jacib

I'm going to stop you right there and say I do not think this is true. If this were true, no one would go to Chicago. No one is trying to "weed out" students in graduate school. Comps might be intense at Chicago, but they're still designed to be passed. They already weeded out the students they wanted during a different selection process called "applications".

Whoops! Clearly, this was all off the top of my head and it is not an exhaustive search. Turns out, Christian Smith hasn't been at UNC since 2006... and I only applied in 2009, so I can't even used the "things have changed since then". I knew there were some good people at Notre Dame! Craig Calhoun is not best known for working on religion; he was just happened to be the adviser of a student working on American religious social movements that I met at a conference. I'm happy to know that I'm giving the same advice as someone I respect as much as Mark Chaves! If you're working on American religion, you certainly need to be able to read and interpret quantitative articles, but every sociology PhD program will teach you how to do that much. More generally, you need to know the methods that will best answer your research questions. Start getting (even) more into social movements literature. Here's a link to the American Sociological Association section caled "Collective Behavior and Social movements". Look who is on the board, who is mentioned in their sample syllabi, etc. and where those people teach at. Also, look at their awards page which will tell you who is "hot" in the field (don't just choose "hot" people--see if the work they do interests you). Start reading the blogs Mobilizing Ideas and Org Theory, and look at the journal Mobilizations, while peaking at Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Sociology of Religion. The University of Arizona's sociology department makes public the reading lists for its qualifying exams, which also kind of make handy self-teaching guides. They took down the one for Religion (which is too bad, it was a good resource) but there is still one for Collective Behavior and Social Movements and Political Sociology. Again, it's useful to see where the people on those reading lists teach. Oh wait, they didn't take down the Religion one, they just no longer link to it. It's still online (though it hasn't been updated since Chaves left, apparently). Section 2.D might be of particular interest to you. Which reminds me, I think Melissa Wilde at UPenn is also someone to look at.

