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jacib

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Everything posted by jacib

  1. Personally, I've heard almost all good things about Chapel Hill. One of my dear friends from college was from Carrboro, right outside of Chapel Hill, and made it seem like a little bit of heaven right here on Earth. My other two close friends from college from the area also love the Research Triangle (which is Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, but for some reason I called just Chapel Hill). I've heard people not wanting to go to Duke because, for lack of a better word, they found it "Bro-y" and I've heard people crossing off the South in general. It's also fairly isolated; for better or worse, the Research Triangle is the cultural metropolis for miles around, you can't just "sneak down to Chicago" like you can from Madison or Ann Arbor or "get away to New York" like you can from Storrs, CT. Where are you going to go, Charlotte? I've also heard people say that the area felt "small", but as far as college towns go, it's pretty big (which is a problem for some people). Mainly, SarahCharlie said she went to Penn State for Law School, and then also said she didn't like the area of her law school, and I thought, of all the schools I mentioned, Chapel Hill and Bloomington could possibly be seen as the kind of college towns most like State College, PA, though I've only been to one of the three.
  2. There is a whole section on this forum about statements of purpose. Maybe it would be worth checking out, if you haven't already. IIRC they often do candid critiques, or trade critiques, things like that.
  3. This is the first thing on the board that I can remember that actually made me laugh out loud.
  4. I absolutely understand what you mean by wanting to be in a location that makes you happy. There definitely graduate schools that I "should" have applied to, but I didn't, because I didn't want to live in that place for seven years. But that's not all, there is, I was actually more surprised by the size of the schools--Madison has a HUGE program and Brandeis (where I have a friend) has a tiny program. The experience of those two would be so different, even if they were ranked the same and in neighboring towns. One of the big things is also the quality of your peers. At my university, one of my third year colleagues casually mentioned that he has an edited volume coming out soon. Another just got two papers published. That kind of things keeps me wanting to produce my best work. On the other hand, I have a friend who turned down going to the top programs in her field (anthropology, she got into Michigan and Chicago) to go to a much smaller program that was in a much better location (a UC). She's happy, she tells me that her peers are not nearly as good as at Chicago (where she did her masters), but she finishes her reading and then gets to go to the beach. I think she made the right choice for her. She definitely examined all her options. I don't want to highjack the thread or shove advice down your throat, but I just wanted to share my experience that I found the collective knowledge boards useful for crafting my list. And also, my dad is a professor so I had an extra step up in crafting my list--if I hadn't had that, I would have been "flying blind" and probably wouldn't have applied to nearly the right schools for what I wanted. So are you interested in non-profits and LGBTQ/sexuality/gender and maybe law? Definitely not my areas of expertise, but I know Princeton (maybe not the best place to live, but no worse than Storrs, CT, definitely) has a whole center on non-profits. I think cherub is totally right in suggesting in Northwestern--great for Sex and Gender, and I have heard very good things about the "vibe" of the program. Plus Chicago. Kieran Healy at Duke works on non-profit organizations and is possibly the sociologist I have the biggest intellectual crush on right now, that dude is amazing (and Duke is a relatively small program), though maybe you don't want to live in Chapel Hill. But seriously, he's so dreamy. Berkeley and Stanford, also top Sex and Gender places. Indiana does orgs and Sex and gender, though Bloomington isn't for everyone. Davis might be another hidden gem for you to consider (a great place to live). I wasn't trying to suggest you need to think about rankings in terms of MUST GET INTO THE TOP. If Madison hadn't been on your list, I wouldn't have noticed it. It just struck me as a list where I couldn't figure out the common denominator, and I was more curious than anything. My interest isn't crossing off schools or telling you you're wrong, (heavens no), but I just think this community is fairly good at "filling in" and pointing one in the direction of schools that one might not take a serious look at otherwise, and I wanted to share that with you.
