victorydance

Yeah but we're talking about a diversity essay, not a SOP. I wouldn't ever mention any of these things in my SOP (and I have had my fair share of struggles). But for a diversity essay, this is where you get a 'bonus' on these things and you try and drive it home. My advice, "own it." Don't make it a sob story or make it seem like you are exaggerating, but there is nothing to be too 'proud of.' You are trying to get accepted to Berkeley, take whatever measures you can to achieve it.

My advice? Change the date of your exam for September or October. Rather than going madhouse on verbal, do 15-30 minutes a day. The thing about the verbal section is it's better studied for incrementally, rather than the more time-intensive quant section. Put 500 words into Anki and plow through 50 words a day. For the other 15 minutes, work on practice questions of sentence equivalence and text completion. Vocab is paramount, but so is understanding the sentence structure, tricks, and nuances of the verbal section.

As long as I got a tuition waiver, I would definitely consider it. I can pay for upwards of 3+ years of funding myself. Not to mention, once you are in you can pretty easily acquire funding because a lot of universities offer competitive fellowships year in and year out. Not to mention partial or external funding. If a top 10 offers admission with a tuition waiver but no fellowship I am jumping on that offer if it's my only option. However this is coming from someone who is a highly budgeted student and has money in the bank to blow on a good opportunity.

I also refer to every professor as "professor [last name]" until asked to call them something else. It's a simple rule that avoids any confusion or awkwardness from ever happening.

Pretty specific. You should have an idea of the literature in the area, be able to target a gap, have some general research questions, and possibly provide some kind of way to solve that using existing strategies. This can vary by personal preference a lot. However, approximately half of your SOP should be addressing this task. No, how 'hot' your research interests are don't matter. More important is how well they line up to prospective professors at the university you are applying to. And even more importantly, how you can show that line of fit. Typically job experience doesn't mean anything. People usually say that as advice for you. IE, spending time working a professional job after undergrad or whatever will help you decide whether you actually want to do a Ph.D. or not. I think a reason for such high attrition rates in doctoral programs is because a lot of undergrads go straight into a doctoral program without even knowing exactly what it is, what it entails, and why they are doing it. That being said, having a job in between that has a component of research and can be shown to connect with your progress or give you skills during your Ph.D. program may be a benefit (especially if you don't have formal research experience), but not an incredible one.

I'll be applying to around 12 American universities this upcoming cycle. Never lived in the US.

I think, in all likelihood, the only significant chance you have of publishing something at this stage is co-authored with a prof at McGill. Most people don't come out of BAs or MAs with any significant publications. The one's that do, hit a bit of a jackpot with a prof and got co-authorship on a paper. The chances of publishing something on your own in a respected journal during your MA are quite slim, but certainly possible. I also agree with the whole timing thing as cooper pointed out as well. I helped do research for a prof that was writing a paper last summer. He submitted it about this time last year. He just heard that it is getting accepted now. Some of the others are still in review. So you are looking at best case scenario 1 year from submission to just get it accepted, much less actually published. Also, I know the faculty at McGill very well, so PM if you want and I can tell you profs that you might want to target to try and get involved in their research.

I'll give this a whirl of what information I have gathered preparing for this cycle to try and crack a top 10. GRE: 160+160 on both sections. Obviously the higher the better, but that seems to be the basic benchmark. GPA: 3.5 (or close to it) or higher. The rest gets a bit more wishy washy: - You should have done an honours thesis. This is especially true for people coming straight from undergrad. - All three of your LORs should be from profs that you worked in some capacity one on one with. - Math/methods is a bonus, better to have, but not necessary especially if your math GRE score is good. - Most people do not have publications, even masters students probably won't have any decent publications (student journals don't mean shit). Lastly, I think one of the most important aspects of differentiating yourself from other applicants is research experience. Serving significant time as a RA is a huge bonus (if you emphasize it properly in your SOP). Combining time as a RA with other research things like a good honours thesis or independent study courses or the like is even better. Unfortunately there is no magic formula. It is random, quite idiosyncratic in who is sitting on the committee, and how they determine you "fit" into the program. The best way to up your chances is to make every component of your application as good as possible, and try to show them why you fit where you are applying for each application you submit.

