La_Di_Da

A very simple workaround is to establish a virtual card, a web bio/profile, your own personal website, what have you, that lists the high points of your CV, research interests, etc., and includes a link to a pdf of your full CV. When you contact prospective POIs, include your site's URL in your email signature. Voila! Now it's a pull, not a push.  And if they're keen, they'll visit your page.
 
Also, in answer to the original question, I would not sweat it. It's not a cardinal sin.

 

Chuck, interesting that you ask this question. I am an older, nontraditional admit. My undergraduate course was a desultory one, disrupted on several occasions by unforeseeable circumstances that required me to enter the work force full time, to the exclusion of completing any coursework, or, on other occasions, take a semester off (while I continued to work full time) in order to juggle chemotherapy, work, and family obligations. Most of those years I worked in education; a few I spent in publishing.
 
With regards to the app cycle, and contrary to recommendation, I did not cast a wide net. In all, I applied to four programs, three sociology and one cultural studies program. I received great feedback from all four institutions, and the cultural studies faculty were openly excited about my research, but they were also very candid about the age issue, noting that since they only accept two students each year, preference would go to younger students due to the hiring practices you noted above. I considered that application my throwaway, and I was right. As for the three sociology programs to which I applied, I was rejected by one and accepted by the other two, Northwestern and Yale. Perhaps they are willing -- or can afford -- to take a risk on applicants who deviate from the standard profile. Who knows. What I do know is that while hiring practices may favor the young, maturity has its perks: many of us "mature" candidates are 100% focused; we're not trying to raise families, find romance or our life partner; plus, we have the time, the freedom to enjoy -- singularly enjoy and attend to -- our research. Also that experience you mention, both the life and work experience, is invaluable, and some of us have spent years establishing solid global networks, within and without academia. I say all this because while age is an obstacle, it is not an impassable one. (So, to any nontraditional students out there who may be reading this, work for it, reach for it, go after it, because it's doable.)
 
As for hiring surveys, one friend of mine got her PhD in cultural anthropology in her late 40s, after leaving nursing. She now has a tenure track position at Virginia Tech. Another friend got her PhD in accounting, a field more amenable to mature candidates, at age 50, and is now teaching at Texas State. Yet another friend of mine got his PhD in economics in his late 40s, and landed a tenured position at the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas; he'll be retiring to Brazil soon (lucky fella!). My father was hired by Appalachian State when he was in his 60s! And in a recent conversation he mentioned that one of his colleagues got her PhD in her 50s! (Note: all are full faculty, not adjuncts!) All this to say, probability does not define possibility, at least not unequivocally. And thank goodness for that!!!!
 
Clearly you are correct: some departments have an age cutoff. For other departments, though, if an age cutoff does indeed exist, it appears to be more of a guideline than a rule. 

Looking for monthly parking near Chapel and Park. Any grads park at the Howe Street Garage? Is it safe?

The people who say that, like you, don't really know anything about World-Systems theory, which is an economic rather than political theory. Many focus on one aspect of World-Systems Analysis by Immanuel Wallerstein where he says capitalism is approaching the asymptote and a new World-System is in the works. I think this is a generally unclear statement and a bit too orthodox Marxist but in general I think the idea is right. Capitalism as we know it is going through a power shift just as it did around WWII. This doesn't change the ways in which production occurs globally, and doesn't really affect the theoretical standpoint either. Especially since these processes are fluid in W-SA. Where Wallerstein gets in to politics it is in the realm of political economy, he talks about how the State, in its various forms, supports the World-System by acting simultaneously as a protector and a scapegoat for capitalist economic interests.

There is great advice already above, but to add another voice to the mix:
 
Folks who do critical studies of neoliberalism and World-Systems Analysis tend to work within the realm of development. Figuring out if you are interested in development as well is, I think, key to determining your fit.
 