  5. Homie, I hope you're being sarcastic. I'm at home on a Saturday "working" on a paper. If you think I'm cool, you need to get out more. Which you can, because you have so much free time now that you're done with apply for these stupid grad programs! Seriously, I just remember feeling like all of a sudden I had so much time. Me and my girlfriend at the time (who had just done her own round of applications) started going out for dinner all the time and stuff, it was great! Until I got into my top choice school in February, and she had six hellish weeks of me being happy while she got rejection after rejection (literally, like 17 or 18).... until she got wait listed at her second choice school, and then she chilled out... and then got in to her top choice school (literally the best in her field, period) in mid-March. And she apologized for being a grouch. Ahh memories.
  6. Man, are a redditor? Man, I've noticed the board looking a lot like Reddit recently. It's never been like that in past years. Message boards are really making a come back, it's weird to see how it affects Grad Cafe (I smell a thesis topic....) Congrats on the thesis! Grades don't matter in a PhD. They'll let you transfer it as long as you pass, I'd wager. My third eye sees well-deserved rest and relaxation in your future.
  7. That's a big range of schools. Can I ask what you're interested in exactly? Madison is in the highest, most selective category of schools, and is pretty big. If I had to give it a number, I'd say Madison is top-5 which is my most selective category. UC-Santa Barbara is top 30 or so. Maybe UMass is too, maybe. UConn and Brandeis are much smaller programs, if I recall correct. I have a friend at Brandeis, they're like 2 to 4 kids per cohort, and they focus on really specialized things, like I think she said most people there do gender or medical or.... historical? I know Wendy Cadge is there, and she does religion, but I don't know if they have religion. What I'm saying is, not only in terms of ranking, but in terms of experience, that's just a huge range of schools. If you're competative at Madison, you should definitely check out top-25ish schools. We talked about rankings (apparently, the image link in that post is no longer working, it just shows the address http://img175.imageshack.us/img175/3210/sociologyrankings.jpg so I'll just post it below here, but read the post for it to make sense): Well, several previous posts, actually. is another where I talked about it, and there are some others that I can't find. (I'm only saying this because you said "I'm narrowing my choices", which I assume means you haven't applied yet, but are still planning. If you have already applied, I don't mean to mess with your head). If you think you have a shot at Madison, you should really consider a broad range of schools on this list. If you make a post sharing your interests on the main sociology forum, people can help make suggestions. It's actually a pretty useful exercise if you catch people at the right time!
  8. I've talked with my department secretary about the applicants. She thinks a lot of you are borderline incompetent children and you ask so many dumb questions, she'd be astonished if you can all feed yourselves. Which is fine, that's pretty much how she thinks about us (in a sweet, semi-maternal way). It definitely doesn't get to the committee or anything like that that you were having trouble with the sign-in thing. Just email her (and I have a strong feeling that the CUNY secretary is a "her"), and just be like, "I'm having this problem. I got this email that says to check. I can't check. Sorry to take up your time but I just want to make sure everything is. Is everything in? Is there another way to check thing?" Keep it short, give your full name (obviously), and be polite.
  9. Having seen what you've posted on this board, I have a feeling that this will not be your last academic paper... but that's still no reason not to go out with a bang. I remember my senior thesis was, let's say, wonderfully precocious. You need to own it, announce to the world the Cherub has arrived. Jacib arrived with a senior thesis full of "obviously" and "of course" (as in, "Of course, most of what is written on this subject is wrong"). I had bits of French and German in-line (which is totally how one writes in religious studies; I had the courtesy to provide translations in footnoes, but that's definitely not a univerisal in my undergraduate field. I mean, educated people all know basic French and German, right?). I also had a lot of what I call now "citation vomit". Like not only citation vomit showing "I know this body work, I just don't really care about it. It's worth mentioning, but not discussing," but also just the unnecessary flourishes that try to show total mastery. Things like footnotes saying, "For similar critques of a, b, c, d, see w, x, y, and z, respectively". I guess roughly the academic equivalent of peeing on a firehydrant to say I OWN THIS TOPIC, I HAVE MADE IT MINE, Y'ALL CAN TRUST ME ON THIS ONE, I GOT IT, which is (of course) how most academics write. On a related note, I always love a blog post Daniel Drezner (International Relations professor at Tufts) wrote called "The Best Paragraph I Have Ever Read in a Dissertation Prospectus" where he mentions that writing requires a "delicate alchemy of fear and arrogance". You're joining the "academic club" now, you should starting writing like it, with that slight arragonce academics have, but also tons of citations covering your ass fighting off the horror. Maybe you're not fully ready to walk the walk (I probably wasn't straight out of undergrad), but that is not a reason you shouldn't talk the talk in your last undergraduate paper.
