ohgoodness

Dont knock participatory things. Zizek is an idiot but Boaventure de Sousa Santos is all-righty. There is far more going on with democracy movements than meeting-up in a park and voting on stuff in places outside of Zizek's viewpoint. (this is an ok-post since I am hating on riotbeards comment) And Pynchon may suck - gravity's rainbow was soo booring - but the crying of lot 49 is still a great book.

People tend to say that you go to a cafe/pub in the balkans and find 10 Zizeks talking drunken drivel.. I agree but then again - haters gonna..

I dropped a class on the final assignment during my freshman year (english Iiterature) because we had to read the mistress of spices. Has to be worst book ever to be included in a reading list. Such a fake way of writing, thinking and feeling. I finished the course two years later - had to read howards end instead .. During that class - we had to read oranges are not the only fruit (winterson) disgrace (coetzee) and on beauty (smith) and then mistress of spices. Yes this was english lit 1 with a slight hint of post-colonialism..

I'm not in your field but feel kinship to the situation. I, myself, have real momentum in my life/career at this point but when I think about what I would want to do in 10 years then a phd feels like the best way of getting there. If you see yourself getting to a point where you want to be by staying put then the phd is probably not for you. In my situation - a phd is probably a side-step, compared to moving up, when it comes to money/work/fame but I still feel like it is the way that I want to go.

Bruce - Born in the U.S:A. .. Album on repeat 10x a day since new years eve party. Best new years music ever.

Really does sound like you would be a good fit for Northwestern as well. Strong in Sex and Gender and a good fit for non-profit interests. Feels like one of the programs with the strongest momentum at this point. And there are plenty of ties to Madison.. Re Madison - I dont think that it would be the most selective but rather having the strongest applications all around. I got such cold feet even applying after hearing that they usually got a significant amount of 90-90% GREs from social stratification/demography applicants.. Good luck anyhow!

Pugh.. Fun idea but come on - illustrate the data properly... or is this some sort of mindgame?!

So application times for these things are coming up soon as well. Is anyone applying? Got any fun pointers for new unknown summer schools/seminars that are useful within sociology? (yes I do understand that it might be an outsider-situation for many prior to starting grad school) I'll post the classics (quant-heavy) just to get started; Berlin Summer School in Social Sciences - http://www.berlinsummerschool.de/welcome-to-the-berlin-summer-school-in-social-sciences/ The Summer Institute in Survey Research Technique at Mich - http://si.isr.umich.edu/ ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research - http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/content/sumprog/2013/application.html Essex Summer School in Social Science Data Analysis - http://www.essex.ac.uk/summerschool/about/main.html And then the new one; GESIS summer school on Survey Methodology - http://www.gesis.org/veranstaltungen/gesis-summer-school/ I've gone to Essex and it was excellent!

Yesterday was such a lovely day for sports; 'Sota fan as deep as it goes and watching the gophers run with the Indiana was an amazing treat. Upset about refs but whatevers. Then Packers lost! And Ravens won! This must signify A.P for MVP! People are going to be sad about Peyton after those INTS. Prediction; Pats - Ravens; Pats will go nuts on medium gains and win by 10. Then resign Randy and I will be elected president for these predictions.

Yeah :/ Obviously I am not going into the whole "crime/felon" thing since that's an discussion beyond me but still a horrible thing to happen.

Could you please tell whoever you were talking to you (secretary or assistant) to redirect this critique to whoever came up with, what seems to be, a rather arbitrary way of accepting students? Only a person drunk on blind faith would not e-mail/doublecheck things when it comes to something important and this does feel rather important.... At this point - I would not be surprised if someone told me that x school actually randomizes the whole thing; all names in a pot and then ask the sea lion to select 8 names from the draw. If accepted - you have to wrestle a spider for the possibility of funding. btw - this large online community sounds exactly the internet..

Thanks Extremely kind of you! Have some karma! This is actually my final home-exam for my MA; just can't wait! Thesis written and done! Can't even lower or raise my GPA. Itchy fingers to go where no man has gone before. "Juxtaposing the want for children and the need for children - a critique of normalization through policy". Then again I want to transfer my MA courseload to som extent so should perhaps take things seriously.

