coyabean
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Posts posted by coyabean
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Yes, coyabean! Last fall I was researching a professor who had a ton of interesting papers, and I was really interesting in contacting him and possibly working with him. Before I emailed him, I met with a different professor from the same school who just casually mentioned that this other professor had retired two years ago! But his bio was STILL on the website! After that, every time I emailed a professor who didn't email me back, I tried to convince myself that it was only because he/she retired years ago, not because they weren't interested in working with me!
I believe it was also UNC where THREE profs I contacted? Were either dead or retired. One man was nice enough to email me back and at least tell me that and he seemed very apologetic.
I also began to assume everyone who didn't respond was dead or in Florida retirement home.
I keep saying I am not going to add more to this thread, but yes coya!!
The one that drove me craziest is UW's. The school is half funded by Microsoft millions, but there are so many dead links on the sociology page, and the information hasn't been updated in who knows how long. There is one particular area of research that sounds interesting, and it is talked about as an upcoming project. It was talked about in that way last year, and they haven't updated! So is it happening now or not??!!
One school had links for the faculty bio. ONly every link fed back to the homepage.
My best friend is applying to comm programs with an interest in internet studies and her programs were the worst! LOL I don't get it. It's like KFC running out of chicken. If you cannot do your core business for yourself how are you teaching it?!
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I'm already so jumpy that the first thing I think of when I awake is to check my email just in case I get an early response, even when I know it's the holidays. When my alarm clock rings, I'll press snooze and immediately turn on my laptop. By the next snooze (5 min), I can login to windows, and by the third snooze, open my internet browser to check my email. It's such an automatic process that I can do this when I'm half asleep!
OMG!!! I was not going to admit to this but since you did, I will, too! LOL
I have even -- I kid you not -- slept with my laptop IN MY BED, all the better to logon quickly before my first cup of coffee. :/ I'm sick. Just sick.
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Uh Oh. Guess my gratuitous name-dropping of Obama's cousin, twice removed, that I met once in an airport was not a good idea?
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I ditto about all of this. I also want to add how annoyed I am by all the people who insist that I read the website carefully but their websites provide no valuable information! I think it is Cornell and MSU who have almost no information about the current research being done. So, how exactly am I supposed to determine fit? And then the websites where there is conflicting info from the grad school and the department you are applying to is just lovely. If you don't want a million phone calls then make the information easy to access and accurate! I actually deplore the telephone. I LOVE a detailed website. Let me just surf and read. But few schools made it this easy.
And Dear UNC: Your quasi e-application with damn near everything needing to be printed and mailed? Is CRAZY!!!! Signed, Me
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I took some classes UG at a school with Abbey in the name. It was ok -- academically rigorous and all -- but there was definitely an agreed upon worldview, you know? Take for instance a class on Nietzsche where everyone but me seemed to be ok with considering him as a bit of a prankster. It did undermine how we discussed his philosophy. Or when the entire school was abuzz with an anti-abortion rally they were going to and I kinda wanted to vomit. Or when a prof framed everything in a literature class in the schema of a great chain of being. I did, however, enjoy studying the bible as a historical document and the people were super nice. But there were some considerations about how open profs and students were to contradicting opinions. Its not that they were actively against debate but that because everyone seemed to have the same default position that there was no debate.
It could be an UG and grad difference though. I'd suggest sitting in on a class?
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ditto to above. i cut and pasted one or two bullets from my CV and then said "see attached". I cannot imagine anyone cares at this level, though. I mean does anyone think my sorority functions will make me a stellar scholar? And if its that major -- starting a non-profit or something -- then it for dang sure isn't going to be relegated to a little box.
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Well, I will compromise and tell about the general interests I put in my SOP and then some more specific interests that I haven't talked about, but hope to do someday.
My general interests are the intersection of class and religion, and also gender and household labor.
A few not-discussed topics:
I did a really interesting survey on body image that left me with a lot of questions and I want to do more. Specifically looking at how media literacy has affected women's body image, and men's true thoughts on women of all sizes.
I also really want to spend some time on the marketing departments construction of gender. I am specifically thinking of the pink movement in girl's toys, and also gender-specific toys (girl's bake ovens, girl's-can-draw books) and what affect that has on boys' desire to use those toys, and also the general public (kid and grown up) response to boys playing with those toys.
And I want to study the marketing of Christianity. I am not sure what my exact questions are there yet though.
Gee, maybe I should go to a place that has a strong sociology of marketing focus, if such a thing exists!!
OK, just one more (and it is in the marketing field too): the homogeneity of places and people in America. It does not hold true for everyone, but you know how you can go to any town in America and see types of people? We talk about kid cliques, but it spills over into adults as well. I don't have any specific questions there yet, either.
Alright that is it. Those are all secondary interests, so who knows if I will ever get to them.