  10. For real, you'll have plenty of time to do that after you're accepted. And you'll get a much better idea from visiting day (I don't know where you applied, but many schools fly students out for visiting day). Don't torture yourself with this now. It doesn't help to know how great Philadelphia is if Penn and Temple reject you. Or go into your visit day thinking Bloomington, IN is the backwater of backwaters (it's not). LEAVE YOUR HOUSE. Loving advice from someone who's been through this. Seriously, most of your decisions between where you get in will be based on academic factors, or personal ones (closeness to family, etc.). Quality of life is also really affected not just by the city but by department culture. At my school, one year we scared off kids during visiting day (seriously, we got 5 out of like 14; we normally get like 8) because our department culture seemed dead inside even though we live in a great place. The next year, we put on our game faces for visiting day and like got 12 out of 18 or something like that. Your time is better spent reading a novel than researching cities, I promise. If you're generally awesome, I recommend: The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. If you do historical sociology, I recommend Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. If you do sociology of religion, I recommend Silence by Shusaku Endo (the last two were recommended by professors). If you need more novel recommendations based on subfield, I'm sure the rest of this place would be happy to oblige. Seriously, read now for pleasure. Do not read about cities you might not have a chance to live in.
  11. If no one else answers this, email the department secretary/graduate secretary and politely ask how to do this. They'll be happy to help.
  12. Hey, I just glanced at your posts and it seems like you joined in the last couple of days. Welcome! One of the things that helped make Grad Cafe popular (before even the forums picked up) was the "Results" section. It's obviously opt in, but people can anonymously post results that they got (by results I mean: admission, waitlist, rejection). At this point, there are several years of results, all dated! You'll notice that schools tend send out responses at the same time every year, and that most of these responses come between early February and mid-March. I noticed you applied to UF, for example. Go to the "Results Search" on the bar on top and type in "Florida" and "Sociology" to the search bar. Or you can just click here. Seems like last year one person heard back early February, one person head back early (possibly two separate rounds of acceptance?). In 2010 and 2009 they seemed to have gotten back to people in late February, and etc. UF is a less than ideal example because it seems not have been as popular here in the last few years, and search for you "UF" instead of Florida is a nightmare. However, if you wanted to know about this with NYU, you need to do two separate searches: "NYU" and "sociology" as well as "New York Univerity" and "sociology". Alternatively, you can get fancy and do (NYU|"New York University") and sociology. * is a wildcard, if you think people typed in "soc" instead of "sociology" you can just do "soc*", but you'll get a lot of social work stuff that way. When I applied, I made a spreadsheet of when I could expect to hear back from each school because I am a crazy person like that. I never checked it, I just made it. It often tells you how people were contacted (phone, email), I made a note of that as well. Anyway, if it's a school like Columbia where there's a huge lag between when they accept their candidates and when they reject everyone else, you can check the Results Page periodically and see if someone posted an acceptance. This can tell you whether you got in weeks before you finally get a crumby rejection letter (Columbia is one of the ones with the most notable lag because they have a stand alone MA program that they shunt some of their more promising rejectees towards) because with a place like that with no waitlist, if you don't hear within a day or two of the first two people posting on the results page, you know you didn't get in (I say first two people because occasionally people will find out earlier through backchannel ways, either being contacted by their future adviser or by a past mentor who is buddy-buddy with someone on the ad comm). Good luck!
