rising_star

It's pretty common at the graduate level to get feedback from your advisors and peers on any fellowship application you submit.

Have you considered doing MOOCs to get hands-on experience with data analysis? I know Coursera has a bunch of free courses related to data analysis (and an entire specialization you can get if you're willing to pay several hundred dollars).

Take a look at job ads and recent hiring in sociology to get a sense of whether WGS PhDs are competitive for and able to secure a position in a sociology department. Most of the sociology job ads I've seen ask for a PhD in sociology.

I wouldn't ask for an appointment but you can still email the professor. Keep in mind that faculty on leave may not check their email regularly and may not reply. But, if the program is saying you don't need to contact profs prior to applying, then you can and should still apply if the program is a good fit for your interests.

There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about being asked to draft the letter. It gives you a chance to point out your attributes so that the letter can highlight them. If you're not comfortable doing that, then that's a different thing. Why not ask them if they can write you a strong letter and what skills/abilities of yours they feel they can highlight in the letter? That way you can make a more informed choice. Someone who taught you in two classes may not be able to say much more than "did well in class," which is worth knowing before that letter ends up in your application file.

Ask both of them if they feel they can write you a strong letter of recommendation for the type of program you want and go from there. It could be that one of them doesn't feel they can write a strong letter or a letter that says something other than "did well in class." But you can't and won't know this without asking.

Send an email updating them on your what you've done since graduating, asking how they are, and noting that you're planning to go to grad school. Then, ask them if they'd be willing to support your application.

First, I want to ask you some questions. What do you mean when you say that this "wouldn't satisfy the underlying need"? What exactly is this underlying need you think you have? And why do you think it can only be satisfied in certain ways? I'm asking because I agree with Eigen that it sounds like you're overestimating these middle/high school relationships. (Side note: what kinds of experiences do you think people were having in middle/high school? For quite a lot of us, that was a time of being introverted, getting labeled as the class geek, being socially awkward, and having few friends...) For what it's worth, I don't think that you can or should assume that you can somehow have a "fully adult-type relationship" (whatever that means!) without having other relationships first. You have friendships with people, you maybe go on a few dates with people and see if it's worth a relationship, and you learn from these experiences. I find it odd that you have such a detailed list of what you must have in a relationship when you haven't really been in any. At least speaking for myself, I've learned a lot about what I seek in a partner by actually going on dates (including a number of first dates that never led to anything more), dating (that is, going on a series of dates with the same person), and being in relationships. Not all of these have been successes but, even where they haven't been, I've learned a lot. I feel like you're trying to skip ahead in the personal development that comes from dating but I'm not sure that will be helpful. It could very well be that you find and date someone that matches all of your current criteria, only to realize that there are other things that are more important to you. Also, I'm not sure what you mean when you say you want someone else that seeks a "childlike and playful relationship". Do you mean someone who makes you laugh? Someone who also isn't great at relationships or hasn't dated a lot of people? If it's any of those three, I think you can easily find someone your own age while in grad school who shares those desires. Last, but not least, my experience with dating people who are older than me has been that I expected them to be more mature than I was in an emotional sense. You may find the same thing in your quest to date younger, which is one of the many reasons you are being cautioned against taking that approach to dating.

Part of this is going to depend on who your other recommenders are and what skills of yours they can address in their letters. Are the other two letters from people who are familiar with your thesis and your research skills? Or are they profs who had you for class?

Sadly, no. What happens typically depends on the current institution, the new institution, the advisor, and how far along you are in the program.

Freshmen and sophomores are in the phase of enjoying their freedom from home/parents/rules, which is also a different phase of life than a first year grad student. There's also the age gap, which means that there are places where first and second year college students can't go (by which I mean 21+ establishments). My guess is that you're underestimating your own social development. But, by all means, give hanging out with freshman a shot if you think it'll work. I doubt they'll welcome and accept you, especially once they realize they could be in your class one day soon. And I'd like to reiterate a suggestion you've been given previously, which is to work with a professional counselor or therapist on your own social development.

No. I don't know that most people even know what my degrees are in. They know what my research is about though.

In terms of dating, there are soooo many dating apps out there, some more general (Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel) and more cater to particular interests/characteristics/types of people (offhand I can think of Growler, Grindr, TrekkieDating, FarmersOnly, eHarmony, and JDate). Some of these are more for hookups, others for dating, and others where you could find a combination of things. If you really are interested in getting to know people check out several apps which meet your interests/desires and give them a shot. As long as you're not in a small, rural town, you should be able to match with at least a few dozen people across various apps. I second everything @St Andrews Lynx said about your approach to all of this.

Is it possible for you to write something new that could also be used for a course assignment for your MA program? If so, then it might be less of a burden overall if you think about your workload throughout the semester.

