HopefulFutureSoc

The University of Memphis offers funding to MA students - full tuition waiver plus stipend.  I'm on the faculty there.  Our deadline was last week, but it might not be too late to apply.  We have an excellent record of placing students into very good PhD programs who couldn't get into those same programs prior to getting their MA with us (Ohio State, University of Arizona are a couple recent placements).  We pride ourselves on being an excellent little PhD prep program.  Check us out.  

Claiming Y acceptance from this afternoon.

Claiming Y acceptance from this afternoon.

Claiming Y acceptance from this afternoon.

Claiming Y acceptance from this afternoon.

Claiming P admit. Thanks!

Whoever advised you to make this choice gave you terrible advice. If your goal is a tenure track job at an R1,  being in a top 10 program will give you enormous advantages over anyone at Brown. It shouldn't be that way, but that is  the way it is. 
There is actually a thread on a message board for sociology professors in which they are discussing how sorry they feel for you for making such a terrible choice. If there's any way for you to still accept those Top 10 offers, I highly encourage you to reconsider your choice. I don't think it's too dramatic to say that you are on the verge of ruining your career before it's even started. 

Claiming P admit. Thanks!

Claiming P admit. Thanks!

Claiming P admit. Thanks!

@goofylemon I agree with you that it's likely that the spread would be somewhat larger if similar studies were done using data from Sociology departments but I'm not sure it'd be significantly so. If you look at placement records, even at some of the top schools, you'll see very few tenure-track positions. Take Brown's record for example, listed here. I count only 3 placements in the top50 schools out of 44 students who have graduated since 2009, with the remaining students in post-doc positions, at universities abroad, or outside of the academia. That's 7% placement in top50 departments, with just one student getting a position in a top20 program. That's not to say that you can't find a meaningful, rewarding position unless you're graduating from Harvard or Berkeley -- it's just highly unlikely that it will be a tenure-track position at a top50 program. So I think whether rankings are a deciding factor would be dependent on your career plans. I think it's a sorry state of affairs that prestige, so narrowly defined, matters this much in hiring but as long as it does, it doesn't seem irrational to pay attention to the rankings when making admission decisions.
p.s. I hope it doesn't sound like I'm questioning your decision, goofylemon - Brown is an amazing program. Congrats! My intention was to point out some reasons why one would be so insistent on paying attention to the rankings. I whole-heartedly agree with you though that there are many other factors one would be wise to take under consideration and that we shouldn't let rankings alone drive our decisions. Congratulations on your acceptances!

Many people have posted similar links here. While I appreciate your comments, please note political science is very different from sociology. In fact, Polisci programs are much more homogeneous than sociology. Economic is another example of being very very homogeneous. Indeed one program maybe better on one area than another, but the difference is slim. Also note Polisci only has 4 main areas (American, comparative, theory, IR). Econ only has 9. However, Sociology has 30+.
      I would disagree with the comments that top program TT position all comes from top 10 position. If you actually look at the placement of UCSB, Yale( you mentioned this), and Brown, you will find their graduates have very good placement records. Interestingly, some very top-ranked  programs are having declining placement records. 
      Oh to talk about Yale, remember Yale only admits about 3-5 each year. My program has a cohort of only 5-7 each year. They are not Wisc type of program admitting a large number of students, but their placement are at least not weaker than Wisc average.
        In sociology, another different aspect is that research area matters much more. I am in the ASA CLD (crime law deviance) section and the ASA job pool emails just pop up every day at least once. Interestingly, very few of the said "top 10" has criminology. 
      So the cited research has very weak applicability in sociology. If such research has been applied to sociology, the research could be highly biased. Worrying whether is a good choice to decline the two top10 offers, I asked four of my very familiar professors in my current institution (which is also top 20), all of them have selected new faculty before and all of them told me it does not matter as much. 

I think the reason behind so much focus on rankings here (and elsewhere) is that rankings matter tremendously in hiring (see the study reported here, for example). There are a few Sociology programs that are known to have excellent placements -- the placement records of most other programs, including some in the top 20, are quite dismal. If you look at Sociology faculty pages, you'll be hard-pressed to find hires even from Cornell or Yale, not to mention graduates from lower-ranked departments. Even most lower-ranked programs rarely hire graduates from lower-ranked programs so chances of landing a tenure-track position if you're not graduating from a top-10 program are slim. And so if one's goal it is to find a tenure-track position at a research university later on, prestige/rankings/placement records matter. I agree with you that the order of priority you mentioned -- "#1 your publication #2 who is your adviser, #3 your recommendation letter, and maybe well then your program" -- would be a more reasonable basis for hiring. Unfortunately, research indicates that this just isn't the case. 
Having said that, I applied to a lower-ranked program and would be thrilled to attend it if accepted because the faculty's research matches my interests very closely. I'd attend knowing, however, that my chances of later on getting a position at one of the top20, or even top50 schools would statistically speaking be none. 

I kindly suggest again to the folks here to not being too obsessed about ranking, talk about your interests. I see so many folks here talking about "aha! top 10", "well, top 20/25". It is meaningless unless you have no idea about your research interests. When you are about to graduate, TT positions/job talks will perhaps look at (in order of priority) #1 your publication #2 who is your adviser, #3 your recommendation letter, and maybe well then your program. 
I received two top-10 offers this year but declined them right away to choose Brown. With my interests in family, social demography, urban soc, China and life course/aging, No place will beat Brown, despite its ranking is a 25. Look, I am not even talking about money.

The comment was aimed at me and I wasn't offended. No need to make a deal of it.