jacib

FuzzyLogician, this is why you're my secret favorite.

Which will end up longer: this thread or the race ethnicity one?

I like how it's let's grow a beard. As if all the individual beards are part of some greater, uber-beard that stretches across states and oceans.

Ha, back in the day, a few of my friends started signing emails: emo<3. lizzi Or whatever. And that obviously evolved into different things... </3 was a favorite. My friend Lizzi swore she'd get "<3" tattooed on her arm when she had the money. ....I was really worried that, without enough context, this was going to be too dorky a reference for even this board. I'm glad to know that there is no such thing.

I think the "local flavor" idea is the best, if you bring a gift (I doubt its expected). I grew up in Boston, so I'd get them a mini bottle of maple syrup, maple sugar candy, or salt water taffy. If I were coming from Chicago, I don't know what I get (it's hard to bring a Chicago-style hot dog on a plane... ditto deep dish pizza, gyroburgers, etc). As someone who likes obscure music, unless there was a very specific reason for someone to give me that specific CD (a student from New Orleans, for example, could get me some traditional Cajun music because I feel everyone might be willing to give that a go), I'd be like "Uh great... these guys are uhh.... I know someone who likes these guys, yeah." And then I'd JUDGE THEM for their music taste. So maybe just get them candy! A bottle of wine seems fine for anyone (but apparently real men don't drink wine), though it seems slightly presumptuous to give a stranger alcohol (maybe I was friends with too many sXe kids in high school).

I was just accepted to Columbia. I have to set up a time to talk on the phone tomorrow (I think they tried to call me today, but my cell phone is off because I'm abroad).

As above, I have also never seen this. In fact, the closest I've seen to this is a few schools said, "We prefer students with some experience in the Social Sciences, though we have had students from many fields." It's nothing as specific as familiarity with theory that they want, but rather an indication that you can preform rigorous social science work. Nowhere did I see numbers on a certain number of classes (I took maybe 3 or 4 course that were in a Social Science department, maybe 1 or 2 more that could be cross listed). And I looked for confirmation. At top schools which listed their students, there were often enough one or two people who had done something off the wall, like engineering or theater.

Yes, I consider myself a "religionist" or a "historian of religion" by training, but I think a lot of the work done in the field is simply not rigorous enough or not asking interesting enough questions. Quite frankly, I don't give a damn about obscure 14th century texts. I applied to five sociologicy program and five religion programs (none actually "the history of religion" but all kind of "religion/social science" in a way). Plus, there are more jobs in Sociology than in Religion.

Re: not looking at applications. A head of a lab is not necessarily on the adcomm, that is perhaps why she doesn't look at the applications unless specifically queried.

Congrats! What an excellent way to wake up.

That one Duke interview is killing me.

I think Brandeis University has a well-regarded Ottomanist, but I don't know if they work on the Tanzimat period. There's a very interesting Historical Sociologist at Columbia who works on the Ottomans (though much earlier than Tanzimat), if you might interested in looking at the period from a slightly different perspective. I think University of Arizona has a very well regarded Turkic Studies program that might be worth looking at. I don't know how linguistic it is, or if there are stronger historical elements. Also, check out the schools on this list. Also check out who the Institute of Turkish Studies supports (all the money for this program comes directly from Ankara, just so you know) Also, you might want to consider contacting Professor Goknar at Duke. His interests seem to align strongly with yours, though perhaps a little more literary than historical. I'd email him, tell him your interests, and see what he says. Even if he says "I am more interested in languages and literature", he can almost certainly suggest who WOULD be a good fit for your interests. (Bilginiz olsun: Bay Quatert, sozde Ermeni Soykirimi'nin oldugunu inaniyor. If that makes a difference to you, and I don't think it should make a difference, but if it does, it's better that you find out now). iyi sanslar.

I think this is entirely appropriate. Especially if you submitted online and never got a confirmation email from the school, just double check that everything went through with a quick phone call.

Yes I agree (as usual) with what Modernity has said: the professors on the adcomm knowing you is a plus, high scores are a plus, having the people on the adcomm know your LoR writers is a plus, high performance at the graduate level is definitely a plus, publications are definitely a plus (especially if they are prestigious for where they were published, or if your husband has his name first), research experience is a plus. Obviously, that's a lot of pluses (but I'm sure you knew that already and just needed someone to write it down so you can tell your husband to relax). While it's a crapshoot, your husband has done a lot of proactive things to improve his odds and that will be noticed.