I am a current sociology student, doing sociology of religion, with a religious studies undergrad. I also applied for religious studies PhD programs, and even applied to Duke to work with Ebrahim Moosa (where I was rejected). I'm definitely happy for so many reasons I ended up in sociology not religious studies. Let me tell you though, I think you should apply to work as a social movements scholar looking at religious movements, rather than a sociologist of religion doing atheism/humanism as a social movement. So look into social movements people and then augment them with religion people. First of all, you're at Duke! Go to talk to Mark Chaves this week. He's huge and he's one of those figures that I think literally everyone in the field likes. Seriously, he's great. He's someone to even consider working with (though I don't know what his position is at the sociology department over there, and I don't know if he works with qualitative students, though his most cited article is qualitative). Anyway, he'll give you better advice than anyone on the internet. The "Dean of American Sociology of Religion" is Robert Wuthnow at Princeton. If you look at current sociologists of religion, he trained a LOT of them. He's getting up there in years. But still, should definitely be on your list, even if it's a total reach, even if you're not particularly interested in Wuthnow's work, that needs to be on your list because that seems to be the place where people get the best sociology of religion training. Phil Gorski at Yale does historical sociology, so if you're looking at this as a historical project (that is, archives not ethnography), he's a guy to look at working with. He's working on civil religion right now and I really think he's going to push the field forward in a big way. I can't say enough good things about his work. If you're interested in ethnography, though, Yale's maybe not for you. 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. I like to think of them as a group of people desperately trying to remake sociology of religion (I was on a panel last week, and I had a question like "Wait, do you really have to argue against this kind of facile rational choice model [the economies of religion]? Isn't that just a straw man? Like, people don't take that seriously, do they?" And I had to say "Yes, I do have to argue like that because yes they do take it seriously. Sociology of religion is stupid, and we've taken a lot of wrong turns". I'm optimistic about the future, but the sociology of religion has been a backwater for a number of years which is one of the reasons why you should really try to position yourself as someone working on social movements). Brandeis and Georgia are smaller, less prestigious programs than the others on this list, but maybe worth a mention (Baylor might be in the same category; they're one of the few schools to really try to specialize in sociology of religion). Courtney Bender is at Columbia's Religion Department even though she's a sociologist. I know she works with sociology graduate students, but you'd have to find someone else in Columbia's actual Sociology Department to be your main adviser, and glancing quickly at their faculty list, I don't see anyone who does social movements stuff. She just wrote a book though called The New Metaphysicals that might interest you and is really interested in testing the limits of "What do we study in sociology of religion?" (her first book/thesis was about religious discourse in a non-religious organization). However, I recently met someone looking at religious social movements who works with Craig Calhoun at NYU. And she mentioned she also works with Courtney Bender who's at Columbia. So that's something. UNC has at least good people who do religion, though maybe neither of them doing it the way you want to do it. Christian Smith (who seems to be the "Dean of American Quantitative Sociology of Religion") and Charles Kurtzman (who mainly works on Islam and terrorism and things, but is very interested in religion and politics) and Margarita Mooney (who blogs for the Christian sociology of religion blog called Black, White, and Grey, so possibly would be less interested in atheism, but who knows). UT Austin has some people doing religion as well (I think) but the one I can think of most immediately is Mark Regnerus who has been in hot water lately (and has moved away from straight "religion" in general). Look to see who else they have. Michigan has Geneviève Zubrzycki who works on religion and nationalism (her thesis was on this in Poland, but is now looking at in Quebec). You should check with her what kind of students she takes (she's young, and if you're the kind of project she works on, I'd imagine you'd be one of the first students she'd really advise). Another outside the top 25 school is USC which has Paul Lichterman and also Richard Flory, (here is a mainly the top 25, because it occurs to me you might not know them; the embedded image on my original post doesn't work, it's this). Notre Dame has people, too, or did rather, but I'm blanking on who; I think the lost some big people. I don't know if Arizona has anyone now that Chaves is gone. That's not an exhaustive list, but it's a good start. Seriously though, go talk to Mark Chaves and become his best friend. He will know what's what with sociology of religion and sociology in general. Oh, and half of my cohort had no strong sociology background so don't even worry about that. If your question is sociological, you can become a sociologist. I think also like 6 out of the 8 of us or something ridiculous like that had graduate degrees in something other than sociology (including on in public policy and two law degrees) so it's not rare to come to sociology a little later. If anyone else sees this, no, it's not common for that high a percentage of people to have graduate degrees; it was just a weird thing my year. Still, let me urge you to position yourself as someone interested in social movements with religion second, rather than religion with social movements second. My adviser doesn't really do sociology of religion, for example, but I could teach myself it. You don't necessarily need anyone in the department who works on religion.

CUNY is one of those schools that definitely admits in waves, just so everyone knows. They admit the people they put up for university wide fellowship weeks before the people who have department funding. I just remember because it's talked about on the board every year.

Seriously, it was not the best month or two for her between when I got into my top choice (the first school I heard back from) and when my then girlfriend got into her top choice (effectively the last school she heard from... of eighteen). She went through a jillion stages of panic, the whole "I'm worthless, how could I think I was good enough, who am I, what is my future" thing. It worked out. Similarly, just be patient for this shitty a month or two.

You only need to get into one program. I only got into one program, my top choice, and it's in the top ten. Everything else in sociology was rejections, even a much lower ranked program or two. Same thing happened to my girlfriend at the time with a different field: she got rejected everywhere, got waitlisted in the second best school she applied to, and into her top choice, which is indisputably the highest ranked program in her discipline.