  13. Ah, you see you're not supposed to be balancing employment with a full-time courseload. You're supposed to be limiting the time you spend on your students, taking what you can out of your courses, and writing, writing, writing. That's what you're supposed to be balancing in there. The biggest shot professor in my department told me, "I tell all my undergraduates to read more, and all my graduate students to write more." Fairly solid advice. Also, I've been repeatedly told by professors to minimize the time I spend on my TAing responsibilities. They're "not important". The same biggest shot professor told me she was nominating me for a graduate student teaching award and then was like, "Not that if you win, it will help you get a job, of course, but you know it would be a nice gold star." Here, most people take 3-4 courses for two years, than 1-2 for another year or two. One of my colleagues definitely took six. It depends on the adviser, one of my friends' advisers was like "Should take fewer classes, finish as quickly as possible [one particular requirement we have in our program] so you can concentrate on your real work." Courses are most useful if 1) to learn methodologies/skills 2) to develop a relationship with a professor 3) to provide a space to write a paper (ideally writing one really good paper for two classes, or continuing work on a paper you wrote last semester). They can be occasionally used to 4) learn the literature or background, but only if it's a tremendous professor (so it's really #2 all over again). Also I guess to fulfill a requirement, but most departments only have very basic requirements. An illustrative story: I told my adviser I wanted to take this class in her other department (she has a joint appointment) and she just looks at me and goes, "Why would you want to take that class? There's nothing you'd learn from her that you couldn't learn out of a book". My favorite academic slam of the year, but also shows what you're expected to get out of classes. I'm a third year taking one course. That's pretty typical of my program (though we're required to take at least three classes through the end of our second year, but these can be "independent studies"). Often they have to lead discussion/recitation sections once a week. At many state schools, TA's straight up teach. They do everything for the class: design the syllabus, teach all the classes, grade the students. It's heavy. I don't know how it works in most sociology programs (I'm at a private university) but an ex who went to Iowa's MFA program was teaching a class her first year. Ditto a friend at CUNY. Teaching and designing a whole class obviously takes much more time than grading midterms and finals. I don't know exactly how it is at a Top Ten public university in the first five years, but I do know that the reason most public schools have longer times to degrees than most private schools (even schools of similar caliber, compare, say, Berkeley to Princeton) is because after year 5 or so people in the public school tend to be teaching a lot (if they aren't RAing on a grant or something).
  14. In my program, which is on the smaller side, since we really only have intro stats (for people who don't know stats) and maybe two random upper level classes, everyone who does serious quant work took most of their stats in other departments and taught themselves a lot of stuff (and when they got stuck, they went to their adviser). The requirement was just that you took a math class in your first two years. People might look at you funny if you wanted to take stats in the econ department, but not if you wanted to take it in the math or stats deparmtents or the CS department (for data-mining related stuff). At least that's how it is in my school--I don't think anyone has taken an econ class. Other places, like especially big schools like Michigan and Wisconsin and Penn State, have really solid in-house quant people who teach solid sequences and you'd probably be encouraged to take some of those first at least (remember, half the point of classes is so you can get to know faculty). And by theory, I meant classical theory not contemporary theory. My theory course was mainly Marx, Weber, Durkheim, then just introducing Tocqueville, Simmel, the Chicago School (Park, Burgess, et al.), Goffman, Garfinkle (ethnomethodology), Merton (middle range theory), Bourdieu, and Foucault, and maybe one or two others. Some might add someone like Benjamin or Braudel, but stuff like Fligstein is definitely not what we learn in a theory class. Everyone is expected to learn Marx, Weber, Durkheim, the Chicago School, etc. and then a little bit of stuff that's happened since 1950, and even less stuff that's happened since Goffman and Garfinkle (and none of the stuff since Goffman or Garfinkle that you really have to know is American, I don't think). Is that typical? Probably roughly typical, though I think most schools will also have a contemporary theory class (some will probably even have a required contemporary theory class, we don't even have an optional one that's regularly offered). FWIW, I believe Fligstein's "isomorphism" comes directly from DiMaggio and Powell's "The Iron Cage Revisited", which is both enitrely theoretical and probably one of the key articles in contemporary sociology, but not what that you'll likely to see in a theory class.
