socgrad2013

A non-trivial question that the OP asked but has not been answered is whether the GRE Q correlates with (or is taken as correlative of) ability to understand statistics. My impression, as someone who did well on the GRE Q and who also has some enjoyment and facility with statistics, is that the two are probably less coupled than most people think, which is a double-edged sword. I would imagine that people who score low on the GRE Q can still do very well with graduate-level quantitative methods, since so much of the latter is foremostly conceptual rather than computational (plus in the real world the nitty gritty is done with computers). The other edge of the sword, as other people have pointed out, is that adcomms and administrators tend to associate the two more closely than they should. That said, I think I would advance a somewhat different argument than many of the people here. I think it's easier than most people think it to be to get into a sociology Ph.D. program. Many programs will tout that they have 5-10% acceptance rates (receiving around 300 applications and accepting 15 to 30 applicants) but you have to imagine that many of these programs are drawing from the same pool of maybe 700 applicants. If you suppose that each program in the top 50 matriculates an *average* of 10 students, that means that in a perfect market the top 60 to 70% of applicants would get placed. Of course, it's not a perfect market and the costs of applying to all 50 schools will be prohibitive for you so this is where all the advice about "fit" comes into play. You don't want to be in the top 50% or whatever of all applicants, but in the top 20% or so of the 300 people applying to the same schools as you are, and who are roughly comparable to you. You can think of this as a Bayesian process: P(getting into Berkeley) = 1/380 applicants or .2%, P(B|you have an above average GPA/GRE combo) = 1/190 applicants or .5%, P(B|GPA & you have a great SOP and writing sample) = 1/95 applicants, P(B|GPA & SOP & you have a great fit with a faculty member) = 1/75 applicants or 1.3%. Then you multiply that percentage by the number of offers Berkeley makes and you have maybe 30% estimated chance of getting into Berkeley. Lastly, let's say you are applying to 8 schools with the same rough fit and ranking as Berkeley. Then calculate P(getting at least one school out of 8) = 1 - P(getting rejected from all 8 schools) = 1 - P(getting rejected from 1 school)^8 = 1 - .70^8 or ~94%. Of course, there are a lot of ridiculous assumptions being made here but I think the underlying intuitions are correct. If you want to maximize your chances of getting into the right graduate school, apply to programs where you'll have good fit (this will move you up in the applicant pool). Get your ducks in a row so you can get into the right normative batches of applicants (strong GRE and GPA, sociological-sounding SOP and writing sample, good letters of rec). Then at a certain point it will inevitably come to chance (grumpy vs happy adcomms, your POI leaving, missing files, plain luck, etc.). Here's where the advice to apply widely, across the range of programs suitable for your career goals, is appropriate. Sorry for the ramble, best of luck.

I made the extremely difficult decision today to turn down Michigan, Chicago, and Northwestern. I wish the best of luck to everyone who is waitlisted at these programs. As someone who snuck into grad school the first time around with basically no funding, only to find myself juggling offers from four of the top programs in the country, I want to say emphatically that if you're on a waitlist at a place like this, you have every bit as much talent as the people who are winning endowed fellowships. The difference is that their signals are clearer than yours. If you don't luck out this time around, clean up your signals: improve your test scores, enter a MA program and excel in it, get better letters of recommendation that really center on your ability to do independent research, and/or -- most important -- polish up your writing sample and write a focused, intellectually mature SOP. Knock em dead. Best of luck.

What do you want to, um, research?

I think you might be misunderstanding the terms of your funding. Chicago requires five *quarters* of teaching, which in aggregate is less than two academic years. The norm at UCLA is to teach at least three years, or the equivalent of nine quarters. Unless you got a spectacular package at UCLA (three years of fellowship), in all likelihood you will teach more there than at Chicago.

I am considering an offer from Chicago but was not able to attend the visit days. Can anyone who did attend share their impression of the department, and of the other prospective students? What was the format of the visit, and what were the department's main selling points? Has anyone been admitted with less than full funding? Thanks!

No, I'd imagine an MA program which requires its students to reapply to its doctoral program would anticipate many of them to scatter to other departments (and, reciprocally, to accept Ph.D. students from other places). I wouldn't say there's a hard and fast rule to any of this; you should go to the program that you think will prepare you to enter the best Ph.D. program afterwards (whatever "best" means to you). On this particular issue (whether professors are nice and understanding people) it's probably best to ask current students. Michigan didn't give you funding? If you have a funded offer from Michigan and are weighing that against unfunded offers from Rutgers and UMass... I'm sorry but I don't think you have a choice

If you want to work at a research university, I think the advice you've gotten already is solid. If you enter the Ph.D. program at the 50th ranked institution, reapply after the master's and don't finish your doctorate there. If you want to work at a think tank, look at the staff rosters of some of the organizations you'd like to work at and see if they hire sociology Ph.D.s from similarly ranked schools (the same advice applies to universities, of course). Two reasons to enter the MA program: you're already funded and you enter with the expectation of leaving after two years (which could mean that the program is already geared towards placing you in a strong Ph.D. program, not to mention you don't have to explain why you're leaving your current program in the next cycle). Plus, if you enter the Ph.D. program, there's a chance that faculty will not be receptive to writing you LORs. As with everything, though, consider fit. If the professors at the MA program don't really care about setting you up to apply to Ph.D. programs then the above points are moot. Correlatively, if living at home for another two years will cause you to gouge out your eyes then it will be subsequently quite difficult to advance in an industry which requires substantial use of them.