I think for a lot of things, subfield rankings matter relatively little. Your adviser is what matters. Subfield rankings are just proxies for that. The general rule of thumb is: almostevery one moves down in their first placement, and if you're a bright shining star, you move laterally, but you generally don't move up. And I mean "up" in overall rankings, not subfield rankings. There are some phenomenal people who have worked their way up (Jose Casanova, Javier Auyero) but it is rare. Is probably truer for some other fields (unless you somehow start getting big research grants as a graduate student). I think quality of papers matters before #. And quality in sociology is stupidly narrow, meaning to many people "ASR/AJS". If you have an ASR/AJS... you're pretty set (more and more I realize how many professors, even qualitative ones, have an ASR/AJS...). # matters after that. And then what program you went to. Your adviser fits in there somewhere. I know people who have almost no publications, but have a shot at most good post docs because their well-known adviser is willing to go to bat for them (so it's two things: how much social capital/recognition does your adviser have in the discipline, and how much of it are they willing to use on you). That said, we hired a great ethnographer a few years ago with one random publications. He was from a top school, his first chapter was good, his adviser said he was good, and when he was invited for an interview, he gave a job talk that blew people out of the water. As a certain type of ethnographer, his productivity didn't matter. The quality of his work mattered independent over all other factors. For academic jobs, this sadly isn't really case. And almost all sociology jobs are academic jobs. If you want to work anywhere else, this isn't the case (or if you want to work in a non-sociology department). The "abysmal methodologies" are asking the people at the universities you want to work at which the best departments are. These are also coincidentally the people who decide whether to interview you for a job or not... It might be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but there's a high correlation between rankings (at least in terms of top 5 vs. top 25) and where people get jobs. But rankings certainly aren't destiny, especially in the sense of it's not like "Berkeley=good TT job" or anything like that.

I just want to say that at my school, I look at these threads and try to recruit people, but none of the faculty looks or knows about the forum. I had a idle talk with the DGS once and he was like "Why are all these rejected kids emaling me all of a sudden? We don't send out rejects for weeks. How do they even know people got in?" and I was like "Well, there's this thing on the internet...." He seemed uninterested. At my school, most of the post-adcomm recruiting is left up to the graduate students. I think this PhD comic sums up everything about the relationship between grad students and professors: So no one should worry "OMG three months ago I wrote something where I said this school was my second choice, but I really want to go there!" It's not like that. As for my own behavior on the forum, I try to avoid saying things that make me easily identifiable. At the same time, my subfields are specific enough that even with vague generalizations, people with good google-fu or people who have read all the grad student profiles at every top-25 school can definitely identify me (it happened at least once last year, with a kid I liked). I mean, there are only a handful of students really working my subfield in the first place, and I mention the country I work in.... I really think that narrows it down to about five to seven grad students in the country based on just those two things, add in the other details like I say I'm at a private school.... you know? However, I like to think what I have posted reflects well on me both as a person and as sociologist (maybe even better than reality?) and that's not an accident. Most things I write (especially since I've gotten in, but even before), I write with the thought "Would I be okay with this if G-d forbid my name were attached to it? Or would it be rly embarrassing?" Now that I'm becoming an academic, this is pretty much how I think about everything I put on the internet. I don't want some creepy student finding some inappropriate reddit post ten years down the line... It leads to self-censorship, sure, but it mainly keeps me from saying unnecessary dumb things. I think FertiMigMort is a great example of this: if I were to identify her Grad Cafe name with her in real life, I'd respect the real life person more, not less.

Haha, I'm a fairly in-the-know about department politics third year, and I don't even know who is on the committee this year, nevermind when they meet and make decisions!

Check out the thread and

Welcome back!

I've interviewed for grants via skype. I found it useful to dress my best, look my best, just because it made me feel comfortable and confident. I spent like a while just setting up and cleaning up my room, etc. I think Skype interviews are easier (professors interviewed via skype have said that to me, too) in part because you just get to talk with them in a really bounded way. You know exactly when you're being evaluated, and because the conversation is so delineated, you know on what you could possibly be evaluated.

I don't know exactly what in this zombie thread from last year that's in relation to, but with schools don't be afraid to follow up. Email the DGS. Ask specifically about covering travel costs, and then tastefully imply it might make visiting difficult (if your parnter is also in Hawaii, they should especially emphasize the costs of flying to the mainland). Granted my school is a private school so they have a few more dollars to throw atch ya boy, and I had a slightly special circumstance cause I was an American living in Turkey, but how it went for me is: DGS: "We hope to see you at visiting days! We're super exxxcited about you coming, lol. We normally offer Americans $300 dollars, but we'll treat you like an international and give you $500." Me: "Yeah, I don't know if I can get time off work and it'd still be a big out of expense." DGS: "Well it would be a shame if you couldn't come purely for financial reasons. Just get a receipt for your plane ticket and we'll cover it." Me: "Well, I guess I'll work on getting the time off work." DGS: "Great! See you then." Remember they're trying to woo you now.

