Chuck

Thanks for all the congratulations! I must say I'm extremely excited. My heart's not totally set on Wisconsin (still have to hear from 4 other programs), but I am so lucky to have such an excellent choice. I notice there are now a total of 5 acceptances posted on the results board! Speak up, fellow badgers! Let's talk Wisconsin! Ok, I know now is not the time to complain. But maybe it will be a small consolation to some people to know that the funding at Wisconsin is atrocious. They've done well to start guaranteeing 5 years of funding for their incoming cohorts (even though they state plainly that their program will take an average of 7 years), but the package is still nothing to write home about. Maybe a few years in the working world have spoiled me, but right now I'm having a hard time seeing how I will live for 7 years on ~$14,000 a year in a moderately-pricey city with no academic summer employment opportunities?!

Received acceptance circa 6:50 CST. Speechless!

Maybe tomorrow? I think it's a little early to call them "late", but I'm probably just as antsy as you are! It looks like Wisconsin is one of the few schools to notify of acceptances and rejections all at once.... so when it does happen, we're all going to get bombed. I think if I were running an admissions office I'd want to send out decisions on a Friday afternoon. That way, you avoid having to be in the office for the initial stunned deluge of angry/random/excited/confused phone calls. Folks get the weekend to cool off and decide if their questions really are urgent. Looks like i misspoke in my first post- last year the Jan 31/Feb 1 notification deluge was on a Monday/Tuesday (not Friday/Saturday). So maybe we'll be getting some news early next week? *3 cheers for obsessive over-analyzing*!

Exactly. Varies dramatically by department. Some departments are permissive only to be overshadowed by broader university requirements (e.g. "The Graduate School requires 32 credits of academic coursework completed in residence"). I dare say though that you've got plenty of time to figure out this and other more important things.

I agree that the rankings are bunk. I barely gave them much mind until yesterday as I put together that poll! I've been in my subfield for quite some time. I have an MS and I work in a research think-tank. As far as I'm concerned, I know who the top people are in my area, and which departments are doing the kind of work that is getting noticed at the conferences I care about. I don't need the rankings to tell me who is important, because the resolution at which rankings are calculated is at the departmental & disciplinary scale. I'm less concerned about a department's output in traditional sociology, and more concerned about things like [quality of professors in my subfield, collegiality of PhD cohort, transdisiciplinarity of research, availability of funding, academic placement, etc]. The rankings don't match up very well with the emerging strengths I see in my particular field. For example: only 2 programs in the "top 10" even have professors in my subfield. So... rankings, schmankings. Without getting too specific yet (at least not until I hear from my top choices, yes maybe I'm a little paranoid ), my research area is pretty trans-disciplinary. Just like you, I applied to only 2 sociology departments. The other 5 departments I applied to officially span the gamut of 3 "totally separate" disciplines. Yet the POI's in each department are working on remarkably similar things. I'm less concerned about being a sociologist (or in a "top" sociology program), and more concerned about finding the right advisor and PhD cohort. So, here's to Oregon! Do you know when they notify? And if they have a paid visit day?

I did! A bit of a crapshoot for me though, as there is only one POI in my subfield at Oregon. I was on the fence about submitting the app (hey, what's another $50? ouch!), but in the end I caved to the temptation of the possibility of working with this person. I notice you applied to only Oregon & Washington, I like your focused approach! Eugene seems like a beautiful place, and of course Seattle is a great city. Edit: Beyond my POI (who I would absolutely love to work with), I don't know much about the department. What do you like about Oregon?

Congrats to everyone who received good news today! I hope you're out celebrating right now!

And I was expecting Wisconsin to come out of the closet today. Bah!

Done and done.

