qeta

I love workshops! They generally focus on a specific topic, especially emerging topics of interest (e.g.: the relationship between property and racialization across the world), and are generally interdisciplinary. Participants are asked to read carefully and comment constructively and collegially on each other’s works, so the feedback is usually good. Everybody gives tons of reading recommendations so it’s a great way to understand the state of the field. More importantly, because everybody works on related topics that are usually niche or new, people have an incentive to build an intellectual community during and beyond the workshop.

Your comments about conferences make a lot of sense. Because I’m in the middle years of my PhD program, I stopped finding medium to large conferences helpful. From what my advisors tell me, they will be helpful again in the next couple of years, at least for networking.

I'm one of those students who participates in conferences annually. I've been lucky because my registration fees have always been covered. I like to make use of my institutional conferences because registration is free.
For me, I think the importance of going to conferences lies in showing some sort of commitment to sharing your research. Publications are great because they'll potentially reach a larger audience, and you can get your name out there, but when you present at a conference, you have to talk about your research, answer peoples' questions, and discuss your work. And, depending on the conference, that might mean sharing your work with lay people. Those are the benefits that I see. Also, in my department, conferences look good on our yearly evaluations. Attending them is not a requirement. It just looks good.
That said, I appreciate you saying that you hate huge conferences. I hate them too, and I don't think that many people would be willing to admit this non-anonymously. Yes, I attend conferences to share my research, but to be completely honest, I mostly do it to add to my CV and strengthen my scholarship applications. I genuinely don't have the attention span for the sheer number of presentations that take place at some of these conferences, particularly when they're multi-day affairs. I find them exhausting at times, which means I'll struggle to fully engage. And I agree with you about conferences often involving vague feedback and being costly as downsides. Now that I've gotten into my PhD program, I don't think attending conferences will be a priority for me. I'll probably commit to attending one per year, and try focusing on publications instead
I've never done a workshop. What are those like?

I'm a first-time applicant at the PhD level (I'm currently in the final year of my Master's). I didn't get the CGS-M for my first year, I got waitlisted the second year I applied, and now successfully got the PGS-D. Getting waitlisted was a confidence boost, so I used that same proposal and used the extra page we get to write to really flesh out my ideas.
From what I've seen with other people who've applied to SSHRC, publications aren't the be-all and end-all. I've seen people with 3+ publications get rejected, and people with only one get awarded. I'm one of the people who had only one publication and I was just the third author, so the strength of my application didn't come from publications. Instead, I had 12 conference posters (four of them first author) and a lot of research experience (I worked as an RA for a few years before starting my master's and I've done some RA work during my master's). In my applicant statement, I noted that I was working on other manuscripts that would be submitted for publication. One of those studies is registered on Open Science Framework (OSF). So, even though that manuscript hadn't been submitted yet, I cited the project and provided the link to the OSF registration instead of a DOI in my research contributions section. I did this to prove that I was indeed writing a manuscript and not just saying I was.
In terms of my research proposal, although my PhD proposal fits under the umbrella of my research area, it isn't directly related to my master's research or any of the publications/posters I've done. My proposal could honestly be read as though I'm trying to change my research focus entirely. I was concerned about this not looking good in my application, so I made sure to describe how the work I've done during my master's has prepared me to do my newly proposed research, and how conducting this research will allow me to broaden the scope of my training and expertise and start focusing on certain areas of interest as I become a more independent/senior researcher. My hope was that there would be some understanding that at the master's level, students can kind of get forced into certain research topics, but at the PhD level, students get to have more say in their research, so there's room to branch out (I didn't mention any of this, though).
TL;DR: I have only one publication where I'm third author and my proposed research is somewhat unrelated to the work I've done over the last few years. What I think helped my application was having a ton a research experience, a bunch of poster presentations, and making sure to explain how my research experience and extra-curricular activities relate to the research I proposed and how those experiences have prepared me to conduct that research.
 

WOW you guys, you have no idea how much yours and the previous reply have helped me make sense of everything!! I too have 3 publications, 5 conferences, BUT everything except for 1 publication and 2 conferences is in a different area! I have 1 year of TA in my past field, 1 year of RA in the current field, 6 years of RA in the previous field (normal in Brazil where I did everything except the phd). Plus lots of teaching kids and volunteering. I changed from International Relations to (secondary, history) Education. 
Plus, thanks so much about telling me that there is a 'waitlist' kind of thing. My university admin didn't know... She said my result came to them as "recommended but not offered" and she said "maybe that means waitlist?" haha. 
Thanks so much everyone!!!

Hey @qeta @Quicksilver25@Ana Lacerda!
Thanks for sharing everyone! Really insightful.
@Quicksilver25, that is a lot of presentations. What kind of conferences are they? Are they international, provincial, and/or institutional level conferences?  @qetaI think the adjudicators' rationale makes sense. I guess the strategy for those who are working on different topics/related topics which do not build on the MA topics might be to frame it as a strength, as @Quicksilver25said. 

