jacib

Just so this is all done with full knowledge, the potential adviser that seemed most excited by my contact (I remember positive words and at least one exclamation point; it was a few years ago, but I believe he was also DGS so presumably on the adcomm.) was also at a school where I ultimately didn't get in. FWIW.

It's funny that everyone keeps mentioning "passions"; it seems to be a word we only use when talking about new lovers, failing relationships, and career advice. We end up acting like if you're not passionate about your work, there's something wrong with you. It's work. There was an interesting article in the Times not too long ago called "Follow a Career Passion? Let It Follow You" which makes the argument maybe not everyone's passions correlate with what they do for work, and instead, "The traits that lead people to love their work are general and have little to do with a job’s specifics. These traits include a sense of autonomy and the feeling that you’re good at what you do and are having an impact on the world." However, he continues, "These traits can be found in many jobs, but they have to be earned. Building valuable skills is hard and takes time." The write emphasizes it's the steps taken after heading down one career path or another that matter, rather than simply choosing a path based on some preexistant, undying "passion". Rather than follow your passion, think about what's important for you. For some of my friends, a huge salary is very important and they've got the education and are willing to work the long hours to get that for a few years. For some of my friends, finishing at five and not taking work home is important. For at least one of my friends, doing something emotionally fulfilling is important so he's using his econ degree at non-profits instead of in finance (where he worked before). For me, autonomy and being able to set my own schedule are things that are important to me. Even when making these considerations though, I agree with the writer of the above article that it's very often not the career path you choose to go down, but how you choose to navigate that path that matters most.

If both parties have a smart phones, the app Viber is free and works quite well (that's how I keep in touch with friends in Turkey--it's especially nice because it let's me text them, too, like I could when I stilled lived in the country. It also can work on wifi signal in addition to cell phone signal). There are other similar apps as well, so if you're not satisfied with Viber, there might be ones you and your friends like more. For calling other types of cell phones in Turkey, Penny Talk was the best deal that we found a few years ago and my family just kept adding money to the account. Calling card plans like that can be quite affordable; shop around and there are some good deals. It might actually be that it makes the most sense to buy two different calling cards, one for Somalia, one for Indonesia. I think we just googled a bunch of things like "cheap calls turkey" and "cellphone calling card turkey" for like half an hour until we got a few offers and then just chose the cheapest.

There was also about this in the Sociology subform recently. I imagine the two disciplines admit people in similar ways with regard to professor relationships (with the primary difference being that Soc's subfields are less well defined than Poli Sci's).

Joss, check out from a few weeks ago; I think it's probably a pretty good summary of the various opinions on the topic. The tl;dr: it's absolutely not necessary but probably won't hurt and may (in rare instances) help. Most likely way to help: you find out someone key is retiring and you save an application fee. I'd add, "if you do email, be considerate in terms of length". Regardless, the graduate coordinator is probably not the person to contact about this. Also, I accidentally voted down IowaGuy the other day; glad he's back at neutral (you can't go back and vote the opposite direction after a day or two anymore like you used to be able to).

Rules allowing, maybe you'll consider posting in the spring or next fall with what you've learned from your experience! Oy, good luck to you reading all those applications and writing samples. I envy the institutional knowledge you'll gain, I don't envy the extra work you're taking on.