  15. Man, when I applied, I took these few weeks between application and acceptance to catch up on with all my friends and on all the drinking I ignored while applying. Now is the perfect time not to think of grad school.
  16. The boot camp thing is famous in econ programs, and soc programs don't do it nearly the same way. There's no math boot camp here, really. There's a soc theory boot camp/"getting everyone up to speed", but that varies by program. You'll find the intro stats a joke. If you go to a big school, like Wisconsin or Michigan, their demography sequences and stuff will be useful and cool for you I'm sure (and you will get under the hood), but in most places, one is more likely to want to cry from the theory reading than the math. At my school, all the advanced math courses are outside the department(which everyone I've talked to agree is good thing). While our "intro stats" class may be a joke, the people who want to continue on get seriously rigorous training... just in the stats department (occasionally in the poli sci department). Networks stuff is mostly taught to people through mentorship rather than a class, weirdly. Like you're expected to do it... and when you hit a problem, then you go to the professor. That's just how my department works, but I think it's known for independent graduate students rather than graduate students who are broken off a chunk of the professor's pet project. Edit: First year will still be very difficult. I was shocked when I figured out that all of my colleagues were smart. Even at my undergrad school, I thought half the kids were jokes, but here (almost) everyone is really actually smart. That's a change, and you'll find ourself not feeling smart enough (the kids I didn't feel as smart as told me that they didn't feel as smart as me--it's a common thing). You'll be a lot more isolated, probably, than you've been in a while. There are just fewer people around and fewer people you know. You'll be spending way too much time alone with your thoughts, and even if you love being alone with your thoughts (which I do), it's a lot. But it's not like the courses are difficult. In PhD programs, everyone gets A's. You're no longer working to earn a qualification, the grade you get is meaingless but you're learning to impress the professor and to produce things that you think are good enough. It's a very different way of being evaluated and it takes a while to get used to.
  17. Quick note: interdisciplinarity is one of those things (like teaching) that is talked about but not really incentivized for most people. I can pull it off, but in my unprivileged position as a graduate student, I always have to be carefully positioned as "a sociologist in conversation with political scientists", rather than "a scholar", because I ultimately want a job in a sociology department. More deeply, at OP, many people in program (myself included) did not have a background in sociology, myself included. The first year for a lot of us was learning "What the hell did we join on to?" And it's hard. For many people I've talked to in a wide variety of disciplines, the first semester of graduate school is a hard time, and a lonely one especially. Your professional background will begin to matter as you can tie it into more substantive, sociological projects. And it takes time before you can present your ideas "sociologically". No one cared much about my religious studies background (which was an academic background, even) until I could bring the insights in to the language of the discipline. I remember I was in a political science class, and I just quoted a comment by one of my favorite religious studies scholars, and the professor stopped me and was like, "Are you writing about that? Please write about that, that sounds fascinating." So now I'm working on a paper transfering that (humanistic) discourse in sociological (slash social science-y) one. Once you can do that, people will be much more interested in your ideas, I promise. And once you have good ideas (i.e. ideas that you can communicate in the right language), professors will treat you differently. Get through the year. I learned in my first year that all the ideas I had before aren't doable or won't be rewarded, but I was beginning to move forward. I ended my second year with a lot nascent paper idea that I was excited about and that I think will be publishable (and I even have specific ideas of where to publish all of them). One piece of advice that we got the very first week was from a junior faculty member: "If you have any career goal other than teaching at an R1 research university, don't tell us. We want to help you, we want to make you succeed, but we are interested in social reproduction. We obviously think we have made the best choices and want you to make the same choices. I'm not saying that you can't have other career goals, I'm saying don't tell us if you do. You can tell your colleagues if you know them well, but don't tell us because we want to make little versions of ourselves, and if you tell us, you won't necessarily get the attention you deserve. I wish it wasn't this way, but it is." I know a half a dozen people in the department who don't necessarily want to be in an R1 sociology department. Some people want different departments (area studies, film studies, business school, public policy, law school), some people want different careers entirely (political opinion research, journalism, film