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Well, if we're labeled as "weirdos" for being polite, I think I'm cool with it!

I'd be happy to look at anyone's SoP, either now or in the future, for any feedback that may be helpful. I worked on my SoP every day for three months and I would definitely say that it was what really nailed my applications. 
One thing I think that's worth mentioning is that I did not heed advice for keeping my SoP, "strictly business" as most people are prone to advise. My statement was extremely personal and linked my experiences with what I want to research. I actually only had one paragraph on why I was "qualified" to be admitted into their program [but I did describe my research experiences in-depth in my CV]. If you have a good reason to talk about what has led you to want to pursue whatever your research interests are, I would definitely find a way to talk about it in your SoP.

Just sent you a message!

Welp, thats it for me folks. Rejections across the board. I haven't heard back from Penn (Soc) or Harvard (SocPol) but I imagine those rejections are on their way. BUT I HAVE NOT LOST HOPE! I'll work for a year (meh), get a tutor for my GRE, give that another go, work on my SOP and try again next year! Congratulations to all those admitted! And for those who weren't admitted I hope I see you back here for another go! *finger pistols*
 
Speaking of SOP, would those accepted mind sharing their SOPs with me? I would love to see what worked for you all. Congrats again!

Got dinged by UCSD just now, but I got formally accepted to UW-Milwaukee last night - my first acceptance this cycle! Will be attending! Just waiting for info on funding right now, but I believe it would be more than sufficient. 
Thank you, everyone, for all your support out here, really! It meant a lot - and i'm so glad that you guys were here to keep me hanging in there!  

This is awesome! Props to you for such dedication. I know how devastating it can be to receive only rejections. So glad you were able to find your path! 
I want to reiterate how helpful it was to read successful SOPs. I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a professor at Chicago who sent me the personal statements of six successful students--three who got into Berkeley, one who got into Yale, one who got into Penn, and one who got into UCLA. They were SO much better than my first draft--so specific and thoughtful. I noticed my mention of professors was all pretty surface-level: "Professor X's work on Y interests me" while these students were saying things like "Professor's X approach to Y using methodology Z would complement my work on A, B, and C and would help expand my development of D, etc. etc..." I spent three months tinkering with my personal statement until it looked like that. 
Another thing that I found helpful was to email graduate students currently in my programs of interest who were doing the kind of work I would want to do. Over 75% of these graduate students responded to my emails and were generally very detailed in their responses. I asked them if there were any 'nuances' to the departments of which I should be aware. For example, the graduate student at Yale told me that it's not uncommon for professors X and Y to invite prospective students to workshops and then to chat with them afterwards. Following his advice, I emailed these two professors, and just like he'd said, they invited me to attend a workshop (I'm fortunate enough to live within a few hours of New Haven and to have a car). I spoke to each of the professors for ~30 minutes after the workshop, after which they told me they would look out for my application. I'm 100% sure that one-on-one time in November was what got me in. 

Just wanted to send a few words of encouragement to those people facing rejections--I was there last year, and it sucked. I applied to 7 programs (not Sociology, but something similar) and got rejected by 7. I felt embarrassed. I felt lost. I felt let down by my recommendation letter writers who had given me way too much confidence. I was angry with the schools who had rejected me.
Don't let it squash your passions. You might need to readjust slightly (like I did), you might need to apply to a wider variety or programs (like I did), or you might just need to do it again to get a better roll of the dice (like I did). 
You're not defined by these applications. And whether or not you have the degree, you're all sociologists. 
 

This is awesome! Props to you for such dedication. I know how devastating it can be to receive only rejections. So glad you were able to find your path! 
I want to reiterate how helpful it was to read successful SOPs. I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a professor at Chicago who sent me the personal statements of six successful students--three who got into Berkeley, one who got into Yale, one who got into Penn, and one who got into UCLA. They were SO much better than my first draft--so specific and thoughtful. I noticed my mention of professors was all pretty surface-level: "Professor X's work on Y interests me" while these students were saying things like "Professor's X approach to Y using methodology Z would complement my work on A, B, and C and would help expand my development of D, etc. etc..." I spent three months tinkering with my personal statement until it looked like that. 
Another thing that I found helpful was to email graduate students currently in my programs of interest who were doing the kind of work I would want to do. Over 75% of these graduate students responded to my emails and were generally very detailed in their responses. I asked them if there were any 'nuances' to the departments of which I should be aware. For example, the graduate student at Yale told me that it's not uncommon for professors X and Y to invite prospective students to workshops and then to chat with them afterwards. Following his advice, I emailed these two professors, and just like he'd said, they invited me to attend a workshop (I'm fortunate enough to live within a few hours of New Haven and to have a car). I spoke to each of the professors for ~30 minutes after the workshop, after which they told me they would look out for my application. I'm 100% sure that one-on-one time in November was what got me in. 

