[Just took the GRE: The "should I even bother" thread.]

Look, they're lower.  They're definitely in the low range for top schools.  But they're certainly not out of the range of Irvine.  And maybe not even for NYU, Cornell, and Columbia.  Those three are private universities, which tend to have less stringent university wide requirements (if any) for GRE scores, so if they really want you, they have the option of taking you in, however likely that is.  I'm sure you read FertMigMort's post pinned to the top of the forum--look at what she says about GRE's and her school (I don't remember exactly where she goes, but I think it's a top 25 public school).  My dad is a sociology professor, and when I applied, he checked with some of his colleagues about what scores they looked for.  I posted their responses 590 V - 620Q isn't great, but it's not on the absolute low end.  I agree, it makes Columbia, Cornell, and NYU unlikely, but I don't think impossible if other parts of your application are superlative or you're a particularly excellent match there.

 

Anyway, regardless of all that, for me, it definitely was "Which is worth more: knowing for sure or $100?"  I generally thought knowing for sure was worth the price of trying.  There was at least one school I applied to that I didn't really think I had much of a chance of getting into (poor match).  I applied anyway, and it was probably a waste of money, but it decreased my worries so I think it was well worth my $100 at a stressful time.

[Current and former grad students...]

I took three years off.  I wouldn't have been ready for school straight out, and it gave me time to really think about what I wanted to do in graduate school.

[North Korean Defectors]

The steady references to Hirschmann's work I hear among my peers gives me great hope for my own future. 

Don't get too excited, man.  It was me who referenced it, and I may have gotten it from you.  It's definitely one of those ideas I learned about only after starting grad school.  

[North Korean Defectors]

You're probably going to have limited luck finding someone interested in that specific topic.  If you're looking for a place to apply for graduate school, you'd be better off trying to do two separate things.  First, try to find people studying the political sociology of Korea.  Even if that broader topic, I'd imagine you'll have a pretty small pool of people working on the subject.  As someone else studying a non-Western topic, I'd imagine that you might still have a small people of people even if you opened yourself up to all people studying political sociology of East Asia (this is the first thing you should).

Second, and more importantly, ask yourself, "If this is a case study, what is it a case of?"  And then find people who work on that general case.  Why would anyone not interested in North Korea defectors read your work?  You need to be able to answer that question (and there may be more than one answer).  Perhaps you should look for people who work on civil society in authoritarian states.  Or people who work on the "exit" part of "exit, voice, and loyalty".    To give you an idea, I saw an ASA presentation of a girl who was doing her dissertation on networks of Korean anti-colonial political activists/freedom fighters.  Her adviser doesn't do anything on Korea, or even Asia, but is an expert on network methodology.  If you're looking for someone to work with, those are the kind of connections that you need to make between the work you want to do and the work that people at top universities are already doing.

[Does prestige really matter?]

You'll have to talk to people actually in the program, but my understanding is that graduate studies in sociology at Oxford are primarily carried out either through the Department of Sociology or through Nuffield's Sociology Group.  Nuffield is, from my understanding, the more prestigious of the two.  It's also the older (the history of the Department is surprisingly recent).  It has stronger institutional support, and more resources, some of which were "Nuffield-only".  The two non-Nuffield people were happy with their program, but we were at a small conference and the two Oxford people didn't know each other before hand, unlike all the other pairs of people from universities.   They both joked this wouldn't happen at Nuffield, because Nuffield has teas or some such thing.  They generally seemed to imply that i) the main resources at Nuffield they lacked were social, namely access to the seminars, teas, faculty, and peers, and ii) while they were happy now, they would have been happier at Nuffield.  They both produced good, interesting work, don't get me wrong, but both seemed to feel like they had at various times struggled to find their home at Oxford (people from Nuffield may have had the same experience, but I just didn't meet any of them for comparison).  One found his home in another work group outside the Department of Sociology (and Nuffield Sociology Group); the other had moved to London.  I really can't say more than that, simply because I don't know, but you should try to get in touch with current graduate students and inquire about their experiences.  This is based on one conversation with two people a year ago so take it with a grain of salt.  The experience may also be different as a masters and doctoral student (they were both doctoral students).  I also know nothing about Social Policy at Oxford, which is yet institutional division with I'm sure its own sets of advantages and drawbacks.

