Pennywise

Are you guys aware of these Sociology message boards for current and recent PhDs on the job market? http://www.socjobrumors.com and this one: http://socjobs.proboards.com Many of the posters seem really bitter, but there's some valuable info. I think it's worth looking at how desperate people on the job market can be, when you're deciding whether getting a sociology PhD is really a smart time investment. There really are not very many jobs for all the smart, prolific sociology PhD students out there. Academia is changing as it becomes more corporatized (with low paid adjunct instructors replacing medium paid tenured faculty). I personally went into all this with eyes wide open (and picked my program in part because it has a record of getting graduates very good jobs outside academia if that's what they want). The posters on the site are pretty cynical about the possibilities of getting a tenure track job in a research university in general because the job market is so awful, but *especially* if you do not graduate from a top 10 program (or, some of them think, top 3). In their shorthand, HRM means high-ranked monkey (meaning PhD program), MRM means middle, LRM means low. For example: http://www.socjobrumors.com/topic/stars-of-the-fall-2015-market

I got rejected by Brandeis last year, and the committee chair emailed me a followup personalized email that even though I was a very strong candidate bla bla bla, they were only accepting 2 or 3 people out of zillions of applicants. My point being -- if you are really committed to doing a PhD next year, maybe throw in another application or two with a 1/15 (or later) deadline, to a school with bigger cohorts?

This is really interesting -- I would suggest current applicants consider leaving the "other schools" field blank. As Piglet wrote, better to get the interview and have to explain it, than to be disqualified before even getting an interview. (ETA: Unless this would be considered dishonest by schools, and then get you in trouble if they deemed you to be a liar -- that's a tough call). I wonder if this issue torpedoed my application last year to a medium ranked school I really thought I was going to get into. I would have seriously considered it for personal reasons, so that would be a shame if they had assumed I was only applying as a safety school.

One more thought: It is worth thinking about the PhD quality of the overall university (note that this is different from the undergraduate quality). I know that criminology is much less elitist than other social sciences, but I think there are real, substantive differences between R1 and R3 universities, as far as the kinds of opportunities and education you'll get. R1 universities are places where the faculty are highly research-productive, whereas at R2s and R3s, the faculty are correspondingly less research-productive. Usually that correlates with the resources and size of the faculty, as well as diversity of course offerings and research opportunities. PhDs are research degrees, so research opportunities are *critical*. For example, at a large R1, you could have opportunities such as, say, taking a class on some new quantitative method with an expert on that method in the Sociology PhD program, and then working with that person on a project over the summer that leads to a paper and then a grant for a bigger followup project. Those types of paths are *possible* at R1s and R2s if you're very self motivated, but harder. Also, not everyone wants to be at an R1, and faculty at R2s and R3s might persuasively argue for the benefits of avoiding R1s where you're expected to sacrifice your entire personal life in order to become an extremely productive researcher. Anyhow, my quick glance through the US News finds that the non-R1s in the US News Top 20 are: University of Missouri- St Louis (though UM-Columbia is R1) Rutgers-Newark (though Rutgers-New Brunswick is R1) Arizona State-Glendale (but ASU-Tempe is R1) University of Nebraska-Omaha (though UN-Lincoln is R1) Northeastern American University Sam Houston I'm not sure how accessible the R1 resources would be at the non-R1 campuses of schools like University of Missouri. Could you just drive over and work with faculty from the other campuses? I don't know anyone in any of those programs, so I just don't know. ETA this is the list of R1s that I'm using: http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/lookup_listings/srp.php?clq={%22basic2005_ids%22%3A%2215%22}&limit=0,50

My take: Maryland is perennially at the top, followed by Albany, and the rest of the top 10 shift a bit here and there but are basically comparable. 11-20 shift a little bit more, but they're basically the second tier schools. The third tier schools are roughly below 20 on the latest US News, and their ranks have been joined by some new programs. I know there was some serious departmental drama/faculty loss at Arizona State, which probably would have led to it sinking if the rankings had been updated. In the third tier, the new program at UMass Lowell seems to be heavily recruiting candidates from top programs, in order to establish its PhD program as serious. Similar with … Alabama I think it was a couple years ago, hiring good, productive grads from the top programs as junior faculty. Other than that, I'm curious what other facts/gossip folks on here will share... One good sign of the quality of the program is the pedigree of the faculty (especially the younger faculty). If all the faculty in a new program are from Maryland or top 10 programs, then it's a sign that PhD grads from top programs decided that that new program was worth working at for some reason...

That's great to know. A couple years ago the Penn State stipend was in the high teens, plus summer funding. $23k is actually really high considering how low the cost of living there is.

<hit reply prematurely, sorry>

One more really general tip to everybody: current PhD students might be more likely than professors to reply to you about their program, especially if you catch them at the right time (such as after finals but before Christmas). They could give you really useful info, such as about which professors in their department might be good matches with your research interests...

