utley24

I'm with you, friend. Hang in there.

I know I said I would stop checking this, but I'm glad I did, because these sentiments are both well-articulated and depressingly true. So many people are blocked out of this world altogether because grad programs don't offer anywhere close to adequate financial supports. There are so many barriers in place because universities see PhD students as disposable cheap labor, and it perpetuates the systematic inequalities we see throughout academia. Good luck.

Yeah, I should probably just stop checking this, I'll see myself out. I just hope that you all realize that the vast majority of people (most of whom don't comment or engage in any way) come to this forum in a negative headspace in the midst of disappointment and rejection. The insensitive comment that started all this, and subsequent defenses of it, are in no way helping those people, and are likely in fact making them feel even worse. Please try to be more conscientious. Good luck to everyone--and if you've been following all these messages, feeling like crap after being denied from your dream schools (or safety schools!), just know you're far from alone.

Haha, I'm certainly not a sociologist--just an office drone sitting on a pile of PhD rejections, with dreams of becoming a sociologist one day. Thanks for rubbing it in though. Y'all really need to check yourselves and be more careful with your words.

Definitely not on the offensive (my original comment was intended to be light and half-joking), just voicing an opinion that, based on the number of likes it's gotten, is shared by many others here. Just think everyone needs to keep in mind how many people are coming to this forum with a lot of anxiety, disappointment, and rejection in tow.

I appreciate your attempt to be diplomatic, but on a thread like this with so many people dealing with rejection and their dreams crumbling, to randomly post about having a quarter-life crisis and crying over a decision about which elite school to go to is annoying at best and callous at worst.

Didn't you get into Harvard? Try getting into *zero* schools and then we can talk about having a quarter-life crisis lol

Have you checked out the results board recently? There's definitely still a lot of trolls around these parts... And yeah, I figure that people are including different sources for funding. But unfortunately that somewhat defeats the purpose of the site--although it's not illegitimate, it makes it impossible to compare funding packages when you don't know what number you're looking at, since healthcare and summer funds can easily change the number by $5,000 or more.

The Chicago ones range from $25k to $40k, so I don't really think any of them would be half...but who knows. If those are accurate, I'd be floored (as much by the upper end of $37k and $40k as the huge discrepancy).

How legit of a site is http://www.phdstipends.com/ ? I believe @jriveracal and @socchi92 were the ones promoting it. I'm looking at the numbers now... A lot of it looks accurate (and the concept of it is awesome), but I find it pretty hard to believe that someone at Boulder is getting $40k per year. And find it especially hard to believe that Chicago is simultaneously giving different students $40k, $37k, and $28k...there's no way they have that big of a difference. Any insight?

"At this time, we cannot provide funding to cover tuition and living expenses. We are working to try and secure funding for you ..." That's the only piece of information needed to make your decision. Don't go there. End of story.

As far as I know, you're not missing anything: in this situation, you'd receive less money. But that's mostly because $35k is an incredibly high stipend, especially for sociology...to be honest, that's significantly higher than anything I've ever heard of. Most packages I've seen/heard of are somewhere in the $24k-$28k range, with a few around $30k. PhD stipends also usually come with some work requirements, though, whereas most fellowships don't, so that often evens things out somewhat. EDIT: I also just thought of this: if Ford is just academic year, then maybe your school will treat it separate from summer? So that'd be $24k from Ford, plus $4k from your school for the academic year, plus $5k from your school for the summer, totaling at $33k.

Out of curiosity, if you were only applying to two programs, how did you settle on those two? I'm not judging--I also only applied to a couple programs. But would be interested to hear your rationale. Also, have you looked into fee waivers? If you apply again next year, they could help extend your list.

For what it's worth, I actually agree with your premise that celebrating/bragging on this site can be in poor taste, since so many people here are primarily anxious and dealing with rejections and/or difficult decisions. I think this forum ought to primarily be for information exchange and commiserating--although claiming acceptances is fine when done appropriately and lends credibility to the results board...but because this is all anonymous, we can't really properly actually celebrate the individual's accomplishment, so bragging about one's wealth of acceptances really just serves to make other people feel like shit while signaling that some person out there is having a swell time with this process. Nobody really comes out ahead there. That being said, you were a dick about it when you could have just said something simple like "Hey congratulations, that's great, just be conscientious that a lot of people reading this board are nervous and dealing with rejections of their own". Don't be a dick. And go Google the Streisand Effect while you're at it.

This is why it seems like a lot of people (and I've started doing this as a result) think about rankings in terms of tiers. Like, is the 14th ranked school actually better than the 20th ranked? Probably not. But the schools in the top 10 are certainly "better" than those ranked in the 30s. I think trying to be any more granular than that is silly. It seems like top 8-10ish is the top tier, then 10-30ish is second, then 30-50, then 50+. That's how I have them categorized in my head.

I also hope I didn't come off too negative with this or stoke anyone's anxiety further, it's just something I'd been hearing from others that I trust, and something I've obviously been thinking about a lot myself--and I also should point out that tons of people have gone to mid-tier schools and had wonderful careers and lives, and none of this is in any way an indication of our worth as people or future scholars. Just all about expectations, I suppose.

Absolutely, I think keeping yourself open to non-academia positions is smart...honestly, for everyone who doesn't go to a top 5-10 school, we should all keep our minds open to that with the way the job market is trending. Focusing on placement records is so important and I feel like applicants honestly over-value fit, potential advisors, etc. when looking at programs. First and foremost, other than "could I live in this place for 5-6 years", the primary question applicants ask should be "what is their job placement?" I'd encourage everyone here to do some deep dives into placement track records like SgtDonut did.Because it also sometimes works the other way, where programs are under-rated and actually have solid placement records...perhaps Vanderbilt is one as SgtDonut pointed out. But in general, I just think that holding out for the best possible program, even if it means waiting a year, is *nearly* always worth it. We can't forget how huge of an investment this is, and it's just reality that schools ranked 40+ generally don't place a lot of graduates in R1 TT jobs.

Depends somewhat on your definition of "middle tier" , but I don't necessarily think this is great advice, especially if you have a decent job to stay at in the meantime (if you hate your job or are coming out of undergrad with no job offers, then that's much tougher lol). But anyone who follows the sociology job market knows how brutal it is--and I think it's important for everyone to be real with themselves about the end result for this degree. For example, two solidly middle tier programs, Boulder and UC Riverside, have one placement each so far this job market cycle--at SUNY Cortland and Penn State Abington (a satellite campus for Penn State). Would you be happy going to school making $25k per year for 5-6 years and end up living and working in those places? Maybe, but I know a lot of people (myself included) who would find that difficult to swallow. So, all that being said--if you have even just a decent job to hang onto for another year, and think you can improve your application a bit and get into a significantly higher ranked program, it's worth thinking long and hard about. Yes, this month sucks, but it's just one month in a (hopefully) very long career. Could pay off a lot to hold out and try again.