Not knowing your exact interests, I can only help in letting you know how I figured out my fit and why I ended up choosing the department I did. My research interests fall along similar lines but with a heavy focus on the environment. I determined that the field of political ecology (particularly feminist political ecology) was the best route for me to pursue the research I wanted to do. From this I made a list of programs with strong political ecology foci. I was looking primarily at Geography departments but to give you an idea this included UW-Madison, Clark, Berkeley, Arizona, Rutgers, UNC (anthropology), Washington, Kentucky, UIUC, Georgia, Syracuse and FIU. From here I looked for people who had allied interests based on my topical area. So I excluded programs that didn't have a strong agricultural focus or didn't have anyone working on critical issues of sea level rise. Since, aside from FIU, I was unable to narrow my list based on geographical location (no one really works in the country I do) I looked for people who were interested more broadly in the Caribbean. Similarly if I were interested in, say, Western Sahara, I might consider people who work in North or West Africa. Similarly, if I were interested in Lithuania (actually my second regional interest...) I would look for people who did work in eastern Europe and the former Russian (pre-Soviet) territories. After doing this I had narrowed my list a bit further to the schools I applied to. Once I got my acceptances sorted out, I weighted the programs based on my interests and went with the one with the strongest ties. I ended up choosing FIU, based on what I wanted to research. I name people here just so you can see my thought process: Roderick Neumann is one of the original Berkeley school political ecologists and a great theorist. His work is on national parks and thus he has good knowledge of development literature as well. Gail Hollander has done significant work on agriculture -- most especially sugar which has been and continues to be an important crop in my country -- and is currently working on an NSF project looking at sea level rise. The department has other political ecologists as well so I have other sources of information, but they were less of a factor in my deciding. Since I'm interested in gender, it was important that there be a strong area in that as well. While Neumann and Hollander are both interested in identity in general and gender in particular, Caroline Faria is a fantastic up-and-coming feminist geographer who has a lot of contacts in that field. She is also a former student of Lucy Jarosz and so knows the PE and development literature well. Being an interdisciplinary department I could also tap into the sociologists who study gender, even if I don't work directly with them. Regionally and topically Percy Hintzen is a fantastic development scholar and has written extensively on my country of interest. He is a sociologist and was formerly in an African Studies program so I got lucky that he decided to leave a cushy tenure position at Berkeley to go to FIU. You might not be that lucky but in many cases departments work together or you are allowed to have committee members from other departments. You can mention these as well. So, if you want to apply to Madison but there is an anthropologist or geographer that you really want to work with, I would not hesitate to mention them. It shows that you are serious about the university.
 
This is considered fantastic fit. I have all of my interests covered by one or more people and these people are established in the field. Through them I can make connections and have the resources to write a strong dissertation. You might not find a place that has this to offer, but try and find places where you can make all of your connections work and outline this in your statement. If a person used to work in that area but no longer is, make sure you note that you are aware that they no longer work in _______ area but that you still feel they may be able to help and guide your research. What you don't need to do is find programs that have one person who is really great but no one else is even close. If you contact that person you might find out that they don't consider you a good fit because of that and you might not be accepted. (Though, I would still contact them.)
 
TL;DR
 
Fit is finding the program that will allow you to complete your research in a timely manner and make the contacts you need to get a position when you graduate.

So professor ranks go like this in North America:  Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, [Full] Professor.  Assistants are generally untenured, associates and up are generally tenured.  Anyway listed as a "Lecturer" or "Visiting [X] Professor" is not tenured and cannot be your adviser (and may not even be there when you start). You generally need at least one person to work with you who is tenured, preferably someone who is a Full Professor (if you program has <12 faculty, just associates professors are fine).  The best way to find out if people are taking students is to email them.  Not all professors like this and not all will respond, but it certainly won't lose you points.  Do this especially with more senior people.  If they say they are not talking on more students, write them back and ask, given X, Y, and Z, who would they work with (I did this when I was applying.  Professor A said there wasn't a good PhD program for me at his school, but I should consider Professor B.  Professor B said he was retiring in three years and I should work with Professor A.  So it goes).  But feel free to email professors, be like, Hey, I graduated in X from school Y  in year Z, I'm apply to PhD programs in the Fall.  I'm really interested in topic A (I can't quite figure out what topic A is though from your summary).  I really liked your article B.  Is topic A something that you have advised on?
 
If you're interested in World Systems, you probably don't say you're interested in World Systems (except at a very few schools, like Stony Brook or Cornell), though you can say you're interest interested in the relationship between the core and periphery.  Say you're interested in Historical Sociology (at a place like Yale if you want to work with Phil Groski, Peter Stamatov, Julia Adams), Neoliberalism and Globalization (at a place like Columbia if you want to work with Saskia Sassen and maybe David Stark or NYU with the obvious crew there), or Environmental Sociology at a place like Madison (if you want to work with any of a number of people there).  Maybe the historical-comparative box is wrong for you because, again, I can't quite tell what you're into, but you get the idea.  In your SOP, you fit into a clear subdiscipline: the one your potential adviser fits into (or at least indicate a strong interest in the subdiscipline that your adviser is in, plus one that another professor works in, plus maybe one more where no one explicitly works--the one you'll have to teach yourself).  Since you have wide interests that can fit into a lot of sub-disciplinary boxes, you should make sure that you customize the "fit" paragraph (and preferably more than that) for each school.  How Marxist/World Systems-y you want to be in you statement depends on how Marxist the people you're applying to work with are (If you're apply at Berkeley, overt Marxism is fine, for example).
 