Oh I see, I missed the first sentence there.

70 or above an A? That sounds really low.

There are dozens of students who get in with no math background at all.

I agree with the other person that you are conflating two things here: identity as a group and the music they listen to. In your example, you are more talking about a sub-culture, and it's not just about the music, but the clothing, their collective identities, their activities, ect. I have never seen someone hate someone else because of the music they listen to. Maybe it's easier for me to relate to people who enjoy music more than the norm because two of my close friends are huge music enthusiasts. They spend a lot of their time listening, recording, and producing music so I have been involved in 'that world.' To me, music is no different than any other interest someone has, whether they actually partake in the creation of it or just the enjoyment of it. Do you find it hard to relate to people because they have a keen interest in something you don't? That is more what I am getting at. I don't see the big deal, everyone is usually intensely interested in something. I mean, I don't like theatre or drama, but that doesn't mean I can't relate to a good friend of mine that is involved in that interest. It's something they enjoy, and I can understand why they do, that's all.

Early September is when I am planning on taking mine. Gives you an extra try if you screw it up, plus plenty of time to submit your scores in time for mid December deadlines.

Not sure what is hard to relate to people who enjoy or are passionate about music. You could not like music, but is it really that hard to relate? Music is a form of expression, which is a central component of every human culture, that has incredible depth in composition, style, performance, and production. Humans, since the dawn of time, have been both drawn to expressing themselves through a medium or experiencing other people's artistic expressions. Music is part of that.

I didn't want to make it sound like theory is not as important. But rather, from reading the OP, I got the impression that he was considering foregoing methods almost completely, which is why my post was structured that way. Now that I realize that is not the case, I am totally willing to shift my emphasis from what it was before (that's why I put that disclaimer portion in my post). Theory IS important. Of course it is, but I also believe that Ph.D. student should already have a solid foundation of theory going into a program, and that these skills are a lot easier to beef up independently. Of course, being in a seminar is probably the best environment, but it's hardly necessary for beefing up theory. Personally, I have already taken two advanced seminar theory classes, one reading class one on one with a professor, and a honours thesis on my subfield in my undergrad (on top of typical coursework). Of course, this could easily be switched around in some one else's background (ie. someone coming from a math/stats background). However, for undergrads coming from the social sciences, your exposure to theory is infinitely greater than methods. That's just the way undergrad social science departments are set up presently. Yes, every paper or project will require a background of the theory in the field. However, what is the first step in virtually any research project? A lit review, which is where you learn the theory that is present in the sub-field that you are interested in investigating. The focal point of my argument rests in what social sciences have become today, and that is methodologically driven work. Economics made the shift, political science made the shift, sociology made the shift, and most of the others are as well. If you are not strong in methods, both qualitative and quantitative, you will simply not succeed in social sciences today. Period. Some programs are antiquated in that they only require a very minimal methods training. Every social science doctoral program requires at least 3 or 4 theory/seminal paper style courses, but some only require a couple methods classes (or even worse, a foreign language exemption). If incoming Ph.D. students don't take the opportunity to beef up their methods training, something that is a lot harder to independently learn, during their doctoral training they will find themselves out of the game when they hit the market. Even if they do get a job, they will find it hard to compete for publications with people who have these skills. So in sum, of course do your theory. Do enough theory to learn your main subfield's large pieces, do your sub-field sub-field, learn the basics of your field in general. But if given the choice after meeting those requirements to beef up your methods training, do it. But that's just my opinion, some may disagree.

For me, longevity is more tied to the user than any specific brand or type of laptop. But I agree with the sentiment that spending a little more will get you a better product with better mileage. If you can afford it, I would look for computers with at least a quad-core processor, 1TB hardrive (or a nice SSD), and 4GB of memory. Lots of people talk smack about Dell. However, I have only ever had two laptops and they have both been Dell. My first one (Inspiron 1525) lasted over 4 years and then it was stolen when it was still going pretty good. The one I have now (Inspiron 15R SE) is a beast and I love it to death, have had it for about 2 years now. Both ran about $900 at time of purchase.

