Sword_Saint

I wanted to start a thread and pose a couple questions to you guys, folks in the soft sciences, hard sciences and humanities. I'm a recently accepted graduate student in the social sciences and over the last year or so I've gotten into more debates about the legitimacy of the social sciences. The debates tend to start when I'm having a conversation and I indicate I have found something to be true (e.g.: I found that crime at a park was not randomly distributed in space, but concentrated at a problematic area), or when someone explains that they value the natural sciences more so than the social sciences. I can accept that not everyone is going to have a passion for the things I have a passion for, but it is at times infuriating to hear a fellow college student make supremely ignorant remarks about whether the hard sciences are more useful than the soft or something of that nature. My intention about starting this thread isn't to start some sort of academic civil war, but to ask a few questions for people who have more experience than I do as current, or aspiring, researchers or scientists; regardless of whether your science is more akin to chemistry and biology or psychology and sociology. Is the argument between natural and social scientists of little consequence in the work place? Is this a discussion I should expect to have throughout the course of my studies and after? What are your guys' experience with the subject of discipline rivalry or citizen skepticism of the usefulness of academics? Thank you for any feedback you guys have, I just want to get some idea of if this is an isolated incident or something I should anticipate for many years to come.

That's really weird; it was my understanding individuals generally had until April 15th to decide. I would look into that farther if I were you.

I don't think I've seen many people (any really) going for Simon Fraser University, but I'm starting their master's program in Criminology in the fall.

I have something to vent about: A women was just arrested in Alaska for running a sex-trafficking operation throughout Alaska. There were hundreds of women involved in multiple cities and the arrested women in charge had many previous charges. Some of her previous charges include driving while intoxicated, driving with a revoked license and stabbing a man in the neck with a broken beer bottle. Why she wasn't imprisoned for the assault with a weapon is beyond me; but I know our system isn't perfect and she was given another chance. What gets me about this isn't the substantive issue of sex-trafficking, the issue of whether or not prostitution should be legal or illegal or whether the prostitutes were being treated well or very poorly. What bothers me is the dozens of comments on different related articles berating the police. I get that everyone has a different opinion and perspective, but it really bothers me that people would insult and belittle law enforcement for lawfully doing their jobs. Especially given that many officers got into the field to help people- often willing to put their safety on the line to do this. Fine, call cops idiots, but their job is necessary, difficult, and often under immense scrutiny. I just don't get the hate. Sure, some cops make mistakes or are just bad people, cops are still people after, but its a tough gig.

My undergrad university prides itself with having a good nursing program, and the nursing students are generally stat's wizards. I appreciate stats and enjoy taking the courses, but some of those nursing people blew my mind.

This is one of my worst fears: That I somehow over prepared for future graduate courses, making the material boring or just review. It sounds arrogant when I say it out loud, but when the courses cost as much as they do, you really want the most for the cost of the course. I totally get it.

In my finite experience it's highly variable based on the school and the department within the school. One of the schools I applied for I heard back from within 10 days, another school I heard back from in about 3 weeks. A third school took 7 weeks to reply (February 1st deadline, heard back on March 23). Not a whole lot you can do I suppose, just wait it out. If you have to make a commitment for other schools before that deadline, I would give them a heads up you are waiting for one still.

Yeah, the response depends on the investment into your application by that respective department. At one school I was nominated to receive an award that only 2 applicants per department can be nominated for; in that instance I'm going to send an actual email and/or give the person a call I've been communicating with. The other schools Ima just use their application site.

