jacib

So my year, we made a post called " and I think it's a good synthesis for all the things we learned. And then last year, I made another post called " Looking back on them, they're great, in part because there's so much agreement and so much disagreement on what is important and works and is necessary. Take a look at both of those and then post what you know now that you wish you had known at a different point in the application process. And now 2013 cycle kids reading this, your job is to point people who are new to the board to these threads so they can benefit from the collected wisdom of three generations. Also, this is a good chance to link to other threads that you've found useful . If I can point you to just two pieces of ancient history (and I can, because I get to say the first thing): 1) a bit on the (from college professors). Everyone freaks out about GRE scores because they're the only thing we can use to compare amongst ourselves. 2) a my year applying. What about you, what worked for you applying to schools? What do you wish you could change in retrospect? What advice and knowledge have you found most useful? What have you discovered yourself?

Back to the OP, I think sciencegirl and I are coming from the same place, but I wouldn't say as strongly as her not to go. I am just saying fully understand why other people might say it's a bad idea. Understand the cons of it, because you understand the pros pretty well it seems. Then make your decision. I went to one of those fancy elite places undergrad and there were definitely people who stayed in the department. I didn't follow to know if it hurt them on the job market, but it definitely isn't completely isolated to one department. And I definitely have also seen more than one Harvard BA, Harvard PhD, but those seem to be mostly from like 30 years ago. And letter writing for tenure: I just found out this year it can be worse. So first the department evaluates your work and votes on you and if you get approved then it goes to the next step (there can be two to three steps total, depending on if the graduate school and the university evaluate your separately, I think). But if it's a close vote, or like the Dean or whoever just doesn't think you're right for the process, they can put the thumb on the scale and ask for more letters (or letters from tougher people or whatever), so, from someone, I think my father who's a professor who's asked to write these letters from time to time but maybe from a kid in my department, I heard a rumor of a dean who asked for twenty letters for a tenure candidate. If there are twenty letters, that increases the odds that one will be "Meh", and the dean can point to that one in declining to give tenure. Alternatively, if they're a big shot in training and the department loves them, and the dean thinks they're good for the school or whatever, there will be fewer and gentler letter writers. It's a really weird process, apparently, and one that can be really opaque.

Yo, I go to a good school. I think in my cohort, the cohort above me, and the cohort below me, there were a total of like two to four publications for the 20 or so people in the program. It's not so important to have a publication to get into graduate school. What is important is to have a clear, well designed statement of purpose that matches your skills. I'm getting to the grant writing stage and what they always tell us is "present your research in such a way that you are the only person qualified to possibly do it" (make sure you sell your language skills). There's a few people here who have more conventional business backgrounds--they're writing about economic sociology. We just admitted a kid this year with a physics background, he's doing interesting networks stuff. One kid has a hard science background and is studying science policy in a country whose language she speaks. We've admitted a lot of lawyers in the past few years, most of whom have projects that in some way involve the law. Whatever you do, if you can make your engineering relevant, do so. Make your project about expertise, or trumpet your quant skills, something, but put your engineering in your statement of purpose and how it will make you a better sociology in such a way. Even if you really want to write about Iranian politics and you don't see the connection exactly, make a connection you can sell in your statement of purpose. Talk about how your quant skills will help that, how engineering got you interested in standards and expertise and now you're interested in how the ulema establishes the legitimacy of their rule through their monopolizing religious expertise. Or how with your fancy engineering quant skills you want to learn how do a network analysis so you can study how the leadership of Iran has X, Y, and Z'd, or how the government orchestrated systematically broke down the protestors' networks (network failure is a topic some people are interested in), and what would more resilient protest networks look like, whatever. Your statement of purpose for you is probably the most important important part--you need to sell yourself as a serious sociologist, capable of asking good, focused and interesting research questions. Yes, make sure to mention your engineering thesis, definitely in your CV, but probably also as half a sentence in your statement (everyone will read your statement, but who knows if everyone will read your CV). You don't need to make that your writing sample and obviously you shouldn't. And randomly, I do not know why people are saying (most kinds of) book chapters probably do count as "original research". I don't know who said that, but they're probably more legitimate than the bachelor's thesis I wrote that was the major research on my resume. They count less professionally because they're just not peer reviewed; you could write any old thing in them.

