Sword_Saint

I would echo many of the things mentioned by "Velua" above, with some of my own comments as well: These sections had grammatical errors / tense inconsistencies: "This was the moment I grew from a somewhat niave and unfocused young adult into a strong, capable, and highly motivated woman. This is the moment that marks the realization..." "round my eduction on this topic" "allowing the student to trailor their studies" "a unique prespective, " General Comments / Feedback: - If you think you need to discuss your GPA / courses, do what you must, but the admission folks already have that information available by looking at your transcripts. They can see what courses you took during your senior year, and will readily be able to tell if and by how much your GPA fluctuated. Explaining why that happened may be important, but consider spending less time on things that can be learned from looking at your transcripts and other application materials. - I am not entirely sure if teaching methods can be interdisciplinary. Substantively, courses can be interdisciplinary, such as "Critical Behavioral Health Problems" having content for psychology students and criminal justice students, two different disciplines; for a teaching style to be interdisciplinary I imagine it would require teaching methods from multiple disciplines. This is not what you convey as an example of interdisciplinary teaching however. - You specify policy reform in regards to drug use as an area of research interest for you, but perhaps you should consider aligning your research interests with specific faculty that also have that specialization at the university you are applying to. If there are no faculty at this university with your research interests, and you are unable to apply to other schools, consider bending your SOP a little and including research interests of one or more faculty that are as close to your interests as possible. For example: my research interests include the application of GIS technologies to predictive analysis and crime mapping, fields that Dr. [bLANK] at your university is one of the foremost scholars on. - Lastly, I'm not a public health student, so I have no idea what goals someone could or should have in public health occupations or what those occupations would be exactly, but, you say that: "I believe that a complete education and mastery of public health is absolutely necessary to successfuly [sp] accomplish my goals in public health policy". You never list or explain what those goals are, you implicitly suggest them at times, but do not explicitly state them. I would recommend doing so. Those are the biggest things that stood out to me, I highly recommend having a few pairs of eyes read through your SOP to find the typos and mistakes before submission, assuming you haven't submitted it already.

Wardrobe failure

Still waiting. The school in Canada, Simon Fraser, normally has later responses than other schools for whatever reason. They told me they'll have their final decisions by late this week though so we'll see. Cincinnati accepted me already but needed a few more weeks to clarify their funding situation, they said it would be at least 50-100% tuition coverage. The other school, Texas State University, accepted me but their funding situation is sorta abysmal for all master's students. I was nominated for a scholarship and have been guaranteed a graduate assistantship position if I do not get accepted for the competitive Research Fellowship; even getting the scholarship and the fellowship/assistantship I would only have about 6-7k after tuition for living expenses for 9 months tho, ill have it sorted in a week or two hopefully Have you made your decision then for Penn?

Yeah. I was nominated for the merit scholarship and have applied for the Applied Arts Research Fellowship (R.A. position). I won't know about either of those for at least 3 or 4 weeks and thats only because of how amazing the graduate admissions folks in the criminal justice department have been. I was guaranteed a graduate assistantship if I do not get the R.A. spot but even then, that would only be like 13k for 9 months of the fall and spring semester. On the plus side, either the R.A. or the Graduate assistantship would allow me to pay in-state tuition so it would cover my tuition and living expenses but probably not all of my food and/or luxury expenses. Still waiting to hear about how much I've been funded through Cincinnati and wanting to hear anything at all from Simon Fraser so we'll see. I would really enjoy attending Texas State though so given comparable funding situations I'd probably choose Texas.

That's a reasonable feeling given your stated background; the PhD is a research degree first and foremost and your proven ability to succeed in some research capacity is normally used as an indicator about your ability to succeed in research in the future. I suggest you talk with members of your cohort and your adviser and find out if you can do some work as a co-author or co-presenter to get more exposure to that, that way you have a better idea of how to get into all of this on your own. My 2 cents: Presentations are a cake walk compared to the peer-review / publication process which can be very drawn out and very critical: you may be rejected from 5 journals before getting accepted to one. Some assignment from one of your classes that can include research, turn that into a presentation with explicitly stated research questions and the other necessary paper components, then have someone review the title / abstract, then submit to present it at one of the regional conferences like ACJS or ASC as a poster or as a part of a panel. Good luck!