At the non-interview schools, I think you only really need to say "Well, I'm primarily interested in Sociology of ____ (or "social networks" or whatever). I'm not sure exactly about thesis topics, but..." and then you can have an option of saying "I'm kind of interested in ___, but you know how it is. I'm open to other ideas." They know your topics are going to change, don't sweat it. At interview schools, you might want to say "I'm primarily interested in Sociology of_____ (or better yet, briding ______ and _______). I wrote my statement of purpose on _____." You have an option of saying "But I'm also interested in ____ and ____", or waiting for them to ask you about it. I'm in a third year class where I see what all my colleagues are actually writing their dissertations on. I obviously don't know what people wrote in their statements, but I think a maximum of 1/3 of the kids are doing something that closely resembles what they wrote in their statements. Maximum. One kid moved from video games to medical sociology (social networks approach so same adviser). One kid moved from education to historical sociology (again, methodologically the same adviser). One kid moved from class in a specific foreign country to science and technology in the same country. One kid moved from globalization and gender to science/technology and gender. My own project moved from something that mostly historical to something that is primarily ethnographic and possibly statistical, but still "sociology of religion" and in Turkey. In all those cases there was something that stayed the same, but most of it changed. Professors know that will happen. Your statement of purpose is about coming up with an interesting, plausible research idea, and a general research area. None of it is a binding contract. Don't sweat it. Just be interesting and charming, but once you're in, they're not going to not let you in. I always mention, my first post-visit day meeting with my adviser went horribly, and I believe she thought I was a chauvanistic, ultra-nationalist. She loves me now. It's all good. Don't worry about it (with interviews, be a little more careful, but still).

Just to be clear, you're commenting on something written more than a year ago, so the poster likely is no longer checking the board. I'll try to answer. SVH's school are all top tier1 so it's a safe bet she means Maryland, which is nationally the better known UMD (www.umd.edu for example is Maryland's website). It appears that University of Minnesota--Duluth does not even have a program related to sociology, except for a Masters in criminology, but nothing related to the SVH's apparent interest in social psychology. 1: A tier which, for the record, Minnesota-Twin Cities is certainly part of.

I think once you get tenure you get summer vacations again! Be happy everyone, that's only like a decade and a half away (best case scenario)!

At my school at least, it's relatively common to learn quantitative methodologies in short courses (usually from someone flown in specifically to teach that course) or at summer schools. There are a couple of similar things for theory (though rarer), and of course foreign language (that's what I did). These are often things you can't get in your university to the same degree. Slightly different: ethnographers are generally encouraged to be out at their field site in the summers as soon as possible, as well, and if you're historical and use an archive, you're definitely encouraged to do thatt over the summers.

What I often see: people who plan to be at their field site year four, are actually there year five (usually because the proposal isn't done at the end of year three, either because the project isn't clear, the student isn't done with classes, hasn't applied for grants, etc.). In sociology, and I assume anthropology, there are a lot of advisers who don't push you through. I'm hoping to get into the field year four (I'm in my third year now), but other students with my same adviser didn't get researching until year five. Let's say you follow that plan, then you have a year in the field, a year analyzing and beginning to write, a year on the job market, that's seven right there. Any slow downs (you know, for kids, or illness, or laziness, or adviser problems, or confusion about your topic, or organizational snafu) beyond that just add more time. Keep in mind that the job market is a full year. You probably can't do it the first year you're back from the field. And there's more teaching and less money after year five in all programs, which means less time for writing.