If you haven't already you might be interested in picking up "Whitopia". Despite the name it draws interesting conclusions about how and why adults filter their environments. Very interesting read.
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Hi, I am a senior at a small, prestigious private liberal arts college
Sociology major, applying to Sociology MA programs for Fall 2010
Overall GPA: 3.10
Last 2 years: 3.01
Major GPA: 3.37
GRE: 1200 3.5AW (I don't know what happened with the writing, I know I'm a very good writer, am submitting writing samples)
I am conducting my own independent study research project and fielding a survey at school
I know I will have good recommendations from my professors
I have applied to UVA, UMD, American, Brandeis, UDEL, GW, Penn State, UNC Charlotte, UNC Wilmington and BU
I'm worried because of my low GPA and AW score they won't even consider me and I don't stand a chance at any of the places I'm already applying to so I've started to panic and looking for other schools with lesser requirements
My schools is known for grade deflation and they do send a letter with all transcripts stating that grades from here are typically lower than normal universities, but I'm not sure how much that will really matter
I just don't want to be left in a few months with only rejections, I need to get in somewhere, what do you think I should do? I'm going to end up spending thousands on like 20 applications if I don't figure this out
Thanks!
As a native let me say that you have an EXCELLENT shot at UNC Charlotte. They are my safety, safety school and I am just under your cum GPA and GRE. I have had almost everyone there say that I would be welcome. I'm considering doing the MA in sociology or public history if I don't have an acceptance by the end of Feb. They have late deadlines and it's a fairly straightforward process.
So, maybe do something similar? Find one or two schools with late deadlines -- some are as late as July for the Fall -- and see where you are in a couple of months before you submit anymore?
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Punch them in the clavicle, eh?
I have height issues.
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I concur. It's high school, for goodness sake and there are many stories floating around here of these kinds of things being allowable if the school wants you. It is more likely that Harvard will keep you out of Harvard than this.
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(Apologies to the original poster for being off topic, your thing is so much improved!)
One of my favorite stories I ever heard during undergrad was about Mircea Eliade, the imminent scholar of religion, who was a Romanian escapee who got all of his news from a small Romanian emigree press in Argentina, shipped at the cheapest rate, so literally all of his news was at least 6 weeks behind.
And Coyabean, one of my favorite professor in college (actually just an ABD grad student) once explained everything in these proper anthropological terms, but none of us were anthropologists, so no one really knew what he was talking about. Finally this girl in the back of the class said, "Okay, but like what's that all mean?" And then he paused for literally two seconds, and then seemlessly busted into an intricate, comprehensive and totally elucidating analogy to about bringing friends to "da club". I wish I could remember all the details, but it was about the different things Boaz and Malinowski brought to the study of anthropology, and why we should cite and read them all, even if we didn't fully agree with them all (I think that part was related to a friend who can't dance but is the best damn wingman ever running all sorts of interference to cover your ass and introducing you to new people and shit), and what they all actually say. God I wish I could remember it, but needless to say, this is a guy who really inspired me to go into graduate studies. Since him and another professor I had at the same quarter, I have learned the value of a well chosen example.
That gives me hope! Cause you just KNOW I'm gonna drop something about how something is like dating. LOL I love it. It's not just funny and effective but I am an affirmed believer that one doesn't really know something until they are able to draw those analogies to commonly held understandings. I read in Alan Alda's book once -- don't ask -- about some brilliant guy in like quantum physics or something who said if a concept could not be explained plainly then it was probably not a well-thought out concept. And this guy did something insane like figure out how to go to space (Sometimes I Talk To Myself might be the name of that book) and I was so happy to read that because I'd always held that belief but who am I, right?
What's the point of being brilliant if you can't share it? And getting that little light to go on for someone else? Ahhhh, so satisfying. I see some of these folks at conferences and such who take such pleasure in being obtuse and I want to punch them in the clavicle. Jackasses. Being fluent in your subject matter is one thing; using knowledge as a weapon is another.
And I like you. This bodes well for you when the war pops off. LOL
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Belowthree might come by and tell you what to do:)
That's what I was thinking. See this thread:
Also, the best way to prove you can do the work is to DO the work. Go to your fellowship or career services office and look for any upcoming research opps or fellowships! That's what I did last year and I think it has helped -- will tell you for sure in two months!
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The Charles River
Two Buck Chuck!
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YOu know what I wish? I wish they'd at least send you the ocassional post card or view book or flyer or something to make me feel like I'm making progress. The law school process is so romantic. They send emails and t-shirts and pictures and stuff. This grad school thing is an abusive one-sided relationship if I've ever seen one. I just want some physical representation that he, er, I mean THEY know I'm alive.
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For a Jan 15 deadline:
My online application was completed Jan 10. This didn't include recommendations (or the SOP, if memory serves).