I was away for a few days but I'm really glad people used this! Sorry about the gender mix up Fuzzylogician. If its any consolation, at least one person on this board has confused my gender as well. I remember at least one person I mixed: Lauren the Librarian has told me really really interesting things through private message (the latest I still need to respond to). Yes and I "sillily" forgot to prop the admins, who obviously deserve it. I lessthan three this board.

Check out (the guy has a 2.7 GPA in Chemistry).

Last word!

Man I'm so glad that I'm visiting family and won't have the opportunity to obsessively check the internet/my phone line is in a different country! And best of all I can stop obsessively checking the grad cafe and feeling like I need to respond to every post! Once a day tops! Oh sweet freedom!

Congrats dude! That's awesome. You really seem to be one of the most enthusiastic, put together kid on this board. You know with Duke's numbers how capricious they can be (especially considering many people probably already have the MA). One acceptance will at least let you breathe. And since its an MA, gives you insurance that if you don't like your other acceptances (which I'm sure will come) you can always try again in a few years. Congratulations again!

Ditto to the cheap labor... they have to let in SOME students. And rumors and speculation say the Berkeley campus is less affected than the other campuses (in terms of money in general, meaning less cohort reduction and more professor retention)... but yeah I am very very nervous about Berkeley. They spaced them out over a while last year (though I'm sure all of you are obsessive enough to know that), so perhaps its done by advisors... and certain professors know who they'll pick first. Yes but Berkeley was one of the places I had the best fit with, I felt, though that might be biased because it was a top choice along with the other program (Columbia) with which I also felt was the best fit. But I'm glad other people are keeping hopes up, because mine were beginning to flag, and if you're hoping, I'm hoping. I am also not available by phone right now... so maybe they're trynig to call me this second and I don't know! When I start seeing people accepted by email, then I'll be really nervous.

I'm travelling right now and haven't had a chance to speak to my dad in a few days, but I think the cohort at his school is so small that (like 2-4 or something) that there's not really much variation. I do know that if the head of the department is willing to fight for something, they can sometimes get it, as my old man told me how the current head of the department (right before the recession) really fought hard to get one professor. They had one spot open for a search, and ended up finding someone perfect to fill that spot.... and also someone who would be a great fit in the department in general but wouldn't fill the hole that was the reason for the search. It was seen as a rare opportunity to get these two really strong candidates, who likely would spend large parts of their careers at the department. The chair ended up lobbying the dean hard and being able to hire both, which everyone in the department realized was a great success and the best thing the chair has done (or that's the way my father tells it anyway). So it is possible, under extraordinary circumstances, to let in a particularly well qualified candidate if there are special circumstances... though I imagine this probably has more to do with the wait list than this round of admits. Anyway, from my own impression I don't think budgets have gotten tighter (except for the UC's potentially) but I wouldn't necessarily expect the purse strings to be looser than last year. That's my own un-expert opinion. Most of the variation at a department as small as my father's it seems is due to fit variations year to year rather than budget things.

Hopefully, what you learned over four years is demonstrated in your writing sample and statement of purpose (though I had a discussion with a friend of mine recently where I felt like I'd learned a lot from classes in college and he felt that he'd learned very little, though he had a higher GPA from the same university. Neither of us were taking slacker courses of study and both of us came in with the same level of preparation from well-respected, public suburban high schools--I think there is a reason to not over emphasize GPA... I think you'd be hard pressed to say it shows for everyone accurately what they've learned in college... though it certainly says more about what you've learned than the GRE does...)

I don't know what is best, but Rising Star (I think) recently posted this article about Chemistry departments, which you might find useful. Also, it matters not just if your department is known, but if your specific adviser is known. Also, who told you there was a long commute in Evanston? I believe many graduate students live close to campus, and those who don't, it's a pretty easy commute up there during the day (at night when the purple line stops running, its more difficult). And shouldn't you wait until you get in places, rather than just get interviews, before you start eliminating options?