Even if those stats are true, remember 5 sports doesn't mean 5 acceptances. If we want like 8 people, we might accept like 12-16. Just to be clear! 1) Be professional. You're not being "accepted" into some purely academic program, you're getting "hired" as a junior colleague. 2) Know what the professors you're interested in write about! Ideally read some of their articles before you go. You don't need to know everything, but you should know your stuff. 3) Don't be afraid to admit you don't know something, just be curious about the things you don't know. 4) Be polite. To everyone. 5) Be social, but don't drink too much. 6) Other than that, know that they're starting to try to sell the school to YOU. They're at least as interested in you as you are in them. Once you get to a visit day that doesn't have an interview part (as in, visit days at all but like three schools), it's all about them convincing you, and you can totally relax. But really, it's natural once you get there. It's a weird mix of a job interview and summer camp. And it's fun! Spend time with the grad students if you can, they'll tell you the "real deals". Try to get "the real deal" about the professors you want to work with!

I actually have no idea. I do know that if you come in saying you love Simmel it will earn you points with a large group of folks. Most of the really creative senior sociologists I know have a huge soft spot for him. Network people love him because he was apparently the first to think of network structure--the reason we say "dyad" and "triad" are because Simmel did. I don't know who influenced his ideas though.

I mostly agree with everything you said, except when it comes to the South Loop, white=rich. But I mean the whole north side is filled with a lovable hodgepodge of white working class, many of whom are Eastern European as hell. What other state would elect a dude name "Blagojevich"? I think pretty much the history of urban sociology (at least the Chicago school) is the whole idea that the city is not corresive, it's right and natural.

It's crazy how fast it's reversing. This I agree on (and actually most of what you said in theory, too, I just don't really care about rent control). And it's also crazy that it's a very cohort based thing--YOUNG white people are moving, and it seems like they plan on staying there. My friends who live in Brooklyn keep telling me which neighborhoods they're priced out of, and how neighborhood X used to be all strollers, but now the kids who live there are older, and the next neighborhood inland is all strollers (which also pushes the hipsters and artists out another bus stop). 20 years ago, it was all like 90% minority, 10% Hasidic Jews. This was of course where the Crown Heights Riot happened in 1991. My friend, a "stylish young professional", moved into a place in Crown Heights about a year ago. She's taken to posting on Facebook all the of the changes in the neighborhood--the number of new bars and ethnic restaurants, the fact that three yoga studios have opened around her in the past year. I lived in Chicago for a while years ago, just as they were like building all these condo buildings I think around Roosevelt and S. 18th St, you know like the area just South of the Loop. I'd pass by them if I was ever coming up from the South, and I'd just think "Who'd want to live here? There's nothing around here." I had to look up the name of that area: "The Near South Side". because no one ever, like, talked about it or anything. It remember buying something on that 7-11 on Roosevelt years ago and looking East and just thinking it was nothing but condo construction and no real people. Now look at it, totally different, full of people living (in sterile, probably pretty boring condos) with services agglomerating around them and stuff. It's just crazy how fast these whole neighborhoods are becoming majority white. Anyway, I don't normally think about things in terms of equalibria, but like it just goes to show you: there was one equalibrium (racist housing policy) that was disrupted by the civil rights movement and block busting which led to white flight but like, if I had to bet money on it, I'd bet we were headed for a new equalibrium with a lot whiter inner cities and poor people increasingly pushed out to outskirts (like Europe!). Apparently, an emerging topic is suburban poverty now, not just urban poverty. Anyway, I don't know, I just feel like this just further emphasizes what a weird process we witnessed with white flight.

That sucksssss. If I were you, I'd definitely start contacting all the school you haven't heard from in early February (which will be most of them) explaining the situation, that's is a special thing, and you're very interested in their program, but you need to plan ahead because of residency matching. Most academics at least ought to be sympathetic to the two body problem. I mean, it couldn't hurt at least. Send your message to the Director of Graduate Students, not the department secretary. Put urgent or time-sensitive in the subject so that it's definitely read.. In my family, we always tell the story about how clear it was that my father was in love with my mother (she was a little more apathetic and focused on her own career) because he early applied for jobs near all the small midwestern towns where my mom was applying to graduate school Congratulations to you to for having such loving partners who're be willing to follow you to the ends of the earth! One of my European colleagues and her boyfriend both applied to graduate schools at the same time, but ended up in cities a few hours apart from each other (a doable weekend, but not a doable commute). It's worked out pretty well for them, they just got married last summer!

