juiceboxrampage

Everyone I have talked to says that you are WAY more likely to get a job with a sociology degree than a women's studies degree, even if you're looking to work in a women's studies department. Folks in women's studies departments are claiming that there is a increasing trend to hire a larger percentage of WS PhDs than in the past, but programs are still much more likely to hire disciplinary PhDs. Who knows what this situation will look like in 4-8 years when you're going to be graduating, but right now, it seems safer to go with sociology. As a sociologist, you can work in a sociology department OR a women's studies department, while you are limiting yourself to only working in a women's studies department with a women's studies PhD. Since the job situation is so crappy right now, there's a huge trend for folks to work in different departments than they got their PhDs in (e.g. soc people working in anthro departments, anthro people working in legal departments). You can take advantage of this with a soc degree, but probably not with a women's studies degree, since disciplinary fields usually do not hire interdisciplnary PhDs. Most schools also offer certificates or emphases in women's studies, so you can still work with the women's studies department while getting your PhD. I feel like having a women's studies certificate or emphasis will make you competitive in the departments that are jumping on the trend of hiring actual women's studies people, as well. Of course, this is all based on the professors I have talked to, and so other people might have different views based on the people they've talked to. As for your concerns about quantative study in sociology, it doesn't really matter if there are more quant people in the U.S. If you want to do ethnography, you can focus on ethnography. Depending on the department, you might have to take a general methods class in your first year that will include some quant methods, but no one is going to force you to use statistics in your work. I personally feel like quantitative and qualitative methods are generally pretty well balanced and respected, though this might be different in different programs.

I literally just accepted their offer! I'm going to be in the sociology department. I'm super excited -- Santa Cruz is so lovely. Are you wanting to live with roommates or alone?

All but one of the schools I applied to have a foreign language requirement, but I've heard it's quite easy to pass their profenciency test with very minimal studying. The test is usually translating 1-2 texts with full use of a dictionary. So you don't necessarily need to know how to speak, listen, or write; you just have to be able to read for comprehension. There's a bunch of different books called "X Language for Reading" (e.g. French for Reading) that help you with this type of comprehension. Many folks say you only need to study for 1-2 months to be able to pass. So, yes, many schools have a foreign language requirement, but not all do, and it's absolutely not necessary to minor in a language or even take undergrad language courses. I'd say it really depends on what you want to do. If you want to complete an ethnography in another country, then absolutely you should take some classes that focus on pronounciation and listening comprehension. If you want to analyze texts or data in another language, then you should take some reading classes. If you have zero interest in ever doing any sociology work in another language, though, then I'd skip the language classes and just pass the profenciency test. It's better to minor in something you're actually interested in or something you can actually use later on in your career. For example, if you want to study domestic violence in the U.S., you're way better off getting a minor in women's studies than you are getting a minor in German. Of course, you should definitely look into the specific universities you want to go to, because many don't require it. If you're having trouble finding that information, most of the language requirements are kind of hidden in their long list of PhD requirements. There will be a section on classes you need to take, comprehensive exams, blah blah blah, and then they sneak in the language requirement.

I spent so much of my life trying to force myself to eat tiny amounts of super healthy food, while occasionally doing little baby aerobics work outs. It sucked. I never had enough willpower to reduce my calorie intake enough to maintain my weight, and I was extremely weak and stressed. Now I do intense workouts a few times a week and let myself eat whatever I want. I feel great, I'm the strongest I've been in years, and I've been dropping pounds steadily. I do strength workouts with weights now, instead of just using my body weight, and oh my god what a difference it's made in my muscle composition. I like to lift in my room in my pajamas watching TV, so it's easy to make time for it. I also try to bike as much as possible. Since it's just a mode of transportation, it doesn't really feel like exercise, and it's made my legs SO strong. The last thing I do is the hardest one. I'm training for a thru-hike, so I put bags of cat litter in a backpack and walk up and down the stairs in my house for about an hour. I listen to music to keep my mind off the task. It's rough, but after only three times of doing it spread out over a week or two, I noticed a visible change in my legs. Crazy. Basically the moral of the story is I am so much happier doing intense workouts, being strong, and getting to eat whenever I want, instead of trying to force myself to look and act like some frail wispy fashion model.

I'm wondering if anyone has any knowledge about how current graduate students have been affected by UC's recent budget struggles. Has anyone heard of someone losing their funding? Is it harder to get a TA/RA position? Are cohorts getting bigger, with more competition? I'm considering a UC school, but I'm worried about how the funding situation will look a few years down the road. One of my friends has told me that "guaranteed" funding really isn't actually guaranteed, and they can cut your funding if they want to.

One of my most helpful and wonderful advisors hates his job, wishes he never got a PhD, and actively advised me not to get a PhD for any reason. I think it's helpful to be realistic about how crappy the whole process can be. You're going to work your ass off for not a lot of reward. Yes, there are benefits, which is why we're all doing this anyway, but I'm sure he knows what he's talking about when he talks about the drawbacks of the program.