Questions 1 & 2 If you were admitted everywhere you applied, which sociology departments would you hands-down prefer attending? Try to narrow it to 1 or 2! note: GradCafe polls only allow a limited number of response options. There are over a hundred PhD programs out there, and almost as many reasons why one might be your favorite. To narrow down the list to 20 likely "top choices" I read straight down the US News "best" list. Believe me, I know their methodology is seriously flawed, and that there are much better ways to determine a top department (by sub-discipline, advisor, research interest, geographic location, size of program, funding opportunities, friendliness of cohort, host university, joint-degree programs, mood on visit day.. etc). So choose which department is the best place for you, or check "other" and tell us about it! Question 3 Be honest... check the box next to the statements that apply to you! I tried to list topics that are interesting for us to know about one another, but which we may not be comfortable listing publicly.

lovenhaight has some sound advice here. As someone with an MS who also works in higher education, I'd like to give a big +1 to everything you've said above. I think we're in the middle of a big shift in graduate education in the social sciences. It used to be that disciplines were much more compartmentalized, with clear-cut boundaries and cannons of knowledge. Undergraduates had a clear path to the PhD, down to the specific courses and skills expected upon application. Admissions were also much less competitive. The MS/MA was the red-headed stepchild of graduate school, a consolation prize for those who hadn't managed to assemble all of the various multiple requirements for a PhD admissions portfolio. MA students were considered to be failed PhD applicants, at the bottom of the heap. Maybe they would manage to improve their credentials in time to be admitted to a PhD program the second time around, but maybe not. Nobody really paid attention. As going "straight through" was the gold standard, there were always enough BA applicants who had gone through the right hoops. At the cynical end of the spectrum there were those who saw the MA as a permanent black mark. With this trend in the background, the social sciences have also been broadening the areas of their disciplinary purview. Some of the biggest contributions have started to come from those who had spent at least some of their academic life outside of the field. And admissions committees started to take notice. And so it's gradually stopped making sense to have applicants who are all prepared in the same rigid cannon. A diversity of educational background was seen to ensure a diversity of perspective, which in turn might ensure the relevance of the discipline going forward. The thinking was that a strong and dedicated applicant would be educated in the sociology cannon in an introductory theory class anyways. And so, a student with a BS in field ecology has not only mastered the analytical and observational skills of a typical sociology applicant, they also have a rigorous understanding of the scientific method and the patience acquired through field research. The paradox has become that many programs have started looking for good students more so than they are looking for fully-fledged sociologists. What really mattered was that the applicant was 1) of high aptitude, 2) could be reasonably assumed to be dedicated to academics and research. As we can see on these boards, there is no shortage of high aptitude applicants. Admissions committees could fill every spot in the top 25 PhD programs with students who have 3.8 GPA's and 1400 GRE's. There is, however, a perceived shortage of students who demonstrate a commitment and talent for research. So how can high aptitude applicants demonstrate that they fulfill criteria #2? Either they begin college with a single-minded focus on sociology, allowing them to pack in the coursework for the major and a stellar independent research project, or.... they go to an MA program. So MA/MS programs are becoming more relevant - both because of the increased competitiveness of the applicant pool, and the increased desire among many departments to build the intellectual diversity of PhD cohorts.* The ancillary benefits of the MA support it becoming a self-fulfilling cycle. MA grads are older (and therefore perceived to be more mature), have already gotten the experience of being graduate students (and therefore perceived to be able to hit the ground running in a PhD), may have fulfilled much of the required PhD coursework at the graduate level (and therefore are less expensive/time consuming for a PhD department to educate), have become socialized into the world of academia (and therefore won't take up professors time with mundane low-level needs).. the list goes on and on. Of course there will always be students who finish undergrad with the clear credentials, experience, and drive to be competitive PhD admits. But I do think that, at least in the social sciences, this will continue to be less common. *Do take this observation with a grain of salt- there are of course many departments, including some at the top, with an ongoing reputation for disciplinary isolationism.

Oh, WOW! Sounds like a record.

