AnnaGG

I am a current international graduate student, so even though I'm in a different situation, I understand your concerns. However, I would like to offer a more optimistic perspective. The new academic year will start on sooner than in five months. No one knows how the virus will develop till then, but even if things do not get better, I don't think a travel ban can be sustained for so long. By that time I am positive there will be better coping mechanisms in place. I really doubt that come September travel bans will make sense anymore. It is natural to worry about something as momentous as grad school in these difficult times, but there is still light ahead!

I am a current international graduate student, so even though I'm in a different situation, I understand your concerns. However, I would like to offer a more optimistic perspective. The new academic year will start on sooner than in five months. No one knows how the virus will develop till then, but even if things do not get better, I don't think a travel ban can be sustained for so long. By that time I am positive there will be better coping mechanisms in place. I really doubt that come September travel bans will make sense anymore. It is natural to worry about something as momentous as grad school in these difficult times, but there is still light ahead!

I am a current international graduate student, so even though I'm in a different situation, I understand your concerns. However, I would like to offer a more optimistic perspective. The new academic year will start on sooner than in five months. No one knows how the virus will develop till then, but even if things do not get better, I don't think a travel ban can be sustained for so long. By that time I am positive there will be better coping mechanisms in place. I really doubt that come September travel bans will make sense anymore. It is natural to worry about something as momentous as grad school in these difficult times, but there is still light ahead!

I am a current international graduate student, so even though I'm in a different situation, I understand your concerns. However, I would like to offer a more optimistic perspective. The new academic year will start on sooner than in five months. No one knows how the virus will develop till then, but even if things do not get better, I don't think a travel ban can be sustained for so long. By that time I am positive there will be better coping mechanisms in place. I really doubt that come September travel bans will make sense anymore. It is natural to worry about something as momentous as grad school in these difficult times, but there is still light ahead!

Nothing wrong with striving for Harvard, we've all been there.. but with an ok GPA, poor GRE and no publications you really need some safety schools

I'd like to share some valuable advice for those who are planning to come with spouses to the U.S. I know the application process is not over but it might help you plan better...
Do not go for an F1 visa. Request a DS-2019 form from the institution and apply for J1. That way your spouse will be able to work in the U.S. Not enough people know this information and I see fellow students struggle. In case you are afraid of the 2-years home residency requirement - fear not. It does not apply unless your program was sponsored by the U.S. Government or your country.
Wish you all best of luck!
 

On Valentine's day...
 
Roses are red, violets are blue, Harvard said, "Nah, we just don't like you."

@Andromeda3921 As a fellow international student, I have to say that public universities have a lot of trouble paying for international students. Berkeley especially struggles in this regard. My Berkeley soc. advisor told me from the beginning to apply to a mix of public and private schools for this reason. Another option is to win doctoral fellowships and emphasize it in your SOP, and then the university doesn't have to worry about paying for you.
The low grad GPA (I'm a fellow sufferer in this respect) thing would be a red flag, so please contextualize it. In my SOP, I explicitly mentioned that McGill is famous for not inflating grades and cited Canada's Social Science and Humanities Research Council GPA cutoffs as proof. I also mentioned that I went from an uber-leftist undergrad school to the liberal-conservative mecca of McGill for grad school and it was a systems shock. At least one professor remembered this during my visit and we had a fantastic chat about these schools' different cultures. I called McGill "staid" in my SOP and didn't mention that I was harrassed by the professor who sank my grad GPA. So be strategic about how candid you want to be, but definitely definitely provide reasons for low grad GPA.
I also think Brown should perhaps be higher on your list because it and surrounding schools are hard to beat in terms of the number of South Asianists. Brown also has a dedicated institute on spatiality called Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4), which was begun and is run by the soc. department. Patrick Heller considers himself a comparativist and told me that Brown soc. has a long tradition of housing comparativists, so you have an advantage there. Cornell Development Sociology, though a niche program, could be a good fit. I can answer some questions about both departments, if you'd like. Stanford is quite quant-heavy and it's hard-but-not-impossible to survive as a qual person there according to one of my profs.

We have a lot of the same interests (spatiality, qual methodology, comparative sociology, sociology of development, and South Asia namely). So feel free to ask specific questions related to those things or more general questions here or through PM.

