oranges

Thanks for mentioning that, as I've been worried about how to dress. I was going to wear an outfit from my government internship, but was worried about shoes as I'm unsure how much walking will be required.

I haven't gone to any visit days yet, but I will be attending UT Austin's recruitment event next month. Is anyone else going?
Also, if anyone else was curious, I contacted the graduate administrator, and she said to dress comfortably (either nice casual attire or business casual would be best).

Hello Olive, 

I don't know you but I want to simply tell you to NEVER give up on your dreams. If your dream is to be a trained sociologist studying and writing on gender (just an example), GO FOR IT. Of course, we desire admissions into a top 20 program but it doesn't always happen. However, during my research, I have noticed that a number of top professors in different sub-fields did not come from "top schools." It's my assumption that their passion and quality performance landed them in tenured positions at top tier schools. 
If you are not admitted this year, no worries. I have a really good friend that applied to PhD programs three years in a row and got into his top choice plus a Fulbright on the last try. Here's the kick, he meet his future professor on a park bench during a conference. She then advocated for his application, and no he is in his last year at an Ivy with groundbreaking publications. 

It's often at the point that we're about to give up, that we're closest to reaching our goals. 

I am in a similar position. I didn't cast a wide net because I jumped in the cycle VERY LATE and I don't foresee acceptance but who knows. 

I was always told to BE UNDENIABLE. 1. Try to get a publication. 2. Strengthen your GRE scores. 3. Get personable yet strong recommendation letter.

At the end of the day, do a bit of soul searching and figure out why you're in the game because if you're in it for the right reason, NOTHING should deter you from reaching your goal.

Best Wishes.    
 

Hey, so I've finally heard back from my schools and I'm trying to decide which soc phd program to go to in the fall and I've narrowed it down to three: Princeton, NYU, and Columbia. 
I don't know what my stipend would be for Princeton yet, but I've been offered around the same for NYU and Columbia (30K ish)...however NYU offers paid teaching positions, whereas Columbia has teaching requirements(about 15 hr/ week) but teaching is unpaid. 
In terms of programs, I am interested in cultural and computational sociology and it seems like all three programs have the resources/faculty in those areas. 
I have some extra considerations because I am a single mom of an infant...so the idea of unpaid teaching time seems logistically and financially troublesome, making NYU appealing....but I went to NYU for undergrad and I know there's kind of a stigma against going to the same grad and undergrad. 

Any thoughts on these programs? How important it is to go to a different school for grad than you went to for undergrad? Also, any single parent students out there with advice/comments? 

Yea, I agree with you that a lot are top flight programs- I didn't apply to anything ranked below 50 (I now kind of regret that).  I want to be a professor so I know my best shot at that is to go to one of the top tier schools...It can happen from a lower ranked program, but it will be harder.  When I apply next year I'll broaden my application list. 
 
Thanks  Yes I will totally go back and retake them, they seem to be, at the very least, the first way that schools take us into account.  

Definitely check out Magoosh and the Manhattan Prep Quant series of books -- you'll see it in the required materials for the 6 month plan. Those two resources taught me the content (extremely well) and also helped me build strategy along the way. I started out getting 6/20 on my diagnostic and made it up to 157 which was good enough for Cornell at least (and considering I'm a qual person who wants to do mixed methods as well). Sorry Sasha but I would not recommend Kaplan - they will teach the content too quickly for a math beginner like you/us to absorb and it's very pricey. I would try to learn as much as you can using the above named resources - it can be done; set up a schedule in google drive and share it with a friend who will keep you accountable - and then shell out for a tutor if needed. I think you'll be surprised how much you'll learn and improve this way. With the Magoosh membership you can also email the expert tutors an unlimited number of times with questions. 

I was accepted to Chicago, ultimately.

thanks for the good karma, @Beals. best of luck to you!!

Haha! The only school I'm still waiting on is Penn. Hoping to receive that important email by the end of this month.

I read your original post with no harm, so no worries. Good luck to you.