Most institutions will be able to advise people who work outside of their "core focii" as long as there are a couple of faculty members (at least one of them tenured) who can advise on the project.  My school on our website lists a number of focus areas, but that's just on paper.  I do mainly sociology of religion, but the mere fact that I don't study the U.S. also puts me squarely in "Historical-Comparative".  My adviser is historical-comparative, and I've worked with other historical-comparative and cultural people in my department, but I don't fit into a clear "core focus area" and no one really does sociology of religion.  That's fine.  This means I've had to (try to) form a work group across multiple departments, including kids from history, political science, area studies, etc.  Other students in my department, who work in more popular subfields, can form peer groups with people just in our department, but we have a real diversity of people with probably only two real core "focus areas" in the department (again, I'm in neither of them).  Harvard and Yale, on the other hand, have very clear bi-weekly work groups where senior faculty members run a workshop devoted to a clearly focused area. If you can't fit into one of their clearly defined areas, as far as I understand it, you're much less likely to be accepted.  What I'm saying, though, is don't worry if you can't find a place where there's world systems + environmental soc + a critique of neoliberalism, you don't need all of that from the faculty.  You can easily teach yourself the missing one (as I am doing with sociology of religion, even though in large part that's my primary interest)--just make it clear that you fit in very well with the other two, and here are the names of two to four faculty members who are awesome and work in those fields (at least one of whom is tenured). 

For applications, I think it makes sense. But, only list the relevant ones. And, if the course titles themselves aren't clear on your transcript, include something that gives the full title. I did the latter for my applications and I think it helped.

Re: Addendum - probably not the technically right word I used . Basically just a separate sheet added at the end of your CV, can be titled something like "List of relevant coursework <and skill sets XYZ> undertaken". Organize by key sub-themes depending on your area of specialization / skill sets etc. (For example, Quantitative Coursework/Skills, Programming Coursework/Skills, Sociology Coursework/Skills, etc. etc.)
 
There may be many reasons why this is useful over and above a transcript:
Transcript has details of too many courses, making it difficult to identify the courses most relevant to the area of interest Transcript has courses specific to an area spread over various semesters etc - a single sheet provides a comprehensive view of courses in specific areas Transcript may have names that do not describe the actual content of the course  It signals that you are aware of what sort of underlying coursework is relevant and important You can add supplementary information not available in a transcript to pose a comprehensive view - e.g. any courses undertaken outside your university, summer courses, online courses, self-study courses, etc. as well as any additional skill sets you have acquired, research or programming tools you have learnt etc. For students where some semesters are still to be completed, you can even mention key courses you expect to take.

My letter writers were from: Anthropology, Political Science, Law, Economics. 
 
I had never taken a "Sociology" class prior to my first semester in my top-choice PhD program. 
 
I'll echo what others have already stated so eloquently. It's not about what discipline you're coming from. Doctoral programs are primarily interested in your potential to do top-notch innovative research. If you have a strong background and you present yourself well, you can demonstrate that potential coming from pretty much any field. We've had students come from: Engineering, Natural Sciences, Mathematics, History, English... 
 
FWIW - I actually think that, in some cases, applicants with background in a different discipline have a slight advantage. Never underestimate the keen interest faculty have in moulding bright "new" students to "their way" of doing sociology. 

I had three letters from economists and got 5 offers from top 20 schools -- you don't need letters from sociologists.  Also, sociology takes a disproportionate number of its graduate students from other undergraduate and graduate programs.  History and poli sci are perfect.  Good luck.  

I somehow missed your message until now, Gilbert. Thanks for taking the time to share so much insight. I've had some experiences over the last 8 months that have helped me to clarify what is truly important to me. Though I intend to complete my MSW program and psychotherapy internship in the interest of having a professional degree to fall back on, I've realized that I spend most of my time reading academic titles, imagining how I would extend/challenge them, and wishing that I had a community with which to share these ideas. Though the idea of publishing work for a popular readership and "community engagement" remain, admittedly, appealing to me on some level, the uninspiring and anti-intellectual professional world in which I've been working and living is truly suffocating me.
 
Despite my frustrations about the hierarchical and popularly inaccessible nature of academia, I feel sick of being in social and professional environments where I'm routinely chastised for being "too intellectual" or "thinking too much" about the issues at hand (even though I actively try to avoid taking up space in conversations and speak fairly little in work settings). I even recently had a Psychology PhD-holding supervisor pathologize me for supposedly "putting on" a performance in the "overly intellectual" way that I speak and carry myself. Apparently, the way that I embody blackness did not meet with her expectations.
 
The idiocy of that supervisory relationship aside, I know that I won't be long for this profession because it feels much too lonely and depressing to have to suppress my candid thoughts and alter my manner of speech just to avoid intimidating (and, apparently, confusing) supervisors and other practitioners. As you mentioned in an earlier reply, I'm realizing that, for me, sharing my ideas with a community (any community, however "exclusive") would feel infinitely better than attempting to repress those passions and "fight the good fight" in politically correct ways.  Thanks for helping me to come to terms with the reality of the situation. My GRE preparation book calls!