- Tribal tattoos - MMA shirts - Very large trucks (citizen trucks, popular in Alaska) - Fast food places (all of them) - Skateboarding - Marijuana

I don't think I saw this anywhere in the other responses: Some institutions (in my discipline) will only look at the last 2 years of your undergraduate degree, like the last 60 credit hours. Specifically, Simon Fraser in British Columbia Canada calculated my last 60 credit hours when determining my acceptance and financial aid. I have a family member who finished their B.S. in biology with a 2.8'ish GPA but was able to take another three semesters of school, get a B.S. in geology / oceanography and raise their overall GPA to the 3.0 area. You definitely are not hopeless or a lost cause! If I were you I would just focus my statement letters on some of the difficulties or whatnot that resulted in a low GPA, then work to ensure my GRE was good. Considering a couple years of work experience / volunteer / research isn't bad either, an then just re-applying. You got this! Edit: I mentioned this in another thread; there are a lot of technical or trade workers that make considerably more money than individuals with bachelor's or master's degrees. Not that money = happiness or success, but you shouldn't hinge your life prospects on a master's either.

It was a "3rd World Success Kid" meme. Sorry about that, I have taken it down! I have a rather sardonic sense of humor, but didn't intend to be outwardly [or passive-aggressively] offensive or derogatory when I put it up.

Meeting with my adviser every week or every other week is how I am managing to finish my thesis; the deadline for showing him progress has helped to terrify me on a weekly basis into getting stuff done. Congrats on the funding! And grant paperwork is painful, in my experience first hand and second hand, it can be painful in every direction, and generally requires rewrites and re-submissions.

Told you'll only have to work 10 hours a week as a GA? Prepare your body.

Disclaimer: I don't have a lot of exposure of police departments in other states and can't speak to the thoroughness of their projects. Fair enough, and I do think you are right in most respects. I just had to reply because I was concerned that your remark may disparage or short-change progressive law enforcement agencies or analysts. My experience with it is probably the exception rather than the rule; police here [Alaska] frequently and openly communicate with academics at my institution. A CPTED report in the downtown area for example was completed by a local 'Community Action Policing' division within the department and was empirically driven, with a lit review and data supportive of a CPTED initiative to reduce crime. Similarly, the local police crime analyst communicates with the crime mapping specialists at the university- however this may be an isolated event compared to how it works in other parts of the country and is not the same kind of experience as a research assistant or technician or whatnot.

Thanks for the info folks, I appreciate it!

It's very arguably a kind of research, using GIS to map crime at places easily falls within the definition of research as "the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions" (google definition). Some of the crime analysts I know would not be getting anything published, but they would be investigating patterns of criminal activities throughout the city in a systematic way so as to establish facts and reach new conclusions, in so far as they would be directing police in a useful, targeted manner, following problem oriented policing (POP) strategies to target specific problems. The crime analysts I know are also not necessarily constrained to not use academic or social science research methods. Two of the faculty in my department consider themselves crime analysts for instance, in so far as they use RTM techniques and/or mapping strategies to influence their response to local community dilemmas and other more academic research in general. The individuals who work at the Texas Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Analysis are also very easily considered crime analysts, but they use very interesting geographic profiling techniques that are academic in nature. My point of mentioning crime analysts, or SAC offices, was just to point out that research positions come in different shapes and sizes and someone's search for a research position should be well thought out to exclude the positions he/she doesn't want to work doing.

That [the presence, or lack thereof, of funding] changes the equation by a million percent. Just because you haven't heard anything doesn't mean you should assume the worst, the school that took the longest to get back to me ended up being the school with the best financial offer [so far, bidding might occur however]. I would definitely be trying to get in contact with the school though as it's late march and you need to decide soon for the other program.

Couple questions from a prospective student at Simon Fraser University: 1) What are the normal 'cold' weeks like in the winter time? (in terms of temperatures, coldest temp's you guys have experienced there in recent years) 2) How much snow if any does Vancouver / Burnaby receive in the winter months? 3) Are there any 'studded tires' laws in Vancouver? For example, for driving in inclement weather during the winter, am I only allowed to have studded tires on my car from November to March or something along those lines. I'm coming from Alaska and am considering biking most places when I attend grad school there so I can save money by not using my car. I'm pretty comfortable biking in weather as low as about -7 c. and wanted to get a sense from locals if the temp may drop below that in January or February. Thanks for any info about it!

