Pencilvester

@Padma011 I would give your statement a look if you'd like!

I'd read through your statement, if you're still looking for some feedback on it.

Would anyone like to take a look and comment on one of my statement of purpose drafts? I would be more than happy to exchange statements. If so, send me a PM, please. Thanks!

Dang... writing a statement of purpose is hard. I'll write something that I think is good only to read it days later and feel like it ought to be changed.

What sorts of writing samples are y'all thinking of including in your applications? I know I'm going to submit a chapter or two from my dissertation but I'm not really sure which would be best... Lit review to show my ability to engage with theory? Methods/results to show I know my way around empirical investigation? Discussion to give little sense of both?

I can take a look if you're still needing another set of eyes. I would send you mine but I'm only half way done writing my first draft.

@GreenEyedTrombonist (Nice I got it) I just looked more closely at the CVs of the professors I identified as possible research matches and realized that I couldn't make as good a case for fit as I initially thought. My criterion has been to apply to programs where two or more faculty members study similar enough stuff and at both programs there was less than 1 who did (as in, even the one person in each department who studied similar stuff would've been a bit of a stretch). How have you been going about your search?/How did you pare down your list?

@GreenEyedTrombonist (I don't know how to tag people on this) I think my program search is mirroring yours in its progression - I've been reaching out to POIs at these programs with a very similar email, stating my interests and asking about fit given my background in another discipline. I've gotten some responses back and have slimmed down the list at the top of the post as I dug more deeply into faculty research at these programs (got rid of penn state and cornell). I recognize that fit is one of the most important factors in admissions so I'm trying to be very careful about which programs I apply to. That being said, I have this existential fear of being rejected from every program despite not having any significant blemishes in my profile, so I want to apply widely to hedge my bets and increase the chance of admission.

So if the competitiveness of a given program depends on one's subfield, is the general rule in comm admissions that applicants are primarily competing with each other among subfields? As in, for example, an adcomm would allot X number of slots to applicants interested in political communication and Y number to those interested in, say, health communication, etc, and each subgroup of applicants would only be evaluated for those specified slots against others claiming the same area of interest?

Sorry, I'll clarify a bit. My interests are in political communication and deliberative democracy, with a focus on online discussion. I have a good amount of research experience - a masters dissertation (sociology) and 1.5+ years leading a research project for an education nonprofit (and undergraduate research experience unrelated to my current topical/methodological interests). I lean more quantitative. I want to continue researching the topic I wrote my masters dissertation about and, by looking at who publishes similar work, saw that most of the people who study it are in communication departments. That's how I came to be drawn to communication despite not being exposed to it as an undergrad. All the schools on the list above are ones that have more than one faculty member who study similar enough stuff that I can make a case for research fit.

Hi everyone, I'm planning to apply to communication phd programs this fall and I'm coming from a different field (sociology). I've put together a list of programs that I think I have good fit with based on my interests and faculty interests but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how competitive each program is, since that info doesn't seem very accessible online and I don't know faculty in the discipline who I can ask (my college didn't have a comm department). Would you all mind taking a look at this list and offering some thoughts about how competitive each program is? I want to make sure that I don't unwittingly apply to the hardest programs to gain admission to and get denied everywhere. Here's the list: -Cornell Communication -Michigan Ann Arbor Communication Studies -Ohio State Communication -Penn Annenberg Communication -University of Illinois Chicago Communication -University of Washington Communication -Wisconsin Madison Mass Communications -Penn State Communication -Kansas Communication Thanks!!