myrrh

I think they SHOULD accept more than 8 applicants. Even when it comes to some best-ranked schools, there could be about 50% admitted student who decide not to attend. Accepting only 8 students means a school could have perhaps 4 who really attend. You have space and funding for 8 and only get 4, it's not a very good thing.

Apparently it depends on in what kind of schools would you expect yourself to work. And also which those "not that amazing" schools are. My suggestion is: survey the schools you can accept to be the place where you END UP to teach (not your first job), and check out their faculty. If they have some people from the schools as amazing as your "not that amazing school", you could perhaps make it to go there in the end. However, you have to know, this survey would never guarantee anything. It's just a hint. And you could think about who your advisor would be. Although the super stars are usually in the big-name schools, I know there are a lot (if not tons) of outstanding professors in 20-50 schools and promising young scholars in 50-100 schools. Last, but not least important, having good works matters. Well, it could be most important actually.

I think it's ok. There's no rejection nor waitlist notified, and hey, there's only one admission. I got my admission (as well as five year full funding package) several weeks later than the first admission reported on gradcafe! I would not say there's any good sign. The decision is unknown so far. However, I guess the situation is not very different from "nothing heard by anyone".

It happens, although not very frequently I guess. As a result, I would write to all schools I'm waitlisted before 4/15. If it really happen, then what? Indeed, there's a thread about this situation. See

Isn't you verbal above 50% percentile? I'm not sure about it, but if so, I think you are safe. And whether to retake GRE or not could be a minor issues compared to your SoP and writing sample. However, if your don't have any section scored above 50% (I think your math score is less likely to be 50% than verbal), retake it, no doubt. And I would suggest that you don't worry about your GPA too much. I don't think a 13 year old GPA could matter as much as some other things do: your work experience (actually the relation between it and your prospective grad study), your sample work or your SoP.

"Although I'm still waiting to hear from a restricted number of schools for a thorough consideration, the admission from your institution along is exciting enough for me" That's how I usually say once I get an admission. After that, I would express my gratitude to the professor and ask for some details about studying at that school.

Well, I just say, I don't know how people usually say this, so I would go strait-forward. I will be attending (school name). It's always my dream to study in (school name). Please let me know if there's anything I should do from now on. My two cents.

Not necessarily. The sociology program at UC Berkeley ranked first according to USNews in 2009, and in the three years before that year, they admitted 30 something applicants, while 16 finally attended. The number could be slightly wrong, but the thing is basically like that.

I'm sure it's the lucky month for you!

It's also what I found out during my application process, and I think the reason is quite clear. In those schools which gave me a total page to fill out about these racial/ social/ economic/ family educational backgrounds, there are usually some fellowships for those students from underrepresented social groups.

I do care about whether or not my friends can get in. And for those I don't really know, sometime, or say in most of the cases, I would feel what they feel as I'm kinda sensitive. But anyway it's how this thing goes: someone in, someone else out. Thank God that rejections could never be the end of someone's academic career.

Your application result is just awesome! Congrats! I've heard some about Northwestern, it sounds like a place where you can have a high flexibility on research. Enjoy it!

Just my personal opinion: 1. extra money: no matter at all unless it could impact my survival. 2. prestige: could matter, but if there's a gap between the schools' reputation, I would choose the one with higher reputation rather than the one offering me a competitive award. The large the gap is, so is the meaningless the prestige. Hope you get great award from some pending institution which is your best fit, thus you will have no dilemma at all!