Just to clarify, I meant "affirmative action admit" only in the fact that, even when you really earned every thing you've got, other people (haters) might have some lingering doubts that you really "deserved" your spot in the program. That's all. Like minority candidates in some places--it doesn't matter how talented a minority judge is, for example, some dumbass will always think, "They got their position because they're a minority". That's the sense I mean it in, not in the sense that you were "saved a spot". The only way you can prove haters wrong is with really good, peer-reviewed work, which hopefully we'll all do, but there might be people out there who will be looking for evidence that "Oh he only got in because Professor Such-and-such must have liked him from undergrad". That's all I'm saying, going to the same school as your undergrad might potentially put you under an added layer of scrutiny on job market. Remember, it's not about the advantages you're actually given or not given; it's about how outside people read the situation.

I want to second all the things that Sciencegirl said. They're all correct, definitely. But I think if it's perfect for you, it's perfect for you. But you will have to realize that you might be viewed in the same way as an "affirmative action admit", that is, you'll maybe ironically have to do more than normal just to prove that you "deserve" your admission. You know? Like your school's name will mean a little less unless you have the published work to back it up, in which case it might not matter as much that you got both your degrees there (I've definitely seen it before on professional CV's). But know that people will probably have the suspicion that you maybe just "slid on by" unless you have a strong CV of peer reviewed published work.

As far as I know, zero people have transferred out of my program, though some have switched advisers completely and some have dropped out completely. I can think of three transfers in, and all of them came with professors who they were already writing their dissertation with. I do not think it is very common in other circumstances.

Judging from the results board, yes, a lot of people have notes that say "Applied to PhD, got accepted to masters". I think Chicago's MAPSS is the same way. There may or may not be a little box to check, "Yes, I would like to be considered for the masters program," I can't recall from either of those places. Also I wrote "lesser undergrad institution", which is a dickish, elitist, and inaccurate way to say what I meant. Pardon my poor writing skills and let me correct myself. I meant "less well known" or "considered less prestigious" or even "less well connected school". Thinking only of all those "less"es I wrote "lesser" in haste, but it now reads like a judgement about quality, which I didn't mean. Oops. And people from less well connected schools can and do get into programs of every reputation, it's just (like everything) more difficult than if you had letters from Buraway and Wacquant, or DiMaggio and Zelizer, or Andy Abbott and Mario Small. A friend of mine who did econ once had a eminent professor write down exactly what he looks for, and in his valuation, a letter from a person he knows was maybe the second thing (after some math stuff), and a letter from someone he doesn't know (personally or by reputation) is more of a tie breaker. Not everyone is so polarized in their assessment, but, you know, networks matter.

Yo, go visit you guys. Or better yet, try to talk with current graduate students if you can. I think my school has a reputation, but I don't think that reputation is accurate. Or rather, if it is true for a minority of students, it's not accurate for me as a graduate student. Wisconsin was super-competitive because of artificial scarcity. I don't think we're likely to return to that in sociology grad schools (one professor told me that back in the day, all the Harvard PhD just took normal summer jobs because they needed the money. She was a typist in this really sexist office every summer. Impossible to imagine now). Some places encourage competition, but I bet they do it selectively. Like for Harvard, I would guess that the quantitive/networks people felt like they were competing (for ASR articles, for jobs, for attention whatever--it's had good results) but maybe the ethnographers and people doing historical work experienced a really different environment. You know? I wouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, is all I mean, and even if it is true to some degree, unless there's a clear structural reason for it (like there was at Wisconsin, or if one huge name adviser has like 40 students or something, or maybe what people above say about UCLA, I don't know anything about that), I'd bet it is irregular even at a department it's "true" for. At my school, I find myself cooperating with people from my same adviser, not competing with them. She has us look out for each other ("I'm worried about how his lit review is going. Will you talk to him about it and tell him not to freak out? He worries too much"). And I know she'd be like that at any school. I'm actively trying to recruit more people to come work with her from the admitted students to come here and work with her because to me, that's more people here with similar interests, more people who could read my work, more people that could suggest useful criticisms. Competition vs cooperation is probably as much about the adviser as it is about the department. One of the hot shot person here has taken to pairing up one of his most favorite students with other people who have potentially interesting projects that they don't have all the skills to do yet. It's assigned collegiality, and it's very much created by the adviser, not the department as a whole. My cohort has some potential cooperation in it because we happened to get along really well. I want to work together with some of these people because I straight up like them. That seems less likely for the cohort below me because, for whatever reason, they just hung out together less and hang out less. We experience the same program and the same advisers, but different levels of collegiality. Also, just a note, we don't have that many co-publishers that come out of our department, but I know like eight people who would take a look at a draft paper of mine and give me thoughtful criticisms. This is also probably something that you can only figure out after you've been admitted though, because that's the only time you can talk to real graduate students, unless you have the social networks to know people already in the department. My recommendation to you, whereever you go, have all the first years meet together for a drink at a bar a few days before school starts. That's one thing we did, and the younger cohort didn't do, that was a small step towards going down a friendly path.