Your question was pretty much already answered, and I imagine that if you narrowed it down to these two you probably already got your situation figured out, but, my 2 cents: ranking isn't necessarily everything. For me, already knowing what I am interested in and wanting to pursue very specific work within Criminal Justice/Criminology, what I [mainly] factored in to my schools was what the particular faculty specialized in. Out of the top 20 highest ranked schools, 2 of them have faculty I would want to work with on crime mapping and environmental crime prevention research. Consequently, my schools included 1 school in Canada known for this research, 1 school with a relatively new PhD program but that has really famous (in this work) academic practitioner faculty and 1 backup school that has somewhat what I want with a high ranking. The high ranking school is pretty well renowned and has great funding opportunities (Cincinnati), but the other two are just more desirable for me b/c of the faculty and their specializations. -Again, just my two cents. Short response to your comment: The comment about them thinking lowly of you is constructive criticism encouraging you to go where you are appreciated and there is funding. Long response: I don't remember if this was me or not who said this, but the comment about thinking little of you gets more at a particular institution not viewing you as the best fit for their program / with the most competitive application given the school's funding situation. The comment really isn't an attack on your personal character. More generally, the comment gets at this idea that you should consider attending a school with some sort of funding instead of no funding because that shits expensive and the general assumption is that no graduate student in this discipline is completely paying for their graduate education if they are taking graduate courses full time. Anecdotally, after speaking with dozens of faculty who successfully completed their PhD's they invariably all report that they went to the school they applied to that paid them the most to go there. "Go wherever the funding is" is a very common phrase given by people who have successfully completed their respective programs.

Since I posted this I've spoken with a couple of alumni that attended Texas State as recently as last year. They informed me that many of the people that attended this school would commute from either southern Austin or from San Antonio; though there are many apartments in San Marcos and public transportation is pretty decent because of how the town is pretty much only a college town. I'm still in the process of looking at apartments specifically in San Marcos, but after looking at 15-20 they are mostly in the 800-900 range for 1-2 bedroom places. I found one or two that were either studio or 1 bedroom in the 715-780 range; I was hoping to find cheaper places b/c the financial compensation for the masters program I was accepted at is pretty slim. Finding roommates is probably pretty not hard if you're willing to go that route, save several hundred dollars doing that instead.

Its definitely not up to the panelists. In my [limited] experience they group like panels/activities to the same day. At ACJS last week the grad students were sometimes on panels with professors/practitioners. The last day, yesterday, many of the panelists were undergrad's / grad students an not PhD's.

Anyone heard from Simon Fraser University? I heard from cincinnati and Texas State around February 25, but still waiting for SFU.

It really depends on the school. Temple University for example requires about 60 credits for their PhD program, at 9 credits/semester that would be 7 semesters, but they also say they can waive up to 30 credits of master's level work. That's way different than a school that operates on a quarter system for instance. The schools I've looked at, realistically after your masters (1-2 years) you should anticipate 3-4 years for a PhD. But I was looking at Texas State, Cincinnati, and Simon Fraser mostly. Also, "Pennywise" is correct in my opinion about funding. Ask anyone in higher education, especially in this field, and they will tell you to go wherever there is the most funding. If you have a very not competitive application for graduate school and don't get funding your first year, re-apply next year and work to get a better application. I would try to become a research aide/graduate research assistant and/or get more research experience to make your application more competitive. Study for and retake the GRE or correct whatever it is dragging your package down. The University of Cincinnati in their acceptance letter to me indicated I was accepted, and would receive a minimum of 50% tuition coverage, but that their funding situation would not be entirely determined for a few more weeks- so that scenario can happen.

There were only 6 or 7 people at my presentation, no 25, but mine was on the last day at 9:30 in the morning. It seemed to greatly vary depending on the time of day, reputation of the speaker(s) and whether it was a featured panel or not.

Holy crap, thanks for posting that. I almost applied to ASU but ended up applying for Texas State instead.

Oh, you were in the Mental Health Panel, right? Did that go pretty smoothly? I present first on Saturday in the Neighborhood Disorder, Communities and Crime panel, gotta be the worst day because everyone I know is gone by then. Yeah, I'm working on abstracts today, looking to submit the abstract for a themed panel for Crime and Place at ASC. I'm just surprised how informal ACJS has been this year, sorta wonder if half the people are just here for the weather.

Both of the previous respondents nailed it with the departments being in or characterized by public policy. It sort of depends what you mean by research and public policy though. I say this because I'm fascinated with crime mapping and environmental criminology for their policy implications. Specifically, it's not that difficult to conduct research for local law enforcement for instance that may influence policy decisions based on your findings. There are plenty of Tier 1 research schools where the faculty are participating in funded research and capable of paying students to be Research Assistants and the like - if you meant broader like that then there's quite a few programs.

Hey all, I'm here presenting at ACJS in sunny Orlando and it made me wana see if a conference thread would be well received or not. Specifically, is anyone or has anyone else presented here already this year? Is anyone planning on presenting at ASC in Washington D.C. in November?