You can't talk about shifts in neighborhood succession in the 20th and treat it just like pure supply and demand, unless your model account for white people demanding to be far away from black people, both through restrictive covenants and red-lining and block-busting in the first half of the 20th century, and white flight in the second half. Gentrification is not merely about improving housing stock; the way I understand it, it's definitely a post-white flight phenomenon (in this case, genritification can fairly be described as supply and demand, adequately if not completely, but the processes that lead up to it can't). I can almost guarantee your formerly Jewish neighborhood went through a process like what's described in this really rad ethnography called Canarsie where in a really short time the neighborhood goes from being mostly Jewish and Italian (working class, lower middle class) to being mentioned in Nas songs ("Canarsie/You're living harshly"). Granted, in the long term I think it's definitely a good thing that the housing market is "freer" ("significantly less racist") but the whole process you describe of affuluent Jewish to most dangerous is almost definitely "animal spirits", not "invisible hands".

If I recall correctly, Santa Cruz is pretty much the place for gender theory or queer theory or something along those lines. Do you want to do qualitative stuff or quantitative stuff (or mixed methods)? For race, I know the ethnography stuff decently well, and the neighborhood effects stuff/straight up strat stuff a lot less well. In terms of ethnography and the like, there are of course the "classics" who mainly write about poor blacks (Wacquant at Berkeley, WJW at Harvard, Mitch Duneier at Princeton/CUNY, Eli Anderson at Yale, Sudhir Venkatesh at Columbia). There are a couple of really awesome younger people who work in the same vein who are are just getting jobs: Alice Goffman at Wisconsin, who works on the "ghetto" experience in the age of mass incarceration, especially how young men navigate daily life with warrants out for their arrest; (worked with Duneier at Princeton) Matt Desmond at Harvard, I don't know if he's started publishing on it, but has this incredible thing about nuisance ordinances, which sounds so boring but is the most exciting talk I heard that year (worked with Mustafa Emirbayer at Wisconsin, who everyone tells me is the greatest). Eric Klinenberg, at NYU, whose last book wasn't about race and who is a little older than the other two (but younger than the "new classics"; he was Wacquant's student, I believe), but whose first book (Heatwave) I loved. His last two books haven't been about race though. Klinenberg is taking students, Goffman and Desmond definitely aren't yet, but they could still be on your committee and Harvard and Madison are obviously great places to study race. (He worked with Wacquant at Berkeley, I think). Just as a random comparison, Duneier, Venkatesh, and Wacquant all worked with WJW when he was at Chicago. Eli Anderson got his degree under Howie Becker, wikipedia tells me. Wow. But there are also interesting people who are writing about the lives of black-people-who-aren't-poor: Karyn Lacy at Michigan, my friend who does race is so excited about her. Her book Blue Chip Black about the lives of middle class, suburban blacks is supposed to be really good. Mary Pattillo at Northwestern. Her book Black Pickett Fence is also supposed to be good, too. Alondra Nelson at Columbia. I feel like she's a name that's getting more important, does qualitative work, but not ethnography. Race bridges with science/health, she's written on the Black Panther's healthcare program, and race and genetics. Glanced at her website, she says she's also interested in gender, but I don't know how it manifests itself in her work. Of course, if you want to do quant stuff... that's a whole nother long set of people. Doug Massey at Princeton and Robert Sampson at Harvard are of course the two people whose names pop to my head most quickly, of course. Anyway, I just listed the race people because 1) I find race more interesting so I know it better 2) you don't necessarily need a single person who does race and gender. You can mix and match. Or do what I do: my adviser does a little religion, but knows the kind of political sociology stuff I'm interested in very well, so I've been teaching myself the sociology of religion stuff (and getting it from the people in the political science department here, and a little bit in the religion department). I think the TL;DR is if you name a top program, they're probably going to have someone excellent doing race, but I personally can't think of anyone who does race/sexuality or race/gender. USNWR has a list of top Sociology Sex and Gender programs.