I have had a few friends who've gone on to success very expensive masters programs. Think about what's missing from your application. Can this masters fill what needs to filled? One of my close friends just did MAPSS in anthropology. A year ago she was accepted nowhere, now she's got into all the top programs she applied to, except interestingly Chicago, which waitlisted her. She did great, but she already had data that she could use and analyze there from a Fulbright year. I actually have met a few people who've done MAPSS or Columbia's MA program. They got into programs that they're happy with, I think, but they said it convinced a lot of their peers not to apply to PhD programs. I think at one of those places, only like 30% ended up applying for a PhD immediately (not everyone went in thinking they were going to apply directly for a PhD, but a lot more than 30% did--a lot of people apparently came out discouraged, from what I've heard, or at least feeling they weren't ready for a PhD). In Chicago, I once split a cab with a MAPSS student and she was miserable. She felt like she got no support, and since it's only a year, had like three months to slavishly kiss ass all the time to develop a relationship with a new recomender. Keep in mind those things are money makers for the schools, so the schools love them, but students might have more mixed experiences. A lot of those people are 40k or whatever extra in debt with a sociology master's degree, which does not add the most transferable set of skills to your CV. The friends of mine who got into a top PhD programs think it was absolutely, unequivocally worth it for them, but I don't know about the ones who didn't. It really depends on the person; if you want to go, go in thinking strategically about what you want to get out of it. Other people on this board have gone to unfunded but cheaper masters programs at places like Missouri or UNC-Greensboro. I don't know about success from those. If you're missing some quant stuff and say you want to do stats, especially, those might be a way to improve your application (I don't know of a cheaper masters program that has good networks people, but that might be my ignorance of networks people). Whatever you do, think about your goals and your application, and what's holding you back. Do they doubt you can do Ivy League course work? Are you missing a skill? Prestigious recs? A focused project? A good writing sample? Master programs are probably not the place you'll get a good writing sample, for instance. You'd probably be better off pouring your soul into revising an old paper. However, if you come from a lesser undergrad institution with a high GPA and high test scores and you think you're super promising, this kind of masters might put you on course for your dream school. Or if your undergrad GPA is spotty and indicates that you were "unserious" this might be a way to show that you're "serious" now. Whatever masters you consider, ask them about success rates (defining success as getting into a top PhD program in a year or two) and what people do after. But then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the school doesn't really know those numbers...