Yup, this is likely true. The DGS told me that last year's yield (people accepting offers) was a bit lower than expected, so the admit rate will likely be a bit higher this time around. Still- if graph #1 is any indication - this one bright spot could be overshadowed by a steadily growing applicant pool. Considerable anticipation about my own admission aside, I'm worried about the effects of this extreme selectivity on the composition of the student body. Yeah, I do want to go to school with top students. But I don't want them to all be amazing in the same way. A diversity of strengths, backgrounds, and experience is as important to me as a diversity of academic specialties. I have a hard time seeing how a program can become so extremely selective without relying on the more quantifiable aspects of student profiles.

Admissions statistics for the Wisconsin-Madison PhD in Sociology: AKA what a difference 10 years makes. Acceptance Rates: *Source: http://www.grad.wisc.edu/education/academicprograms/mas/922.html (Program Profile PDF at bottom of page)

Brilliant! Thank you... and now for some really depressing graphics.

Hmmm. I was just trying to post some quick graphs I made showing the last 10 years of admission trends for UW Sociology, but I can't figure out how to upload an image to GradCafe. Hints?

Oh Shi* !! Say it isn't so! I knew they upped the interest rate on new federal stafford loans, but I hadn't heard about any changes to in-school policies for subsidized loans. If this is true, it is going to majorly affect my ability to complete a PhD.

I'm in environment as well, though my research has strong ties with science studies as well as economic change/development.

