herself the elf

Congratulations Rogue on the acceptance as well as the funding! (I'm not the other admit, keeping my fingers crossed. . .) Do you know any CUNY stats for this year, such as # of applicants, # of spots, # of Enhanced Chancellor's Fellowships, etc.? Also, I'm curious about this "admitted students event," do you know anything else about it? I visited the CUNY Soc. program this fall out of curiosity and met with a couple of students to get a feel for the program from a student's perspective. The Graduate Center, basically a building full of Ph.D. students, is a really compelling environment to me. And despite, or perhaps because of, the lack of student office space (though it is a detriment, given that the building is at 34th & 5th it is understandable), the Soc. lounge is the most welcoming/collaborative space I've seen in a Soc. grad department. Have you been there? If so, what are your impressions?

You guys are all awesome-- love this thread, made my day.

Is anyone else clicking on "Results Search" about 10 times per day, driving yourself mad? Anyone else at the point of considering laying off GradCafe for a while? And to the lucky few-- does this madness subside when you have an acceptance in hand?

WOW! This goes way beyond 'PhDs lack social skills'-- this guys is a complete jerk. Who would do something like that, after the fact???? I had one undergrad professor repeatedly ignore me for requests for recommendations to grad school several years ago, despite the fact that I took three classes with her and got As in all of them. I wracked my brain for the reason; was it because she was in a particular area of study, and I did not fit into that demographic? But that thinking got me nowhere but angry, and later I realized it was probably because she was absent-minded when it came to paperwork. I think professors first have a responsibility to be honest, both about their time and availability to write recommendations, but also about application prospects. Most of them have a lot more knowledge about all of this than any of us do. Nevertheless, they also have a responsibility in the professor-student relationship to foster a certain level of trust with their students and through it to encourage academic growth. Being a nasty jerk (like yours), delivering news particularly harshly, or putting down a particular applicant's school (as an earlier post said) is, in my opinion, a violation of this trust. Many of the problems people are complaining about have to do with either the honesty issue or the trust issue; I think sometimes professors are so wrapped up in their research that these issues fall to the wayside. I hope that all of us (myself included) have the wherewithal in 10 years to be able to take these responsibilities as seriously as we take them now.

Wowzas, people are super qualified! I, like others, believe that the writing sample, SOP, and recommendations play a huge role that cannot be summarized and quantified in this space. That being said, we all want some reassurance, no? Undergrad: Decent private non-Ivy: 3.75, writing awards, etc. Law School: Decent private non-Ivy: 3.45, writing awards, research position Publications: Topically relevant article in academic journal (law/gender/migration, way back in 2006) Professional experience: 4-5 years practicing attorney in NYC at a nonprofit (sucking the life out of me!) GRE: 750Q (84%)/780V (99%)/ 4.5 on the writing thing. (I'm convinced I went way too legal, and too political, citing articles of the UN Charter, etc. . . oh well. It would have been an A final in International Law- haha!) Interests: gender and international trade law and policy; gender and technology law and policy Applied to PhD: Columbia, NYU, CUNY (geographically limited, husband is in media and I refuse to move to LA Lots of people have stated that they are also applying to these schools. Of the 4 NYC schools offering sociology PhDs, I didn't apply to the New School because I didn't hear great things. Right now, I expect to get into CUNY, expect to get rejected from Columbia, and hope to get into NYU. Thoughts?