making). That's fine, and they will by and large succeed, I think, but they won't get support from the faculty advisers for those careers until the faculty advisers know them well. For the different departments, they have generally sought out a person already in those departments who has shown them the ropes. For different careers, these people tend to be very driven and have figured out this stuff on their own. This is possible to do, at least in sociology department, and it's probably relatively easy to do from a sociology department compared to most other sorts of departments. It's not encouraged, though, but don't let that make you feel like it's super-heavily discouraged. What I suggest, basically, is to stick with the program, learn sociology for a year. First semester is hard for everyone--even if the classes aren't hard, emotionally it can just be draining. You're way more isolated with your thoughts than is normal. It can make you feel totally crazy and that's totally the most common thing in the world. See if there are peers you can talk to outloud about this so you don't feel so crazy. You are probably spending way to much time alone with your thoughts and that's totally typical of a first semester. Pick a supportive person as an adviser when you have to, maybe one that has had students go on "non-traditional" career paths. Failing that, pick someone who is just supportive period (often middle-aged women, but by no means exclusively. In general, younger faculty who are still trying to prove themselves may be less receptive to other career paths). Then, in your second year (and if you jump ship, you're going to want to do it after a masters so might as well stick it out for now), see if you can find someone in another school at your university (social work, public policy, whatever) who is 1) "academically rigorous" enough to please people in your department 2) close enough interest to you to mentor you in how to get to where you want to be. Failing that, see if you can develop a relationship with someone at one of those other school. Go to sociological conferences...and also go to your other conferences, too. Read both kinds of journals. You will probably find the most support in your department if you are able to position yourself (at least for now) as "a sociologist who is interested in policy". For example, just tell everyone you're "VERY interested in 'public sociology'" even if you mean "I'm interested in public policy, I guess from a sociological perspective, or something". Just speak to your professors in a language they understand, because, let's be real, you are the one expected to translate for them, they're not expected to translate for you. When you write papers, write what you want, but be willing to throw them a "sociological" bone or two to keep them happy. People do this a lot, actually, but the onus is on you to code-switch and learn how to navigate the various systems.
  18. Haha, by that point it was all button down shirts with hardcore shirts carefully hidden underneath. Turks are Caucausian (according to the census, etc. Persians and all Arabs), but yes, I am actually (non-Turkish) white. A single cartilage piercing (that many people don't notice), not gauges. Also, always hardcore, never punk so hoodie, not denim (never a backpatch). Also, gained a lot of weight in Turkey because I wasn't biking anymore. So to be honest, wrong on almost every account, yet much more close than I'm eager to admit. I feel like I look pretty "average white male academic" in my grooming habit, but you nailed a lot of the semi-hidden things. I've got pockets full of Kleenex and lint and holes where everything important to me just seems to fall right down my leg.
  19. Ditto. It's partly the style of the press--like McCloskey's book for them on economics doesn't mention the "secret sins" until the end. That's why these books are so engaging--they're really essays, not academic articles. He has done empirical, ethnographic work in Madagascar and that's where some of the insights come from. But the press specifically does not really let you footnote. I kept Fragments in my bathroom for months in college because it made great bathroom reading (and I mean that as a compliment). But there's another part of the essay where he talks about that people insist on equality because they know inequality (towards women, for instance, or they know about slavery) and I think it's not just about complete equality but checks on power. For instance, if you are able to take a rock and bash in the big man's head while he's sleeping, that's a pretty effective check on power (if I recall, Graeber mentions that elsewhere). Anyway, it's not a perfect argument, but it is a great essay (it unfolds information gradually in an engaging way of unpeeling), in that, while I didn't agree with it 100%, it opened me up to different ways of thinking. Definitely worth reading in full in the bathroom.
  20. I think it varies by program what's first. I definitely got an email from a program first... telling me that they'd be trying to call me for two days and requesting a working phone number (I was in America while the phone number I gave them was my number in Turkey). They waited to give me details over the phone (it was a conference call with the head of the adcomm and the head of the deparmtnet). So yeah, some programs definitely do call before emailing, but if they can't get ahold of you it's no big deal.
