jmu

I'm not in the program yet but starting in the Fall I will begin a certificate (18 credits) in GIS (along with my PhD.) One thing I noticed while looking for programs is that they pretty much all use ArcGIS and are tailored around that software. This is a bit of a problem for me, as a GNU/Linux user, but be ready to get deep into it. From talking to others who are in the program or who have taken courses related to it, it seems that it is not incredibly difficult as long as you are willing to devote a lot of time and effort into understanding what you are doing rather than just following along. Some folks have told me that they find the programming portions difficult because they had to learn some Python, but, again as a GNU/Linux user, this doesn't seem like it will be that big of a deal for me.

FYI Graeber is now at LSE, if that factors in at all.

Definitely only apply to places you could see yourself spending several years. Especially if they are PhD programs. Look at the schools, the scholars that are there, the resources that are available, etc. I also looked into the cities and what life would be like there. I didn't apply to a number of top programs because I couldn't imagine living there or because there was no one that I wanted to work with. I applied to five schools and was happy with that.

One school put my transcripts in a file for people who had not sent any other application materials and never told me they were missing. I happened to notice online about a month after they were due and called. They sent the transcripts to the department and told me not to worry, it's not the first time that happened. I ended up being accepted to the program and assigned to my top POI (one of the top people in the field.) If they say it's alright I wouldn't worry about it too much.

Most of the grad students I know at UKy live downtown and walk or bike to campus. The entire campus/downtown area is pretty easily walkable and very pedestrian friendly from my (very limited) experience there. We only really saw undergrads at one bar downtown (don't remember the name, it's by the big empty square with the fence around it) but I imagine it's worse when there are sporting events going on. I didn't really like that bar anyway.

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.

Structural functionalism as opposed to Malinowski's functionalism. http://spruce.flint.umich.edu/~simoncu/269/brown.htm

I use refworks. It's the one I have the least complaints about.

I order my coffee from Equal Exchange or, if I run out, I buy Sweetwater. A lot of cities have places that roast there own and they are almost always worth checking out. It's also a good way to find out which regions and roasts you like. I tend toward Central American Full City Roasts but occasionally go Vienna.

I'm a coffee snob. At home I drink Equal Exchange (currently rabble rouser) and if I'm out with friends I only drink from a roaster I trust. This results in mesuggesting a place I can get Sweetwater roasts. I walked through the snow at a conference to get good coffee once. The stuff at the hotel was terrible and at the conference location all they had was Starbucks. Blech.

Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 103(2) was a special edition on water. Might be worth checking out if you need some ideas of people or universities.

I study agricultural policy and climate change from a political ecology perspective. Water is a part but not all of it. Geography can be as quant as you want. I use quant (surveys, census data, records, etc) to make my GIS data and support it with historical methods (archives, historical readings, oral histories) and qual methods (ethnography, discourse analysis). That's actually why I chose an interdisciplinary department/ degree. Syracuse has a similar interdisciplinary degree (PhD in Social Sciences) as does Georgia (PhD in Integrative Conservation). Berkeley's Geography PhD is also really open and allows for courses from any department as long as you can justify it. I'll actually be taking some geology/ environmental science courses in mine as well because having a strong understanding of ecological processes is important in my subfield.

Have you considered Geography? Your background and goals seem better suited to me than EER. Unless there is a particular reason you want to go that route. For example, Syracuse has Tom Perrault and Farhana Sultana who both study water policy and governance and you would be able to make connections with the PA/IA program in Maxwell as well.

P.S. -- If you are feeling brave and want to read Marx's Capital, I strongly advise reading ti with David Harvey's A Companion to Marx's Capital or with his YouTube video series. Harvey is a fantastic social scientist (geographer) and really helps to make sense of the denser sections.

I agree with some of these but I also think it is worthwhile to read them on your own and see what get out of them. Foucault can be difficult, for example, but some of the best analysis I've ever seen is by people otherwise unfamiliar with his work. I also don't think it ever hurts to read these types of books more than once and in different contexts.

Some schools I just sent them an email telling them I was interested in the program and would like to work with them. I told them what I wanted to research to see if they were interested. This was more for people who had related, but not identical, research interests. If their interests were really close to mine (one school had two people studying the same thing in different regions) I never contacted them and just mentioned them in my SOP. In the case of the school I had to best contact with the POI I wasn't accepted (but I have a good relationship with him now), one school that I didn't contact anyone I was accepted.

I say "best." On a related note: http://theweek.com/article/index/241210/digital-etiquette-what-your-email-sign-off-says-about-you

The comments are just as enlightening as the main post.

Wondering how everyone ended up doing, where everyone is heading. I mentioned before but I accepted the offer from FIU in Global and Sociocultural Studies. It's my best fit program and the one that offered me the best funding. Not a huge name but it seems to be picking up in political ecology/geography circles. How about you all?

My undergrad program was kind of weird in that the physical geographers were in another department from the human geographers and we rarely ever interacted outside of GIS/RS which was in their department but crosslisted to ours. From talking to them, they said it depends on the program how useful a math BA would be. Apparently some geophysics programs like it because it means they don't have to waste time teaching you and others don't because it means you might have to "unlearn" some things and they'd rather you start fresh with only what you need. This is all second- and third- hand info though. GeoDUDE! is obviously more knowledgeable and it sounds like he offers up some really good advice.

My advice would be to cite to the standards of your field. If your field doesn't use footnote citations then you shouldn't either. The programs that required a writing sample from me said that the limit needed to include the bibliography. I will say, though, that if you have a 25 page limit and are worried about another page or two you might be able to look at your sample and say the same thing in a more succinct manner. You are trying to show them that you are capable of writing and doing research. You don't need to submit a complex paper with several arguments.

Have you considered Oklahoma? They have faculty focusing on petroleum geology/reservoir characterization. (I don't know much about the program other than a person who took a few courses there.)

Definitely. What I've noticed is people suggest a catch phrase or anecdote so that you are remembered by the adcomm. In my case I was remembered because I had an interesting and original topic I wanted to research and was able to show why I would do well in those programs. As an anecdote, I was at a conference for my subfield and someone from one of the programs I was accepted to recognized me based on my name tag and talked about what I wanted to research/what I was presenting on.

I didn't have anything particularly interesting either. I just went right into some of my background, explaining why I went to a Jr. College before university. I was able to focus more on my research and explaining why I would be a good fit. I got excellent feedback from my essay.

Not all departments, espcially in the humanities or social sciences, need or even use any equipment other than printers and copiers and the like. Program rankings are based on surveys which look at how the department is perceived by other departments in the same field. It has nothing to do with the students there unless those students are putting out particularly bad research.