@heyitsthatguy What are your career aspirations? Edit: Also, what is the funding situation at either school?

OrangeSoc: the visiting days are in early April, I think something like 3rd-4th. For what it's worth, I'm almost certain I will accept another offer, quite possibly before then. Best of luck.

^That's really good advice. If I were to supplement it, I would advise the following: Regarding (2), do get in touch with one or two professors to start, but remember that you will need three letters of recommendation for the vast majority of programs. Letters that are not from faculty in the social sciences tend to be taken less seriously -- since LORs are universally glowing, the ones that count are from people who can speak authoritatively on your potential for social scientific research. Regarding (3), sociology graduate programs are a little anomalous in that being familiar with the discipline is not really a prerequisite since the substantive and theoretical footprint of the discipline is so vast and eclectic. However, for applicants with weaker "stats" (e.g., GPA and test scores, but also other roughly quantifiable assets like the prestige of your undergraduate institution), you have a lot of ground to make up on the SOP and writing sample. If you want programs to take a chance on you, you have to show them that you're ready to take on sociological work without the conventional signals -- meaning you really want to impress them with your grasp of the logic and methods of sociological research. My advice is to get involved with a research project right away. Regarding (4), cosign. GREs already matter more to sociologists than you'd maybe expect, but they matter so much more for applicants with sub-3.5 GPAs. Finally (5): read, especially, sociological articles in AJS and ASR. These are exemplary models of the kind of work you'll be taught, cajoled, and pushed into producing as a graduate student, namely focused inquiries into specific puzzles or questions that are theoretically grounded and empirically substantiated. Articles have a modal form, i.e., they have an intro section, a lit review section, a methodology section, a data analysis section, and a discussion section and conclusion. Try to understand why sociological research is patterned in this way and use it as a guide for formulating your own research ideas. Although it's not the only way to organize research, it will show programs that you are capable of consuming information that is in this format (90% of sociology) as well as fitting your ideas to it. PS., it might be a really good idea to get a master's first, since you face a bit of an uphill battle with your GPA (nothing that can't be mitigated with some time in a graduate program) and lack of research experience. My advice, though, is to get a master's in something other than sociology which will require you to acquire specific research skills -- for example, I think Columbia and NYU both have MA programs in quantitative research methods for the social sciences. You can learn many of these skills in MPH and MPP programs as well. The discipline as a whole is moving in a more quantitative direction and it's worth taking a year or two to show that you can move with it (not to mention that most sociology departments have quantitative requirements anyway, so you'll also signal that you're able to fulfill these -- a not-insignificant concern for adcomms when it comes to sociology majors).

What's the reputation of your undergraduate institution? I can't really give you much advice because I have to confess that your research interests remain quite opaque to me. Why a Ph.D. in sociology, as opposed to history, poli sci, anthropology or cultural studies, etc.? What kind of authors and books are reading, e.g., for your independent research? One general pointer: the Statement Of Purpose is usually written in response to a quite focused prompt asking about a proposed research plan (of sufficient scope and depth to require multiple years of effort) and your qualifications to carry out that research (e.g., previous research experience and/or undergraduate training). It differs markedly from a Personal Statement, which usually more biographical in timbre and comprehensiveness.

Yeah, it might come off as a bit presumptuous (a) to bring up the economy and how it must be affecting schools' admissions policies, and/or ( assume that your withdrawal results in someone getting in off the waitlist After all, you could have been rejected, and/or the adcomm might only want the 20 or so people they extended offers to. Just thank them for their time and say that you'd like to withdraw your application (or name from consideration, etc.). If it results in an opportunity for someone else, great! If not, at least you won't be wasting people's time and $$ at the visit days.

Declining my offer. Best of luck xdarthveganx.

I posted something about this in the acceptance thread (I think it's around page 19 or 20) with a link to the CUNY funding situation. This is, and was when I visited, my impression of CUNY's funding strategy: since they need adjunct teachers to staff the many city colleges that are scattered around NYC, they admit a lot of graduate students on flexible, short term contracts that can be moved around as demand fluctuates. So many students are able to teach, but their labor conditions are pretty exploitative: essentially they do the work of community college professors (teaching their own classes) without receiving any long term commitment from the department. Other people have pointed out that CUNY is giving out some more fellowships now (which you might be able to snag if you really want to go to CUNY and communicate that to the DGS, and if the department is trying hard to recruit you), and that CUNY students sometimes win outside funding or get nice second jobs to supplement their education (you are, after all, in NYC), but to that I would counter that even if your situation is good, your cohort is going to have a lot of people working themselves to the bone to get a Ph.D. from a department outside the top 25, and it's inevitable that some of them will grow jaded, pessimistic, and bitter. And that was definitely the vibe I got from the students I met when I visited CUNY a few years ago. A lot of schools have yet to notify so I hope enormously that you get another acceptance. If you don't, it might be worth getting your feet wet at CUNY if you can figure out a way to support yourself in NYC. But I wouldn't recommend trying to finish a Ph.D. there. That's just my experience and opinion, though.