If you apply to multiple disciplines, do not indicate this to the programs. Schools want "serious" applicants, and publically considering any other options is a sign of unseriousness, for better or worse. I applied to five religion programs and five sociology programs, but I wasn't forthcoming about it to schools because I didn't have to be. On all my religion applicatoins, I listed the four other schools with religious programs I was applying to, likewise on my sociology apps. At one school, I wanted to apply to both a religion and sociology program, so I wrote the DGS of a sociology program asking if this was okay and he straight out said, in exactly the language other professors had warned me about, "There is no institutional problem with applying to multiple departments* here. However, in our department we would consider that the sign of an unserious candidate." (*It is a problem some places--Berekely, for example, I know forbids it). Perhaps a better strategy might be to ask the professor if they have historically worked with faculty in the other department, and faculty in the other department if they've worked closely with students in your department. Your situation might be borderline exceptional, however ( though I still say "better say than sorry, keep your cards close to your chest"). Tom Pepinsky at Cornell's Government Department has decent blog post about applying to graduate schools and the most directly relevant bit says says: While interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is often praised, in practice students in the social sciences are strongly encouraged to work within their discipline. There are some exceptions: social movement scholars frequently work across political science and sociology, formal political theorists frequently work with economists, methodologists will often work with statisticians. The point is, if you really care about history rather than political science, it’s better to apply to our (excellent) History Department. This point may seem obvious, but many applicants appear to miss it. I'd add to this there's various degrees of crossover between political science and sociology in organizations, social networks, historical-comparative (especially related to origins of states, welfare states, revolutions, etc.), ethnic identity/ethnic conflict, social capital/trust (less crossover than you'd think, here), and religion in the public sphere in addition to social movements. I found, though, personally as I went through the application process, where I belonged became clear to me, just by how people reacted to my project as I pitched my proposal professors at different departments. At religion departments, I got a lot of "Wow that seems cool I want to read that... but I can't be your adviser for that." Maybe you'll get the same sense. Consider also you'll have to read Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, Robert Putnam, John Padgett and Mancur Olsun no matter what, but, beyond teaching the intro courses, do you want to read Hobbes or Durkheim? Do you want to have peers interested in game theory and rational choice, or do you want to have peers interested in gender and Bourdieu? Of course, you can find political scientists who use gender, and sociologists who use rational choice (Michael Hechter, whaddup), but it matters for the types of critiques you're kind of required to anticipate and address in your work. I should add, in some places, it's quite easy to work with one departments while being firmly grounded in another. My advisor does political sociology and many of her closest colleagues are in the political science department rather than our department, so when I want to take class there (and if I want to have one of them on my committee) her name hooks me up big time with three or four of the faculty over there. I'm sure that's not rare. I know I belong in the sociology department, clearly, not in the political science department. Nevertheless, the presence of one member in the political science department influenced my choise to apply to the sociology department here (he was recommended, incidentally, by another sociologist). For me, it was useful to realize that I wanted to be "a sociologist who could be read in the first (or middle) three weeks of political science course" (in the ethnicity literature, think people like Gellner, Brubaker, Anderson, etc) not "a political scientist who could be read in the last (or middle) three weeks of a sociology course."

At my program, back of the envelope calculations make me think: probably 1/4 or fewer came straight out of undergrad somewhere around 1/2 had a graduate degree of some kind before coming to the program (including applied degrees like JD or MPP and academic degrees not necessarily related to their study here) if we include people who have never been out of school (that is they went bachelors-masters at another school-doctorate here) maybe 1/3 didn't take time off. Almost no one had publications before coming here. Maximum 10-20%, but even that might be overestimating. I think every cohort had someone straight out of undergrad (sometimes more than one). I think every cohort had someone over thirty (sometimes more than one). There's a real diversity of people accepted just like there's a really diversity of people applying. These numbers are estimates and based mostly on my cohort, and the cohorts above and below me, which isn't a huge number of people, and while I think this holds true for my program as a whole, I'm not sure it does. There are a couple of reasons why these results might not be typical: We take a lot of non-American students, and the clear majority of these students got some sort of graduate degree (some got PhDs) in their native country before coming to the U.S. We are probably a majority qualitative program--I get the impression that a lot of people who work with numbers are more likely to not take time off, and when they do take time off, it's a smaller amount of time. I also think, more generally, because certain things about how our program is structured, the adcoms (perhaps rightly) tends to prefer older, presumably more mature and self-directed/self-motivated candidates. I don't think other schools have as skewed as number as we do. Everyone should have a plan B when applying to PhD programs, of course, there's no such thing as a safety school in PhD programs, I tend to strongly encourage people to take time off because that was important for me, etc. but maybe you're also experiencing "imposter syndrome" early. You're impressed a lot with how these people look on paper. Trust me, when we got here, we were all impressed with how each other looked on paper too and over the first six months of the program all but one person in my cohort admitted that they felt underqualified. But also trust me, we all had things that other people found impressive and intimidating that we ourselves found mundane. We knew our own qualifications so they were just normal. Some were impressed that I had taught myself a foreign language but I was like "but that's a minimum requirement for my project", just like I was impressed by people who could do time series and social network analysis, to which they'd reply "but that's a minimum requirement" for my project and I was impresssed by some people who have many contacts in the fields they want to study and they said "but that's a minimal requiment for my project". Don't compare yourself to others, but ask your self: i. is the question I'm asking interesting? ii. am I (uniquely?) qualified to (continue getting the training and experience necessary) to try and answer that question? When applying (and to stay sane once you start going to graduate school as well), you have to look at your qualifactions from the outside and think about your strongest qualitites, not fixate on how you might be inferior to other candidates. Honestly, all you can do is make the best application possible so really work on that. If you're worried that you might not look ready because of your age, for example, show that you are ready by demonstrating knowledge of the revelent debates in your field or whatever.

