soci2015app

Plenty of R1s can be found outside of the top 50 and some not even ranked.
Plenty of R1s can be found outside of the top 50 and some not even ranked. And I would hope that anyone coming out of grad school, even from a place like Chicago, would be happy as hell to be offered a tenure track position at a place like GSU or Tennessee. Top 25 programs don't have enough openings every year to hire all the PhDs other top 25 programs produce. And if all this is true and schools in the bottom half of the popularity contest are hiring from all over, I think we've come to a conclusion in this thread: the prestigious programs benefit you on the market (obviously), but it's your own work that will make or break you.

Also, I ate dinner with one of my mentors yesterday who headed a search for a tenure track position this year (in history) and she gave me a word of advice that may help some of the people reading these two threads on elitism in the programs. Every search there is a quality applicant from a high ranking school who walks into an interview with his or her nose up thinking they're doing the lesser ranked program a favor by being there. Princeton and Wisconsin don't entitle you to a job.

The school is tennessee if you were wondering. The website hasn't been updated with some of the newest faculty, however.

And just for the fun of it, I just pulled another program from the rankings randomly. Georgia state (both graduate degrees offered and around 30k students as well) does not have many faculty members from top 20 universities. Only two are from top 15 universities, one a 1977 phd from Chicago (so this doesn't even remotely factor into today's placement rates).

I suppose we could randomly pull more middle of the line programs, but I'm not sure it's worth the time. I think this top 20 program or bust beief is a myth, perhaps created by the top 20 themselves. Of course the top 20 may rarely hire outside of themselves, but who in the hell cares? I'd be perfectly fine attending or teaching at a school not in the top 20.

My dreams have been shattered. Only one program in the top 20 fits my research interests and their admissions rate is ridiculous.
 
I suppose these other schools are lying about their placement, eh? For a field that prides itself for welcoming people of all backgrounds and being open minded, politically, there seems to always be a stench of elitism around here.

It's incredibly frustrating—and somewhat offensive—to keep hearing that sub-top 25 programs are a waste of time. The USNWR has over a hundred graduate sociology programs on their list. Are people really suggesting that 60-75% of all sociology PhD programs (and their students and faculty??) are a waste of time? Seriously?
 
We've all seen the research, top 20 PhDs dominate new hires at the top, prestige matters. Nobody is arguing this. But contrary to popular belief, there is a world outside the top, and plenty of us will be happy working there.

Shhhhh! It's only the beginning of April and I'm holding out hope for my Princeton application. Don't let them hear you say I could be happier at Santa Barbara!

Is it just me or do these pointless threads come up every week? Rankings, by definition, point out 'superiority' in terms of program quality. We get that. But to say anything lower than the top 25 is pointless and a waste of energy, well that's just absurd. And the contradictions in your post are abundant: "Though the job market is a crapshoot", "base your choice on the following","Anything below the top 25, and at worse the top 50.", etc. So is it a crapshoot or can can this get-rich-formula lead you to success? So is it 25 or 50? That's a huge difference. And it pretty much defeats the point of your post. If you want to see a discussion on this, go look in the silly "holy shit" thread.
 
Take a look at programs around the country and see where their faculty comes from. Of course the top 25 dominate, but plenty of programs have tons of people who DIDN'T attend a top 25 school. To say that person A from Chicago is going to get a job over person B from Santa Cruz (or anywhere else) simply because of prestige is naive, especially if person A is busy doing a bunch of nothing while person B is producing high quality research. The sociologist I'm most interested in working with got his degree from New Mexico (#78 for the nuts who obsess with rankings). He's one of the premier minds in his field right now. Take that elitist mess somewhere else, yo. There are plenty of people using these message boards who don't attend top 25 universities just trying to lend a helping hand to future colleagues while being forced to read insulting posts such as these.

Though the job market is a crapshoot, individuals should based their choice on the following criteria:
Department ranking: They matter. Period.  Anything below the top 25, and at worse the top 50 is a waste of time and energy. Specialty area ranking: This one is just as important as the department’s ranking.  Say you’re interested in studying aging, and have a choice between Northwestern and  Cornell.  If you base your choice on the department’s rankings, you’ll choose Northwestern.  However, Northwestern’s not known for scholars who do work on minority aging, and if you choose this school, you may wonder who will you work with.  In contrast, Cornell’s known for health.     SENIOR scholar in your specialty area who does work related to your interests:  This is VERY important.  Though younger faculty members (Assistants and Associate’s) may do excellent work related to your area, letters from Senior Scholars are the one’s that COUNT on the job market.  Rankings should be based off of the US News and World Report (http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/sociology-rankings).  Basing rankings off of what someone "heard" is less reliable. I've heard pigs fly.  Do you believe me?
 