On Feb 8, they contacted me about an incomplete recommendation because the recommender didn't include the required form. The next day, I found out they were interested in nominating me for a University fellowship.
My inbox doesn't have the date of the acceptance...
Oh wait, I found it in my journal:
"Status: Congratulations| On JANUARY 30, 2006 you were admitted to the university. You will receive further information by mail as well as a request for final transcript(s) with degree statements."
Here's the one from the Jan 1 deadline:
Acceptance letter dated Jan 26
Received this email from the DGS on Jan 5: "From glancing at your record, I believe your application is extremely competitive. You are almost certain of being admitted and should be competitive for funding from departmental and/or university sources."
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Okay, all of those were for MA programs, which I applied to for Fall 2006 entry. Here's some info from when I applied to PhD programs for Fall 2008 entry.
- Rejection dated Feb 4 for a Jan 1 deadline (they later apologized for sending me the rejection and admitted me, but that took a couple more months)
- Jan 1 deadline, accepted March 14 (took forever but I know why, and would've taken less time if I weren't already a student there)
- Jan 15 deadline, March 4 acceptance
- Deadline was Jan 15 (can't remember), accepted Feb 11. Had a massive LOR problem with one person having to send the letter three or four times (he ended up emailing it directly to the DGS and apologizing to me for the trouble)
- Jan 1 deadline, Feb 8 acceptance.
- Jan 15 deadline, Jan 23 acceptance. They were missing 2 of 3 recommendation letters and official transcripts (they had unofficial) when I got the acceptance, which they told me to send because they needed them to nominate me for a University fellowship.
- Jan 15 deadline, late March acceptance. And no, I wasn't on a waitlist. They just notify super-late compared to other programs in my discipline.
That's all of them for the PhD.
What does this show? That you can get accepted even with late latters; that you can get accepted before all of your materials have arrived; and that this whole thing is completely unpredictable.
I kind of love you. Details like this appeal to all of my OCD tendencies. So, really, thank you, thank you, thank you.
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Ok, my comment was eaten. It was all "i love you dorks blah, blah, blah, why i'm going to grad school blah, blah, blah"
Lisa Dodson's "The Moral Underground", Malcolm Gladwell's new collection of his New Yorker articles, Paulo Friere (online) and really awesomely bad erotic romance novels with vamps and werevolves and crap. And I hate Twilight.
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You're right that humanities make this a much different game. For some fields, there's relatively nowhere you can go to get work experience that will significantly improve your application and you can only find work that's tangentially related, in the sense that it may provide you with sellable skills, like teaching or project management.
Chances are you wouldn't work with anyone that you could ask for recs, so that leaves you with the same people, unless you return to school.
And publications in humanities are difficult. We don't publish like they do in the social sciences and sciences since we don't publish the results of experiments or studies so much. Instead, humanities publications are usually the product of years of solitary research, reading and contemplation. They are very rarely co-authored and since the potential impact of a humanities pub is often difficult to discern, 90% of whether you get published is decided based on your name, where you got your highest degree, and where you're teaching now. If you don't have a name, don't have a higher degree, and aren't teaching, you're probably not going to get many publications.
That's not to say that a humanities student should leap at safety schools just for the sake of the acceptance, since the law of descending prestige is just going to compound the problem once the student graduates. It's just that the student has to improve hir competitiveness in a different way:
- signing up for graduate classes as a non-matriculating student, if possible
- completing a post-baccalaureate or summer study programme
- doing more undergraduate coursework directly related to your intended graduate study
- completing a master's before applying for the PhD
- getting a job that involves transferable, CV-building skills or opportunities
- getting older (seriously! For some people, getting a year or two older is all they needed to do to take their application out of the reject pile.)
The crap part is that most of these are going to require yet another financial investment.
This is what I wanted to say but better. There is almost nothing I could do, at this point, to be a better candidate. I have work experience, relevent academic contacts and letters, publishable papers, etc. For humanities/SS folks being affiliated with a University is extremely important. There is little to be done in the private sector that could be seen as an application boost. What am I going to do? Write a treastise on higher education and government relations reform at my apartment with no access to data, technology or mentors? So, I rather resent the idea that if I were to not get in anywhere this year that there is something left for me to do that I have not already done. Not that it could not be true of alot of people, but one's experience is not a universal sample. The skill set for humanities and SS is just different than those for the life sciences. Presumably one need only be able to read, think critically and write. Unfortunately those are skills that are considered universal, thus increasing the pool of applicants. You don't need a background in anthro, for instance, to be considered for an anthro phd. That is not the case for biochemistry or what have you. There is a smaller pool of qualified candidates for the life sciences and private sector work that can be tangentially related to your academic goals. Those opportunities are not there for humanities/SS.