Having worked in academia for a number of years, I find the following text quite useful. It's from a professor and long time contributor to the Political Science forum, "The Realist" I'm copying his/her words directly from this post. Though the advice is for Poli Sci applicants, I think it applies across the social sciences. Just substitute "Sociology" for "Poli Sci", and perhaps "Top 15" or "Top 10" where it says "Top 25." Sigh. This is reality, folks. We may know in our hearts that it's where we need to be, but grad school is far from glamorous, a sure bet, or an unequivocal good idea. ____________________ "I am a tenured associate prof in political science at a large state university. Around this time in the application season, I can't help but think about all the things that I wish that I had known before entering my PhD program. I posted this several years ago under the screen name "realist" when I first learned about this forum from a senior applying to PhD programs. Two years ago I posted it again. Now it's time for the third generation. I've made a couple small changes from the original version but this is basically the same as what I wrote the two times before. While some of this may be hard to read, I offer it as-is, with only the thought that more knowledge is better than less knowledge. I. Choosing Graduate School Your graduate school choice is probably the most important choice that you'll make in your career. Do not take this lightly. There are many reasons, but they boil down to some uncomfortable truths. The most important one is that only the best departments (say, the top 25) can reliably place students in academic jobs. And even among these "top" departments, less than half can expect to find themselves employed in a tenure-track position within 8 years of matriculation. While there are thousands of colleges in the United States, there are many many many thousand more political science PhDs. 5-7 years is a very long time to spend in a low-paying job (which is what graduate school is) only to realize that you have very little chance for promotion. Is it fair that this is the case? No. Are there very smart graduate students that are not at top departments? Absolutely, there are literally thousands of them. But this is how the world works. And you have no chance to change it from "the inside" unless you are already at a top department. You should also be aware that advisers are fickle beings. Especially outside of the top institutions, they are busy and pressed for time, and they cannot offer you the type of guidance and support that you may believe that you are going to get. I had a very close relationship with a very influential adviser, and saw him for about 10 minutes once every two or three weeks. This is the norm. Do not assume or expect that you will have a different experience (although there is a chance that you will). Moreover, good scholars are often terrible advisers. I think that one of the worst aspects of our profession is that at middle-range departments, top scholars often will not even acknowledge graduate students. You should also be aware that graduate school is an unequal partnership between students, who receive very little and give very much, and faculty, who have many other things to do but rely on students to do things that are in the university's best interests. Graduate students are (1) essentially powerless and (2) extremely cheap labor. Universities have an incentive to keep a lot of graduate students around to fill instructor slots and TAships. This means that they will keep on a lot of graduate students who will never have a chance at a tenure-ladder job. This is a pathological system of incentives, and I find it repugnant, but this is the reality. So what sort of advice does this lead me to give? First off, above and beyond almost anything, you need to go to the best possible graduate school. It doesn't matter if you don't like Ann Arbor as much as Athens or Austin, graduate school matters tremendously for your future ability to get a job. It's not that hiring committees care exclusively about pedigree, although that does indeed matter to many people. Rather, the reason why you need to go to the best possible graduate program is because you need to surround yourselves with the smartest and most motivated students possible, because you will do most of your learning from them. You also need to surround yourself with the faculty who have been judged by the discipline as having the best reputations and connections. Those things are highly, highly correlated with the "rank" of the graduate program. As a corollary, you need to think long and hard about graduate school if you do not have the opportunity to go to a top one. You should understand that even if you do, you may not have a good chance of landing a tenure track job. The ones available to you, moreover, will likely be at "directional institutions" (think Northern X State) or small, low-ranked liberal arts colleges in the middle of nowhere. Even there, you will be competing with Harvard and Berkeley PhDs for a job. It's hard. It's not as hard as English or History, but nevertheless it's really hard. You should know this and plan accordingly. The academic job market has gotten much harder in the four years since I first wrote this. There are thousands of students right now chasing a couple hundred jobs, and every year it gets worse because most people who strike out in one year go back on the job market the next year. Do not assume that the academic job market will get easier in 5-7 years, when you are going onto the job market. First, there will still be a substantial backlog of unplaced PhDs. Second, trends in academia are leading to more adjunct and lecturer positions and fewer tenure-track positions in all but the very best schools (and it's starting to happen there too). The number of tenure track assistant professor positions in political science listed on APSA's eJobs site has dropped from around 700 per year in the early 2000s to about 450 in 2010. I would not still be in academia if I didn't have a tenure-track job. Let's say you don't want to go be professor. Maybe you want to work in a think tank or a political consultancy. OK, fair enough: but in this case, I would recommend against getting a PhD in political science. There is little that you can gain from a PhD in political science that a think tank will find attractive that you cannot also have gotten from a good MPA/MPP/etc. program. Outside of academia, the PhD has little value-added over most professional masters degrees. Given the opportunity cost, the only people who should get PhDs in political science are people who have a passion for college teaching, or those who have a passion for academic research and who are willing to settle for college teaching if the academic research thing doesn't work out. Do not choose graduate school based on one individual who you "want to work with." Instead, you should choose the best program (by subfield) that you can. Why? Let's say that you identify one faculty member whose research interests match yours perfectly. For this to be the person upon whom you rely for your entire PhD course of study, it must be the case that (1) your research interests don't change (which is rare), (2) that your potential adviser is a nice and approachable person (which is about a 50-50 shot to be honest), (3) that your own research is interesting to that potential adviser (which you should not assume, regardless of what is said on recruitment weekend), and (4) that that adviser doesn't leave (which is common, especially for productive faculty at top-50-ish departments). If you chose a program based on that individual and any of these don't work out, you're in trouble. If you've chosen the best program, you'll be OK because there are other options; if you've banked on one faculty member, you're out of luck. You should be flattered by faculty who are nice and approachable during recruitment weekend. But recruitment weekend is not like the other 51 weekends a year. Remember, faculty are approachable during recruitment because you provide them with an unlimited supply of discount labor. They have their own worries and incentives, and these rarely align with yours. Likewise, funding matters. You should not go to graduate school unless you have full fellowships (teaching or otherwise) for five years and a stipend large enough to live on. Without these, graduate school is a long and expensive process with little reward. There is a constant demand for doctors, so doctors can pay for medical school and still come out ahead. $200,000 in debt and only qualified for a very low paying job is a terrible situation that many PhDs find themselves in. It is tempting to think that a potential adviser's kind words mean that you are special. You are special, but so are many many others. Wherever you are, you will likely not even be the smartest or most successful member of your cohort. Do not fool yourself into thinking that you are the one who will buck the trends that I have described. It's just not likely. Finally, I have made a big point about top 25 schools. We all know that Stanford is and Purdue isn't, but what's the definitive list? Simply put, if you have to ask, your school is not in the top 25. And of course subfield matters more than overall ranking. Emory is not a top-25 theory department so think long and hard about going there for theory. JHU is not a top-25 American politics department but it's a different story altogether for political theory. If you need to convince yourself that your program is a top-25 program, it's almost certainly not. II. Your Career If you decide to go to graduate school, congratulations. I mean this sincerely. You are embarking on the most intellectually rewarding period of your life. Of course, intellectually and financially rewarding are not the same, but given this choice, here are some tipcs. The best political scientists are the following five things: smart, creative, diligent, honest, and nice. Smart is obvious. The rest are not. The best political scientists are creative. They look at old problems in new ways, or they find new problems to look at. A good way to land a middling job (or no job) is to find a marginal improvement on an existing estimator, or take lessons from Paraguay and apply them to Uruguay. The best political scientists ask new questions, and they find new things to estimate. The best political scientists are diligent. They think about problems for years and years, they rewrite their draft papers repeatedly, they collect giant datasets from scratch, and they go into the field, learn the language, and stay there until they have learned something. There are no quick research trips, there are no obvious philosophical points, and there are no downloadable datasets left to analyze for easy and quick results. The best political scientists are honest. There are many points at which you might fudge your work: creating a new dataset fromscratch, during fieldwork, in writing up your results. You will be astounded at how frequent this is in our profession. Don't do it, for it always hurts you in the end. Being wrong and honest about it is OK. Being wrong and hiding it never works. Finally, the best political scientists are nice. It is tempting to be prickly to make yourself seem smart or to protect your ego. But the same person you criticize today might be in a position to give you a job tomorrow. As they say, make your words soft and sweet, for you never know when you may have to eat them. ************ I hope this helps you all. I wish you the very best of luck with your careers."