It's possible, but you'd need to really show the committees that you belong in political science and definitely not history. Tom Pepinsky at Cornell has a pretty blog post about applying to graduate schools and the most directly relevant bit says says: Foreign applicants, especially, should also familiarize themselves with the nature of the research done by the comparative politics and international relations faculty here, to ensure that a Ph.D. in the Government department is right for you. (It’s not right for everyone, and that’s just fine.) While interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is often praised, in practice students in the social sciences are strongly encouraged to work within their discipline. There are some exceptions: social movement scholars frequently work across political science and sociology, formal political theorists frequently work with economists, methodologists will often work with statisticians. The point is, if you really care about history rather than political science, it’s better to apply to our (excellent) History Department. This point may seem obvious, but many applicants appear to miss it. Make sure your application (and probably your interests) isn't better suited for the history department, because clearly this is an issue for a lot of candidates. What theories will you be testing, what issues will you be address? Theda Skocpol's take on revolutions and her take on the rise of the welfare state in America are very different from how a historian would deal with these issues, just like Robert Putnam's work on the Italian state bridges the literatures on state making and social capital while John Padgett is now using 15th century Florence as a test case for theories about organizational innovation. Your project needs to fit into the existent literature, it can't just be "about politics". And you probably need to work harder than a kid with an undergrad in poli-sci to make an argument that your work is political science, not just about politics.

Oh, also for some reason it is rarely mentioned on this forum, but Fabio Rojas (a sociology professor at Indiana) has a $3 e-book called "Grad School Rulz" that a lot of people have found worth reading (I only found out about it after applying and I showed it to one of my professors who called the parts on tenure "totally wrong"; I think he'd probably have the same assessment of the sections on grad school applications). He's also a big blogger at Org Theory, which is probably the most read blog written by sociologists, and if you look through the posts tagged "Grad School Rulz", you might find more advice. You can look at the first 10% (a lot of which doesn't actually get to applications at all) for free!

Please don't do that. As a current graduate student, I can say I do periodically get an unpersonalized email from a prospective student (and it's always clear that it's unpersonalized, even with generic phrases like "your research interests seem fascinating") and they annoy me and they annoy my colleagues. If you do email people, email one or two current students who have research interests similar to yours. And don't just ask them how they got in, because why would they tell a stranger that? Ask them how the program is, who they work with, how it is for some one with your research interests, and maybe ask them what they think the program is looking for in someone with your research interests and more broadly. I know for example my department is more interested in "creative, imaginative" work than it is in work that fits squarely into mainstream sociology of X (we have very few people doing straight strat, race, or gender work here, for example). And I believe my adviser, more than others, cares about languages (none of her current students are monolingual, though one who recently graduated was, and most of her students are non-Americans so that might be coincidence) than most. But you should know that most schools are A good application at Duke would probably be a good application at UNC or Northwestern or Arizona or wherever. As for the least important part of the application, the GRE and scores, again this is probably broadly the same at Duke and peer institutions in the Top-25. but if you go to "results search" on the top of the page, you can actually search for Duke Sociology. Any result with a little red rombus you can click on and that'll show you their "stats". It's a small self-selected sample, but here's what people reported: Admitted: GPA: 3.8, 3.1, 3.5 GRE-V: 640, 660, 169 GRE-Q: 710, 770, 156 Rejected: GPA: 4.0, 3.76, 4.0 GRE-V: 710, 680, 610 GRE-Q: 740, 800, 670 Waitlisted: GPA: 3.68 GRE-V: 620 GRE-Q: 780 As you can see, the GREs and GPAs are high for all applicants in this non-random sample (probably a little bit higher than average, because people who do well are probably more likely to self report), but notice there is basically no difference between the kids who were rejected or waitlisted and the kids who were accepted accepted. If anything the former have better stats than the latter! Just concentrate on writing a good application, you can find examples of statements of purpose (or SOPs) around this website and you will probably know what your most appropriate writing sample is (a section of your undergraduate thesis if you wrote one, or another research paper of some kind).

