pl0x

The short answer is: you're fine. The long answer is, you're fine if you choose your programs intelligently and have a strong research question you want to develop in grad school. Apply widely (this is sage advice for anyone, not just appropriate to your situation) and run your SOP by as many professors and students as you can.

Something I wish I had done was consider ranking more heavily. I applied schools only by fit and ended up with acceptances from one top-10 program and several top-30 programs. The institutional resources of the top-10 program vastly exceed the other programs, and the difference in terms of placement is huge as well. I really wish I had applied only to one "safety" school and picked some other schools ranked in the top-15 and top-20 that have good placement and more real world cachet. Especially privates with strong funding support for grads -- Yale, Columbia, Duke for instance. A lot of these programs are trying to move up as well, so the landscape might dramatically change in terms of hiring, funding, placement, etc. And you never know -- your research interests may change dramatically from even the time you apply to the time you are accepted (which happened to me). PS. echo on the "High GREs mean squat." I had a 1500 combined and a 6.0AW and wasn't nearly as successful as the majority of people I have met at open houses, etc. And the highest ranked school I was admitted to told me no one on the adcomm cared about them except as a kind of curiosity (Hey, these scores are really high!).

There was a visit day in February, I believe on the weekend of the 13th. My feeling is that all accepted applicants were notified by then. You may want to check your spam folder-- my email was in there and I know it landed in there for a number of other applicants as well. You can also try giving Rati Kashyap a call if your spam box gets periodically empty. Then again, I did receive an actual letter a few weeks ago with my notification of acceptance and some medical forms to fill out. To be honest, I have a lot of issues with the way CUNY handled admissions this year. You can PM me for details.

I'll jump in, but with slightly different opinions on a few of the points here. I'll organize it by the components of the application. 1) GRE scores - sweat the minimums. I don't mean the bare minimums for acceptance by the Graduate Division, but no one really cares about GRE scores unless they're low (if they're high, it's a novelty thing). 2) GPA - Have a strict 3.5 or above (like, not even 3.48). It makes a big difference at schools that guarantee funding, because the Grad Division often has numerical cutoffs for fellowships. 3) SOP - Ask a good, compelling research question. This is probably the most important thing in your whole application, provided you have the baseline numerical qualifications. Every faculty I've talked to has wanted to know my interests, and trust me, you can get as specific and arcane as you want to -- it's a good thing. No one cares about anything else. Just find a kickass dissertation topic and write well about it. 4) LORs - most people aren't famous. Get letters that are really enthusiastic and specific. 5) School list - for the love of God, apply to 10-14 schools including a good handful of private universities. There are so many reasons for this -- the most obvious being that the more schools you apply to, the more likely you'll get in. But also, once you DO get in (and you will), funding will still be an obstacle for you. If you didn't get enough at your dream school, you can leverage your other packages to get more. If that doesn't work out, you can really think hard about whether going into debt/paying more is an acceptable investment for you -- and have options to fall back on. And with funding for so many public universities running out, you're going to feel the pinch in terms of worse funding packages, less acceptances, higher yields -- you do want to have the private school option insulating you a bit.

Have you heard about funding? It seems this year has been incredibly tight... I really don't know if I can go with what they've offered me. I can't make the visit days to plead my case either. If I do wind up at UCLA, I'll probably have to take out pretty substantial loans. Unfortunate...

Anyone considering attending? The visit days are in a week.

I don't mean to impugn her words, but 89%?!?! I had no idea Iowa was graduating so many students to the TT!

I'm the same... but my birthday's in December. I'm a little worried about that coming up during the visit weekends, especially at the events with alcohol.

I was going to post something but this pretty much sums up everything I had to say -- especially about the tough decisions we have ahead. OP, my 2 cents -- if you have dependents, don't go anywhere without funding. Regarding the snark: yes, this is a time of extreme anxiety and, for a few, extreme disappointment. I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a twinge for every person celebrating their acceptance to a program I was rejected from. I empathize with those who have not heard from their programs. It sucks. But we shouldn't forget that this is also a time of extreme happiness -- and it should be! I am proud of my accomplishments and ecstatic that they have been recognized. And because of that, I have no problem extending my sincere congratulations to all of us on this mountaintop -- we've sacrificed a good deal to be here. Good luck to everyone still waiting!

UC Irvine with full funding + stipend! I now have a very difficult choice if UCLA doesn't offer me funding, but I'm not complaining! Good luck to everyone still waiting.

Ahh... not the most pleasant news to receive in the morning. I really thought Princeton was a good fit, but the professors I wanted to work with were all superstars and applying to a program of that selectivity is always tough. Good luck to all those on the waiting list! And again, congrats to those who were accepted... what an amazing program.

Same here. Let's keep our fingers crossed together... Congrats to all the accepted applicants!

Forgive my curiosity but did you apply to any programs other than Stanford? In any case, I'm sympathetic to your feelings -- waiting for that first acceptance is torture. Good luck to you.

Congrats EdPolicy! Do you mind me asking what the phone call/email was like?

And my GPA was a good deal lower than the average GPA.

UCLA!!! Admitted by my first choice! I'm in shock. I woke up way too early this morning and was about to go back to sleep when I received the email.

In ref. to 1, my undergrad is a mid-tier UC. My LORs did not come from professors in sociology (not 1 out of the 4) but I would consider one of them from a "known professor" in his field. Good luck! and thank you.

I got into UCSD! though I'm not one of the first two in the results page. I'll fudge the numbers a bit, but my GPA was ~3.5 and my GREs were V95% and Q85%. Hope this helps any future/current applicants. So excited! EDIT: I didn't see the post above. I can't really provide an opinion on the usefulness of stats because of my limited experience with grad admissions, but it does make sense to be prudent about interpreting them. I do have a relatively low GPA, and I do think (hope) I was helped out by the more nebulous aspects of my application. In either case, I do hope that sharing my stats provides someone somewhere with some kind of help -- reassurance, a barometer, etc.

The presupposition that affirmative action (and by extension, the acknowledgment of race) is somehow childish -- the antithesis of something as "important and prestigious" as grad school -- is incredibly offensive to me. Many things we take for granted when we talk about race today -- the understanding that racial discrimination is wrong, or the idea that race is a social, not biological construct, for instance -- arose in huge part from the work that was done in higher education BY people of color. People who, if not for affirmative action, would not have been able to participate in higher learning. We shouldn't assume that we've reached a static understanding of race perfectly equitable to all people, PRECISELY because of graduate/higher ed research. One example I can pull from the top of my head is Roland Fryer, the economist at Harvard, whose work and life I won't summarize here but are well worth reading for the perspectives they provide on this topic. Beyond this, we should question the notion that one's ethnicity and racial identity don't impact the research one is capable of doing. In sociology we learn about "access," and what that means in terms of membership in a racial minority/majority. But in every field, there are real obstacles that arise because of race -- black kids who don't apply themselves in science and math classes for fear of being accused of "acting white," Asian American kids who are pressured into those same fields not only by their parents but by their peers and societal expectations, for example. Even if race theoretically "shouldn't matter," even if race is arbitrary, even if it isn't "real" -- it creates very real feelings, very real problems, and very real consequences. There are nebulous aspects of affirmative action, and I won't pretend that I'm arguing wholesale for either side (well, obviously I'm leaning one way). Just, please -- consider the ramifications of EVERYTHING you are saying.

I was just accepted to CUNY! I'm wondering if anyone has any info about the funding situation there? Extremely excited!!