Also on pins and needles for Wisconsin! What are your research interests?

Even though you are just recently out of undergrad, you have a lot of interesting experience under your belt. I see the outlines of a fabulous SOP in your listing of background achievements. Being a great engineering student and then transitioning to and also excelling in educational/sociological research can help you stand out as someone who would contribute in valuable and unique ways to a graduate program. You need to coherently draw out your strengths and goals from that narrative. You're clearly a good student who is versatile, experienced, and (with your time off), worldly. These basic qualities encompass much of what grad programs are looking for. MA programs especially are looking for students who have "promise" but perhaps not as much research or coursework experience as PhD candidates. This is no fault of your own (hell, you squeezed a whole major into the last 2 years of your undergrad degree, that shows dedication!), but the fact is that PhD programs will be looking for a longer track record of commitment to the discipline. Now is a good time to point out that the PhD is a long, painful slog. You want to be sure that you get along with your advisor & are desperately in love with your topic. Hating your project can be academic and emotional agony many times worse than what you are experiencing now. If you at all feel as though you're still searching around for the specific topic that most compels you, an MA may be your best bet anyways. An MA allows you to expand your repertoire of skills, explore different sub-disciplines, get more research experience, and gain a much deeper and more confident sense of where you want to be with a PhD topic. You will also meet many future colleagues and benefit from their expertise before committing to an advisor you barely know and a project you think interests you. I do think you'd make a great MA candidate. And it's certainly not true that most MA programs are unfunded (UChicago and Columbia being notorious exceptions). Look for public research universities that have ongoing government research grants in your area of interest. Believe it or not, there are RA-ships specifically set aside for master's students (so you won't be competing with PhD students). At many schools, there may likely be a chance to get a TA-ship in Engineering or Mathematics. Often the STEM fields are scrambling to fill their TA vacancies with qualified grad students in other departments (chem 101, anyone?!). The opportunities are out there. Just a shot in the dark, but have you considered programs in Ed Policy? Many ed policy programs have strong overlap with sociology departments. Your background with different disciplines/ pedagogies combined with your publication may make you a strong candidate.