For Master's Program- NOT Ph.D. program: - Texas State University: Accepted (February 23), waiting to hear about Research Assistant and Merit Scholarship. Admissions folks said I had a competitive application for both and if accepted for them, will receive about 17,500 the first year and only have to pay in-state tuition. - University of Cincinnati: Accepted (February 25). Told I would at least receive the "University Graduate Scholarship" which would at least pay for 50% of tuition but may pay for up to 100% depending on how the funding allocations go, which will be done in a week or two. Still no word from Simon Fraser University. Undergrad GPA: 3.8, GRE: Math 151/ Verbal 157/ Writing: 4.5. Member of 4 research projects / undergraduate thesis, 1 conference presentation, co-authored 1 paper.

It would appear that way. I'm a little jealous of all of the students who applied for schools that allow bachelor's students to apply straight into the Ph.D. programs. My top two schools for environmental crime prevention only allow bachelor's students to apply for the university's Master's Program. What was worse was Simon Fraser's website indicated they do allow bachelor - Ph.D. but after my student adviser spoke with their graduate adviser he was like "No, sorry, that's not a real thing at this point. Not currently accepting of that situation."

Like the other users have indicated, ArcGIS is anything but user friendly, in my experience at least. This is an unfortunate side effect of being capable of doing so much- you can really do a lot of things with the software. I used it for crime mapping in a "Crime Mapping and Analysis" course so I imagine you may be using it for different purposes as a straight GIS student. One resource for online courses not mentioned yet is "Lynda.com". They have courses on ArcGIS and other programs as well. Below is the link to their site where I searched for Arc GIS: http://www.lynda.com/ArcGIS-training-tutorials/1963-0.html

I was tempted to add this as a post under Austin, as San Marcos is only 30 miles away, but different city, so new topic. I'm applying to Texas State University (Criminal Justice Master's Program) and wanted to ask a few questions to anyone who lives there or has been through. 1) Is the city bike friendly? I was contemplating living nearby campus and biking to get around as I don't mind the weather or extra time spent instead of driving. I am unsure whether the town is very open to that, in terms of vehicular-bike safety and/or bike lanes. 2) Are housing costs more expensive around the University than elsewhere in town? Are the housing costs near the university low enough to allow students with assistant-ships to live there in an affordable manner? 3) Where are the disreputable neighborhoods a student should be weary of ? (assuming here that there are some) Any information about San Marcos is welcome, Texas State is my number 1 school but I don't have a lot of personal experience with the surrounding town and area. Thanks in advance.

1) Short answer: It depends. Long Answer: Criminological theory focuses on causes of crime, which may or may not be the first step in identifying how to solve criminality in a certain area (prevention / intervention). It depends on whether the criminological work is being done in a purely academic setting or will make its way to policy makers. For example, my undergraduate thesis involved environmental criminology to identify physical characteristics of an environment that contributed to why people commit crime there. The research is being presented to the local law enforcement agency and stake holders, so it may (help) lead to prevention and intervention (also presenting at ACJS in March, hope you see some of you there). Many environmental criminologists are strong proponents for research being applied to the field and being as useful as possible, examples include Drs. Eck and Rossmo (not to say other criminologists work is not useful, just less practically applied at times). 2) Criminology is the causes of crime. Criminal Justice is the institutional response to crime (generally). Many programs combine the two terms and many students use the terms interchangeably. Whether the Ph.D. is different depending on Crim versus CJ depends on the institution as much as on the terms as far as I have observed. 3) It depends on what you're interested in within Criminology or Criminal Justice. My undergraduate justice capstone was "Bio-behavioral Criminology" and focused on, you guessed it, biological explanations for individuals committing crime. The course had psychology and biology students and the content covered topics such as: psychopathy, sociopathy, neurotransmitter in-balances, etc. This is a relatively new and interdisciplinary part of criminal justice research, and a psychology student would be extremely well suited to pursue this if you were to find programs capable of allowing you to pursue this (the right faculty who were cool with biobehavioral and had research experience with this). It might be more foreign for you to pursue other areas within the discipline, but it is all social science, so the statistical procedures and methodologies shouldn't be a huge leap for you.

I'm excited about Cincinnati for their crime prevention and environmental criminology myself. The faculty at my university normally discuss the student interests here the most- pretty standard stuff about going into local or state law enforcement or corrections. This is a little outside of psychology (and possibly Criminology a little if you don't believe environmental crim.) but as a crime prevention and crime mapping student, I understand there's some demand for GIS and Mapping Analysts. Been looking at postings for a while for that and for security management firms. Its a little more technical in some respects but looks rewarding if you're working for the right agency.

I have not heard back from Cincinnati yet. I applied for their Master's program, not their Ph.D. program though (deadline for their Masters was the 1st). Criminology: Simon Fraser University (B.C. Canada) Criminal Justice: Texas State University, University of Cincinnati Anyone else applying for Texas State or Simon Fraser? They sorta look like the best programs for Crime Prevention and Crime Mapping (imo).