  21. Graeber has a section in Fragments about this, pages 3-7. Start from "It does seem that Marxism holds an affinity with academia that anarchism never will" and read through "and that, of course, is going to get one in far more trouble than anything one could ever write". Link to a PDF of Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology.
  22. I am pretty sure some of those schools above do not do real interviews and the "interviews" were rather just part of the open house or visiting weekend and the applicants were confused. I was admitted to one of the above schools without interview, for example. In most places you are already before visit weekend so those interviews were more "Get to know your potential adviser", I bet. I don't think it's common to interview marginal candidates, even mariginal interviews. This might be rarely done by individual advisers, but it's not common practice even at the schools listed above. There are only a handful of schools that do interviews every year. I almost wrote this in my first response but I get Vanderbilt and Emory a little confused sometimes (cause obviously... they're both private universities in the South) so I could have been wrong about Vanderbilt and just thinking Emory.
  23. I think the same schools interview every year... but it's only a handful (I don't remember if Harvard is one). I believe Vanderbilt is one of the schools that has interviewed in the past. I'd suggest just searching the sociology subforum for "interview" or "interviews" or "interviewing".
  24. I'm not a big social theorist, and some of these are definitely used interchangeably by some people but mean totally different things for other people. Norms--I mainly know norms from International Relations stuff, and I feel like I'm not the best person to get into those. I think these are used (very roughly) as they'd be used in economics. Institutions--ditto, except from Comparative Politics not IR. Still not sociology. I don't think you'd be in horrible shape if you understood them like, say, Acemoglu does. Fields--this comes from Bourdieu, check out wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_%28Bourdieu%29 and http://understandingsociety.blogspot.com/2011/02/bourdieus-field.html. Lately, Fligstein has been trying to build on it. There's a recent article in sociological theory about this. There's also been a lot of discussion on Org Theory about this, which will be useful for understanding the debates. Culture--culture is hard, or it's far too easy. It's the category of all the norms, traditions, traditional roles, rituals, etc. plus a lot of other "cultural junk" put together. At it's worst, culture is the residual category. When you explain away all the conditions like race, class, education, gender, whatever, what's left over is "culture". **That is the worst definition** but it helps me understand what the cultural sociologists are trying to get at. Read Jeffery Alexander's article about the Strong Programme in cultural sociology, that's probably the best introduction to different ways about thinking about "culture". Institutions are what enforce norms. Fields are spaces where action takes place (the setting, as it were). I found Melissa Wilde (et al.'s) article "Religious Economy or Organizational Field? Predicting Bishops' votes at the Second Vatican Council" useful as a place wehre I've seen field applied and I "got it". It's sociology of religion. Steinmetz has a famous article about the colonial state as a field, as well, that some people also love. Culture is kind of "what we do", the accrued junk. Culture is somehwat controversial--I think you read org theory so you know Fabio Rojas recently was like, "Is cultural sociology just some weird luxury?" Anyway, I hope that's a start.
  25. Probably more than half of the people who apply don`t get in touch with professors. Many of them probably shouldn`t have applied because they`re just not a good fit for the school, or have something that obviously disqualifies them (inadequate scores or language training or whatever it might be). Especially in anthropology, you have a lot of people who are unprepared for a PhD program thinking something along the lines of, ``I`d really like to go back to school, maybe in anthropology. I don`t know, I`ve always wanted to study gypsies...`` because they`re unhappy with their current jobs (In the past two years, two separate young women have told me that when they found out I`m in a sociology PhD program). That said, when I applied, I got really positive feedback from one professors in particular. He assured me `You`re exactly the kind of applicant we`re looking for`, etc. Loved my project. I didn`t get in. That doesn`t mean he didn`t want me--I know at that school, maximum one person from that subfield gets in a year (this was in a religion department). I did get in somewhere else, though. Definitely apply if it`s a school you want to be at. Yes, it will be competitive, but all the top schools will be competitive. You just have to throw your hat in the ring.
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