I happened across this advice for prospective graduate students that seemed relevant to two recent posts ( and ). It's by a professor in the Government Department at Cornell, but I think it applies mostly to people applying in sociology as well. What I think is most useful is where he quotes from a computational linguist's words of advice that, again, apply to prospective sociology graduate students as well: I think every applicant should try to imagine what it’s like for the admissions committee in an active research department. Every good department will get far more applicants than they have positions available, so they will select the applicants that are most likely to succeed in doing innovative research and completing their PhD. Putting it very crassly, there’s a huge difference between undergraduate and graduate education in the US. Undergrads pay for the privilege of attending college, and your education and edification is the main goal of the undergraduate experience. But as a graduate student … you can generally expect to be fully supported financially while you are studying, i.e., you are paid to study, and the relationship between student and institution changes accordingly. While we hope that you’ll be personally enriched and enlightened by your graduate education, this is not the reason why you’re being paid to study. Instead, we expect that you’ll advance scientific knowledge to the benefit of all society. Of course you may have personal goals for going to graduate school and it’s fine to mention those in your application, but your primary goal in your application should be to demonstrate that as a PhD student you will contribute to and advance our scientific understanding of the field you’re studying. (emphasis added) The computional linguist's advice continues: In general, faculty want graduate students that can do ground-breaking research and complete a PhD in a timely fashion in the research areas they are interested in. How do you convince the faculty that you can do this? Well, first of all you need to demonstrate that you understand the field well enough to know what you're getting into. It's a waste of everybody's time if a student decides after a year or so that they don't really want to work in the field they have been admitted to study. More than that, you need to demonstrate that you are honestly interested in the field you are applying to study. There are easier ways of making a living than as a research scientist (think of the ``1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration'' Edison quote) so we're looking for someone that's sufficiently inspired and motivated to actually stick at the research long enough to get something substantial done. Second, you have to demonstrate that you have the technical ability to work in the field of your choice. Notice that I said ability; you don't need to demonstrate that you already have all of the skills you'll need, as you'll get training in graduate school. But again, it's a waste of everyone's time to admit a graduate student and discover a year or so later that they can't program a computer or do statistics or whatever, so if skills like those are important to your field, you definitely need to demonstrate that you have the ability to learn those skills. And a very good way to do this is to take a couple of courses in these areas and do well in them. (It doesn't hurt to have a professor from these areas write a letter of recommendation for you). So you should make clear in your application that you have the skills, or the ability to learn the skills, that you'll need to do your research. Finally, you should have a moderately specific idea of the kind of research you want to do. It should fit in well with the research program of at least one of the faculty members in the department you're applying to (I discuss this elsewhere on this page). Your interests should be neither too vague (you should know the field well enough to know what the important issues in the field are) nor too specific (as you are coming to learn from and work with faculty). I think most of that same advice applies to sociology. Going back to the original political scientist: Admission to Cornell’s Government Ph.D. program is fairly competitive, especially in the subfields of Comparative Politics and International Relations (chances are that if you’re contacting me your interests fall into one of these areas). We average between 0 and 1 students per year whose research focuses on Southeast Asia. This means that you should apply broadly. Foreign applicants, especially, should also familiarize themselves with the nature of the research done by the comparative politics and international relations faculty here, to ensure that a Ph.D. in the Government department is right for you. (It’s not right for everyone, and that’s just fine.) While interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is often praised, in practice students in the social sciences are strongly encouraged to work within their discipline. There are some exceptions: social movement scholars frequently work across political science and sociology, formal political theorists frequently work with economists, methodologists will often work with statisticians. The point is, if you really care about history rather than political science, it’s better to apply to our (excellent) History Department. This point may seem obvious, but many applicants appear to miss it. With the caveat that sociology is generally more open to interdisciplinary work (though it depends on the department), I think there are a couple of key things to take from this, which mirrors the advice that I got from professors when I was applying (and I talked to a lot of them--my father is a sociologist and made me talk to several of his peers). I was told multiple times that I needed to seem like a "serious student". Being a "serious student" included things that you would expect, such as actually knowing what the faculty at the school you're applying to study and showing an awareness of some of the relevent literature, but it also included things that I didn't necessarily expect, like not mentioning to sociology programs that I was also applying to religion programs (with the same research question)--and in fact, the one school I did mention this fact to, they specifically told me this would be in their eyes the mark of an "unserious" student. This helps to put in perspective what they're looking for across the board: admissions committees are primarily interested in your potential to finish the PhD program, which includes consideration of how you'd fit into the program, and your ability to do groundbreaking work that will make them look good.