[Help: How to determine FIT?]

So professor ranks go like this in North America:  Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, [Full] Professor.  Assistants are generally untenured, associates and up are generally tenured.  Anyway listed as a "Lecturer" or "Visiting [X] Professor" is not tenured and cannot be your adviser (and may not even be there when you start). You generally need at least one person to work with you who is tenured, preferably someone who is a Full Professor (if you program has <12 faculty, just associates professors are fine).  The best way to find out if people are taking students is to email them.  Not all professors like this and not all will respond, but it certainly won't lose you points.  Do this especially with more senior people.  If they say they are not talking on more students, write them back and ask, given X, Y, and Z, who would they work with (I did this when I was applying.  Professor A said there wasn't a good PhD program for me at his school, but I should consider Professor B.  Professor B said he was retiring in three years and I should work with Professor A.  So it goes).  But feel free to email professors, be like, Hey, I graduated in X from school Y  in year Z, I'm apply to PhD programs in the Fall.  I'm really interested in topic A (I can't quite figure out what topic A is though from your summary).  I really liked your article B.  Is topic A something that you have advised on?

 

If you're interested in World Systems, you probably don't say you're interested in World Systems (except at a very few schools, like Stony Brook or Cornell), though you can say you're interest interested in the relationship between the core and periphery.  Say you're interested in Historical Sociology (at a place like Yale if you want to work with Phil Groski, Peter Stamatov, Julia Adams), Neoliberalism and Globalization (at a place like Columbia if you want to work with Saskia Sassen and maybe David Stark or NYU with the obvious crew there), or Environmental Sociology at a place like Madison (if you want to work with any of a number of people there).  Maybe the historical-comparative box is wrong for you because, again, I can't quite tell what you're into, but you get the idea.  In your SOP, you fit into a clear subdiscipline: the one your potential adviser fits into (or at least indicate a strong interest in the subdiscipline that your adviser is in, plus one that another professor works in, plus maybe one more where no one explicitly works--the one you'll have to teach yourself).  Since you have wide interests that can fit into a lot of sub-disciplinary boxes, you should make sure that you customize the "fit" paragraph (and preferably more than that) for each school.  How Marxist/World Systems-y you want to be in you statement depends on how Marxist the people you're applying to work with are (If you're apply at Berkeley, overt Marxism is fine, for example).

 

Most institutions will be able to advise people who work outside of their "core focii" as long as there are a couple of faculty members (at least one of them tenured) who can advise on the project.  My school on our website lists a number of focus areas, but that's just on paper.  I do mainly sociology of religion, but the mere fact that I don't study the U.S. also puts me squarely in "Historical-Comparative".  My adviser is historical-comparative, and I've worked with other historical-comparative and cultural people in my department, but I don't fit into a clear "core focus area" and no one really does sociology of religion.  That's fine.  This means I've had to (try to) form a work group across multiple departments, including kids from history, political science, area studies, etc.  Other students in my department, who work in more popular subfields, can form peer groups with people just in our department, but we have a real diversity of people with probably only two real core "focus areas" in the department (again, I'm in neither of them).  Harvard and Yale, on the other hand, have very clear bi-weekly work groups where senior faculty members run a workshop devoted to a clearly focused area. If you can't fit into one of their clearly defined areas, as far as I understand it, you're much less likely to be accepted.  What I'm saying, though, is don't worry if you can't find a place where there's world systems + environmental soc + a critique of neoliberalism, you don't need all of that from the faculty.  You can easily teach yourself the missing one (as I am doing with sociology of religion, even though in large part that's my primary interest)--just make it clear that you fit in very well with the other two, and here are the names of two to four faculty members who are awesome and work in those fields (at least one of whom is tenured). 