My heart goes out to you, Supernovasky . I am far from an expert in the Sociology admissions process, but I did go through an MS program, and have been working in academia for several years. The advice given to you above strikes me as wise and reasonable for someone in your position. Your description of your background and profile seem to make you a very competitive candidate, provided you find the right programs for you. Unfortunately, the elusive contours of this all-important idea of "FIT" seem to be under-discussed- on these boards, in the rankings, in general. We tend to get carried away with "stats", which certainly have their place in the competitive world of academia, but should not necessarily be our primary concern. Your GRE scores will not get you into Harvard, but who really cares? DarthVegan is right, GRE scores are not nearly what they're cracked up to be on these boards. There is great work happening at hundreds of schools across the country, most of which you have likely not heard of. Yet. Your profile qualifies you for admission to many of these programs. If you find the right place (again, the right place for you), and do great MA work, you will be admitted to one of your top choice PhD programs. I am confident that there are schools out there where you will be quite happy, and that if you look hard you will find those programs. And, I also have no doubt that you will be admitted. So, Chin up! This likely means getting an MA first, which is incidentally something I recommend even to people who are (or could be) accepted directly to PhD programs (My Master's program changed my life in ways a direct-entry PhD never could have- but this is a topic for another post). Don't hesitate to contact your recommenders and ask for them to support further applications. Do it today, while you can still give them some notice. Then spend your weekend looking for places to apply. An MA program is hardly a consolation prize- it's a qualitatively different path. Any schmuck who looks down on you for doing an MA isn't worth listening to. Tell your recommenders that you've been considering the merits of doing an MA and think that, on second thought, you've found A, B, & C programs which will fully support your current needs and interests, let you explore a master's thesis on this exciting topic, expand your skills in methods, etc.... It's not up to them to decide your path, and if they are good people they will support your decision. I would say that it's important that you take a step back, stop focusing so much on the "name" of a school, it's ranking, it's GRE scores, or otherwise obsessing over how you might get in. DO start focusing on the things that actually matter once you become a graduate student. Who do you want to work with? (this is huge!) What, specifically do you want to study? Go to the library and use their proxy server to search journals that you find interesting to see which professors, and which institutions, are doing work that is most compelling. Essentially, the best advice I ever received about applying to graduate school is that a successful application requires a large amount of going through the duties of a graduate student. You need to treat the application process like a mini-research project, and in doing so you will make yourself more competitive. Above all, know that you are a strong candidate, especially for an MA program. Meanwhile, make the best of the situation you are in. Being a car salesman is quite an opportunity for sociological research. Make your job interesting: practice your research and writing skills by pursuing your own secret project on the car lot. The most interesting social scientists have very storied backgrounds far beyond the 'normal' path to academia (Just one example I came across this morning: http://www.natekreuter.net/about). There are hundreds of potential advisors out there at "less competitive" schools who are just dying to be noticed by students of your caliber. Having an advisor who is willing to put the time and effort into mentoring your MA research is totally worth not going to a "top" program. Put your nose to the grindstone and go find them! It will work out if you put the work in. Also, you are totally not 'old', so I don't want to hear any more about that! I'll be 31 when I start my PhD in the fall. Incidentally, I also have yet to be accepted anywhere!