But basically yes, for now, they cannot take students until they have a permanent position.

Visiting professor is by nature a temporary appointment. There's a difference between "Visiting [Full] Professor" and "Visiting Assistant Professor". VAP's are usually a kind of adjunct or sometimes similar to a postdoc w/ teaching. Some people see them as having an inside track for any tenure track positions that open up, but there's no guarantee. They're generally in a precarious situation in terms of employment and can't take students, are often over worked and underpaid. Visiting senior professors can be on sabbatical, trying to make their old department jealous, in basically a try out phase, or waiting for a position to open up. It really depends. You can write and ask them about their research, and maybe where they'll be in the future, but I would guess there's a high chance that they themselves don't know.

As for AaronM's thing, I think in some (probably rare) cases the Ad Comm might reach out to a prospective adviser and say "What do you think of this kid? You want him?" (I suspect this is the case especially if they're doing something where there could be the only one to adviser: there's only one ethnographer in the department, or there's only one professor who does computational sociology, or only one who has technical skills in social network analysis, something like that--but I don't know, that's just a guess). Also, it can give them an idea of yield. And as for xdarthveganx's thing and madarin.orange's thing, at most sociology programs I know of, you're expected to want to work with someone specific from the get-go. People are usually admitted with the adcom knowing who their adviser will be or suspecting that their adviser will be one of two or so faculty members. No matter what, everyone must make it clear who they would be interested in working with and where they fit in with the school in their statement of purpose. That's a must, but I don't think emailing the person or people who you want to work with is strictly necessary in sociology (though I'd encourage it). Oh and I totally agree with faculty's statement that the emails are a straight up inconvenience for faculty members. Be aware of that. As a grad student, I get some emails from eager students--and even though they often seem like students who aren't the type of students who get in to this department, but I feel duty bound to respond to them thoughtfully regardless. Some of them are loooong, too. These things, if you do send them, should be very short, and the professor should be able to answer all the questions you ask in a line or two. Your email should probably be one paragraph, two might be pushing it unless it's just "short bio/introduction paragraph, short research paragraph". And never ever ask anything that can be found on the website. Sometimes it makes sense, when you're worried about something, to email the DGS and not a specific faculty member.

I think this is one of those things that varies. It probably won't help you, but it also probably won't hurt you either. For me, I had a somewhat obscure topic so I emailed lots of people to ask, "Do you think you could advise a thesis like this, do you think I'd be a fine fit for the department?" Some were very excited and said, "Yes, you are exactly the kind of student we're looking for," (those are places I didn't end up getting in, incidentally) some said, "Actually, your idea sounds awesome, but I don't think I could advise you. Sorry, bro." (I didn't bother to apply to those places, but there were several like that). I didn't email place where I already knew I'd fit in. The place I did get in, however, which was a good fit for me, my then-future, now-current adviser ended up scolding me for not emailing first. When I got admitted by phone, they said, "Well, I read your application and thought, 'This boyis perfect for me... why didn't he email me first?'" And I giggled a little and they said again, "Well, why didn't you?" and I managed to stammer something out about "already knowing that I'd be a good match that I didn't think I needed to check" or something. Long story short, I'd guess many professors won't care, some might care (and, like with my adviser, even in those cases it might not make a difference), and some may just tell you they're not taking students (another professor told me not to apply to his program because he was retiring in three years... but I should apply to his friend's program if these were my interests) or not actually taking students like you (some people list "sociology of x" as a subfield they're interested in, but really don't ever work with students in that subfield).

