the graduate school guidelines. Usually schools that are unable to offer a strings-free full funding package to all admitted students are instructed to demarcate candidates into tiers with candidates in lower tiers being given funding packages with greater TA/RA requirements.

Hate to break it to you, academia is a pretty petty place. In any case I apologize if I offended anyone. Cheers

There are minor variations between (and within) schools, but yes the procedure is pretty much universal among PhD admissions in the USA. If a candidate has exceptional non-quantifiable attributes then the department can ask the Dean's office for a waiver, e.g. a candidate has subpar GREs and/or GPA but already has a published paper in a respectable journal. There are probably other idiosyncrasies that are not worth getting into, as they won't apply to the vast majority of PhD applicants.

I certainly didn't say that you needed high or near perfect GRE scores; the vast majority of sociology applicants certainly don't have that either. Believe me I'm more than familiar with being from a socio-economically disadvantaged background; I disclosed earlier in this thread a bit about my own background, and its certainly not anywhere close to the privileged background you're describing here. Having a mediocre GRE score certainly isn't the end of the world but you're at the 54th percentile in verbal and the 40th percentile in math--that's an entire standard deviation below what would constitute a mediocre score for a social science PhD applicant. You should retake or be prepared to waste your money on application fees. Its great that you spoke to a single person who somehow defied the odds and ended up in a presumably bottom tier PhD program, if what you say is true. You should bear in mind that you're about to embark on journey that will train you to become an academic research, so you should know how disastrous it is to make inferences and generalize from a single observation. Its not that hard to crack the 70th percentile on verbal with a bit of practice, especially for a sociology major; I'm a math/econ guy who has never written a single term paper and hates reading anything that isn't equations and I stilled nailed a 160V with the free magoosh android app and the $20 ETS prep book as my only study material. Its not a question of lack of financial resources, though I will concede that the GRE test fee was quite hard to stomach. I'd have been a lot more sympathetic if it was quant, as I did quite poorly on the quant despite my math background. The GRE quant questions just don't make any sense to me.

Those may be average among all test takers, but are way below average for someone doing a PhD in the social sciences; you have to retake them. Forums like these can be a bad source of info since they are filled with undergrads (and sometimes graduate students!) speculating about things they don't know--essentially the blind leading the blind. The sociology department will not be understanding of your subpar scores because the sociology department doesn't admit you to the sociology PhD; they can only recommend you for admission, and a pencil pusher in the Dean's office will eyeball your scores and compare them to the institutional average before giving the final go ahead for admission.

Hey guys, I had a major setback (broke my foot in a longboarding incident) and its basically ruined my entire semester. I won't be applying this year, but definitely next year. I'll still contribute to this thread in any way I can. I'm super bummed right now Good luck to everyone!

You're applying exclusively to Master's programs, right? I can't think of a single PhD program that doesn't require the GRE.

I can relate a lot to what you've been through, believe it or not. It's taken me 6 years to complete my undergrad, for all the reasons you've mentioned; the only difference was that I went part-time to protect my GPA instead of taking a full course load in addition to working and dealing with chronic health problems. The honest truth is that none of your extra curricular activities will be relevant for PhD admission unless they directly lead to an interesting research question. Also, your GRE and writing sample will not offset your GPA: practically every department has to operate within the guidelines of the Graduate School in order to recommend you for admission, which often has a non-negotiable minimum GPA requirement. For top schools, usually the requirement is a minimum 3.0 GPA for the last degree completed; for mid-tier schools, the 3.0 requirement is most often restricted to the last 60 credits. Again, this is isn't determined by the Sociology department, but rather by the graduate school (most often the school of Arts and Sciences). Your best option would be to do a Master's degree, or if your last 60 credits are above a 3.0GPA then you could try rolling the dice at schools outside the T15. Just to clarify a bit: the department in which you apply for PhD admission does not "admit" you (in the conventional sense) to the program. Rather they recommend you for admission, and a pencil pusher in the Dean's office is going to skim your application and look your numbers (GPA & GRE) and see if it falls in line with the institutional average before giving the final approval.