net traps

Yeah, it depends on what kind of research you want to do and where you are willing to work. Not to be a jerk, but "this field" is very very broad. If you had skills with geographic information systems I would tell you to get familiar with the "International Association of Crime Analysts" but if you are in this field and have never used crime mapping software, that advise may be useless to you. Other examples: For instance, Justice Statistical Analysis Centers are in every state to my knowledge, and at least the one in Alaska is commonly working on funded research in addition to having full time paid employees. Link: http://www.jrsainfo.org/sac/saclist.html Some research positions are within governmental bodies, in my state there is a statewide website for positions all over the state, I imagine other states do this as well. This would be like for research within a crime lab, for law enforcement, etc. Universities are also places where public positions relating to research are most common, I say this because there are many research universities. Additionally, each state has their own research institutes, for example in Texas: "Crime Victims Institute" and "Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation". In Ohio, "University of Cincinnati Corrections Institute." Use google and narrow your focus to a particular type of research.

One of the programs I received an acceptance from gave me 21 days to reply. They sent me the letter when 21 days was after April 15, but still, I imagine some schools have different procedures for this. Like the other reply indicated, I would contact the director and not the secretary. Also, I would not stop at 1 phone call; if you get a voice mail with the secretary (or director) and they don't respond within 24 hours, I would call again because it's an understandably important conversation you need to have.

Keep holding out, take one day at a time, and realize that it isn't the end of the line: I applied for IRB approval on an exempt proposal that I wanted to start data collection on in mid-December. By early January I realized I would have to do data-collection during the semester and wouldn't be able to take the stats class that I wanted to, that would make my grad school applications look better. The IRB approval came in the third week of January, nearly two months after I send it in, on a damn exempt proposal. Then, I was relying on a grant to travel to an academic conference, the grant paperwork was approx. 25 pages and reviewed by multiple faculty members. The amount of the funding was about 1000 dollars and in late January it was rejected, after it was already rejected once in November and I revised and resubmit it. The grant committee told me to revise and resubmit it in late April, when they knew it would take 4 weeks to review the grant applicants, and my conference was on March 3rd. They don't retroactively award funding. I question whether they told me to resubmit it out of kindness or passive aggression. It was the end of my prospects of going to the conference, presenting this research I'd been working on for about 6 months in some capacity. Presenting at the conference was a major facet of my individual research course and it all went to hell, or so I thought. Turned out my department took pity on me, paid for my hotel expenses, flight expenses and per diam for 5 days (about 1,950 total). Then the next week I was told that my Tuition Scholarship essays (2 one page essays) were the source of roughly 1,700 dollars of tuition reimburse for the semester. Combined with a grant my adviser nominated me for, my tuition for the semester was completely paid. Since late January I have gotten 3 generous acceptance packages from graduate programs I want to attend. What started as the worst semester became the best in a matter of weeks. No, I didn't get that grant, and no, I didn't get to take the "Applied Stats for the Social Sciences" capstone course I wanted, but I pushed through that and focused on all of my short term goals, one day at a time, and for me it ended up working out in the end.

Thank you for the useful information! Yeah, food prices [and gasoline surprisingly] are pretty high in Alaska, as is the cost of housing in general. The tip about transportation is useful, I am considering bringing my car with me but planned on biking everywhere for the most part; just using my car to get groceries and such. I'll check out the city page for Vancouver and go from there.

Thank you for bringing that up, when I looked at housing in the Burnaby area it was pretty affordable (many options within the 400-700 dollar range) but I haven't looked into some of the other expenses. I will be spending two months during the summers back home working on funded research and I will apply for other scholarships for my second year. The package from SFU then being for about 10 months of the year and not 12. The high expenses in Vancouver, are you attributing them to gasoline costs, food costs, utilities or something else?

Officially heard from Simon Fraser in Vancouver (technically Burnaby) British Columbia! I was accepted with a 34k funding offer for the two year master's program. It indicated I could apply for other competitive financial awards as well, and as their tuition is only about 7k per year, the funding package is more than enough for me to attend classes there. I had an anxiety attack when I read their letter, and will very likely accept as it is the most financially competitive compared to the other schools I applied for and is tied for 1st place in terms of research fit.