I'm an international applicant with interests in gender, work and family (in particular- intrahousehold bargaining and resource allocation, child welfare outcomes), social networks, migration and remittances and social demography. I'm interested in mixed-methods research (more inclined towards quant methods, though). My undergrad GPA is 3.7 (engineering degree from somewhat obscure university back home), and I have a masters in development from a top school in the UK . I have almost 3 years of research experience at an econ policy research organization (one peer reviewed lead-authored publication, one under review, a couple in the pipeline, and one presentation at an international statistics conference). My GRE scores are V: 163, Q: 158 and AW: 5. I hope to have good references from a UPenn demography alum (my graduate supervisor), and a Cornell econ alum (my co-author and supervisor at work) and an Anthropology alum from Purdue (undergrad professor). I’m hoping to apply to sociology PhD programs at Princeton, Michigan, UPenn, UCLA, Brown, Cornell, UMD, UC Davis, Vanderbilt, North Carolina State and Michigan State. I was wondering if my choice of universities is too ambitious- especially since my quant score isn’t stellar.
Would love some candid opinions here- if applying to top ranked schools isn’t worth it, I could save some resources (mainly financial) too ! Should I look into some more lower ranked universities (names, please) as well? I’m really excited about the applications process, and really terrified at the same time!
Thank you!