Nito

Thanks for all the info Darth! Looks like everyone is covering a lot of my questions! I, sadly, will not be able to attend the Open House, so any info about the housing/community/living situation is great! I have three main concerns. Given the somewhat larger size of the faculty, do you feel that there are any departmental "turf" issues? Or are faculty fairly collaborative? And, are there sociological subfields or approaches that are off-limits or scoffed? I don't really feel like my own interests are "fringe," but do you feel faculty are supportive of endeavors into new or marginal areas of sociology? Also, somewhat related to the above, what does the overall support for inter-disciplinary work look like? Thanks!

I'm on the other side of the planet, so the times (I'm assuming) emails/phone calls will be going out is about the same time I'm trying and failing to sleep. Glad I'm not alone in being stressed out! Solidarity!

Hmm, Karl Barx seems to obvious, and Minotaur (Gouldner's nickname for Max Weber) seems too obscure. Habermas, Ferdinand and Zygmunt, are good names for a dog, but not very punny. If you lean qual, maybe Fieldnote and quant, maybe Scatter, Random or Anova. Power/Knowledge is kind of clunky and I think Foucault, along with Talcott, are cats. Well that was a fun vacation from worrying about decisions!

CONGRATULATIONS, Shewrote! All my apps were submitted by the first week of December, and I was cruising without a care until I saw your decision pop up on the results. I'm close to freaking out An unwanted blobfish has taken residence above my stomach.

@FertMigMort, thank you so much for the advise! I have a few questions regarding how to address people in the SOP. Should I name specific people who have influenced my research interests if I have only read their work and they are not at the institution I am addressing? Or would it be better to only refer to broarder theoretical and substantive subfields in which these people work? For those researchers I have worked with, what is the best way to address them in the SOP? By this I mean: Dr. Firstname Lastname, Dr. Lastname, Lastname (current institution), Dr. Lastname (alma mater ’97), etc... For those at the university I would like to work with: How many should I name (I've heard a ~10% of faculty rule of thumb)? How would I introduce them? Should I simply write a list in a sentence, or should I state the specific areas where our interests align, or should I hope my SOP is written so that connection is obvious?