Since Santa Cruz is in a housing crisis right now, I've heard from many locals that the only way to find decent housing is to know people personally. Try visiting the area, ask your friends if they have friends there, and get in contact with student groups that you have interest in. You can use Craigslist and other online postings, but I've heard that each Craigslist post gets tons and tons of responses, so it's rare to be the one they pick if you don't have connections. Just make sure you're writing detailed emails to craigslist ads to show how you're a great applicant and make you competitive. This is true if you're trying to find housing anywhere, but especially when housing is scarce, sending a one line "hey can I move in thx" email won't cut it.

I emailed the director of my undergrad university's department asking which school I should go to, and she flat out told me that I'll only be able to get a job at the higher ranked school. There's been a ton of research about hiring practices within academia that shows that the lower a school is ranked, the harder it is to get a job. You could email the director of the math department at your old school and ask their opinion. A lot of people will give you the sugar coated "go where feels right!" talk, but If your goal is to work in academia, your best bet is probably the prestigious program.

I was having this issue, so I emailed a director at a different school asking which one I should pick. Her answer was a very clear, very precise "It is a no brainer that you should choose X school if you want to become a professor." So, you know, that helped me a lot.

Ostara, a family friendly co-op in Boulder, has 2 rooms opening up. Rent is $582-$628 per month. Here's a link to the craigslist post: http://boulder.craigslist.org/roo/4860458836.html And to their general website, which has much more information about the house: http://boulderhousingcoalition.org/houses/ostara/

I think you should aim for higher GRE scores. If you must, pay the stupid rescheduling fee to give yourself more time to study. With a low GPA, you need to be able to show that you're still an exceptional candidate, which you can do with exceptional GRE scores. You could also ask whoever is writing your letters of recommendation to explain the difference in grading. Good luck!

For both of the schools I got accepted to, I won a fellowship worth $24,000 a year. The TA salaries range from $17,000 to $24,000. I'd definitely check out the websites of the schools you'd be interested in going to. Some have a flat rate fellowship that everyone gets, some have different fellowships with different amounts of funding based on how competitive you are, some have fellowship matching (meaning if you win an external fellowship, they will match that level of funding for you for a certain number of years), some have unionized student workers (which generally means better salaries and benefits, and you have bargaining power if the school is screwing over TAs), and some have almost no funding. It really just depends. I think paying off student loans is totally possible if you're living frugally. There are some folks who have families, who have cars, who want to live in a one bedroom apartment right next to campus, etc. etc. that would probably have some difficulty saving money on $17,000 to $24,000 a year. How I live now, though, ALL of my expenses (rent, food, gas, bills, everything) come to around $500 a month. The cities I'm going to be moving to are going to be a bit more expensive, but I can't imagine spending more than $600 or $700 a month. Obviously this isn't possible for everyone, but it sounds like you're willing to make it work. Get as many roommates as possible (maybe live in a co-op), budget your food expenses wisely (maybe start a bulk food ordering share with some other folks), get a bike or a bus pass, research cheaper companies for your bills (I use Ting for my phone service and pay around $17 a month), and get yourself used to not having as many luxury purchases.

I use Google Flights and Kayak to search for cheap flights. There's also a few cheap airlines that are not offered on sites like Kayak, so I search on their websites individually (Southwest, Spirit, and Jet Blue are a few I can think of). Many folks have recommended putting your browser in incognito mode when you're buying tickets, since there's rumors that websites will increase your ticket costs if you've been browsing tickets for a while. You can use couch surfing websites instead of getting a hotel. If you're going somewhere for a conference or a university visit, you can also ask the organizers if they can put you in touch with folks that can house you.

If your school doesn't post placement records, you can use google search to help you get an idea of where PhDs from your department wind up. Enter this in the search bar: For example, I was trying to find Sociology professors who got their degrees from UC Santa Cruz, so this is what I entered: (Entering site:.edu makes sure only university pages come up in the results. Entering -site:ucsc.edu makes sure the results aren't bogged down with pages from UCSC.) The results are faculty pages of Sociology professors with degrees from UCSC who are teaching at other universities. Hope this is helpful to someone else!

I am absolutely clueless on many very important aspects of grad school. Folks on this forum are generally really helpful, but there seems to sometimes be a culture of "oh my god how do you not know this use the search feature I'm not going to answer this kiddie stuff you should have learned in high school." I've tried searching for this stuff so many times and I still cannot find any simple explanations, or the simple explanations I do find don't seem to apply to me. So I just go along with everything because I don't want to look like an idiot and I don't want to make people mad by asking a silly question. I can't tell if I am actually an idiot, or if everyone else is doing the same thing. For example: I have NO idea what grants to apply to. Zero freaking clue. "The Bank" section is just filled with random acronyms and people talking in code and none of it makes sense to me. I went through a bunch of lists of grants that I apparently should be applying to (listed on grad schools' websites and different topics on here), but I didn't feel like I met the criteria for any of them. Almost all of the grants I found when I was looking were for PhD students already advanced to candidacy. The few I found for first year students required very, very detailed research proposals, but I'm still not sure exactly what I want to do yet, and I was under the impression that grad students don't start doing research until year two or three. I'm so confused about how everyone else knows where to apply and what they applied for and how they applied! It's overwhelming and frustrating. And I'm sure someone will now direct me to a super obvious post that I should have been able to find on my own already. Boo.