Also, in my department, a fair number of people have switched advisers, probably like half don't have their original adviser as chair. Sometimes people have switched topics, some people have discovered a different take on the same topic, sometime it's a strategic thing--one of my colleagues got the advice from his first adviser, "Make her your chair. You know I'll always be on your side, but she's a big shot and probably won't look at work unless she's the chair." Probably two out of the four people on my committee will be people I didn't even know about before. This is one of the reasons you should look at both people you want to work with and the department holistically. This is also why, when you visit, you should find out who doesn't like working with whom. Graduate students are the people to ask about this, and 50% of the time they will say, "We have nothing like that at our school" even when it's not true. Ask them again, a little later, in a different way, preferably after a few drinks. You can ask broadly, "So who doesn't like whom?" first and then later, ask "Who are reluctant to serve on committees together?" Ask who won't do much work if they're not the chair. Just get the dirt in general when you visit. That's really your only chance to find out. Try to talk with your potential adviser's current students if at all possible. My adviser is well known within her subfield, well connected within the topics I'm working on, but probably less well known in the general world of sociology; hopefully, there will be well known people on my committee whose names faculty search committees will instantly recognize and respect, but that's not my adviser. Still, I think she's probably the best person for me in the country because 1) she's interested in the same debates I'm interested in and knows about them 1.5) she's knowledgeable about the geographic regions I need 2) she can really rip my work apart 3) she rips my work apart in ways I'm comfortable with--we get along, that is. She is the right mix of critical and supportive for me. 4) she's well connected within the department and in the university. A professor from another department who I came her wanting to work with is her academic BFF. Her name is enough to always open the door to his office, and he definitely remembers me because of her. 5) she's willing to support a variety of methods and styles as long as it's good sociology. I just got a tentative green light for a project that's ambitious, possibly too ambitious, but she's willing to let me try even though it's entirely different methodologically from what she does in her work. Some people definitely prefer students with their methods (a lot of Burroway's students' books, for example, have a familiar ring to them), 6) In the end, I just work really well with her and she likes me. I'm really happy with her. When we're both at a lecture, and the speaker says something boring, she'll find me in the crowd and make a face at me. That wasn't something that happened until my second year. Not everyone needs that kind of connection, but I can tell you, it goes a long way towards making me not feel crazy during graduate school. Those are the kind of things that you can't find out from the internet or even meeting them once (but you can get clues about it). Your visiting day will really be like the first date of a multi-year relationship, and like romantic relationships, sometimes things that look great on paper are a mess, somethings that make no sense on paper make perfect sense when you see them, sometimes you think you're headed one direction until you meet someone else, etc. I knew exactly who I was going to work with when I came in (I work in relatively small subfield) but not everyone did. However, by second year, all of us have found a relatively permanent home (in some case, multiple homes) and it's pretty clear who will at least chair all of our committees. With some people it's intellectual agreement, with some people they just get along well.

I've seen on CV's things like "1996-97 Associate Professor without tenure, 97-2003, Tenured Associate Professor," but that's rare It's a safe bet to say an Associate Professor is tenured, especially if they've been associate for more than a year or two (most universities kick people on down the road when it's clear they're not going to get tenure any time soon).

I'm currently at a top ten graduate program and of my incoming cohort, I think only 1/8 had a publication. I think they were looking more for what we would do in the future than what we had done already. As for the rank order of publication on the job market, it really depends on the department. I have a strong impression there is no unitary rank order. My father's a sociologist too and the advice he's given me is that some universities, especially large public ones, really do do article counts. I heard a story about a person who dusted off her masters thesis and got it published in Social Forces. The professor telling me this story had been her thesis adviser and told us "This could have been an ASR article if she had been willing to put 600 more hours of work into it, but she just needed one more article for tenure and wasn't interested in the project anymore." Even qualitative people are apparently expect to produce a number of articles in addition to books at these top top public institutions, but that's apparently less important for qualitative people at some other schools. At my department, most quantitative candidates we've interviewed recently have had an AJS/AJS article (the one I remember who didn't had an article in Science). I think at a different school, a couple of articles in a top subfield journal (Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociology of Health and Illness, Demography) or second tier journal (Social Forces, Social Problems) would have looked as good. I haven't seen that "counting" in our department, though I can easily see that being enough for a higher ranked public school with a bigger department. An Annual Review article is basically as good as AJS/ASR but those are invited articles not open to graduate students or even junior faculty (unless you can find an important person to co-author one with). As for books, of course, not all university presses are created equal. Books with Chicago and with Wayne State presses are evaluated naturally differently. But know that each department is looking for something a little different. And furthermore, the quality of the work does really matter. One of our junior faculty members was hired with zero publications--he gave a really phenomenal job talk on his unique and interesting dissertation. His work was just that good and everyone saw that immediately. This was two years before I got there and people still mentioned specific things from his job talk my first year. (I think had already contracted with a good press, but it took him another two years to get the book out; he also must have had stupendous letters from well-known advisers). Another professor was telling us how he was an outside reviewer on a tenure committee for a promising young ethnographer at a top, top private university. She had only one book (with a good press) and maybe two or three chapters and articles (which for a top department is a little light) and wasn't close to publishing her second project (it's been a few year and it's still not out), but was almost given tenure because it was agreed that her work was just that good. I think at a top top public school she might have been rejected for tenure without as much contention because consistent publication volume matters more, though it probably depends on the specific school too. At a lower ranked school, she'd probably be tenured easily because her work was apparently so well received in the field. We read another ethnographer in the same class who was again denied tenure at another top, top school because she hadn't published enough before her tenure clock ran out (again, one book and a few articles) but was immediately made associate professor at a well-known but not world class flagship public university. It was enough for tenure there. Do the best work you can do, get published in the best places you can get published, but know what's valued is different at different departments. What I've learned in the past two years is that to get a job at a top department you not only need to have a good thesis project, you probably need to be able to talk about a second project you'll be starting (or have already started). And to get tenure at a really top twenty five research university, you might well have to have something tangible to show for that second project, though again, it depends on the school (at some schools, the administration is notorious for making it hard to keep junior faculty, even if the department likes them).