I don't want to make it sound like it will kill your chances altogether. Just wanted to point out that getting a TT job in the US is a uphill battle as it is, coming from a Canadian university makes it even steeper. What exactly do you not like about the top 10s? Looking at sociology, there is quite a bit of diversity of types of schools in the top 10 (although of course, this is narrowed by your research interests as a prospective student).

I agree mostly with this. And I would say, in some fields, McGill and U of T would rank somewhere in the top 25-50. But there lies the problem. I think everyone's goal, if they want to get a tenure-track position, is to attend a top 10 institution. Canadian universities just don't hit that mark, and that's why it's hard to penetrate the US market from a Canadian university. I also think, although not really fair, that there is an additional 'stigma' attached to the US market where you should be trained there if you want a job. The problem with this analysis is that 'ivy league' means absolute zilch for Ph.D. programs. In history, Brown ranks barely in the top 20 (18th in US rankings). So you are comparing a decent, albeit not that strong of a university with arguably Canada's top university. When you control for size of departments, the placement records of the the two universities still favour Brown. So right off the bat, you have Canada's top university placing at a lower level than a 20th ranked university. Here is the kicker though: even despite Brown being a much smaller program, it still places more graduates in the US market than Toronto. Now, maybe there is some kind of bias attributed to the fact that more Canadian students are at U of T and hence more likely to search in the Canadian market, but regardless, there is some kind of factor there that American schools, despite having similar placement records are placing in American universities better than Canadian ones. Lastly, if you look at the placement records closely, Brown is placing students at top institutions, Toronto is not. The best placement Toronto had was UT, Austin, which is the same ranking as Brown. However, Brown placed students in Yale, Chicago, Harvard, and NYU. I doubt (I don't know) Toronto has ever placed anyone in institutions like that. So what does this all mean? That Toronto might rank somewhere in the 25-50 range in history if it were in the US.

I would argue that emotional support and regular sex are definitely necessities, especially when launching yourself into a potentially demanding and stressful environment. I wouldn't underestimate the benefits of finding a romantic partner during grad school; yes, they require work, but their benefits can be numerous.

Not sure if I agree with the advice for doing the intro course. Intro courses are boring as hell, have huge amounts of students (many of them first years), and have a bunch of students only taking the class to fill pre-reqs. This means more work, not less.

I am a little confused about something. It says that traditional Canadian fullbright awards are given to prospective students to study in graduate programs in the US for their first year. But then it says you have to have approved affiliation to be considered. Well, if you are a prospective student applying for fullbright and universities in the US, how are you supposed to have approved affiliation?

Ah, so the three year bachelor is out of the norm for Austrian bachelors? I thought maybe they used the same system as the UK. However, many countries typically have three year BComm degrees. I guess it depends on what program you are applying for and if a BComm is an acceptable prerequisite.

I was under the assumption that bachelors in the UK are only three years as well, so I don't see why not?

^ Even more important is getting approx. 8 hours of sleep a night. It is very difficult to consolidate your memory without proper amounts of sleep.

I don't have any personal experience, but this is what numerous profs have told me and the general consensus of everything I have read. Generally speaking, it is very difficult to penetrate the American market without a Ph.D. from an American school. On the other hand, it is easier to penetrate other markets with a Ph.D. from an American school. If you came from either McGill or Toronto, those odds increase. Basically, every university outside of those two are not likely at all to penetrate outside markets. It's not really necessarily a 'Canadian' or 'American' thing, it's just the fact that the top ranked schools in most fields are in the U.S. Ergo, these are the schools that place the best. Canadian schools, with mixed results of course, do fairly well at placing Ph.D. students at Canadian schools, but not American ones. In my field, political science, I have never seen a TT prof that has come from a Canadian university (Ph.D. granting institution of course). Obviously if I went out and looked for it I am sure I could find a couple at random small universities, but I have never seen one at a major American university. I can't imagine sociology being that much different.