There's a 2010 Annual Review article called "Anthropologies of the United States" which is probably of interest to you. I forgot that anthropology is organized so regionally and forgot that there are several regional Annual Review pieces each issue.

It really depends not only on the school but on the individual on the committee. My old man is a professor and when I was applying, he asked his colleagues at top departments for advice about my GRE scores and got answers One school talked about "Score in high 600s and low 700s do more instant attention", one gave precise means for each category and then said, "Of course, what really matters is the writing sample and statement of purpose." One wanted the precentages to be a certain way (clearly guided by "feeling" if it's good or not), two gave precise numbers. As for one good and one bad score, one said, addressing you question directly, "Generally, it's a question of balancing one thing against the other [...] One low sore won't hurt; two low scores need to have something pretty outstanding to counter balance; a bad GRE and a less than stellar record will have a hard time, though we admitted one such person who won a prize for the best senior thesis." Since then I've developed my own senior colleagues, and I know one who emphasizes the GRE heavily ("With massive grade inflation, it's the only way you can objectively compare students across programs") and another faculty member who I'm sure barely glances at. As one of my dad's colleagues said, "I have found much to my dismay that recent admissions committees vary widely in how much they weight GRE's and sadly enough, individuals also vary." I think ultimately, that's what needs to be kept in mind the most. I feel I got in because the committee was just right for me my year, but I didn't get in to lower ranked schools where I was equally well qualified. The admissions process is a lot more stochastic than we are comfortable admitting, I think. On a similar note, one of my favorite academic bloggers, Chris Blattman (economist looking at violence in a poli sci department), has a recent post about grade inflation at schools. The relevant bit is: Well, [for] grad schools and some grant competitions [GPA will matter]. Here students who come from schools with lower GPAs probably have a slight disadvantage. All the times I have sat on admissions committees, I haven’t a clue whether a school is inflated or not. There are too many. And we do look at GPA. But because I know there is heterogeneity I don’t take it too seriously, which is why I think the advantage is narrow. I know my dad tries to know, when he does admissions, exactly which schools are inflated and which ones aren't. Likewise, with the GRE, I know some people who will argue "What the GRE is testing is arbitrary and unrelated to the work of being a sociologist, I don't take it too seriously once we're over department/university minimums," and some people who will argue, "Because of the heterogenity in GPA, we need to take GRE very seriously." It really depends on who you get on your committee. I agree with xdarthveganx that a lot of schools are only looking for minimums, but some I bet some schools do look for excellence in one category; this is especially imaginable if admissions are very political decisions by different factions in the department (demographers need high Q, but V is less important; ethnographers need high V, but Q is less important). In some cases (like my case at the school that admitted me, I believe), a higher GRE will get you looked at more quickly. But overall, because of the capriciousness of individual whim, it would be impossible to give any accurate hard and fast notion of how any of the quantitative aspects of the application will be looked at.

I can speak for sociological ethnographies. Two of the hottest ethnographers in sociology right now are Alice Goffman (check out her article called "On the Run"; the book isn't out yet) and Matt Desmond (On the Fireline has become something that every young ethnographer is supposed to have read). Shamus Khan's Privilege just won the C. Wright Mills award (which is a big deal in sociology) and is awesome. Mario Small's Villa Victoria (2004 and not pure ethnography) is also talked about a lot, as is Blue Chip Black (2007), with some people finding Villa Victoria "a little thin". Nikki Jones's Between Good and Ghetto (2010) and Courtney Bender's the New Metaphysicals (2010) are both talked a lot about, as well, and I've heard good things about both of them. You'll notice, though, if you read any of them, ethnographies by sociologists are written differently from ethnographies by anthropologists. Especially for book-length urban ethnographies or ethnographies dealing with class explicitly, there's been a growing trend to try to make them less technical as part of a clear effort to try to open them up to a wider audience (a "policy audience", if you would--"public sociology" is considered very hot right now), while anthropological ethnographies have tended to engage deeper with critical theorists and a vocabulary of neoliberalism. There's a lot of overlap, of course, but if you want a specifically anthropological ethnography, these books might not be what you want. I thought On the Make had only one good chapter. If you read Venkatesh, go for Off the Books, not Gang Leader for a Day. Oh, Body and Soul by Loic Wacquant is methodologically and analytically weird, but it's widely read, and the kind of sociology an anthropologist might be more into (very reflexive--Loic Wacquant is Bourdieu's American ambassador). As for anthropology, I'll second Msafiri and say I heard a lot of good things about Karen Ho's book. I haven't read Graeber's Direct Action: An Ethnography, but I've enjoyed his other works, so that might be another one that's specifically anthropological. You might also want to check out this post from the anthro blog Savage Minds.