x-posted in the Acceptances/Rejections/Decisions thread, but this can happen: I think this is more likely to happen at PUBLIC schools where funding might be cobbled together from various sources (department, research grants, school as a whole, etc.). At PRIVATE schools (particularly larger ones), information might trickle out to a few people with an inside scoop (past relationship with the department, someone who would work as an RA on a specific project, or just a very excited potential adviser), but the general impression I get is that there is a 8 to 48 hour period when the admits are notified. If you miss that, it's bad news. At Columbia and Chicago, you might not hear back for a while because of their masters programs. Not only schools even have waitlists, but the ones that do might hold off rejecting people until they have a better idea of who's coming. I don't know how common waitlists are--I know at my program we don't have them, but it still took the adcomm more than a month to formally reject people, which is a little obnoxious, yes, but that's the way it is. I think Chuck's idea is a responsible one, but keep the letter short and very polite, because the DGS will get a lot of them, and they will be mostly from people checking this website.

CHICAGO ADMITS: STAY FOR THAT CONFERENCE. They're underselling it. If you do qualitative work, or are even just interested in qualitative work, go. People around here are talking like it might be the most significant conference so far this decade and will probably be a special AJS issue. It's on "ethnography and causality" and should be really great. I'm barely an ethnographer and I am still thinking of flying across the country to go to it (well that, and to visit my sister). Main site: http://sites.google.com/site/ajs2012conference/, initial site: http://sociology.uchicago.edu/department/ajs/ethnography-conf.shtml

When I was applied to schools, I was an American living in Istanbul. They had said $300 for Americans, $500 for international students. When I asked, they were like "Yeah sure I guess we can give you the international student amount." And then, I checked tickets and it was significantly more than that (closer to $1000 I think?), and additionally I thought I might have trouble getting the time off work, and they were basically like, "Yeah, it would be awful if you couldn't come just for financial reasons. We'll work it out." And they took care of the whole thing. The point of this, especially at top programs, you've courted them enough, now you have to realize that they're courting you. Schools are going to try to wine and dine the hell out of you. Make sure you get there and have a good time.