@qeta
Hey, you are totally right. Solidarity with all waitlisters out there ?  Trying to understand how likely it is to get the scholarhsip offered in relation to the ranking at this point seems pointless at least to me. 
Im also interested in what you all think has made your applications strong.
I've compared my scores with another colleague of mine who I had helped enhance their application who in fact was awarded sshrc this time by getting a slightly higher score than me overall. Our backgrounds were similar: 3 publications, 3 conference presentations. I have had a grad level teaching experience but he didn't. The biggest difference lied in research potential. His research topic seemed to have been liked quite a bit more than mine. Also while my PhD focuses on a completely new topic his builds on his master's. I think that the reviewers like that kind of narrative in the proposal.
Thoughts anyone? 

People do move up waitlists and get awards as others ahead of them decline. If you read the previous years’ threads on the SSHRC doctoral fellowship, you'll see upward movement like that. People get other large, multi-year awards like Vanier, Trudeau, and US-based ones or decide to go to international universities. I have acquaintances who have declined an award or become an awardee at a late stage. It's a highly contingent process that plays out over months, so it's probably best to not dwell on it, if possible. (Saying this as a fellow waitlister.)

Also, your worries about an evaluating professor holding a grudge are the stuff of my worst nightmare. I changed countries and disciplines to get away from a political science professor with Napoleonic complex, who shall remain unnamed. On the plus side, your grudge-holding prof will probably not judge your application next year.

This is my reading of SSHRC and Canadian awards in general. They really do seem to prefer if the applicant expands their MA research during doctoral studies. Possibly the adjudicators think that the applicant has a better grounding in the topic and is more likely to finish the PhD/project if they focused on the same during their MA. In my experience, the US awards evaluators don’t focus on this dimension because most PhD programs are direct entry. Not sure what would counteract this, except publishing more, or pointing out that you received a distinction in your exams and are building on that base, or asking your recommenders to comment that you are one of the most knowledgable students they have met.

People do move up waitlists and get awards as others ahead of them decline. If you read the previous years’ threads on the SSHRC doctoral fellowship, you'll see upward movement like that. People get other large, multi-year awards like Vanier, Trudeau, and US-based ones or decide to go to international universities. I have acquaintances who have declined an award or become an awardee at a late stage. It's a highly contingent process that plays out over months, so it's probably best to not dwell on it, if possible. (Saying this as a fellow waitlister.)

Also, your worries about an evaluating professor holding a grudge are the stuff of my worst nightmare. I changed countries and disciplines to get away from a political science professor with Napoleonic complex, who shall remain unnamed. On the plus side, your grudge-holding prof will probably not judge your application next year.

Mine disappeared in February, or at least that’s when I noticed it. The CV section is still visible to me. It’s my first time applying, as I’m finishing my masters, but from what I’ve read it’s normal.

Got the rejection email today, on 2/22 at 1:28pm. See you again next year.

Got a request this afternoon to enter a Canadian permanent address to be eligible for the doctoral competition. I’m a direct applicant from a US school. So they are at least beginning to sift through the applications.

From past chats, it is usually by email notification

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!

Ah, thank you so much! Here are my scores:
Maximum review score: 101
Minimum review score: 101
Absolute difference score: 0
Average review Score: 101

I just commented on their post about selecting candidates -- fingers crossed for a response.

Well, I'll be drunk-knitting and refreshing pages until I fall asleep. Sorry that you're all in this hell too.

Well, I'll be drunk-knitting and refreshing pages until I fall asleep. Sorry that you're all in this hell too.

I swear that at the webinar they said that while they have not contacted unsuccessful applications in the past, this year they would. The FAQ may have been written earlier, or they changed their minds. I wouldn't be surprised if they take an extra day or two to finalize their list. Perhaps they underestimated the amount of time it would take to review potentially over one thousand applications. Previously, they received a small handful. They're also using new software and I'm sure the pandemic might throw a wrench in the timeline plans. I wouldn't worry too much if we don't hear tonight. Good luck everyone!

I fail to see how you refuting the validity of the Arab Agricultural Revolution would offend Muslims or why any professor would say that. In fact, a cursory search on JStor on the topic brings up a refutation of Watson's thesis by Michael Decker written in 2009. Most of the sources he cites on farming machines, techniques, and systems were written after the mid-1980s.
 
ETA: I am also going to stop responding because I can no longer take anything you say seriously.

There are many different ways of doing comparative historical work and the methods also generally correlate with epistemologies, not just topics. My understanding of comp-hist work in sociology break down like the following. The Skocpolians like to use a Millian, "scientific" method. For that type of variable-based comp-hist work, I'd say Northwestern is a good place because of James Mahoney. You could check other people who are associated with Mahoney and where they are placed. A lot of them might be faculty in political science. UC Berkeley and Wisconsin comp-hist people are generally Marxist, perhaps with the exception of Mustafa Emirbrayer who uses relational historical analysis (think Margaret Somers). Even within the Marxists there are epistemological differences: I'd argue Tugal/ Riley and Burawoy at Berkeley are somewhat different beasts. Michigan is an interesting place for comp-hist research and has a long history of hiring and producing comp-hist people, I think perhaps because of Charles Tilly. It has generally made room for comp-hist people of all stripes and managed to house Tilly, Somers, and Jeffrey Paige (who wrote the brilliant structural/ Marxist tome Agrarian Revolution) at the same time after Paige was denied tenure at Berkeley. You could argue that folks using a postcolonial lens (Julian Go at Boston U, George Steinmetz at UMich) employ yet another method of doing comp-hist work.

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!