Hm, I dunno, I think he/she could make an argument for applying to a PhD before finishing the Masters -- realizing he/she wanted to pursue XYZ topic as a scholar for the rest of his/her life, or something like that. There are a lot of unknown variables at play in why someone changes programs and countries. If it were someone in the middle of a masters at NYU applying to a PhD at Columbia, that might be harder to justify than relocating from Australia (although even then, a case could probably be made). I wouldn't go all out and apply to ten schools, but maybe a couple carefully selected top choice programs would make sense. You might even be able to justify restarting a Masters program in the States (such as at the well funded Lehigh) because you decided to move across the world for some personal reason (though if you could get funding at a PhD program, why not just apply to those?).

Yeah, I didn't mean to make you nervous, sorry. I don't think any professor would expect you to be an expert on their work, but being somewhat aware of their research interests might help start a conversation. This isn't their first time at the rodeo, and they probably expect applicants to not have much substantial expertise, but to have research interests and a little bit of experience. My interview experiences were slightly different than SocIsCool -- after a couple brief questions about my research interests and experiences, the profs tended to want to talk about their own upcoming work (since many researchers are extremely focused on their upcoming projects) and how I could fit into it. With two in particular, it felt like what they wanted to know about me was what skills I had, or what interests I had that could translate to them assigning me to a particular project. So bottom line, the interviews sound like they vary quite widely from professor to professor. I personally think the fact that this person is giving you an informal interview is a great sign that he or she might be looking to take on a new student. But no pressure! One tip if you, like me, are an over-preparer who scours CVs (possibly not relevant to the OP): if the profs you're talking with haven't published in a research area for a number of years, there's a chance they moved away from that interest and aren't looking for someone to work on a project like that. And if in their papers on a particular topic they are only second or lower authors, chances are that that subject is someone else's passion, and they were roped in as either senior scholars, or to do number crunching or something like that. I made that mistake with one professor, telling him my favorite paper was one he had published about five years ago as second author, and he was like, "oh ok well that was actually my student's paper, really, and I just helped with the [number crunching, essentially]"… Maybe all this is obvious to many people, but I wasn't really familiar with how author order and that sort of stuff worked when I was an applicant. Anyhow, I don't know if all this would apply to critical theorists and such, so YMMV...

I would just chime in to 100% encourage you to discuss how your personal expertise and rich qualitative experiences as a gangbanger inform your sociological interests and skills, helping you ask questions nobody else would think of and explore assumptions nobody else is even aware they're making. If you can translate those life experiences into scholarly expertise in a convincing, sophisticated way, then there are many programs that would LOVE to have someone with that kind of background. And would you really want to be in a program where they didn't appreciate how valuable your experiences are, anyhow? Also, I personally think the discipline needs more young scholars with backgrounds like that. One other thought -- have you thought about applying to any related disciplines, such as American Studies or Asian-American Studies? If there's someone doing closely related research in a program like that, that person could be your biggest ally on the admissions committee (and in your career as a scholar).

Congrats! That's a great sign. I found the Skype interviews I did unnecessarily nerve-wracking. From my experience, they were trying to ascertain whether my research interests would be a good fit with their own, and what skills I could bring as their RA. I was so unfocused that I was trying to adapt my research interests to whoever I was talking with -- in hindsight, that was not an ideal gambit since it can lead to a program where you're not actually a good fit. But it is a good idea to try to really research their recent work (though it sounds like you already have). One other thought -- a very smart friend of mine with a very impressive CV and GREs only got into a very low-tier program because her research interests were TOO focused, and most of the programs were like, uh we don't have anyone doing EXACTLY that tiny area. Like, she told me that only three scholars were working on this area, and one was at Berkeley, one at Harvard. So that was not a great strategy… If I had it to do all over again, I would recommend 1) sincerity, 2) somewhat focused but not overly narrow research interests, 3) making sure that you're truly compatible with specific faculty at the programs you are applying to. It sounds like you have already anticipated all these recs, but maybe it could be helpful for others reading...

Also, if you study a lot, take it in, say, January, and get that Q score up to the higher 150s or so, that would be something you could email to the admissions committee chair as an update to your application. I got into a top 15 soc program off the waitlist in part because I emailed the chair a new paper I had just submitted to a soc journal (which had been a weakness in my app). This whole process can get really messy for those of us who aren't obvious admissions or obvious rejections. Having said that, I hope you're one of the early admissions and that my advice is totally irrelevant!

I would not worry about it for the first round of apps, but I personally would consider retaking it in the week after Christmas, and apply to a couple extra programs with deadlines in January or February. They're more flexible about documents than they say they will be. The thing about the quant section is that it's the easiest section to study for. Like did you go through the Kaplan books? If you already prepped a lot and just didn't do well, then maybe forget about it, since the rest of your app sounds so so strong. But if you didn't really prep, it might be worth going through a prep book or even hiring a tutor.