This is less common in sociology, but the most frustrating case scenario for large public universities is something along the lines of what happened to my ex who was applying to creative writing programs. Iowa, the most prestigious school in the field, let in a bunch of people in February, so my ex assumed that she had been rejected. As the rejections, even from mediocre places, rolled in, she became really disheartened. She had a crisis of conscience--"Oh my G-d is this field right for me? Am I delusional about my abilities? If I don't do this, what will I do? I f I don't do this, who am I?" etc. Finally, at the very end of March she gets waitlisted at Virgina, generally considered the second best fiction program, and for the first time in two months doesn't feel crazy. Even though she probably won't get in off the waitlist, she feels validated. She works on Plan B. And then on Plan C. Then, at the very beginning of April, she hears from Iowa, and they say, basically, "Oh, yeah sorry--we knew we were accepted you in February, but we didn't know exactly what funding we were going to give you so we waited. The people whose fellowships are through Iowa Review heard in February, but people like you with teaching experience, we needed to figure out exactly what you were going to teach, and in which department (Lit or Creative Writing), before we informed you of your acceptance." It's rare, but of the 13 or 14 places she applied to, my ex got into only one (the most highly ranked), and waitlisted at one more (the second most highly ranked), and got 11 or 12 rejections before she heard from either of them. I only got into one of the sociology programs I applied for, but it was much more highly ranked than some of the programs that rejected me. More importantly than its ranking, it was the best program for me: best for my interests, best in terms of resources for my interests (okay maybe second best in terms of resources for my interest), place where my research interests were most au courant in the department at large, one of the three departments that fit my interests regionally, and definitely best in terms of advising for my particular project. And see, that's the nicest thing about applying to graduate school: rejections don't matter. You really just need one school to see potential in you, that's all.

It depends on the program. I am fairly confident that all the large private universities send out their acceptances over the course of a day or two at most. Schools with masters programs (think MAPSS at Chicago and the free-standing MA at Columbia) may not send out rejections for a while because they have two completely separate rounds of acceptances. At large private schools without MA's, if you haven't heard within 48 of the first person, this is not a positive sign for your acceptance to the PhD program. Smaller schools that only accept one to three people a year probably can't really extend more offers than slots, so a school like that may wait to hear from their first sets offers before extending offers to others (ideally, they should tell you that you're "waitlisted" but you may find this is not always the case). At public universities, the situation can be more complicated. Look at the "results survey" to get a good idea of past behavior. At public universities, funding usually comes from more varied sources, and so acceptances can come in when information on funding is complete. People who the department wants to submit for university wide competitive funding especially may be informed earlier that they've been accepted. Other public schools will accept everyone at the same time and say "funding info to come", but not all do. CUNY, for example, has been known to let in a bunch of people who have been awarded university-wide "presidential fellowships" or something like that first, and then everyone else, for whom the funding is less known, slightly later. However, people getting in after the recruitment weekend (or after they could conceivably make plans to go to the recruitment weekend) is very, very rare, and I've personally only heard of it happening once with one school that admitted a single student after recruitment weekend because they had had an uncharacteristic overlap in acceptances with two slightly higher ranked programs and their cohort was literally half the size they had hoped for, and would have been the smallest cohort in at least a decade.

A tiny school like Brandeis usually accepts only two or three people a year. At a place like that, stats matter even less than usual and fit probably matters even more. If Brandeis is your top choice, I would email them and tell them that (be honest about where else you were accepted of course). Because they only two or so spots a year, they're probably going to have offers to two or so people at a time. However, if one declines, they're more likely to use their waitlist and if you're excited about going there, you should definitely see if you can't make sure you're at the top of the waitlist.

1) They are probably still looking for similar percentages, though I'd also guess some of the professor on the admissions committee just won't know how to read the new scores. 2) GRE scores are probably overrated, especially in online fora like this. We like them because we can compare across applicants; they're not really testing much that has to do with sociology though. I got 1580 and got into one out of five programs I applied to. This girl on the forum last year 3) GRE scores are still important. At top ten programs with a lot of apps, I'd imagine probably a quarter to half the applicants don't even go before the full committee (that's what happens with junior faculty job applications for sure); they're just weeded out for some combination of low GPA, low GRE, unknown undergraduate institution, subliterate writing and maybe bad fit ("we don't do that here"). One girl I know at a top ten program said that one of her professors admitted that when he's on the admissions committee, he doesn't even look at ugrad GPA, only undergraduate school and GRE. I am not citing that story to indicate that it's common and GRE's are really important; I'm just trying to emphasize how capricious this whole process is. When I got here, I realized that I got in because impressed the adcomm liked me, and if the adcomm had been composed differently, the result might have been different. Two of the professors who really like me happen to have been on it together. 4) In my (top ten) program, of the 8 kids in my cohort, I think only one person had a publication coming in, and she was a lawyer and it was in some law journal from when she was in law school like 6 years before or something. I am sure a lot of you on this board read those guys up there, and got worried about publications. Don't be.