This is awesome! Props to you for such dedication. I know how devastating it can be to receive only rejections. So glad you were able to find your path! 
I want to reiterate how helpful it was to read successful SOPs. I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a professor at Chicago who sent me the personal statements of six successful students--three who got into Berkeley, one who got into Yale, one who got into Penn, and one who got into UCLA. They were SO much better than my first draft--so specific and thoughtful. I noticed my mention of professors was all pretty surface-level: "Professor X's work on Y interests me" while these students were saying things like "Professor's X approach to Y using methodology Z would complement my work on A, B, and C and would help expand my development of D, etc. etc..." I spent three months tinkering with my personal statement until it looked like that. 
Another thing that I found helpful was to email graduate students currently in my programs of interest who were doing the kind of work I would want to do. Over 75% of these graduate students responded to my emails and were generally very detailed in their responses. I asked them if there were any 'nuances' to the departments of which I should be aware. For example, the graduate student at Yale told me that it's not uncommon for professors X and Y to invite prospective students to workshops and then to chat with them afterwards. Following his advice, I emailed these two professors, and just like he'd said, they invited me to attend a workshop (I'm fortunate enough to live within a few hours of New Haven and to have a car). I spoke to each of the professors for ~30 minutes after the workshop, after which they told me they would look out for my application. I'm 100% sure that one-on-one time in November was what got me in. 

This is awesome! Props to you for such dedication. I know how devastating it can be to receive only rejections. So glad you were able to find your path! 
I want to reiterate how helpful it was to read successful SOPs. I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a professor at Chicago who sent me the personal statements of six successful students--three who got into Berkeley, one who got into Yale, one who got into Penn, and one who got into UCLA. They were SO much better than my first draft--so specific and thoughtful. I noticed my mention of professors was all pretty surface-level: "Professor X's work on Y interests me" while these students were saying things like "Professor's X approach to Y using methodology Z would complement my work on A, B, and C and would help expand my development of D, etc. etc..." I spent three months tinkering with my personal statement until it looked like that. 
Another thing that I found helpful was to email graduate students currently in my programs of interest who were doing the kind of work I would want to do. Over 75% of these graduate students responded to my emails and were generally very detailed in their responses. I asked them if there were any 'nuances' to the departments of which I should be aware. For example, the graduate student at Yale told me that it's not uncommon for professors X and Y to invite prospective students to workshops and then to chat with them afterwards. Following his advice, I emailed these two professors, and just like he'd said, they invited me to attend a workshop (I'm fortunate enough to live within a few hours of New Haven and to have a car). I spoke to each of the professors for ~30 minutes after the workshop, after which they told me they would look out for my application. I'm 100% sure that one-on-one time in November was what got me in. 

I visited three East Coast schools when the weather was on the verge of a blizzard. During the Brown visit, there was an actual blizzard that stranded all of us for a couple of days. I wore comfortable but stylish clothes, nice winter boots with good treads, and coordinating watches. There is a huuuuuge amount of walking involved during school visits, so paying attention to footwear is a must. Watches were good for keeping track of time while running to make meetings all the time in unfamiliar campuses. I wore a lot of cozy sweaters with woolen skirts (with elastic waists, lol), sometimes long-sleeved dresses, and tights. You will basically be wearing the same clothes from morning to night, so comfort and maybe an amount of unfussiness are good characteristics for your clothes to have. Also packed a lint roller and travel steamer, both of which were very handy.

It's super-stressful to make the decision, but please try to enjoy the visits! You will be treated like royalty and seriously wooed by faculty, administrators, and graduate students. If you have been admitted, they really want you there and think very highly of your potential to become a sociologist. Also as I told myself prior to the visits, it was likely the only time in academia when I would have so many offers to choose from, so I'd better enjoy myself!

