theorynetworkculture

Denied by Wisconsin-Madison too, found out on the website.. Pretty annoyed by the lack of courtesy as well: I paid some good money for that application. Wasn't the best fit for me, to be honest. Congratulations to those that got accepted though, it's a great program. Here's hoping for better news from the rest of the schools.

Noticed on the results page that a few folks heard back from Stanford and Wisconsin-Madison: still nothing for me so far. Anyone else experiencing the same?

Harvard is quite legendary: Frank Dobbin, Michele Lamont, Orlando Patterson, and Theda Skocpol are all there, to name a few. Stanford too: Granovetter, Walder and McAdam. @socnewbie I would probably be inclined towards UCLA out of the three. You might find Rogers Brubaker and Gabriel Rossman's work interesting!

I think most top 20 programs are going to be strong in culture, political, and comparative/historical sociology. Berkeley, Michigan, Harvard, Chicago, Stanford, especially, stand out in my mind. What are the scholars that you've enjoyed reading, and would like to work with? Who are the biggest, most cited names in the field? That's how I chose the programs I apply to, it might work for you.

Yeah I was! Interview did not go well, but I guess it didn't matter that much in the end . Good luck everyone!!

I got into Chicago!!!!

Wisconsin is a huge department. While it does have a general reputation of being stronger in empirical, quantitative work, there's still a bevy of theorists there (even outside of Emirbayer). I don't think any aspiring social theorist should shy away from applying to Wisconsin-Madison. I personally identified Emirbayer, Goldberg, Ermakoff & Olin Wright as people I could see myself working profitably with.

I did! Radio silence so far.

I'm pretty sure that advice pertains campus visits for job market candidates, which is a vastly different affair, since there's the pressure to impress as a potential colleague.

I received an email from Northwestern seeking clarity on a few points of my application, so I imagine the admissions committee have already met and may be in the midst of making their decisions. Good luck to all of us applying!

Accepted by UNC Chapel Hill via email this morning! Details are still hazy, but they mentioned ~20k of funding for 5 years, via fellowships or possibly TA-ships. It make the Berkeley rejection easier to take for sure.

Another Berkeley reject here. Would have loved to attend — oh well. Onwards.

I recommend everyone on this board read Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. It's a hilarious satire of an cranky creative writing professor complaining about academic life, in epistolary form. One of the best books I've read in a while.

A slew of technical difficulties, coupled with an interviewer whose interests weren't really aligned with mine. One of those interviews where you can tell the other isn't really interested in what you're saying. I'm a theory kind of guy, but was interviewed by a movements/political sociology scholar. I don't think I defined my research interests specifically enough either, or at least so my interviewer said. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ , we'll have to wait and see, maybe it'll turn out fine.

Done with my Chicago interview: it was an unmitigated disaster. Still, my interviewer told me to expect results in about three weeks. So sit tight, everyone who applied to Chicago.

Foucault's influence on sociology surely isn't as strong as it is in anthropology or the humanities, but I'm agree with bradley610 that Foucauldian ideas are nonetheless commonplace, even if Foucault is not cited as commonly, or as directly. In many ways his ideas are fundamental to sociology (the ways in which knowledge/truth is constructed, power/control/discipline etc.) I think your view may be a product of your own specialization within sociology: try asking a gender or race scholar about the relevance of Foucault! Here's an annual review piece on Foucault & Sociology that may be of interest: http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-soc-081309-150133#_i10

A number of programs appear to be doing Skype interviews this year — this seems to be a recent development in sociology. I was curious what people's experiences with Skype interviews have been, and what advice they'd give.

Congratulations! It must be great to have an offer in hand this early. Good luck with the rest of the cycle.

I was just invited to do a Skype interview too. I don't know what to read into it either.

Social theory is always going to read closer to philosophy than the rest of sociology. But I find it a lot less laborious than the majority of continental philosophy (Bourdieu is clear, Foucault is still all right, Althusser, Lacan, Zizek, et al. are more difficult). I find Geertz to be a great and clear writer myself. My all time favorite theory piece is probably Sewell's 1992 AJS piece, "A Theory of Structure."

Just about every top program will have excellent training in quantitative and qualitative methods, and "mixed methods." I second Illusio80's suggestion: just look for programs with scholars doing both qualitative and quantitative work. Mario Small had an excellent article on mixed methods in the Annual Review a few years back, you might want to check that out.

Both are interesting to me, but I lean towards cultural sociology. As far as I understand it, sociology of culture tends to be about the study of cultural practice and institutions (Griswold's work on fiction comes to mind as an example), whereas cultural sociology uses culture to explain social actions, per the cultural turn.

I used a term paper I wrote in my junior year. It's ~ 20 pages. It's polished insofar as I have the tone of a sociological article down, but the "research" itself is undistinguished undergraduate work. I applied to Michigan, Wisconsin & Chicago, along with UCB, UCLA, Harvard, Duke, NYU, Northwestern. Thanks for the advice. I definitely try. Not looking forward to the anxiety escalating and cascading in the coming weeks though.

That sounds amazing, congratulations. What's digital sociology?

Secondary texts are a great idea. There's definitely something to be said about diving into primary materials, but those olde classics can make for slow reads. Giddens wrote a great primer for sociology's "holy trinity" that you may want to check out: https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Modern-Social-Theory-Analysis/dp/0521097851/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483627591&sr=8-1&keywords=giddens+marx+durkheim You may also want to skinny dip into your subfield(s) of choice. You can consult course syllabi of POI (http://home.uchicago.edu/~jlmartin/901 syllabus.pdf as an example), or look up comp. reading lists (say http://www.sociology.utoronto.ca/graduate/compre.htm) for a good list of materials to keep busy with.