To the OP, to your the first part: yes, race ethnicity is taken into account, especially at public universities. From what I've heard, this mainly means test scores are potentially given less weight and the GPA given more weight for students who are underrepresented minorities, provided the rest of the application is strong. One hyperbolic professor informed me, "I could get arrested for telling you this". It's pretty well known that this happens; someone posted some advice from the Pitt English department which gave an example of a Hispanic student who got into many more programs than white students with comparable grades and scores. To the second part: No, I don't think your race will make in your particular case, either way, unless you demonstrated in your SoP that it gives you a unique perspective or a unique ability to blend into some community (if you were studying, say, race relations in South Africa or Zimbabwe' your whiteness/Asianness could give a different perspective). Nor, do I think that applying as an Asian to a (presumably Science) department with a "majority" of other Asians will necessarily hurt you. In the above example, it's not even really even race that makes a difference, but your SoP. This is partially speculation, but schools want to train minority faculty at least in part because schools want to hire minority faculty because students want to hear from minority faculty. Full disclosure: I'm white. Like wicked white. To be honesty, at first, I thought the drive for minority faculty was rather silly; after all, knowledge is knowledge, truth is truth, who cares what color hand writes it down? My girlfriend at the time was Vietnamese-American and she was leading our school's Asian American Student Association in a protest of the university's hiring practices. Here, it wasn't just that the University didn't hire enough Asians, but that most of the Asians they hired were in the Sciences. And a lot of them were Asians, rather than Asian-Americans. There were at the time something like three to five Asian-American professors in the Humanities/Social Sciences, despite the fact that some much higher percentage of Asian-American students were majoring in the Humanities/Social Sciences. Firstly, she demonstrated that Asian American students wanted more classes about Asia and Asians... particularly about Asians in the diaspora. Though any professor could teach those classes of course, an ethnically Asian professor would be more likely to. My school already has a South Asian Languages and Civilizations department as well as an East Asian Languages and Civilizations department, both of which I think are majority white at a faculty and student level. She was not arguing the composition of those departments, or there needed to be more classes taught on Southeast Asian where her family was from (I don't think there were any). In fact, she wanted more faculty specifically outside those departments, I think. Which leads to her second more important point: it is not just the teaching or the topics that were important, but the advising. She was a Sociology major and had a lot of trouble explaining to her parents. She was really looking to be mentored in a way that, as the son of two university graduates who had lived in the United States all their lives, I was not. While there were two Asian Sociology professors, they were both born abroad, and didn't have the same kind of encounter with the Asian American experience. She was having a really hard time with her school and her family, and there was no one she could reach out to. The University was most unhelpful to her in this regard, though she tried to get help from both white professors in her department, the Asian (not Asian-American professors) in her department and Asian/Asian-American professors in other departments, but eventually found an Asian-American professor in English or something like that with whom she could talk, and who ended up giving her really beneficial advice. Next most useful in terms of giving advice were the white professors in her department (I think she found the Asian professors particularly unhelpful, if I remember correctly). Anyway, I'd guess the main two reason for a school to give special consideration to minority candidates are 1) an alternative perspective (I doubt a white candidate in African studies would automatically have an alternative perspective.. though a white Zimbabwean or a South Asian candidate wanting to investigate South Asian communities in South African and Kenya, for example, might earn special considerations) 2) an ability to fill a teaching need after graduation (again, I'm not sure white a student in any discipline would earn special consideration in this regard). Anyway, to the best of my knowledge, Affirmative Action in graduate schools is never a numbers game, where they have x number of ys, and then look to find z number of ws to counterbalance those opinions. I don't think there is an "affirmative action card" (though I don't automatically object to the term, because it is clearly analogous with the "race card". It is a loaded term, however, and I can see someone objecting to it). Anyway, point (1) above is more related to your SoP than directly to a "This dude is Q-colored, we need one of those". Point (2) is more related to a demonstrated need for professors with certain experiences. Sidenote: I liked the two articles Rising Star linked too.

While I don't want to turn this into a forum for criticism, and I really hope no one says, "Hey why not me?!?!?!", if people add to this and you still don't see your name though you post frequently (especially the people who joined within the past month), perhaps you should ask yourself "What do these people do that is appreciated that I do not do?" I firmly believe that people should lead by good example, and by that standard, all the people above are better leaders than I am. Also, yo, if you respond to this, please don't quote my whole spiel in your reponse. Quoting long things makes the thread harder to read. Oh and there are several people, particularly in history and anthropology, who also deserve praise but whose user names simple didn't come to my head at the particular moment that I wrote this piece. Please, someone fill my omissions!