This is awesome! Props to you for such dedication. I know how devastating it can be to receive only rejections. So glad you were able to find your path! 
I want to reiterate how helpful it was to read successful SOPs. I was fortunate enough to be in contact with a professor at Chicago who sent me the personal statements of six successful students--three who got into Berkeley, one who got into Yale, one who got into Penn, and one who got into UCLA. They were SO much better than my first draft--so specific and thoughtful. I noticed my mention of professors was all pretty surface-level: "Professor X's work on Y interests me" while these students were saying things like "Professor's X approach to Y using methodology Z would complement my work on A, B, and C and would help expand my development of D, etc. etc..." I spent three months tinkering with my personal statement until it looked like that. 
Another thing that I found helpful was to email graduate students currently in my programs of interest who were doing the kind of work I would want to do. Over 75% of these graduate students responded to my emails and were generally very detailed in their responses. I asked them if there were any 'nuances' to the departments of which I should be aware. For example, the graduate student at Yale told me that it's not uncommon for professors X and Y to invite prospective students to workshops and then to chat with them afterwards. Following his advice, I emailed these two professors, and just like he'd said, they invited me to attend a workshop (I'm fortunate enough to live within a few hours of New Haven and to have a car). I spoke to each of the professors for ~30 minutes after the workshop, after which they told me they would look out for my application. I'm 100% sure that one-on-one time in November was what got me in. 

Sure, in case it helps!
By the end of February, I received all by rejections. I was devastated. I just could not process it or make any narrative sense of it. I was pretty confident that I will get in somewhere; my friends and recommendation letter writers were even more confident. It was suggested that I contact professors at schools I have applied to, asking what I could do to improve my applications next time. I just couldn't even muster the courage to do that. Really, it was a period of darkness until June. I won't torment you with my depressive state of being.
Then in June, I took a 2 weeks vacation. It was a helpful change. After return back to work, I decided that I should reapply to grad schools again, after a lot of soul searching. My GRE were valid for one more year, and I was still passionate about doctoral studies, so decided to give it a shot. I read some of the statement of purpose of my friends that have gotten in. I realized they were more impersonal/citational/jargon-y in their statements, meanwhile I was more biographical and chronological. I also spotted that I had only applied to the top 10 schools (clearly overconfident, with a conflated sense of self). I decided to expand the range to top 40 instead. I decided not to apply to any below top 40, given that the job prospects are non-existent if you stray outside the hierarchy. I threw myself into the application process from July onward.
Then came the process of selecting departments, working on writing samples, and writing the statement of purpose. I decided to apply to only those departments in the top 40 programs that had at least 6 professors that I would want to work with. Arbitrary number, but I needed some selection criteria. I found 18 programs that met this criteria. I then read at least 3 essay by these 6 professors in each program. After reading them, I read some more essays, especially those that were cited the most by the professors I had already read and those that stood out as particularly promising. After reading all of their essays, I ranked the professors from 1 to 5, based on my subjective interests in their work. This was really helpful in eliminating other schools. Being cost sensitive and focusing on quality over quantity, I decided to only apply to 10 programs. I ended up applying to the 10 programs that I gave the highest points, based on my essay readings.
This informal literature review process was very helpful in writing my statement of purpose and tweaking my writing sample. I wrote highly individualized statements, based on what the professors had said in the essays I read, especially making use to use the keywords, highlighting key problems, and talking about how I personally would expand on this research question. My writing sample was similarly reworked to incorporate all the essays I had read, although this wasn't individualized to each program as that would be just practically impossible.
I kept reworking on this till the application deadline, and then I checked out. The rest in history.
I probably went overboard with this process. It was incredibly time consuming. But, I really enjoyed it. I am sure all those essays I have read will be very helpful for the actual graduate studies.
I hope this helps. Feel free to ask me anything else.

Me too! Huge congratulations!  

Me too! Huge congratulations!  

Me too! Huge congratulations!  

Me too! Huge congratulations!  

Me too! Huge congratulations!  

Just wanted to send a few words of encouragement to those people facing rejections--I was there last year, and it sucked. I applied to 7 programs (not Sociology, but something similar) and got rejected by 7. I felt embarrassed. I felt lost. I felt let down by my recommendation letter writers who had given me way too much confidence. I was angry with the schools who had rejected me.
Don't let it squash your passions. You might need to readjust slightly (like I did), you might need to apply to a wider variety or programs (like I did), or you might just need to do it again to get a better roll of the dice (like I did). 
You're not defined by these applications. And whether or not you have the degree, you're all sociologists. 
 

I'm on the verge of a breakdown right now, and I can't tell you guys how sick I am of trying. 

Last year, I applied to 6 places in the US (I'm an international student with an MA), and to 6 other places in my own country. I got rejected by all 12 of them in the end, despite being waitlisted at one US institution, and being interviewed by several domestic ones. 