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Computer Science - Computer Graphics
Why?
I like computer graphics. I also enjoy drawing, photography, animation, and long walks on the beach.
My goal is to eventually work in the motion picture industry as a technical director for a few years then work my way into r&d or become a visual effects supervisor.
You say long walks on the beach and all I hear is
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It depends. Something like cultural anthropology of knowledge production, critical race studies, urban policy and history higher education.
Why? Because I'm crazy. I mean jusssst crazy enough to think that I might be able to actually make a difference in how education attainment is enacted in a first world democracy and that people who look like people I love might actually stand a chance at parity.
And I can't sing. Cause if I could sing?! Mannnn...
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Hey guys, does this make any sense, or does it feel like I'm just rambling on?
Growing up in Russia in the 90’s1990s I got to experienced a period of dramatic political, economic and social change. The fall of the Iron Curtain instigated initiated? a massive flow of information from abroad, which that sparked my interest in foreign languages. I remember that my first English teacher tried hard to imbue into our minds instill in us the idea of the importance of foreign language skills in our new, open society. I realized that if my parents' foreign languages did not have much practical use outside the classroom, for my generation that knowledge created new opportunities for business and travel. That and also the derive genuine pleasure I got form learning foreign languages combined with these new opportunities to influence my decision to pursue a degree in Interpreting and Translation.
Undergraduate study at Nizhniy Novgorod State Linguistic provided a profound knowledge of English and French language, literature and culture. Translating articles from “Economist”, “Newsweek”, and “Figaro” as a part of my coursework I learned about existing international political and economic issues, like the controversy with NATO expansion, intricacies of Kyoto protocol, economic policy of European Union. Rendering those texts from English or French into Russian besides language skills required both language skills and a deep understanding of the subject matter. Therefore, I would often spend hours researching this or that issue in order to produce an adequate and accurate translation. My professors would always say that the best way to understand a text is to translate it. This experience developed my ability to research and analyze information from a variety of sources in different languages. At the same time, I became aware of the difference in presentation of certain facts and events in Russian and foreign media.
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I agree with everything coyabean said, to put it bluntly, you really ought to say right up front, "Yo I survived the post-communist transition to a market-economy... bitch. Any of the other fools applying for this shits do that? Naah, thought not. You gotsta let me in." But you know, academically. This can be done simply by chopping your first sentence off, or alternatively, moving it after the first three sentences (before "At an early age").
Also it's my "parents' language skills." I agree with all of Peppermint beatnik's changes, they're really good even if she can't properly spelled "centre" or "favourite" for an American application*. I might add an adverb or an adjective in a place or two, but especially "{I think you need a transition sentence] English [quickly] became my favourite subject". Also I might add which languages you worked with at the end of the second paragraph: again this is something that sets you apart and you should be quite explicit about it.
*I'm kidding to both of you... I think Commonwealth spelling is perfectly fine for these things. I felt I needed to add this disclaimer so you didn't panic and/or I didn't look like a prick.
OMG ROFLMAO!!! Someone else with my sense of humor! LOL Yes! That's exactly what I meant. Just drop that shit, homie and then back away like "what?! what?!!" but, you know, academically.
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You know, professors can review applications without the entire committee being able to get together. They just "check out" files from the grad program secretary, review them, then return them. Then, once they've all been read, they meet to discuss them. This is sorta how it works at my current program, and how it works for big grant competitions.
This is what I was told by one of mentors. She's done this a few times. She said she comes home with a stack of files and tries to read them before passing out asleep. She gets her definites and maybes together and at some point everyone compares definites and maybes and whittle from there. But it isn't some big marathon session with the whole group.
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It varied. For anthro programs I told them about my proposed research project but I didn't drill down to potential sites, the reasons why I chose them, etc. I talked more globally about knowledge production, etc.
For the interdisciplinary programs I was VERY specific, down to naming coursework, professors, area resources, etc. because I was told -- more than once -- that such programs are very attuned to candidates being self-motivated as they don't have alot of structure.
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Oh crap. Thanks, Santa, for the bad marriage that keeps on giving.
I hadn't thought to follow-up on this. The schools that are complete didn't seem to have any problems. One, my maiden name is my middle name post-marriage. Maybe that helped? I also list all names on every piece of everything I send schools: every page of the SOP, writing sample, etc. Also, with a first name like mine i think a last name is kind of superfluous, and no i'm not sharing.
I will, however, check on it after the holidays. Thanks guys. I was almost in danger of relaxing!
FWIW it's so nice to read a forum of good grammar and coherent arguments
in Waiting it Out
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Oh god, I thought I was suddenly 80 years old the first time I saw that kind of lexicon. I, literally, cannot email/fb/text the younger generation in my family because this is how they respond. It's horrible.