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.

Point taken. I do have an ace in the hole that I believe will give me a leg up on the competition, which I think justifies my confidence. I never meant to be dismissive about the amount of variability in the process. Letters of rec have already been requested and written.

Didn't go as planned. Retaking next month.

Things have been pretty slow around here lately so I'll attempt to breathe some life into this forum. Who else is applying this year? A brief introduction would be nice, then we can collectively sulk and bemoan this entire process for the next couple of months. I'll start things off: Major(s): Math + Econ CGPA: ~3.7 Interests: Urban, Crime, Racial Strat/Inequality, Quant Methods GRE: Taking it tomorrow! Expecting a near perfect quant score, but not too confident about my verbal. Applying: Mainly Top-10, with couple safeties in Top-20 Concerns: I'm pretty sure adcoms are gonna look at my app and wonder if there is a bug in the system, which is why they accidentally got an application that was meant for the econ department.

My goal wasn't to turn this into a Poli Sci vs Econ letter thread; I was simply responded to what I perceived to be a universal statement that you need at least one letter from a Poli Sci professor to be successful. I've had the pleasure of knowing a handful of people who were econ undergrads and successfully transitioned to top doctoral programs in other social science disciplines and the vast majority of them had 3 letters written by economists. Judging from the OP's profile I suspect the issue lies with his SOP and/or Writing Sample. While s/he isn't technically switching disciplines (due to being an undergrad poli sci major), I think your most recent education in economics may have played against you. When you "switch" disciplines the number one challenge is bringing credibility to your application: specifically you need to demonstrate that you understand the current research agenda in the discipline and demonstrate how your background will allow you to bring a fresh perspective. Speaking a bit from personal experience, a lot of research that economists refer to as "political economy" probably would get a desk reject at most 2nd tier Poli Sci journals. If your writing sample fell into that category then it may have been what led to your downfall - it probably communicated a lack of understanding of political science research.

Graduate school isn't a choice, but rather the only option you have left when you realize you can't hack it at a "real job": by hack it, I mean you value autonomy and intellectualism too much to deal with office politics/govt bureaucracy.

This is very false. Someone I know personally was admitted to all the T5 Poli Sci programs with 3 letters from economists last cycle. The person also never took a political science class (not even a political economy class in the econ dept). If you're interested in doing quant research, a letter from an economist is going to carry a lot more weight than from a Poli Sci professor who has never ran a regression in his/her life.

Thanks for the response. The advice I got from PSR is similar to what law2phd is saying: laws schools are on the decline at the moment and will remain so for the foreseeable future. I'm not interested in practicing law at all; my only goal is to become an academic who does research on law and political economy. From what I've been told, a lot of people got tenured in law schools with big salaries during the height of the law school bubble but now that enrollment rates are falling hiring has slowed down dramatically. I think I'll focus on the PhD exclusively.

I'm an economics BA/MA student who will be applying this fall and my interests are public law and (American) political economy, specifically judicial decision making and the interaction between federal courts and the legislative/executive branches. I've noticed quite a bit of JD/PhD programs and I am wondering, given my interests in law, would it be worth applying to these programs? What are the benefits over simply having just a PhD? I'd assume that it would make it easier to place into a law schools (and get a higher salary), but are there any other benefits? I really don't see myself as a law student, but there are a few law classes that I think would be beneficial to my research. Could I achieve the same outcome by just simply enrolling as a PhD student and taking the odd law class? Thanks!

1) Its unfortunate that you've already graduated college, which means you probably don't have access to online academic journal database/archives (usually your college purchases a subscription and makes it available to current students & faculty). You need to read actual [published] political science research - its a million miles away from any paper you wrote in undergrad classes. 2) It could be a good option if you find a Masters that has a heavy research component. The majority of masters degrees tend to be oriented for working professionals, with MPAs & MPPs being the prime culprits. There are some MPPs that do have a research component so they are not all bad. Your main goal when choosing a masters is to check to see if classes are taught by full-time faculty and whether a master's thesis is required. Neither of these two conditions will guarantee that you've found a good program, but they are necessary conditions of any good program. 3) Yes, math can fix this! (inside joke) - Going to a community college and enrolling in calculus is an excellent idea. In fact, you probably should do this before you even apply to Masters programs. Taking the full calc sequence (if you can stomach it) and a first course in Linear Algebra will definitely be useful. 4) See #1 above. Once you start reading actual Poli Sci research it becomes easier to identify POIs and determine "fit".

The political science job market is in a dire state, and there doesn't seem to be any signs of improvement in the near future. Especially with congress intent on de-funding higher ed (and poli sci research ... damn you Coburn), combined with the current arms race between colleges trying to build the most luxurious student centers/dorms instead of investing in tenure track positions, adjuncts and VAPs will continue to be the norm. NYU is a top 15 school and last year 5/11 of their placements were post-docs. A post-doc placement from a top 15 Econ program is almost unheard of! Regardless, placement should concern you - I'm sure you don't want an adjunct/VAP/post-doc position after living the past 5-6 years in poverty. Personally, a tenure-track at a R1 is the only job market placement that I would be happy with.