[Does prestige really matter?]

I have in my head the schools I want to apply to (Oxford, Cambridge, Toronto, etc.), but I don't feel like I fit in well with those departments. I have found schools that do exactly what I'm interested in though, and found a potential advisor that said he would be happy to supervise my project at the University of Leeds. Is it better to go to Leeds and do exactly what I want? Or to apply to a prestigious school that doesn't really study what I'm interested in? I feel like if I applied to Cambridge and Leeds and got in at both, I would feel like I "should" go to Cambridge for the ranking. Will it matter that much later on? 

 

I know very little about European sociology departments, so I can only say three quick things: 1) at Oxford, my colleagues have told me, there's a big difference between studying sociology "at Oxford" and studying sociology "at Nuffield".  If there is an equivalent divide at, say, Cambridge, make sure you know which side of the divide you are on (I think I was told this was a weird, Oxford-only thing though).

 

2) You can delay the decision by applying now, seeing where you actually are accepted, and then making a decision based on those.  Visits are often very important to guage not only the faculty but your peers.  Also, see where the population of recent graduates (rather than just a biased sample) got jobs.  Are those the kind of jobs you want?

 

3) In America certainly, and in Europe almost certainly, where you get your degree matters a lot for where you can get a job.  There's a whole literature on this, the most recent being Burris's "The academic caste system: Prestige hierarchies in PhD exchange networks", ASR, 2004.  I think the name "academic caste system" says it all and I don't even need to quote an abstract.  The rule of thumb I've been told is within the job market, an exceptionally strong candidate can stay in the same "tier" and most candidates will go down at least a tier from where they go their PhD.  I don't know if that's precisely true, but you know, it gives you an idea. 

[Multiple PhD applications for 1 School]

Some schools won't let you do this (Berkeley wouldn't let me apply to their anthro and soc programs). Most universities, especially if the schools are located in different faculties, won't know and so have no way of caring. However, don't advertise this. When I was applying, I was considering applying to both Harvard's soc département and their committee on religion (in the end, I applied to neither). I emailed the DGS of the soc department to ask if this was ok, and he told me they would have no way of knowing, but that applying to different types of programs like that was the mark of an "unserious student". I had the same basic statement of purpose for every program I applied to with the same project proposal but I think that dude was right, in some ways. Though we talk about "interdisciplinary work", the disciplines still really matter. I would have been less happy in an anthropology or religion department, I think, even though my peers would have had projects substantively more like mine than my current colleagues do. As of now, I work on religion and politics so I see a lot of my colleagues as folks in poli sci departments. I like them, I like their work, but I am glad I'm in the sociology department because I think a lot of the things they have to care about are stupid. People on this board often say "oh I don't care where I go as long as I get a degree and teach!!!" but it's definitely not that simple. I think it's fine to apply multiple places but it will effect your work and your career in a very big way.

[Programs for Race/Ethnicity, Education, and Military]

(Accidental double post)

[Programs for Race/Ethnicity, Education, and Military]

The alternative would be to look at the military as a type of organization, and look for places which are good in org theory (and hopefully have someone who does state institutions type stuff or other political sociology).

[IAmA Grad Student Rep on a AdComm]

I have a question for the people who asked me questions:

Why do you think the application process is so secretive? What do you think universities gain by not being more transparent about it? Do you feel like this disproportionately affects some groups?

I think, if pressed, they'd explain it would be a "costly signaling" issue (RIP econosocio).  It's not that the GRE tests something, the fact that you would study for it shows something.  It's not your statement of purpose is a binding contract, it's that you took the time to learn the rules of how to write it.  It's not like your idea will matter, but if you can at least frame it as relevant to the current literature, that means something (more than "I'm interested in studying the sociology of sports because I play a lot of sports").  If you can't even research whether you'd be a match for the department, they think, how can you research something good enough to publish?  But this makes some sense, because, I went on a lot of dates shortly after coming to graduate school and it was very common for people to be like, "Yeah, I've thought about applying for a sociology or anthropology PhD," just because they're in their early- to mid-twenties and don't know what else to do with their lives.  I don't think they should have gone into PhDs.