Sociograd- you're right, UW has gotten REALLY competitive since 2010. Both my UW POI and the grad secretary dropped the 6% figure rather - dare I say - happily when I made my inquiry last fall. I do see their perspective - they must be quite pleased to be up in the rankings and matriculating such competitive students! Last year's yield was a bit lower than expected, so the admit rate may go up slightly this year (according to the DGS). But I do think slightly is the operative term here... I can't imagine having to slog through 350+ applications over the course of just a few weeks. Makes me wonder how 'holistic' their selection process really can be. Though they publish guidelines for competitive GPA & GRE ranges, they also stress the importance of the picture painted by the overall application. My early interactions with the department (several years ago, before I was ready to apply) gave me the impression that they were much more interested in me as an intellectual being than as a set of numbers. But these past few months I've heard a lot of talk of admit stats and how objectively brilliant everyone is. My general sense is that their selection bias is going to lean more and more towards the quantifiable aspects of applicant materials. Can they really be reading hundreds of 20-50 page writing samples? Even if they read the top 50 or so, that's a lot of time away from other professorly duties. The NRC data on Wisconsin admits between 2003-2006 shows an average GRE Q score of 706. Nothing to scoff at, but this is quite low for what now is such a competitive program. I do wonder how much this figure will likely change with the new admissions rate. If I am lucky enough to be admitted to UW, I will most likely accept. But not if my cohort is a bunch of political scientists!

Anyone else starting to get excited/nervous/antsy about UW Madison? Looks like their major wave of acceptances went out Jan 31/Feb 1 last year. This date is equivalent to the last Friday/Saturday in January, so depending on how the committee timeline shapes up, it's possible that we could be hearing tomorrow. Yikes. I don't think I'm ready! I haven't heard from any schools yet, and UW is definitely one of my top choices. My POI at Wisconsin told me that last year, in addition to receiving a record number of applicants, they majorly ramped up their selectivity. I think they accepted on the order of 6% from a pool of ~350. The upside of this (if you are lucky enough to be accepted) is that they started guaranteeing 5 years of funding to all students starting with the 2011 entering class. Wisconsin was already a fabulous program, and I would be honored to be admitted. However (also as my subfield is extremely small) I know that the chances are not amazing. Sigh. Trying not to worry to much about tomorrow. Any other Wisconsin hopefuls?

I find the courtship dance of building a relationship with prospective faculty prior to admission to be somewhat necessary but inherently problematic. Personally, I talked one or several POI's at almost every program I applied to (but not all). These were short informational conversations to confirm the relevant information for someone at that stage in the application process: Are you accepting students? What direction is your research going? Are you interested in pursuing this particular thematic overlap with my proposed topic of research? After a conversation that would last anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, I had all the information I needed as a prospective applicant to the program. I honestly think that these sessions were much more valuable to me as an applicant than they could have been for the professors. Sure, I was on my best behavior and basically treated the conversation as I would a job interview. But the interaction was more about me getting information from them than the other way around. I told them enough about myself so as to pique their interest - and later thanked them for their time and referred them to my completed application. Only rarely did a professor ask me evaluative questions about myself as an applicant (and, totally wierdly, the question was about my GRE scores! Who does that?! Needless to say, I did not pursue working with this particular person. My GRE scores happen to be great, but I am hardly impressed by someone who sees them as the first thing they need to know about me. Boo!). But here's where it gets problematic. I don't understand this idea among many of my colleagues that they should somehow be pursuing a full-fledged relationship with prospective PhD advisors. At best, this seems like a net waste of time for both advisor and student. Why begin a working relationship (which requires time, effort, and other investments) prior to admission (the formal process that protects the interests of both student and professor prior to the investment of time, work, etc)? At worst it's disingenuous, and potentially compromises the purpose of a "fair" admissions process. I can't tell you how many times my MS advisor laughed out loud at smarmy "Dear professor, I want to work with you so much" e-mails. Though some smarm+charm unfortunately does seem to get some people the leg-up. There are a number of departments out there which are notorious for allowing applicants to sidestep an honest formal evaluation. A few professors I talked to mentioned that they had "already identified" the applicants they would be accepting for the following year. Shocked, I asked how this could be possible, since the final submission deadline was then still months away. I never received what I felt was a satisfactory answer.