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I believe the deadline to submit all relevant document for a deferral request is July 1. (I had thought about deferring because I had a research job offer.) You should get in touch with Tara Alward ASAP.

@sociologicalpizza @meowcow @Highland Cow I believe @letstalkshop from the 2015 application cycle did a Columbia MA and found it very useful for getting into some great PhD programs. You could try getting in touch with her. One of my friends also did the Columbia MA program and was able to use her thesis and letters to get into Berkeley last year. So it seems that it can definitely work out for some people.

I am about to graduate with an MA from McGill poli. sci. department. You can message me if you have some general or specific questions about the department or particular profs.

I agree with @rising_star. Bay Area also houses tons of students/scholars of migration from sociology and other disciplines: not just USF folks, but also people from UC Davis and Berkeley. I have benefitted enormously from this community in my work on migration and citizenship. If you end up going to USF, please PM me and we can chat.

I am interested in something related to this, so thought I'd throw some names in the ring. Marie Gaytan (University of Utah) works on Mexican and Mexican-American food/cultural production. Priscilla Prankhurst Ferguson (Columbia) works on the emergence of French national identity and cuisine. Julie Guthman (UCSC Feminist Studies and also affiliated with the Sociology department) has written about organic farming in California. I found a lot of these folks by reading the citations in Josee Johnston--I'm not sure if that's the professor you're thinking of at Toronto--, so her bibliographies might be worth a look. You might also find Frederic Wherry's book on handicraft production in Thailand and Costa Rica interesting.

While I can't meaningfully weigh in on the role of rankings in getting TT jobs in sociology, I have to say that the above is a spot-on analysis of political science. It is a fairly homogeneous discipline and has worked extremely hard over the last decades, through mainly social/political control rather than bench-building (see D. Patterson, ASR, October 2015), to stamp out variety in perspectives and methods. This makes networks and rankings matter that much more in political science. (Probably should mention that I'm a current MA student in political science, who is taking the slim liferaft of political sociology to get out of my degree and hopefully into a soc PhD program.)

I know one grad student who is doing a Medical Anthro PhD jointly at UC Berkeley and UCSF. He does computational modeling to study brain evolution, human development, and language emergence and diversification. I'd look into the UCB+UCSF Medical Anthropology program and also check out D-Lab where a lot of computational folks come together to form interdisciplinary working groups on specific topics.

This is such a useful thread! I am in an MA program where my research fit is terrible, so I had to learn how to publish my best undergrad work (closer to what I'd like to do) on my own. First, I started noting down journals that appeared on professors' and PhD candidates' CVs. Then I went through journal wikis to narrow down the list of journals. The wikis told me how long the turnaround time was and how helpful the editors/reviewers were (as a novice, I needed a tiny bit of hand-holding) at specific journals. Then I ranked the journals by their, ahem, rankings and sent the manuscripts to the highest-ranked one on the list. A lot of the above advice I had gleaned or had been given on Gradcafe, so now that I have *some* experience of my own, thought I'd pay it forward.

George Steinmetz is probably too busy writing and uploading pieces to Academia.edu to be an attentive supervisor (jk!). Good luck with the other apps!

@nywnorb120191, I'll be sending you a PM. :-) And yeah, I'll totally be applying to Berkeley with full knowledge that I'll be rejected, haha.

Berkeley might be a good fit for you. I know a few of Kim Voss's students and they work on a wide variety social movements (feminist movements, the Occupy movement in the US, etc.). I would also take a look at the research projects done by students (mostly soc and anthro folks) associated with the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI). I did a workshop there last year on ethnographic methods and it was a great experience. I've also learned a ton from attending ISSI events this past year. I'm like you and am switching from political science to sociology, so feel free to PM if you want to chat. I'd love to commiserate about switching disciplines.

So since the tone of anonymous reviewers at journals and conference attendees is generally harsh, we should make absolutely sure to set the tone of every venue associated with academia accordingly? And I ask this as someone who has presented at conferences and workshops and has gone through the review process. As a prospective peer, one can only hope that you are able to distinguish between various academic fora, their differing objectives, and the different tones they might require. Bringing in mean-spirited SocSciJobRumors abbreviations and rumors about faculty (like your "insight" about Jeffrey Alexander that was verbatim copied from SSJR) does nothing to enhance the discussion at a forum meant for prospective and beginning grad students.

Some schools may have strict cutoffs and require waivers from the departments if they push for a candidate who scored outside the range. There is some inside info about how GRE cutoffs work in the pinned post in this subforum. I doubt that this is a universal phenomenon though.

Here's a list of all the graduates from the JSP program, along with their positions and dissertation titles: https://www.law.berkeley.edu/academics/ph-d-program-jsp/our-graduates/. I occasionally attend talks at Berkeley Law alongside some regular attendants from the JSP program. The program seems like a good fit for someone interested in socio-legal studies and sociology of law. Again, these are only impressions, as I haven't actively sought out information about the program, and they are subjective as well since I self-select attending talks with a sociological bent.

I second rising_star. You should ask about their leave of absence policy. This is a very difficult time for you and you should be able to spend more time with family. The rest you can probably deal with when you're back. In my department, this would involve a conversation with the Chair.

Congrats on finishing your first year, Threeboysmom and RunnerGrad! I finished all my coursework and moved to Berkeley to be with my partner. During the next academic year, I'll be holding a policy fellowship at McGill and a partner institution in India, auditing classes at UC Berkeley, and co-organizing a conference. I suppose I'll be applying to a slew of fellowships for the following year since I've decided to take a year off before applying to PhD programs. And oh, I am also supposed to do some fieldwork and write my MA thesis. Yikes!

This is the best houseplant care blog that I know of: http://houseplants-care.blogspot.com/. The amount of light in your apartment is by far the most important criterion. If you click on the lighting guide link on the left, you can see the types of plants that are likely to do well in your place. My favourites are zz plants and aloe veras, both of which were low-fuss and thrived in my Toronto apartment.

Try petharbor.com! I bet there's a perfect cat waiting for you at a nearby shelter.

I want to add my voice to the chorus as well. Given everything, you've done really well for yourself, so congrats! It will probably take you a while to recover - I hope that you give yourself all the time, care, and credit you deserve during that time.

My graduate university also accepted a letter last year in lieu of transcripts. This seems to be a common enough occurrence: my undergraduate university in fact has an online portal (similar to a transcript request page) for requesting graduation verification letters.

New York is actually one of the best places to find smaller- and larger-than-average shoes, so I don't think you should worry too much. If you search Time Out New York, you can find some store recommendations. You can also shop online as the previous posters have said.

I watched the first episode of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell too! Liked it quite a bit. My only caveat was that I don't remember Jonathan Strange being as much of a doofus in the source material. Eddie Marsan is the perfect Mr. Norrell.

This reminded me of all the spider stories here: http://time.com/3882445/raining-spiders-australia/.

Is your cat okay?

I'm sure he will. You might now have to apply to Harvard instead of Cornell - that's all I meant.