 

It definitely puts candidates like me, who have been socialized into academic worlds earlier, at an advantage (I went to an undergrad institution where many of you applied to this year, both of my parents teach college or above, many of my friends were applying to graduate schools--academic and professional--at the same time I was).  I don't know if similarly socialized international candidates would be at that much of a disadvantage (at a school like mine, where funding is citizenship-blind).  At my program we have degree candidates from four continents and at least 10 different countries.  Most of them went to elite undergraduate institutions where they had access to professors who had gone to the States for graduate school and regularly sent students abroad; often times (but less than half of the time) their professors were connected to someone in the department (First year, professors would say, to one girl in particular, "Oh, you're from country X?  Did Person Y send you?").  I think it's much more likely less privileged candidates and candidates from non-traditional backgrounds and non-elite undergraduate environments in general who are at a disadvantage just because it's less likely that people taught them "the rules of the game". 

 

I can only say that my switching fields didn't hurt me in terms of my statement of purpose, says my adviser (who chaired the adcomm the year I was admitted), because my "questions were so sociological".  I had familarized myself with some of the social scientific literature on my question so I was at least using the right words (and I even picked a fight with the right person)... but I knew to do this in part because my father is a sociology professor who read multiple drafts of my statement of purpose.  In addition, he set me up with his colleague in my soon-to-be subfield who explained some people I needed to read (I was already doing some casual reading on my own).  I think it's a matter of privilege in general more than merely international/domestic.

[Decision-making time?]

Done and accepted the offer! 

Only have to take care of the emigration process now... 

 

Yeah, and soon you'll be able to start buying guns!^₁  And drinking tasteless beer!²  (What do sex in a canoe and American beer have in common? They're both fucking close to water)³  And shopping at drug stores/pharmacies bigger, and better stocked, than any you've ever dreamed of.⁴  Congratulations again on your decision to love freedom. 

 

1: Obama is making it easier for you furriners.

2: As far as tasteless beers go, while the national tasteless brands include Coors, Budweiser, Miller, Busch, and Natural Ice/Light, let me recommend a local tasteless beer and suggest you go with Genessee Cream Ale ("Jenny") when you want that ole fashioned American beer flavor(lessness).

3: American beer, because of the microbrew movement, is now probably better than Europe's in general, but old stereotypes persist.  Seriously though, you'll never have to drink bad beer if you don't want to.

4: Strangely, it's our giant drugstores I might miss the most when I live abroad.  That and, of course, all the freedom.

[IAmA Grad Student Rep on a AdComm]

MORE QUESTIONS:

 

What surprised you most about the process?

What surprised you most about your fellow reviewers' opinions?

What's a quesion that we should have asked, but haven't?

 

Knowing what you know now, what two or three things of your own application would you have changed?

 

How much did you think about about "distribution" in your selection?  Beyond the fit of the individual for the department, but the composition of the group of people for the available number of spots and resources.  That is, lets say your department is great in Urban Ethnography, and Social Networks, has a couple of quality people in Sociology of Health, a noted about Historical Socioogist, two old strat guys who should retire, and the department is moving towards more hiring more young scholars who do Race.  How much does the disribution of specialities of applications affect who gets in?  Like if you have 10 great urban ethnography applications and two great ones in social networks and one good one, might you let in three and three?  (Okay so I was aiming for clarity with my imaginary department, but I think I may have made it more confusing). 

 

This is awesome, by the way.  If there were such a thing as GradeCafe Gold, I'd give it to you.

[Conference Abstracts]

Submitting papers to multiple journals is a definite no-no (after all, it can only end up in one), but paper presentations don't have the same kind of indivisibility that publications do.  I've presented similar work at multiple conferences, but just a few months apart. 