Just some quick guesses. As the OP mentioned, s/ he has done two years of undergrad after a ten year break. I'm guessing that this background hurts. 1. As we could not suppose someone to remember what he/ she learned about ten years ago, the OP's background could be seen as a sophomore. 2. As we could not be sure about what can be built up in just two years (after a ten-year break), the OP would look only a bit better than someone returning to the academia after ten years. I'm not familiar with the OP's field, but I think "ten years outside of academia" would not be very advantageous for the admission from a quite academic program. See, it's not MBA anyway. The adcomm would say, well, this person has just done two years of undergrad after a ten-year break, how could we know that he/ she is truly willing and prepared to do PHD, or even if he/ she really know what he/ she is doing? So my suggestion will be simple: if as it turns out the ten-year gap hurts, go to MA program and thus fix it. Also, try to publish the conference paper by all means. It helps, even an R&R could help, at least in my case. GRE would be also a issue. I know the financial concern would be tough, but if you retake it, have an MA in your hand and perhaps some published papers, you will be a brand new applicant next time!

I'm with you guys. I think theories underlies every subfield of sociology, and it implies two things: first, the existence of the subfield of "social theories" or "general theories" never means that other subfields are not working on theories; second, even you are doing so called empirical studies, you are supposedly required to have some theoretical concerns. Or, let's say, your empirical studies could respond to some theoretical puzzles or even create some theoretical arguments. As always be considered as a "theorist" and usually introduced in a theory course, Foucault built all of his "theories" based on his empirical works. I know there are some people treat "disciplinary power" as a theoretical term only, but it was exactly the outcome of a huge empirical research project, and was right there in a book dealing with a very empirical puzzle. On the other hand, as a "ethnography", Michael Burawoy's Manufacturing Consent has really strong theoretical arguments on "class-in-itself vs. class-for-itself" and subjectivity. It's also addressing the social ontology debates between determinism and voluntarism. I know some people would argue that they are doing "pure theories" or "pure regression", but I myself would like to do something in the middle. --- bb385: your specific topics are really a bit difficult to integrate into a single project, although the areas of interest looks highly related to each other. Anyway I think it's good to have some different interests! It could bring you good flexibility and creativity. However, it could also make you difficulties when you are going to build up ONE project. Good luck, I think it will be cool! BTW, I am interested in Real Utopia project, too, although I would not be attending UW Madison. I believe E. O. Wright will love your topics. herself the elf: I'm not sure is there any other one interested social networking website. However, I think, if your topic is about the "online self-representation", you will definitely find some people interested in this topic as well as yourself, whether on Gradcafe or somewhere else!

I guess (just guess) the thing is going like this: the department wants you, but yes, the grad school has its rules. Your GPA could be problematic, although we can never say at what extent. The department would perhaps try to defend you, but the result partially depends on how much they know about everything behind your GPA. So far, they knows nothing, I guess. So, if I were you, I would write to the department, say thanks to them, and ask them to keep me informed once there's ANY updates. If I am lucky, I would know once the grad school has raised any issue on my GPA. Then I can provide some explanation to the department or the grad school. Will things really go in this way? I don't know. But it makes sense and I've heard some TOFEL stuffs did go like this. More important, it's no hurt to email the department and ask them to keep you informed of anything unexpected.

The spelling is totally ok - I'm resubmitting a paper to a British journal, LOL! Your topic is interesting to me, and, do you know Jeff Haydu in UCSD? His recent book, Citizen Employers, looks awesome and you would like it. It's about labor movement, although from the angle of capitalists' class-identity formation. And thanks for the response to my question(:

It could be driving people crazy to just asking others if they've heard from some schools or to refresh the result reporting page. Let's do something alternative and perhaps it could distracting us a little bit. Also, I think no matter what results we got so far, we are somewhat considering sociology as a life long career. If the next step in sort run is vague, why don't we think about our long run plans? It could remind us that however we end up this year, we still have a long way to go. So, how about talking about your areas of interests? I know it well that many of us have mentioned it in the stats thread or in the signature, but of course we have something more to say, rather than only stratification/ economic/ political sociology or so. It could help us know someone have overlapped interests with us, too. About me: I was working on labor issues when doing my MA thesis. Specifically, I was working on the labor process, labor condition and industrial relation in south China. My MA thesis is a factory ethnography, for which I used to work in a factory for several months. In the very beginning, I mean as early as I'd not been in the field, I tried to write a proposal combining spatial politics (like some Foucaultian stuffs) and the labor process. Many of you would be saying, "oh, like some shop-floor panopticon". Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking about. However, I turned out wrote something more traditional, namely more close to the Marxist labor process studies. From now on, I will be working on the same topic: labor issues in China. This time, however, I hope I can do something bigger. For example, I'm interested in comparative studies, such as the comparison between the Chinese coastal processing exporting zones and the Mexican maquiladoras. Also, it will be very interesting to examine the interrelation between political setting and labor condition, such as the Leninist party-state regime and the nominal trade unions. Oh and I'm wondering this: during an interview, a professor said there are not so many American students interested in blue-collar workers. Is it true? It is reasonable for me as a lot of plants are moving overseas and perhaps the blue-collar labor issue is now replaced by unemployment issue. But anyway, I'm wondering is here anyone interested in the topics similar to mine. Is there anyone interested in workers, occupation, labor, economic sociology or China?

I would be with you - if we assume that people's tendency to report a result keeps on a constant level over time. If so, less reported acceptances and more reported rejections means that we have fewer and fewer offers over time. However, I could be Astronautka as well - if we assume that people's tendency to report acceptance or rejections depends on how they get used to each of them. If so, and since in the very beginning there are acceptances only, we can see: T1: all acceptances! Wow! People admitted are so excited and report and report and report. The A/R ratio extremely inclines to the acceptances. T2: some school hadn't made any decision in T1 start to send admissions; and the schools sending admissions in T1 start to reject people. Let's say the real A/R ratio is 1:1, but some people who get admitted in both T1 and T2 are getting used to admissions and feel not very into reporting. However, the first-time -rejection-receivers, are reporting their rejections. Also, some people had no admission in T1 but are admitted in T2 feel excited so they report. Entirely, compared to the reported A/R ratio in T1, the reported A/R ratio in T2would incline more to rejection. T3: likewise, but very likely fewer first-time-admission-receiver, and more people who are getting used to admissions. T4: likewise. . . . . . . . TN This is absolutely a rough model, well, I even doubt if it could be called a model, lol. The assumption about infinite schools slightly implied in the model is stupid. And there are a lot of other detailed assumptions needed. However, I think my idea is expressed well in it. The REPORTED A/R ratio could be contributed by the factor "people's being used to acceptances". BTW, I think it's fun to have some discussion like this in a sociology sub-forum. We are all kind of nerdy thus we are here.

It would be so interesting to meet you guys in Madison. I feel regretful now for that I would not be attending the visit day of UW Madison!

I would like suggest that the OP does this: contact the professors you are most interested in in each school, and talk about your future research plan. Provide as much as information you could, and discuss how could/ would you work with each of them. Then you could figure out the feasibility of working with them, and I believe it matters on your being happy or not during the PHD years. I also believe they will be very willing to discuss this with you, especially if you let them know this discussion will help you make up your mind.

I didn't expect that the option I chose, the thank you note, is the least popular one....@_@ I wrote to a professor, who interviewed me, right after receiving the rejection. I said thanks to her and wished to cross her path in the academia someday. It's no hurt, and anyway I wanna keep in some kind of touch with her.

I think, generally, being recommended for admission is very close to a really admission. However, I've heard some anomalous stories. For international students whose native language is not English, the most common problem would be TOEFL. Sometimes the department can recommend someone whose TOEFL is a bit under the requirement of grad school, and their could be some negotiation among the grad school, the department and the applicant to decide whether the applicant can get an admission, a conditional offer or perhaps get nothing in the end. In some cases, the applicant would be ask to take TOEFL again. Anyway, I think it's very likely that the OP is in. Congrats!

I'm really surprised at seeing a PTT post here. Anyway, it's fun that I'm on that list.

Yes, they said so! So I think it's something they have decide very clearly and stated formally.