So globalization can be more of a buzz word than a concrete subdiscipline. Economic concerns are often at the heart of the more formal globalization research (look at the "World Systems/Globalization" comps reading list for Arizona's department for example: it's mostly very Immanuel Wallerstein/World Systems based stuff). If you want to do work on identity, look up things on transnationalism--that probably the side of Globalization that you're a better fit for. If you can sell yourself to a more World Systems audience, there are a couple of schools that still have healthy World Systems programs. Since there are so many competing little things here, you may find yourself really tailoring your sales pitch to every school, which is something that I also had to do because I am interested in a part of sociology that sometimes falls through the cracks. In some places, you find yourself selling yourself as a purely cultural sociologist. In other places, your statement will emphasize immigration. In some places, ethnicity and identity. In others, globalization and transnationalism. And then, maybe there are a few other ideosyncratic schools where you'll emphasize you're interested in other things (If you apply to UCLA, you might emphasize you're interested in nationalism rather than any transnationalism). A lot of schools you'll probably emphasize two of the above for two different professors. I can tell you right now that sociology of sport is unfairly marginalized. I don't think anyone doing sociology of sport teaches at a top 25 school, but maybe there are a few exceptions. As for identity, it's quite fashionable still, but Rogers Brubaker's article "Beyond 'Identity'" (with the historian Fredrick Cooper) is worth reading. Studying "identity" or "ethnicity" in a sociology department is very annoyingly divided into people who study ethnicity and nationalism (people like Brubaker), and people who study ethnicity and race (who mainly study immigrant minorities in the U.S.). The former think the latter are quite provincial in their outlook, and the latter barely acknowldge the former exists. Maybe one place to start, beyond talking to your undergraduate professors for advice, is looking at the different ASA sections: see who are officiers in at least 1) Global and Transnational (notice the World Systems-y people) 2) International Migration (this is maybe a good place to sell yourself, depending) 3) Racial and Ethnic Minorities (notice that almost everyone just studies the U.S., with a few other high immigrantion societies like France, Brazil, and New Zealand occasionally being mentioned. Nothing on indigenous ethnic minorities in places like China or Malawi or Burma.). Then there's also 4) cultural sociology, but the section might be too big and diffuse to be of much use to you, but probably worth a look (look at what wins awards and try to imagine what couldn't be nominated) and 5) Political Economy of the World System which is probably not for you, and generally a shrinking field. Go to each sections' website, see who has won awards recently, who are officers; see where those people teach, and if they're young, where they got degrees. The Global and Transnational section even puts who was on the awards committees for some years, so you know those are well-respected scholars in the subfield. Get a sense of what kind of work is valued, and where.

I don't fully know exactly what you mean by built environment as natural environment (I can imagine that meaning several things) but I can say one of the biggest names in environmental sociology is Michael M Bell at Madison. He literally wrote the book on the subject (An Invitation to Environmental Sociology) and his first book, Childerly, is a lot about the question of how people define and understand nature. At NYU, Moloch and Jerrolmack's work might interest you. Maybe maybe Klinenberg's work on disaster is for you as well. You could certainly sell yourself as a fit there if you were inclined to. It also might make sense to sell yourself at some places as an urban sociologist interested in environmental sociology rather than an environmental sociologist interested in urban environments. If you're passionate about something, you can often teach yourself most of the niche stuff anyway (I'm doing sociology of religion in a department where there are no real sociologists of religion to train me, but plenty of people backing me up on my other interests, which actually works out pretty well).