 

To look at two of the field's rising stars (that is, important enough to be known, young enough to still put presentations on their CVs).  Matt Desmond's CV lists:
 

López Turley, Ruth, and Matthew Desmond, “Contributions to College Costs by Married and Divorced Parents,” Institute for Research on Poverty Seminar, Madison: December 8, 2005.

 

López Turley, Ruth, and Matthew Desmond, “Contributions to College Costs by Married and Divorced Parents,” American Socio

logical Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia: August 13 - 16, 2005.

 

Alice Goffman's whole presentations section of her CV is organized around having given the same talk multiple times in multiple places.  Usually though, like Matt Desmond's, they're a couple of months apart because presumably she worked on the papers in between.  If they're the same time of the year, it might seem like a waste to present the same paper twice without revisions, but if you can work on it (or there's at least enough of a gap on your CV so it looks like you could have worked on it), it seems pretty normal.  If they do end up being a month or two apart, it's probably still fine.

[IAmA Grad Student Rep on a AdComm]

Are people knocked out at every stage?  Like, if I have a 2.6 GPA and a 297 GRE, will my full application get read?  Or does someone "pre-sort" those out?  If so, what proportion of total applications get the "full reading"? (I get the sense at my school some percentage are presorted out by a professor or two, so that the committee can focus on the ones with a more realistic change of getting in).

 

What order do people generally read the application in?  Like I'd imagine, GPA-GRE-undergrad instition-maybe CV ("stats"), then SOP and maybe recs, and only then, if those things made them seem like a strong candidate who would likely do well in our program, would I move on to the time intensive writing sample.

 

What's the most common mistake you saw people making?  What's the single biggest aspect you wish people improved on (like "Oh man, this candidate would have been so great for us... if only they had studied harder for the GRE" or "Oh man, great scores, but clearly didn't bother to look at what this department was good at")?

 

Were you guys actually that impressed by publications?  Because I feel like that's something people freak out on here about a lot ("Oh no I have no publications!  No school will want me!").  Also, what counted as "research experience" in your views (if that was something you were specifically looking for)?

 

Were there people with great scores/recs/writing samples/everything else who weren't let in because of poor fit?

[Grad Skool Rulz Ebook?]

@jacib - about when did your professor get their phD?  Just curious if there was a difference in experiences due to time.  We also had a professionalization seminar but had a different professor lead the discussion for each class each time.. and it was really interesting to note the differences in advice between older/senior faculty, midrange and younger junior faculty.  The advice given by the latter two was much more in line with the grad skool rulz book advice.. whereas the older faculty were like "I just published some papers and one day found myself tenured" (not so helpful advice if you aren't genius already) where the younger professors' experiences and suggestions were much more in line with the book advice (which is written by an assistant professor who recently graduated right?) 

He got his PhD in the mid-80's, but he's also the faculty least likely to say "I just published some papers and one day found myself tenured" in large part because he says things like, "My adviser just called around and I ended up with an appointment at [a top 15 school].  That doesn't happen anymore.  You guys can't do that anymore."  He is one of the ones really pushing for professionalization stuff (we have a formal pro-seminar with all the faculty, this was technically a research designs class but it became more than that).  I wish I asked him what he specifically didn't like about it, but I didn't (it was over email and professor emails are usually very very short). 

 

His advice would probably be roughly in line with the Grad Skool Rulz book, in that it would say that you need to think strategically and stuff like that, don't teach in the summer unless there's a compelling reason to, develop good taste, etc, but it would differ on certain points, too, I'm sure.  I, unfortunately, just can't tell you what.  Ah, here's small but obvious one.  I don't think he'd pick "passion" as something to consider in choosing a dissertation project (though he might ask you how "interesting" the problem was, technically or sociologically).  He'd also give definitely different advice for coursework, but he'd agree with the general statement that "courses are important short term, irrelevant long term".  Rojas doesn't mention taking course to develop a relationship with a faculty member, for example, or just to get noticed by one.  He'd also encourage people to take course where you could get a draft of a paper out of it.  So yes, I think he'd say that on the broad points Rojas is saying things that everything agrees with these days, but some of the finer points aren't perfect, you know?