^that's good advice. Speaking as someone who also entered an extremely competitive graduate program out of undergrad, I found the most prescient bit of it to be that no one really knows what sociology is when they enter a sociology Ph.D. program. It's like doing well in undergrad calculus and wanting to pursue a math Ph.D. -- you may have shown a talent for sociology but there are so many facets of the discipline that undergrads are simply not exposed to: research for the purpose of publishing, publishing for the sake of getting a job, and trying to develop a professional/intellectual persona. All while teaching undergraduate sections for 20 hours a week. So you kind of want to consider whether these are actually the things you want to do for the rest of your life, so much so that you're willing to tolerate six to eight years of making around $20,000 a year (when other members of your undergrad class are going to making $40,000 to $60,000 as new graduates and getting raises during that time) in order to accumulate the human capital necessary to get employed afterwards. Oh, and getting a job or a Ph.D. is never guaranteed, nor is it necessarily a function of hard work and intelligence -- you have to get lucky. You have to have supportive advisors and peers who will guide you through the hoops (MA paper, qualifying exams, dissertation), you have to be strategic about who is on your dissertation committee so you get good letters of recommendation for the job market, and you have to hit the market when your speciality (media, qual methods, culture, etc.) is in demand. I knew one person who was purely unlucky in all of these dimensions (young advisor who ended up being a terrible dissertation chair, older advisor who decided to check out of his responsibilities, unpopular subfield and methodology), and is now nearing a decade in grad school. You don't want to be that person, but he didn't want to be that person either. My advice is to *avoid* planning your life like you want to go to a sociology graduate program, especially if you want to work for a few years anyway. Your GPA and GRE don't matter as much as you think they do, and your interests will change much, much more than you think they will. Take advantage of the fact that you're at one of the best universities in the world, take a lot of different classes and do well at them, study abroad, work for a few years, etc... then if you still want to be a sociologist, look at who has won the ASA book/article awards in culture, migration, race & ethnicity, and so on and read their books and articles. Then apply to work with the ones you want to work with.

Lugubrious, I made a decision similar to the one you're confronting. PM me if you want my opinion. Waterelf, what are your choices? If you are really planning on attending CUNY with only your tuition covered, do you have a plan for living in NYC without funding, possibly for multiple years?

I thought it would be quite unusual for a Ph.D. program to operate outside of the student-advisor model, so I checked the website: "ADVISING Every student in the Sociology Department has a faculty advisor. That advisor may change several times over the course of a student’s graduate career, but there will always be one professor who is the current advisor and is up-to-date on the student’s progress. Students may change advisors at any time if they find a professor more suited to their intellectual interests. Students should report such changes to the Graduate Program Assistant for the departmental records." http://www.sociology.northwestern.edu/graduate/requirements.html#advising Of course, in practice advising may be more collaborative, especially if your interests don't directly overlap with a given faculty member. But I would be shocked if you didn't have an advisor; who would read your master's paper, chair your dissertation committee, write you letters of recommendation, and support you on the market?

I would strongly advise anyone against going to CUNY. I was admitted in 2010 and it was the same thing -- only two incoming students were given a "normal" five year package with fellowship and assistantship years. From what I can tell and have heard their strategy is to admit torrents of students with very short term contracts so they can staff the city colleges with adjuncts. I was told that second years would have to teach their own courses while essentially being paid like TAs (see http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/02/06/cuny-adjuncts-ask-not-be-called-professors-course-syllabuses-highlight-working). The graduate students I met were on absurd timelines like 10 year ABDs, and one mentioned working two jobs. Not to mention their placement is hardly extraordinary. The visit was shady and depressing, e.g., they didn't tell anyone their funding beforehand so all the prospectives were called in one by one into Kasinitz's offices to be told their package. Just seemed like a totally grim environment.

Woot! Northwestern! Not sure how to find funding details, but I'm assuming all admits will be funded according to the following rate? "Q: What is the typical stipend for doctoral students? A: The Graduate School offers a competitive base stipend rate of $22,428 for 12 months." http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/admission/faq/index.html#Financial Aid I've been incredibly lucky this application cycle (my second). For those of you who weren't successful this time around, consider me another data point in the don't-lose-hope column: it's a marathon, not a race. Best wishes to everyone still waiting!

Woot! Chicago!

Bluegreygreen -- I haven't heard anything back, but maybe they are updating the system in pools (waitlists/accepted/rejected). Anyway, getting waitlisted at a school as competitive as Columbia is still a remarkable accomplishment and I hope it's a good omen for your other applications. Best of luck getting off the waitlist.

I haven't updated the survey, but I was also accepted, with the same mixup: first received an email addressed to a woman, then the same form email with my name at the top shortly afterwards. Friendly, but pretty standard. Five years of funding guaranteed. Visit days in March. PS, in case any current Michigan or Princeton grads are reading this, I'd love to speak with you over PM. Thanks!