As for the "battle" between east-west, if you're talking about like Huntington-type ideas, I can't think of any sociology departments I could recommend for that. If you mean like immigration issues (East Asians in the US, South Asians in the UK, Arabs in France, or Turks in Germany), there are many places that you could study that. If you're interested in a slightly wider focus or a focus on non-Western countries, you could look at programs that do "sociology of globalization". In my experience, sociologists are generally more comfortable speaking in terms of globalization than post-colonialism or a battle between east and west.

Post-Colonialism isn't really as dominant in sociology as it is in, say, Anthropology, in large part because research is so U.S. focused. I'm doing research on Turkey, which most people would call non-Western and it hasn't really been an issue either way. There's a push in sociology of religion to "provincialize America" just as there is a push "provincialize Europe" in post-colonial discourse, but generally those who are interested in things like that within sociology still work within an established "sociology of ___". Like Fred Wherry has that book with research on markets in Thailand, Cihan Tuğal has that book on political mobilization in Turkey, etc. but they're doing economic sociology, political sociology, etc., not "post-colonial" sociology as such.

The blog Org Theory has in the past asked its readers to highlight prestigious programs in strat/work, education, org studies, culture, urban, soc psych, demography, political sociology, health, gender, race and ethnicity. I've been around long enough to know that that will be useful to these boards because everyone asks, "Hey what are good programs in....?" These aren't "rankings" but rather just a listing of top programs (or more specifically, programs that have several members who teach on that subject). If your favorite subfield isn't listed, go to this page and comment, and they might do the same thing for whatever little tiny area you care about. Already requested: economic sociology (x2), mathematical sociology, org studies (again), environmental, urban (again), globalization, religion, sexualities, ethnography. If you want to know about another one, run and request it in the comments! http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2012/08/18/more-soc-phd-programs/

Has the 09-10 stipends for Berkeley, Brown, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, Penn, Princeton, Stanford, Yale. Private schools in general tend to offer a little more but be in more expensive areas. On that link above is also a chart of adjustments for every place with a graduate school I could think of using a "cost of living" calculator. The 2009-10 stipend numbers above are already a bit out of date, though. Summers historically have been funded separately, but like three-four years ago Yale started guaranteeing five summers worth of funding, so they can (and do) say "25k a year for five years!" instead of "21k a year for five years, plus four summers at 4k". See how much better the first one sounds? At least two other elite private schools have followed suit already and I expect that to become the new normal at top private schools over the next 10-15 years. Public schools generally don't have the same monetary as private schools, though. Example: the school I go to offered to fly me out for visiting day. Up to $300 is what they were offering for Americans, but since I was living abroad, they offered me the international student compensation of $500. I said that wouldn't cover it, plus I might not be able to get time off work so I might not go. The chair immediately said, "Well, it'd be a shame if you couldn't come just for financial reasons. If you can get the time off work, book your ticket, we'll cover the whole thing." I'm not sure at a public university there'd be the same money just lying around. At my school, there are institutes, centers, working groups, seminars, etc that have money (one of them is currently funding my working abroad as we speak) that I didn't know existed when I applied. Fringe benefits are like that, in my experience, catch as catch can. I don't know the details of every school's packages, but I can guess what school sciencegirl is talking about because I've only heard of one program which offers such expansive and established fringes like she described (someone in my cohort also got in there and I believe used those fringes to negotiate a "computer fund" for their first year at my school). You'll worry about that after you get in though; the current graduate school students will explain how money works on visiting days. Spoiler alert: I haven't heard any one at a top-20 sociology complain that they were thinking of taking loans out because money was tight, even at Columbia and NYU. Whatever they're offering, it is enough to live on, but conversely probably not enough to let you save much (unless you get bomb outside funding like the NSF or are really dedicated to saving). The biggest thing to keep in mind is that at many private schools, as a TA you are a glorified grader (minimal time spent) whereas at public schools teaching (often intro classes) takes up a lot more of your time (especially after year five). From everything I've heard, things like that are why Berkeley, Madison, Michigan have longer years-to-degree than Harvard, Chicago, Princeton, despite all being peer institutions. Oh,NYU's is an outlier because they fund TAing completely differently--they're paid like adjuncts. I think it's a weird legacy of NYU's years of union-busting graduate students' attempts to organize.