[So very lost]

While I agree that communication (or anthropology) might be better places to look, there is actually other sociological work on online environments.

All of SocialGroovements advice is partically solid.  I agree that there are ways you can do work on sociology, but you'd have to frame it in a certain way to make it "sociological interesting," which these days means finding something that can be "generalizable" about it (the easiest way to do that is what Mark Chen does below--deal looking at it as organizations).  If I don't care about video games at all, what would make your work interesting?  What does it say about how society works?  I have a colleague who is looking at collaboration online, for example, and some of it is tying into the economic sociology literature on innovation, stuff like that.  All that said, you might run into less restinence in (certain) communications or anthropology department, and if you really want to look at this specific subject, you shouldn't necessarily cross them off your lists.

 

If you're doing internet/computer stuff, here are some people to look at: Eszter Hargittai is a sociologist at Northwestern (PhD from Princeton), but in their Communications Department.  Wikipedia says she was DiMaggio's student.  Since a lot of what she's doing is so new, a lot of work her work is just descriptive and categorical (I'm thinking specifically of her work on the "digital have-nots").  I-School at Berkeley is a place you may want to look at for doing a PhD.  danah boyd got her PhD from there, she's one of my big intellectual crushes, because she's just so smart.  Media Culture & Communication at NYU, where she teaches, might also have a PhD program.  Further, she's affiliated with Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, which is another bunch of top people on the internet computer stuff front, meaning it would be good to see if you could get into one of Harvard's programs.  Boellstorff at UC Irvine (anthropology) has Coming of Age in Second Life (he did his thesis work on gender/sexuality in Indonesia, unrelated to digital anything).  Again, his work isn't great because he's just sketching out what you could do.  I was disappointed with the book, but anthropologists seem to like it. Bonnie Nardi (also at UCI anthropology) has a book about World of Warcraft called My Life as a Night Elf Priest (haven't read it).  Mizuko Ito I just realized is also at UCI anthropology (realize she was boyd's adviser).

 

Mark Chen wrote another book on Warcraft called Leet Noobs.  This book is cool, seeming, I've only read the review of it in Savage Minds, but it seems cool because it seems like it could be taken as about more than "video game culture" and much more about how organizations work (his argument seems like it could be reframed slightly as the expertise one gains as an individual needs to succeed is different from the expertise one needs working with others, hence those who are "leet" enough to be brought into guilds are actually "n00bs" at working within the organizational framework--hence making them the "leet noobs").  He did his PhD in Educational Technology/Learning Sciences, College of Education, University of Washington, and has said that he had to do "basically a lot of stuff on his own".  At many programs, you might end up in a similar boat.  His whole dissertation is up for free online if you have access to the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database (full title: "Leet Noobs: Expertise and Collaboration in a 'World of Warcraft' Player Group as Distributed Sociomaterial Practice"); it may have a more extensive lit review than the published book.  You as an individual don't, but if you know someone with an ID that works at a big research institution (like SUNY) they should be able to get access through their library.

 

MIT has that PhD program in the "History and Anthropology of Science, Technology and Society (HASTS)", which might also be interested in that kind of thing.  Look also into various other STS (science and technology studies) type departments because they might have similarly open-minded programs that are open to ethnography like this.  In the country where I do field work, I met another American, from a communications department, who was trying to do an ethnography on "how conservatives use the internet."

[Grad Skool Rulz Ebook?]

Current grad student.  It's useful, but not gospel.  We had a class that dealt heavily with professionalization, and I sent it to everyone in the seminar including the professor, who wrote back "I cannot endorse many of those rules, so follow with caution."