@method I was in exactly the same boat as you are in last year in terms of applying to soc depts and b-schools, so let me try and help.
Just because you've highlighted your work experience and are currently writing your SOP, let me just stress: don't focus on your work experience in your application. People are only interested in why you want to do research, what kind of research, how that fits into the department, and why you're going to succeed. So unless your work experience informs the first of those points, I would not advise to spend much time on it. Especially for B-schools (even the sociological ones), it doesn't matter that you haven't taken any soc classes. If you look at their current grad students you'll see that plenty have no soc background. You will, however, need to make clear why you want to do sociological research, especially at the soc departments. This might be a little difficult for people with interdisciplinary interests. But as long as you can refer to people at the department doing similar research, you should be fine. There's nothing you can do about not having published anything. That being said, your profile, which generally looks very strong otherwise, would benefit from some academic research experience. Not sure if there are any feasible ways to check that box before application due dates. Not having taken any math classes is definitely not going to hurt at soc departments, and even most b-schools don't care too much as long as you're applying to the OB/management concentration. There's nothing you can do about your age either. I've only heard anecdotal complains about this and officially it shouldn't be a factor, but who knows. If you can't change it, don't worry about it.  
A few more things to be aware of regarding the schools you are looking at:
Have a look at Yale SOM (very sociological) and Duke soc (strong faculty in econ soc and organizations). Maybe someone will fit your interests there. Booth's OM program hasn't been taking in students for the last two years. Burt stopped working on it, and it might take some time for the younger faculty to pick up the slack. Wharton, albeit a great school obviously, kind of sticks out of your list as it is the only schools that is decidedly not very sociological. Whether or not that matters is up to you, just be aware that they are doing much more general management research, whereas you'll find plenty of people publishing in soc journals at the other programs.

TOEFL does not boost application. It is a pass/fail kind of thing. As long as you can prove that your English is in working order - you're good. TOEFL WILL NOT be chosen over GRE in any way and will not compensate any deficiencies of the GRE score. If you can waive the requirement - just waive it. Sending the TOEFL score will only cost you money. 

Notre Dame fully funds students with a pretty neat stipend

Also wondering this! I proposed to my boyfriend two weeks ago and was so nervous about the proposal that I completely forgot that after he said yes, we'd be planning a wedding. I'm starting my PhD in the fall and he'll have 1 year left finishing his BS, and then will come join me. We're not planning to get married for two years so we can save up some more money, but I'm starting to think that maybe we should just elope because being in grad school, on a grad student budget, while planning a wedding that will take place ~2000 miles away (our family is in the same city we grew up in, but I'm moving to the West Coast for my PhD), well, that all sounds like a recipe for stress and disaster.
I am really looking forward to having him out there with me though, and him having a more stable income. I do wish there were resources for spouses of grad students though, as I can definitely foresee us running into issues with him underestimating the commitment a PhD program *actually* is.

I also get engaged - yesterday ^^,  my partner will join me later as he wants to work on his resume a little bit more (international couple)

Same all around, with the exception of being an international student. The best part about dragging my partner across the country for my MFA was I had a built-in person to do stuff with when I wanted to explore the area. "Who wants to volunteer to clean up an abandoned graveyard and then hunt for Maillard's Automaton at the Franklin Institute? You do, because you're stuck with me." I will say, and this may not be the case for my upcoming graduate program, the MFA skewed older. I was 25ish when I started, and that put me maybe lower middle of the pack, with a good number of my cohort in the early to mid 30s when we started. That might just be the nature of writing programs, though. It sounds like maybe Lit PhDs skew younger.
Okay, but isn't this the strangest reaction? I had one woman in my MFA cohort, who was also married and had opted for a long distance option, actually kind of sneer at me? She said something along the lines of "Oh, they don't have their own career?" I'm happy to say she was an outlier. Most of the coupled cohort brought their partners with them, and those who didn't (usually because they were attending somewhere else) often had them visit and would even get permission for them to sit in on classes.

For anyone curious, offers are being made to folks on the waitlist at Oregon. Can confirm two offers went out today to waitlisted folks per my discussions with the DGS. Good luck to everyone still on the waitlist at their dream schools. 

On Valentine's day...
 
Roses are red, violets are blue, Harvard said, "Nah, we just don't like you."

Hi, I got accepted into two programs I was rejected the previous cycle. I used the same GRE, and your GRE scores is better than mine (V157 Q158 AWA 5.0). What I did different this time was to contact POI. I wrote a research proposal that helped me to find out what I wanted to do in the field I am interested. The exercise of design a research proposal helped me to be able to state what I am interested and why. This also helped me to have conversations with POI about my research and during the interviews it helped me to answer questions like why do you think you can do something different with so many people working in your same field. My advice would be to focus on finding out what are you really interested, and try to contact POI. At least that is what worked out for. Hope it helps!

ND grad student here, living on a grad stipend in the Humanities (which is on the lower end compared to STEM fields etc). You'll be FINE on 23k. I make less than that and my rent is $1050 a month and I'm fine. Probably could save more if I was more on top of my spending habits lol. But you'll be just fine on that! 