Some areas are always in demand (quant methods, health, race, and crime), while others are not (qual methods, social movements). 
 
Sincerely,
 
 
PostDoc

The school is tennessee if you were wondering. The website hasn't been updated with some of the newest faculty, however.

And just for the fun of it, I just pulled another program from the rankings randomly. Georgia state (both graduate degrees offered and around 30k students as well) does not have many faculty members from top 20 universities. Only two are from top 15 universities, one a 1977 phd from Chicago (so this doesn't even remotely factor into today's placement rates).

I suppose we could randomly pull more middle of the line programs, but I'm not sure it's worth the time. I think this top 20 program or bust beief is a myth, perhaps created by the top 20 themselves. Of course the top 20 may rarely hire outside of themselves, but who in the hell cares? I'd be perfectly fine attending or teaching at a school not in the top 20.

The school is tennessee if you were wondering. The website hasn't been updated with some of the newest faculty, however.

And just for the fun of it, I just pulled another program from the rankings randomly. Georgia state (both graduate degrees offered and around 30k students as well) does not have many faculty members from top 20 universities. Only two are from top 15 universities, one a 1977 phd from Chicago (so this doesn't even remotely factor into today's placement rates).

I suppose we could randomly pull more middle of the line programs, but I'm not sure it's worth the time. I think this top 20 program or bust beief is a myth, perhaps created by the top 20 themselves. Of course the top 20 may rarely hire outside of themselves, but who in the hell cares? I'd be perfectly fine attending or teaching at a school not in the top 20.

Hi caskofespresso,
 
I was a recent applicant in colonial American history, also focusing on Native American history. I just finished the application/decision process and will be beginning a Ph.D. program in the fall.
 
I honestly do not think those rankings can be applied to Native American history. In fact, during my application process, I felt that only four of the programs on that list would be strong places to pursue research with a focus in Native American history (at least for my interests/geographic focus). I also believe that some of the strongest Native American history programs do not appear on the list at all. For example, while Harvard has a wonderful program overall, it currently isn't the best place to pursue research with a focus in Native American history (this is both my personal opinion and something I've heard from others in the field).
 
When I searched for graduate programs, I felt that it was most important to look at the number of faculty focusing on Native American history (or cross-cultural relations in early America). I also felt it was important that programs have a vibrant community of scholars in other departments working on various aspects of Native American studies. I also found the regional focus of faculty to be a big factor in determining which programs were the best fit. (For example, if you study the Great Lakes region, programs like Michigan, Minnesota, or Illinois might be a particularly strong fit, even if all of them don't appear on the colonial history rankings.)
 
To find which programs I thought might be a good fit, I started with the obvious--figuring out where the authors of various books I used for my research and/or read in my undergraduate seminars are located. After this, I visited the websites of the 40 top-ranked programs in American history and made a spreadsheet of faculty with relevant research interests. (I realize this second method is somewhat arbitrary, but I needed some way to make the process more manageable.)
 
If you'd like to chat about this any more or want any more details, please feel free to PM me!

Accepted my offer for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill! It feels so good to be done with this whole application process! Grad cafe has drove me crazy and kept me sane all at the same time!

I don't think anyone is saying that we shouldn't be concerned about the job market. The reality is that OP's post exaggerated the problem. There are plenty of programs outside of the top 20 placing students into tenure track jobs, you just need to find which ones. Job placement should certainly be a factor in the decision making process, it weighed heavily on mine. It just isn't a top 20 or bust kind of scenario. 

just wrote a long ass blog post that was deleted
 
in a nutshell:
if you have the option, goto princeton: no other program has demonstrated the ability to place ALL students in solid postions (both ROCKSTARS and not)
if you cant do princeton, harvard and berk set you up to do just as well as pton if you end up being a rockstar
otherwise, the usual suspects--wisc, mich, chicago, duke, etc.--give you equal "chance" to the lottery of placement
 
DO NOT GO TO SOC GRAD SCHOOL IF NOT TOP 20. if so, do it at your own risk (risk of unemployment, underemployment, making less than 50k in your thrties if lucky etc). clearly folks here CAN do ok, but be a social scientist for a second, how different are you?

Hello everyone,
 
I'm looking into programs for the next application cycle and I was wondering if anyone could help me out with some information from the guide. I know that my sociology department has a copy, but I'm not anywhere near my campus at the moment. I was wondering if anyone could look at the speciatlies section in the back and give me the list for the schools that specialize in globalization (or whatever the word is in this edition of the book), development, and political economy. Thanks for any help that you can give and I'm sorry if this isn't the correct place to post this--I'm new here!

Thanks again