[2013 Acceptances/Rejections Thread]

3-7?  What happens if the 3 students they choose to admit don't matriculate?  They have a cohort of 0?

I know a program (not USC, but one broadly comparable) fairly well where they want a cohort of 2 or 3 graduate each year.  They generally only admit 2-4 at a time, and then work down the waitlist (the list is divided by subfield, so let's say the program is good at A, B, C, if they accept students from A, C and the one from A declines, they're going to be looking at people from A, B, but they might not let in anyone from C.  It's something like that).  The idea is that they only admit students who are very good matches for them, and in general, they seem to have a pretty good yield, so even though they're far out of the top 25, they don't seem to have to really "work their waitlist" that much--or at least that's the sense I get from it (I am not in this program, I'm just familiar with it).  So let's say USC wants a cohort of 3, they admit three, and then if no one declines, they admit more off the waitlist, but because people who applied there want to go there (and they have experience and a sense of who will come and what other offers people have) they probably won't have to admit that many from their formal or informal waitlists, a maximum of four they're estimating.  Judging from the numbers they gave, it seems like they probably want a cohort of 2 to 4. It's a small program, though, at a private university that isn't dying for TA labor.  They don't need warm bodies to fill into classrooms, they're honestly just looking for the best matches with the program.

 

Just to be clear: this is a guess of what USC is doing based on what I know about admission at a similarly situated program. 

[Most marketable sociology subfield?]

Does anyone remember that post in Org Theory that basically argued that a lot of the "new" cultural sociologists were just people who would have been labeled as being in other subfields in past generations?  These things come and go.  Now, no one says the word "deviance", but when my father (also a sociologist) was in graduate school, it was among the most marketable fields.  Criminology and quantitative methods will always be marketable, especially to smaller colleges, because there isn't enough supply to meet all the demand (damn microeconomics). Whatever you end up studying, make sure you can teach "duty classes", you know, those basic introduction classes (intro, theory, quantitative methods, qualitative methods, and then some of the core "sociology of..." like urban sociology, race, inequality/strat, economics, orgs, social movements, immigration) that need to be taught no matter if anyone is excited about teaching them.  Make sure you don't just do sociology of culture (probably make sure you don't "just" do anything).  If you're interested in art worlds, probably the easiest way to bridge it with would be theory (know your Bourdieuan distinction!) and economic sociology (you know, markets, morals, and the creation of value).  It would be good to feel comfortable teaching courses in those, in addition to culture, arts, and qualitative methods.  Depending on your topic choice, you could also end up knowing either "social movements" or the orgs literature (on creativity and innovation) or even some of the urban literature .  It's all about how you frame your work.

 

Also, a post-doc we have explained it to me like this.  In the 80's, there was tons of money being thrown at education research, and then in the 90's it was all criminological, and now we're still throwing money at health/medical (Robert Wood Johnson is a big part of this, but not the only part; a lot of the money is coming NIH and NSF).  There are still plenty of other places that are relatively easy to get funded.  Sociology of religion is actually fairly well funded, because of the Templeton Foundation especially, with money flowing from Luce and some others as well.  The probably with sociology of religion is there are few jobs (except in religion departments) for people who just do sociology of religion.

[Is it ever too early to turn down an offer?]

I not only declined some offers around this time, I withdrew my applications from some schools even before I heard a decision (this was partly due to switching fields).  But don't feel pressure to decline, and visit every school you're considering, because you don't want to look back in the middle of your second year when you're miserable studying for comps and think "What if I had done this differently!".  However, if you're absolutely sure (like 110%), decline when you know that.

 

Here's the basic version of the letter I wrote to withdraw (someone else asked me for it over PM).  I added other :

 

Dear [whoever told you were accepted, DGS, Chair]

I would like to formally withdraw my application from consideration for the PhD program.  I have been accepted to a program I know I would choose over [this program], and I do not want to deny some other candidate a spot.  I know in this economy many schools  are only doing one round of admits, and not accepting any from the waitlist.  Please tell me if there is any other information you would like me to provide.  Thank you for the time you have already spent looking at my application.