The research triangle sure is getting close tho. 2011-2012 was around 20-30 January. Fun to think that if I do not go anywhere then the paper that I currently writing will be my last ever. Feels like I should do something special with it. Cut someone down ala C.W Mills perhaps... "and as for unobserved heterogeneity.. p*** off!"

You. And Daddy Issues. For me - Mommy Issues.

A tad late period-wise but Albert Jay Nock's "Our Enemy the State" has always been one of my favorite books summarizing american intellectual development from certainroots. It is highly linked to your time-period but also political (hard to know what you mean by intellectual)

Don't call me whiiiiiiiiiiiiite!

Hey - how is JMP? When it looking at old syllabuses I always see it in there but then when I take the class - STATA/SAS it is. Recommended?

I got several e-mails from Minnesota regarding my application and other fantastic chances at the university.. but I never even finished my application

Let me just say that it certainly is not excel.. I just spent 12 hours manually entering data into a new matrix and now I feel like I really need to rethink my life choices.. Seriously tho - I love STATA. I used to like SPSS but it becomes old fast and people tend to misuse it, i.e. using it for mixed methods projects or so. If you can get a good license from your university for STATA then you should be solid. SAS for data handling, Stata for regression and descriptives, excel for charts, ArcGIS formaps and then we are all good. I want to develop into R + latex but another day, another project.

I think most professors more than understand 99% of all the posts in this forum. It's a rough process and it's nice to talk people who understand it. After all - most professors go through the same thing every other year when they apply for funding and act exactly the same way

It really isnt but in social sciences where you do applied work then it usually becomes very tied to the packages you use. In demography STATA/R has become the way to go since it is very easy to deal with and has enough power to perform the main analyses, descriptive and regressions. Sadly I think that there is a wide divide between the theoretical part and the applied, my professors actually tell us not to take statistics since it is far too theoretical and not useful in social demography. It is enough if you know how to analyse output, control for various issues and know the major issues. I still think it would be very very useful to know more about the theoretical work but there is only so much time etc. Side story - during my class in multilevel regression - my professor showed a summary of studies using a cox model and how many of them failed the major test of model fit.. Makes one question why people are knocking qualitative methods for being non-scientific.. (economists)! forgot about this one - http://dss.princeton.edu/online_help/analysis/regression_intro.htm ds

I often find it a must when actively reading something. Pen in hand, notebook by side and then read and mark + put down own comments in side. Then I transfer the notes + 2 sentence summary into my zotero. But this is only when I read very actively, such as key texts or things from authors I usually love. Notetaking is a great way to active your mind and be ready for your task. I usually try and read 2-3 texts actively a week and then 10ish otherwise. I have a 40+ oneway commute to school/work and I always read a chapter or an article during that time. That is passive reading and does not require notetaking.

I dont know about the anonymity but I have had several professors laugh out loud re the idea of this forum. I doubt it would reflect poorly on anyones application but yeah - netiquette and all that remains important as always. Flaunting all your insecurities might not be the greatest idea etc

Moving beyond SPSS then we can use the STATA corp/Cleves book is pretty good: http://www.stata.com/bookstore/saus.html . You could also use the H-P Blossfeld http://www.stata.com/bookstore/event-history-analysis-stata/index.html which is pretty hard but still useful for going through all thedifferent models (cox, parametric, semi-parametric) If you want to do multilevel regression then Stephen Jenkins is great: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/cmm/ especially the online course. My feeling is that for practical work then the internet beat text books. ps. I would also look into going to the quantitative methods summer schools - specifically the essex, michigan or slovenia. ds ps2. you should really move beyond SPSS ds

Re the data source - if your project works with data already available then there is no need to collect any. Collecting data is timeconsuming and very hard so I would def keep it to "old" data. Re time line - just a way of making sure that you have figured the process out and know how to approach a large project. I would really not see this as a formality - without proper planning; you will not be graduating any time soon