I'm not really sure why there is so much hate for the second poster's tone - I read it as an honest inquiry. I'm going to chalk it up to a lot of super anxious folks with emotions running high as we wait on the future of our careers.
Thanks for the feedback. I hadn't though about cost of living, that's a good point.

Now that I've received my first offer and funding package (with hopes more will roll in), I'm wondering - is it standard to negotiate offers? Stipend amounts? Teaching loads? How does this work, and what is the standard protocol? I know that a friend of mine last year was accepted to UCLA's PhD program in Sociology, and then Yale afterwards, so he told UCLA he was accepted to Yale and was considering going there over UCLA - and they (UCLA) offered him more money. But that's my only knowledge with "negotiating" these types of things. Any solid info or opinions would be appreciated. Also, if you know of any resources, that'd help, too. Thanks.

Gotcha. I called this morning. Michigan didn't really give me a sense for when they'd be releasing the decisions. At first the person on the phone said, the next few days, and then said, maybe next week. When I prodded a bit, she said she didn't know, and that the person who coordinates these things is out of the office today.
I also called Northwestern, and Ryan, the graduate coordinator, said that they will be releasing decisions this week and that the Visit Day is March 29 and 30. 

That was me! I got an e-mail from the Graduate Chair David Grazian! Not sure about the portal--haven't checked!

I also received an acceptance email from the Penn Graduate Chair. My portal status wasn't updated though.

@EvelynD -- I've been struggling with my fair share of self-pity...Thankfully, I have a good support system in both my personal and professional life that hasn't really let me get too down. I've also found that trying to figure out why certain people get accepted and why others don't is just a painful, unproductive exercise. We weren't in the admission meetings and have no idea why they picked the people they picked. Trying to compare yourself to the accepted folks just brings more frustration, in my experience. But four schools is a pretty small pool of possibilities. Just think, maybe the people you want to study with can't take any more students right now, are leaving, or have already left and the school hasn't updated their website. Maybe research interests are changing at a particular school and while they once studied what you want to research, the department is trying to move away from that area. Also, one of the schools I got rejected from took a cohort of 7-ish people. That is a very small and very competitive group of people fighting for just a handful spots. We could have been rejected/waitlisted for any number of reasons that really have nothing to do with our abilities. I know that there are areas in my application that I can improve upon (such as a better tailored SOP and raising my quant GRE), but I know that I'm qualified to do this and I won't let a couple rejections get in the way of that. 

You should finish your Masters in Australia, first. Not only will a completed Masters (with a solid thesis) strengthen your application, applying to transfer with an incomplete Masters will definitely weaken your application. (It suggests you can't go through with something you set out to commit. You definitely do not want to give off that impression to admission committees.)
If you still want to know about Masters funding in the United States, it's typically not great. Chicago and Columbia, for example, have well-know cash-cow Masters programs in sociology. (However, they offer you the pedigree and (potential) training that will make you competitive enough to launch into a top 10 PhD program in the United States. This is of course contingent on your actual performance.) 
PhD funding, on the other hand, tends to be much more solid. In fact, if you can't get into a PhD program that offers full funding + stipend, you really should not go. It's really not worth spending 5-7 years raking up debt to then maybe (and this is a big "maybe") get a job that pays, if lucky, $60,000 as an Assistant Professor.
 
 