We had a fairly extensive discussion on this recently over on the Literature board, but I think it's best to refer to it by the full name on first mention and appropriate abbreviations each mention thereafter. University of California Berkeley first, then Berkeley. It's like referencing an author by their full name on the first mention and last name for the rest.

I'm forced to use the forums from my phone lately, hence my short reply, but the link I provided and what the above poster said should get you started.

A lot of schools have 2 or 3 soc of ed people. Ohio State has Claudia Buchmann and Doug Downey, Texas has Rob Crosnoe and Chandra Muller (not to mention a very close relationship with some faculty in the education school. Indiana has Brian Powell and Jessica Calarco. All are top people in soc of ed (as well as people mentioned above). I didn't visit there but I think NYU just hired some top education people. Irvine has some good people as well as a very strong, sociologically focused education school. UCLA also has some very good people. All are worth checking out

More important than the entry-barrier to a US PhD program, is the long term consideration.  One cannot operate as a professional sociologist without at least a pedestrian comprehension of statistical methods, even if you do not yourself use the methods in your own work.  
 
The GRE involves high school level math.  The real challenge is practicing to learn how to do the problems quickly within the time limits, and getting used to solving them strategically.  Like @ohgoodness said, don't stop before you've started.  The GRE practice books are very good.  

Apart from the GRE, something else you should seriously consider is the fact that most sociology graduate programs will require you to take one or two (sometimes three) statistics courses. Many social science programs -- anthropology, sociology, and psychology included -- require stats. If you wish to avoid math altogether, and you cannot find a school where stats and the GRE are not required, you may want to consider a graduate program in the humanities, such as cultural studies.

Wishing you all the best, both on the GRE and in your program search. Keep us posted on your progress.
 

The New School does not require GRE, but scholarships are very limited.

Apart from the GRE, something else you should seriously consider is the fact that most sociology graduate programs will require you to take one or two (sometimes three) statistics courses. Many social science programs -- anthropology, sociology, and psychology included -- require stats. If you wish to avoid math altogether, and you cannot find a school where stats and the GRE are not required, you may want to consider a graduate program in the humanities, such as cultural studies.

Wishing you all the best, both on the GRE and in your program search. Keep us posted on your progress.
 

Apart from the GRE, something else you should seriously consider is the fact that most sociology graduate programs will require you to take one or two (sometimes three) statistics courses. Many social science programs -- anthropology, sociology, and psychology included -- require stats. If you wish to avoid math altogether, and you cannot find a school where stats and the GRE are not required, you may want to consider a graduate program in the humanities, such as cultural studies.

Wishing you all the best, both on the GRE and in your program search. Keep us posted on your progress.
 

From my conversations with Penn State, it seemed like they were open to it too. Seemed like a department where they'll really try to accomodate what you want to do

This was a point that played a big role in the schools I applied to several seasons ago. I found that looking at job placements of recent grads was a good indicator of whether students were supported in entering non-teaching positions. You could also look at professor's CVs to see if they do work outside of teaching/publishing - what else are they involved in? 

Michigan seems to be open about non-academic placements.  They brag re: the different directions pretty hard on their website.  http://www.lsa.umich.edu/soc/graduateprogram/recentgraduatesandplacement

I'm not sure there's much of a risk to singling out faculty IF there are others in the department who are clearly also a close match. However, you'll probably want to avoid wasting space on assistant professors (who may up and leave) or particular older and/or highly-regarded faculty (who may not be taking on students).

I'm under the impression that fit matters a lot for many smaller programs but not very much for bigger ones. Anyone want to weigh in?

My experience stands in contrast to this advice. My initial query letters were several paragraphs long. They included an introduction, a brief summarization of my professional and educational background (one paragraph), followed by a paragraph or two about my sociological interests, my main inquiry (am I a good fit?), and lastly, a request for additional info that might benefit my academic goals.

I received positive, robust, informative responses from all of the faculty members I contacted. Some chose to continue an intermittent correspondence thereafter; others wrote one substantive response and left it at that. After my initial contact, I made sure not to pester with follow-up emails. I only wrote when I had an important update, such as when, in 2011, I had to notify a school that I wouldn't be applying until the next application cycle, or when I had an urgent question that only my POI could answer. In the end, I was accepted to two of the three programs to which I applied.

In my opinion, a few lines of correspondence would neither have been sufficient to introduce nor distinguish myself. I opted for a longer serve. Thankfully that serve made contact and my recipients volleyed. Personally, I didn't want to waste my time or anyone else's by applying to programs that may clearly not be supportive of my research goals.

I found my studio; it's such a relief to finally find a place to stay!! Does anyone need any help finding an apartment?