A general rule of thumb is that, in terms of rankings, people tend to find jobs at schools of an equal or lower level of prestige to their graduate school, and it is rare (not unheard of but rare) to get a tenure track job at a department classed in higher group of schools, though there are exceptions (Yale, for example, is not ranked among the very very top sociology departments, but I think they have decent placements). You need to be doing some pretty rad work though to "move up", or be willing to work in a non-tenure track capacity. Tenure-track job openings frequently get dozens (often in excess of a hundred) applications, I believe. There is apparently a huge range of people applying for jobs. People at the top jobs come from a very limited number of schools (someone ); I get the impression that sociology is ironically does more sorting by prestigious-scoring degree granting institution than some other fields (less than others too of course; I hear anthro has some very very highly regarded departments and people from those schools are much better placed than schools ranked even slightly lower, but that's all second hand knowledge, I've never looked into it). I get the impression that sociology has less upward mobility and less downward mobility than most fields though (bracketing people who were geographically limited in where they could search). My best advice is to look at the kind of school you see yourself working at. Where did those people get their degrees from? I'd disagree that one should be wary of new programs inherently; Rice for example will probably have pretty decent job placement out of the gate, I bet.

I did well on the GRE but I took months studying vocab everyday and relearning all of the triangle stuff (I had not taken a math class in like five or six years). I also took a lot of practice tests and learned the format very well. With diligent effort, it is possible to raise your scores. As with everything, though, it's really depends on the kind of schools you want to go to. page__view__findpost__p__244943

1) Score well on the GRE. 2) Come up with an interesting research idea, that is well developed, interesting, and a good fit for professors at the schools you want to go to, and have your statement of purpose show you know kinda where your research will fit within sociology (you don't need to provide citations or anything but you know--make it have a place). 3) I'd also check out the advice for the and applicants from people who experienced the applications process a year before and already had their results back. That's really the best crowd sourced advice available in one place, as far as I've seen.

Oh I was wondering how they got my address! I had assumed they got it from my department, but yeah, through ASA is probably a better bet.

Going pretty good, I feel like I have a million small projects going on, none of them quite what I'd anticipated. Doing more stats than I thought, less directly with religion. Realize other people probably see me as a "historical sociologists". Am writing what might turn into a thesis chapter. Am starting what might turn into an ethnography this summer, which will be completely separate from my thesis topic. Am also vaguely working on two quantitative projects, both unrelated to my thesis and each other. Got stars in my eyes. I really, truly respect everyone in my program, which is surprising, because I'm a hater at heart. People drink and go out a lot less than I expected. Just got my progress report from the department which said, "The department met last month to review the progress of students. We want you to know that the department was impressed with your progress. Good work!". So yeah, things are going good, academically I think. Having to figure out that famous "work-life" balance more than before though. Yeah, but religion is a small competitive subfield, and from the first I was told "To get hired, you'll probably need sociology of religion & something else. Theory, qualitatives methods, political sociology, globalization, you're going to need to be able to teach more than just sociology of religion courses," but considering that my whole background has been in Religious Studies, I'm actually quite surprised with how far my academic interests have expanded. The people I respect most at my department are: my adviser, who is super historical, an urban ethnographer, and a guy who does very quant-y, social network-y stuff. I am trying to find excuses to work with all of them because they're all mind-blowingly intelligent. I haven't actually interacted with the sociologists of religion who works at my university, not because she's not great, but because we don't have that much in common. Hopefully, she will be an excellent "critical eye" for my work on religion. If you're going to do sociology of religion, you should really go into grad school with a pretty open mind about what you want to do. In fact, I'm probably exploring less in terms of main interests than all the other kids in my cohort but one (who came to grad school with awesome skills and outside funding for a specific project). Yeah, open mind, that's all I'm saying.

....I had no idea that thing existed....