 

[My full name]

 

The actual text varied.  Sometimes I thanked them for more specific things (responding to my emails quickly, etc), sometimes I said other things like how much I liked the department's philosophy and specific faculty members, but the above is the basic template I "riffed" off of.  The "in this economy" is probably dated; this was in 2010 when there was a lot more talk about the Economic Crisis destroying higher education, and people were wondering if all the UCs' faculty were going to leave, if anyone was ever going to get jobs out of graduate school, etc.  (same problems still exist, people just don't make as big a deal out of it even these short few years later).  Again, also, this was withdrawing my app, not declining an acceptance.   If you've been in contact with any specific professors, get in touch with them and thank them personally.

 

Edit: I should add that this is of course not "the perfect template", but you know, it's what I used not knowing any other model.  Just be nice, in general, and don't go on for too long.  This is a normal thing that happens to them many times a year so don't fret over it too much.  I know some schools accept certain students knowing that there's a low probability they'll attend.

[2013 Acceptances/Rejections Thread]

Ok, so I just called the Columbia GSAS admissions and asked if all the decisions have been made for Sociology, and the person on the other line said they are "still working on it," including sending out the acceptance emails. When I asked him if I could find out my status, he said he couldn't disclose that information yet. It seemed like they were bombarded with calls like mine.

Having been around the boards for a few years, I believe Columbia and Chicago send out their rejections late because they both have free standing, unfunded masters programs (I know people who've done both and felt they were worth it and are now in excellent PhD programs. I know people who've done both and felt like all they got out of it was a realization they didn't want to be in academia. This is probably not the place to say "I'd never do that!"). The acceptances for the masters programs are mostly people who didn't make the cut for the PhD admissions. I don't know the details of the admissions process, but it may well be two separate committee sessions: one for PhD, one for the masters.

Also in general, I would contact the department (DGS or department secretary) rather than than the school if you're looking for leaks. I believe in the past, however, both only had one wave of PhD admits. That said, looking at the results page, it looks like this is the first time anyone from the boards was on a Columbia sociology waitlist so who knows).

[Applying to Sociology PhD program with Anthro undergrad]

Conversation analysis: definitely very UCLA.  Two places to check out: 1) the last chapter (or whatever it is) in *Sidewalk* (I figure most of you have that handy).  That's conversation analysis.  Looking not only at what's said, but the pauses, interruptions, etc.

 

2) The only person who I've encountered who is still doing as the main thing they do (that's me, I'm sure there are lots of people doing it) is David Gibson from Princeton (PhD from Columbia, not UCLA interestingly) who, among other things, wrote a big book based on the conversations recorded by the "ExCom" during the Cuban Missile Crisis called *Talk at the Brink: Deliberation and Decision During the Cuban Missile Crisis.*

[Rankings]

I'm thinking back to the job talks I've seen at my top ten school, and I think every single one of the junior scholars who's given a job talk was from another top ten program. The senior scholars we've tried to woo have also generally been working at a top ten program, but not exclusively. (This is of course using standard sociological counting where there are about fifteen in the top ten).

[Sociology of Religion]

Minnesota has Peggy Edgell.  You should definitely apply to work with her.  There are a couple of other people to look at there as well.  Peggy Edgell recently co-edited a book that you should buy called Religion on the Edge, the first chapter of which is essentially a manifesto about the future of sociology of religion (there's an article version of the same ideas out there too, but you should buy the book).  The other editors are  Courtney Bender at Columbia, Wendy Cadge at Brandeis, and David Smilde at Georgia. 

Another mistake I realized I made when I was sitting at my desk looking at that book--the fourth person is *Peggy* Levitt at Wellesley, not *Penny* Edgell at Minnesota.  Oops!  Third mistake.  Anyway, clearly my advice is more of a sketch than a blueprint.  Penny Edgell and the people at Minnesota are still worth looking out.