Honestly, I found it difficult to develop lasting friendships with undergrads but that's because we were at different places in our lives (they were gearing up for life after college whereas I'd already done and dealt with that). I lived with undergrads at a few different points in grad school and I'm only still friends with the first roommate I had, who was much more mature than a typical undergrad, already knew what was going to happen post-college, etc. YMMV obviously but I wouldn't view joining an undergrad student group or even meeting younger people as a way to make up for social or emotional development you feel like you missed out on. And plenty of grad students, postdocs, and faculty are a bit awkward or uncomfortable in social settings.

Starting with your love of the field since middle school is generally considered a kiss of death in graduate applications.

Depends on the department. There should be exam/desk copies around for you so you don't have to pay for them but ask around to be sure.

This is one of those questions that no one here will be able to answer. You'll want to contact specific programs you're interested in and ask them how they'll handle it. That said, what are your goals in doing a second bachelor's? Are there specific courses you're planning to take or training you're looking to acquire? If so, then it may be to your benefit to hold off on applying until the next cycle so that these courses and skills are documented in your application materials.

Two thoughts come to mind: 1) Utilize any resources available through your university's teaching center. 2) Use rubrics for grading papers. When making a rubric, do not start from scratch. I would instead google around for rubrics for assignments similar to what you're grading and use those as the basis for your own rubric. Even using a rubric isn't foolproof. If you want to try to keep your grading "fair and effective"*, remember to take breaks while grading, try to randomize the order of the papers, and make sure that if you deduct for something on one paper, you take that deduction on all of them. That can get tedious though, which is why some use holistic rubrics which don't require you to take off points for every little thing. *Note: I really don't know what that means or if it's even possible in the social sciences, similar to what you might say about qualitative research more generally. By which what I mean is that there's a broad debate among educators about how to make grading equitable and whether to use a growth model** approach to grading. **The growth model is appealing for many because it rewards students who are improving even if they aren't becoming a perfect writer in one semester. At the same time, students who are good writers but don't make any improvements don't do as well if you use a growth model.

@historicallinguist, unless there are only three people in the class, this is only somewhat helpful information. What it sounds like is that the professor has a broader expectation that you all will provide some context/observations with whatever answers you have and that you and the two others you've spoken with didn't do that. If you all lost points for the same reason, then it should be pretty clear that you all are not doing something he's expecting you to do.

Is this a serious question? You're actually asking if you should wreck your relationship with your advisor, who is also the chair of the department, over a grade on a problem set? This is a clear overreaction on your part. If you want to get a better grade in the future, go to office hours to get a clearer understanding of how problem sets are being graded and what you need to make sure you're doing. This means talking to the professor and perhaps other grad students to see how they did so you all can learn from one another's mistakes. Do NOT escalate this to those higher in the administration (remember, you're challenging a department chair here) and do NOT file a complaint about instructor misconduct. Most of what you're complaining about is par for the course in a graduate class. I can honestly say that I don't remember any grad classes where the ranges for grades were explicitly listed. Also, instructors are not required to provide rubrics with assignments. Those who do are being nice/helpful but I never saw a rubric in a graduate course. Hell, I don't even provide detailed breakdowns of everything you can lose points for in upper-level undergraduate courses. You really need to chill out, manage your expectations, and talk to more senior grad students about what is being asked of you, what you should be doing, etc. If you think about this more calmly, I hope you'll think about the bigger picture here. How much of your grade is being determined by problem sets? How many problem sets are there over the course of the semester? It's unlikely one grade on one problem set is going to wreck your course grade, unless you let it.

My system is a folder labeled "Research" with articles saved by author(s) and date. If there's more than one that would otherwise have the same file name, then I'll add a hyphen and a keyword so I can distinguish them. But I also rarely end up consulting the actual PDFs that are saved on my computer...

Honestly, this was the very first thing I realized wasn't possible to do when I was in a MA program applying to PhD programs. I realized that there was no way I could have a distinct SOP for each program, in part because there are really only so many ways to describe what you want to study, why, and how you're prepared to do that. I ended up tailoring specific paragraphs (the fit paragraphs at the end) and tweaking a few sentences throughout the rest to talk about a specific feature the school had that would help with my research.

If you don't have any teaching experience, you may want to look into an in-person program, rather than an online one. Also, given that you only have 4 classes left for your BS, would it be possible for you to take some bio classes this spring or summer? What field, specifically, are you looking to teach and in what state? You may want to look up the state's requirements for certification to see what classes are required.

This is what I get for posting before I'm fully awake. I meant to say for programs that offer funding at schools that have signed the CGS Resolution. In those cases, you aren't required to decide before April 15, which makes the question of regular vs early decision moot.