I am sorry you feel this way. My initial reaction was what? you got accepted to three universities and you're still unsure? but when my bite of jealousy subsided I was able to see how you'd be bothered and would wonder what is it that UWM wanted that you didn't have. I was only accepted to one school and had to question their standards if they thought that I'm good enough. But that's not the point. The point is there are humans in those universities. They aren't gods or clairvoyants and I believe making the choice is just as difficult for them since they can't be sure they're betting on the best of the best either. People drop out from the best programs. And succeed in okay programs too. Look up a list of where world's Nobel laureates graduated from and you'll see it's a very broad range of schools. Some of those people got rejections too in their time and someone might have regretted turning down a renown specialist because one of their recommendation letters was not exactly stellar. It's a betting game for everyone, in a way. They way I look at it, it's not worth putting on a pedestal a school that didn't select you. Their rejection doesn't make it unreachably good. It's just that you're not the horse they're betting on and that's okay. Instead, I want the school that chose me to be really really proud of it some day. You can even choose which of the three schools will get to put your picture on their "distinguished alumni" wall.  

I know I asked this earlier and it seems that the thread is dying down as people contemplate their offers and what not, but if you're going into environmental soc, environmental justice, inequality, community sociology, sociology of agriculture, or rural sociology, feel free to PM me so we can connect! I wanna make sure that I can help support the folks who have supported me through these tumultuous times!

You know what I'm glad that I got rejected from Penn State! I rather thrive and grow in another institution that sees potential in me. I'm tired of the overall idea that we need to get accepted in a high-ranking program to do well. Well, F!@# that. That's just ridiculous. I was bitter at first, but you know what? I'm getting my PhD AND an MPH at the school I got accepted to. So take that. This is the most adult-thing I've realized in the whole process of applying. I rather work my ass off at UAB and succeed than stress out at Penn State or U Penn. I'm done trying to attract prestige. I'm going to do what I freaking love wherever that maybe. So Penn State and U Penn can kiss my sociology ass! 
 

Not really a rejection but this was last year from a Sociology applicant at Cornell:
God, Buda, Odin, Ganesha, Jeff Bridges, Zlatan, Beyoncé, I pray to thee. Let someone find their golden choice and turn Cornell's offer down.

Anna,
It’s likely that a good portion of the inhabitants of the city live under 23k, so it’s quite feasible. The cost of living in this town is low enough that many of us stick around after graduation. So long as you don’t have to spend a lot of money on transportation, you’ll be fine.

I grew up in the South Bend area, did my undergraduate work in the area, and my brother goes to ND now. I'd be more than happy to give anyone info about Notre Dame or northern Indiana in general.
ND's campus is sort of isolated from South Bend, and they are taking steps to isolate themselves still further by closing a main road that previously went through campus. Downtown South Bend is only about 3 miles from ND. There's a decent strip of shopping/restaurants/etc near campus, and in the past few years it's been growing steadily in terms of stuff to do. If you are vegan/vegetarian/health conscious, there are a few great privately owned health food stores in the area as well, and ... *drum roll*...some really awesome coffeehouses! The cost of housing will vary depending upon how far from campus you live, but I'm sure that's pretty normal with most college areas. If you need help finding housing or want more info on the area than you might get from ND's website, check out http://www.ndtoday.com, a popular site among students. To register you may need an ND email address, but I think some parts of the site are available without registration.
The campus is beautiful... and while ND can be a little brusque during the admissions process, they really take care of their students once you're in.

There's a quote from Louis C.K. that I think is applicable here:
“The only time you look in your neighbor's bowl is to make sure that they have enough. You don't look in your neighbor's bowl to see if you have as much as them.”
My first year of grad school I was getting $3000 less in aid per quarter than everyone else in my cohort because I screwed up my FAFSA. I was broke. Constantly. So I rarely went out. Everyone else also complained of being broke but went out much more frequently. At the time I didn't know about our financial discrepancies. I just assumed they were eating fast food less frequently than I was and therefore had more discretionary spending for bigger things.
You're being fairly uncharitable towards those you are in school with. And not everyone's versions of struggling are the same. Playing a pain comparison game and denying them the right to express their own frustration with finances because they *seem* to be better off than you isn't going to win you any friends. You have branded them liars with bad attitudes, it seems, without really getting to know them. You have already decided what type of people they are. So yes. I'd say this is an insecurity on your own part that needs remedied.
Not to be harsh... but i wouldn't want to be friends with someone in my cohort who felt as you do. Anyone who begrudges another person the good things that come their way and assume it means they don't get to have problems also isn't a person I am interested in spending my time with.