This year, I've applied to 10 places (9-US, 1-EU) - and all I've gotten so far are about 6 rejection letters, with an implied 7th one on the way. It's only my safety schools that are yet to get back to me. What makes things worse is that I've been unemployed for two months, and none of the applications I've sent out for contractual positions seem to be working. People around me (friends, family) are constantly asking me what my "Plan B" is, and I have no answer for them, because I don't want to settle for anything lesser than a university-level academic career. I know that anything other than this would just make me feel very frustrated. 
I feel like I've let my references down. I feel like I'm burning stacks of money on applying time and time again (and international exchange rates don't help). And I've never had a worse case of impostor syndrome than I'm having right now. I've faced terrible depression and anxiety in the past, and it's taking everything I've got to not pick up a couple of bottles of alcohol, or start smoking again. 

To make things worse, I'm also sick right now (I've had a terrible case of food poisoning over the past two days), and I had an accident about three days ago that really messed up my car as well. Having to move back in with family has been limiting - and though I'm grateful for accommodating my parent has been, it's frustrating in its own way to be moving back in as a 28-year old. 

I feel like I'm getting nowhere. And I'm sorry if I sounded like I whined a lot - I didn't have any other space where I could vent and have people understand me. Pretty sure many of you are experiencing similar/worse situations. Hugs to those of you who are - I'm with you in solidarity. 

Just wanted to send a few words of encouragement to those people facing rejections--I was there last year, and it sucked. I applied to 7 programs (not Sociology, but something similar) and got rejected by 7. I felt embarrassed. I felt lost. I felt let down by my recommendation letter writers who had given me way too much confidence. I was angry with the schools who had rejected me.
Don't let it squash your passions. You might need to readjust slightly (like I did), you might need to apply to a wider variety or programs (like I did), or you might just need to do it again to get a better roll of the dice (like I did). 
You're not defined by these applications. And whether or not you have the degree, you're all sociologists. 
 

Just wanted to send a few words of encouragement to those people facing rejections--I was there last year, and it sucked. I applied to 7 programs (not Sociology, but something similar) and got rejected by 7. I felt embarrassed. I felt lost. I felt let down by my recommendation letter writers who had given me way too much confidence. I was angry with the schools who had rejected me.
Don't let it squash your passions. You might need to readjust slightly (like I did), you might need to apply to a wider variety or programs (like I did), or you might just need to do it again to get a better roll of the dice (like I did). 
You're not defined by these applications. And whether or not you have the degree, you're all sociologists. 
 

I genuinely never meant to upset anyone and I sincerely apologize that I did. 
For what it's worth, I'm not having a quarter-life crisis because I "don't know if I should go to Harvard or XYZ". Rather, I am honestly feeling a lot of sadness and anxiety in trying to navigate what the most feasible option is for myself as a mother with two children. I am finding that the institutional supports for low-income student parents at many of these institutions is simply non-existant. It's not like I'm expecting luxury, but things like having an institution willing to cover my children's healthcare for less than 6k a year would be cool...Maybe subsidies to help with the $2600/month childcare tuition...
All of this has really got me thinking a lot about how low-income and self-supported mothers and WoC are undervalued and are not seen as a priority to support in virtually every sect of society...even at these "world-class" institutions...It has me thinking about how resources are allocated within universities...and how in their choice to not invest in support policies and programs for disenfranchised students, institutions are able to silently weed out the "undeserving",  effectively reproducing their privilege. 
I'm sure that some will read this and think OH BOO-HOO and not understand, but it's a pretty upsetting process to have all of these doors slapping me in the face after what for most would seem to be a done deal. I was just hoping to find someone who is also experiencing worry or disappointment to talk with. Although we are strangers I have really come to value and appreciate all of you and would never intentionally want to hurt anyone.

hi friends. shook we've heard nothing from Yale. congrats to the Princeton acceptance! 

Just wanted to send a few words of encouragement to those people facing rejections--I was there last year, and it sucked. I applied to 7 programs (not Sociology, but something similar) and got rejected by 7. I felt embarrassed. I felt lost. I felt let down by my recommendation letter writers who had given me way too much confidence. I was angry with the schools who had rejected me.
Don't let it squash your passions. You might need to readjust slightly (like I did), you might need to apply to a wider variety or programs (like I did), or you might just need to do it again to get a better roll of the dice (like I did). 
You're not defined by these applications. And whether or not you have the degree, you're all sociologists.