I feel a bit like a prick for correcting you but Deborah Davis in Yale is doing Contemporary Chinese studies. In fact she is my best fit. She is amazing and her work was what inspired me to do what I do. Philip Smith and Jeffrey Alexander from Yale focusing on cultural sociology also influenced my choice of Yale because while I am interested in contemporary urban studies regarding Mainland China unmarried women in major cities (it gets real specific, so it is really hard for me to find someone that is with the same interest), I like to view and frame my research from a cultural sociological point of view. So tbh, among the three, Yale is my perfect fit. 
UPenn and Harvard also has professors doing educational studies pertaining to races/American Asians which is something that I am tackling for my master's thesis as well, so they are highly relevant. I am very interested in racial studies although I tend to focus on those of Chinese descent. 
If I just wanted 'shiny', I would have gone for Princeton or UC Berkeley (much higher ranked in sociology).
You misunderstood me though. I am officially applying for my phd studies for fall 2017 when I have graduated and got all my research, conference, and papers tied in, so I would get a better chance. Only then, I will apply for a mixture of schools regardless of ranking. I was not planning on applying for fall 2016 initially, since I have only been at my masters institution for 2 months, hence I don't think it would make much of a difference with my fall 2015 application in the first place. However, at the last minute, I thought why not, just apply to work with all my dream professors (which coincidentally reside in shiny schools), if I don't get in, it's fine, I have another shot for 2017. I don't want to make the same mistake of applying to random schools just because they are traditionally known as 'safety', get into one, and feel inclined to take it even though their research interest has nothing to do with what I wanna do (which was what happened with Purdue). 
My supervisor merely said that the schools I want to go to is difficult to get in because of how 'shiny' they are and I should consider applying to lesser known schools despite my research interest. 
Hope that clear things up. Have a great day.  
PS: It is still pretty awesome to get into a top school though, especially when you have professors that you really want to work with. 
PPS: Their funding packages don't hurt as well.

Unfortunately, I have to agree on the bit about Master's Program accessibility. 

We are in the same position then. A year ago, I applied with only my undergrad from China (Central China Normal Uni), majoring in International Trade. Hi! 

Interest: Qualitative, Urban Sociology of China (Relationships, Women Studies), Overseas Chinese Studies, Education
Undergrad: BBA International Trade (In China) GPA: 4.0
Masters: MSc Sociology (Uni of Oxford)-graduating Fall 2016
GRE: 159V 158Q 5.0 AW  IELTS: 8.0
3 publications in peer-reviewed journals-sole authorship (2 business related though, only 1 is remotely sociology related)
2 more articles are under review (sociology related)
Research experience: Involved in a think-tank group for public policy 
1 conference (but doesn't matter cause the email of acceptance for the conference came a day after I submitted my application, TOT!)
Recommendations: 1 from Sociology Dept Head, 1 from my supervisor (Research Officer), 1 from my professor, 1 from my research group leader
 
That's about it. My chances aren't great. I applied for Fall 2015, only got into 1 US school-Purdue. My stats are pretty much the same since I am only in my masters for 2 months before I started applying. So no results for my masters and the professors probably don't know me well enough to give me super solid recommendations. I guess since then, I have been involved in a research group and gain 1 more publication, but that's about it really. 
I am applying to only my dream schools and programs this round because I think I will have a better shot at getting into them for Fall 2017 if I fail this year as I get more research experience as my masters program goes on. My supervisor wrote me a very politically correct and polite email trying to convince me to apply to schools that are not as 'shiny'. I just don't want to feel inclined to go to a school that I wasn't set out on going in the first place just because I got it you know. 
Fun fact: Despite my research interest, I decided to go for Sociology of Mafia as one of my specialised options for my Masters. Cause come on, how cool is it to study mafias with Federico Varese eh? Wire-tapping, Russian mafias, Yakuzas, this is the stuff. Plus I want to be able to explore other topics while I still can before buckling down for my PhD. Prison reformation sounds interesting too, unfortunately David Kirk is not offering a course. 
Also Hi everyone.

Hi, all! 
The first sociology interview has been posted on the Results page, so I figured I'd kick off this thread. 
Post results here, should you feel inclined, and this can be general discussion on Acceptances/Rejections/interviews as well. 
So, anyone wanna claim that University of Virginia interview? 

It would actually be strange if your rec writers don't themselves ask for a draft of your SOP. Rec writers often rely on things like the person's statement, CV, transcript, etc. to be able to write a proper rec in the first place.

Can't you ask the 3 people who are writing you recommendation letters? If you are hesitant to ask them to look over your SOP, then that doesn't bode well in terms of letter strength (i.e., it would say a lot about your relationship with them).
Also, don't forget, reviewers don't have to be sociology faculty. You can, for example, ask political science or history or English professors as well. So if you made any connections with faculty, then shoot them an e-mail and ask.
You can also ask your parents and your extended family, especially if they're good writers.
Nothing wrong asking here, of course, but you probably don't want it just checked by a bunch of prospective grad students.