achoo313

I am currently a graduate student at Irvine. Yes, the place lacks the lovely urban centers that we might like to see, and have known from our past (my education was completed in London), and yet, this seems to me to hardly be a cause for calling the University itself "soul sucking," as if that term means anything anyway. Yes, there are strip malls. One of my favorites has a Soon Dobu restaurant (and the nice women running the place don't put fish in my soup - which is nice,) a vegan restaurant that makes damn fine sandwiches, and a north Indian restaurant. Certainly, there are also lots of nasty little big box stores whose parking lots are monitored by underpaid and inattentive security guards. But really, the portrait of Orange County is much more complex than that.

I also would like to address two streams of thinking that run through the responses you have gotten so far: 1) that driving is evil, precludes you from going anywhere, and will eventually defeat your will to do anything and 2) that it is impossible to find affordable, accessible housing in or near Irvine that still allows you to have a social life, and that this social life is entirely dependent upon where you live.

First, Southern California is a dispersed place, true, and this is to my mind one of its greatest assets. While there are certainly centralized areas of culture that graduate students are likely to flock (concerts on the East Side, galleries in Culver City and Chinatown, etc., --more below), we shouldn't assume that all graduate students or university faculty are interested in and likely to spend their time in the same place. Some of my peers commute to San Diego because they have families there; some from Pasadena choose to commute because they work at the Norton Simon; others live in Long Beach - including myself - and still others live in Irvine. Nobody's soul appears to have evaporated, regardless of where they live. I choose to live in Long Beach because it is halfway between the University and LA, where I spend every weekend, with only the rare exception, and near the beach and bars. It takes me 20 mintues carpooling and 30 minutes alone to get to school (door to door) and 30 minutes carpool/45 minutes alone to get to the furthest reaches of LA. True, traffic can be killer and I sometimes sit for a long while. But that is usually because I am going somewhere I want to be, and we sometimes just have to wait for what we want ...Moreover, delay occurs on public transit everywhere, anyway.

Second, I find my rent to be reasonable, as it relates to my geographic area and my cultural map of the city. Traveling around the city really isn't that bad, and I find that life in the region is generally good. And certainly, depending on your interests and class schedule, the size of the region does afford a good diversity of activities, impeccable weather and natural beauty, and some great adviser at UCI.

Hope this helps

I did my undergrad at UC Irvine and loved UCI. here are some tips

Vista Del Campo is the best on-campus housing! Do whatever you can to get in- I believe the grad VDC even has a washer and dryer in every apartment.

Do not commute from LA or SD!! You will be in your car at least 4 hours a day. As wonderful as Silver Lake, Los Feliz, and all the other hipster neighborhoods are it is not worth the commute. If you are looking for hipster in the OC, live in Costa Mesa.

If you want beachside live on the Newport Penninsula. I currently live in Corona del Mar beachside, but I do not have a neighbor under 40. It is an old wealthy neighborhood.

Take advantage of the Film and Video Center at UCI- the weekly screenings are amazing.

Those are great topics. I'm looking to focus on victimology, hate crimes, and legal regulation of gender and sexuality. A lot of my background with those areas has revolved around minors, so we may cross paths there

Thanks for the response. I disagree with you, but I can do that respectfully. Essentially, for this process going forward — I’ve mentally compartmentalized it to something I’ll deal with as results reveal themselves. Unfortunately, I’ve had the hone that skill given the vicissitudes of life/time, so I move on from things quickly mentally and emotionally. I’m no longer visiting the results section, so I’m not living and dying with each update. That’s been beneficial for me. Now, to your point: there’s a great book I read over the summer called, “The Inequality Machine,” by Paul Tough. The gist of the book is that our most hallowed institutions fail to be the truly transformative entities they could be, and actually causally reproduce and further propagate inequality. How so? Well, generally when these “top” schools  select applicants, they accept students from a certain background (i.e., affluent, well to-do). Even when they accept minority students, they are generally from an affluent background either domestically or internationally. Moreover, what they are actually accepting when they opt to take on students is typically students with the means to best “game” the system. People with the resources that can hire a private tutor for 6 months to study for the GRE, spend 2K on Kaplan self-study materials, take a job for two years as a research assistant making next to nothing because they can afford to do so, and so on. I read a post on Reddit before where an international application in India said that the GRE fee cost was half of his monthly salary. Think of the sheer absurdity in this statement. What does his ability/inability to know that proper fractions get smaller when multiplied by a whole number have to do with a flourishing sociological imagination? I posit nothing. 
 
 I’d like to think I’m a pretty informed applicant now, and I didn’t even know people actually email and contact professors they’re interested in to foster a relationship before they even apply until this cycle. That actually blew my mind, because here I was thinking this was some wholly impartial process in terms of decisions being meted out. Silly me. It’s a game — within a game. Additionally, so much of sociology is devoted to inequality, injustice, etc. If there is ONE academic arena where one’s historical positioning should be accounted for, I contend it’s sociology. 
 
For example, Cal Berkeley is oft seen as this paragon of inclusivity, progressive ideologies, etc. Such that, there are specific pejoratives that parties will bandy about for people that attend institutions such as Cal. Yet, even Cal Berkeley struggles to adhere to these ideals with regard to its meager black populous — and many have accounted that their time at Cal has been racially and socially charged. Now, this is occurring at Cal Berkeley! What does that denote about the rest of the world outside of Cal? When I go to these university websites, and I look at the professors, and I peruse their CV’s, I see an overwhelmingly white demographic. Now, inequality, injustice, and so forth manifests itself in various ways throughout a functioning globalized society. Whether, you’re black in Compton, white in Appalachia, or Latino in Peru. However, I know how it has directly impacted my life. Do I think most of the people I see on these websites can turn the electricity back on in their house when it’s cutoff by power company with just a clothes hanger? No. I can, though. My mother taught me that when I was 6. 
 
We all learn about Durkheim, Pierre Bourdieu, Max Weber, Mills, DuBois, et al. We all write papers on the juxtaposition of anomie to Marx’s alienation. We all have things we’re interested in and theories we’ve cultivated. We all have things we think should be researched or we intend to research, and we hope adcoms assent. Undoubtedly, I don’t think any of that is unique in some collective application sense. Sociology can be more than that. In fact, it should be. The greatest sociologists of the ages were radical in thought. I’d argue with one of my professors, how is sociology supposed to make the world a better place if we all have to write papers on the same stuff and in the same style? What is unique about people is normally their life course, and the road they’ve traveled to get to a particular point. Marx saw the world the way he did because the shit he’d been through. If sociology is ultimately really in interested in the bettering of the world vis-a-vis inequality those differences have to be taken into account. Otherwise, we’ll keep reproducing the same kind of people from the same backgrounds, and nothing will change. The best schools will continue to be a forlorn hope for certain demographics racially and socioeconomically, and the accepted will continue to be those most adept at playing the “game.” 
 
Anyways, I definitely recommend that book I mentioned. 

I have a little spreadsheet with what schools I applied to and whether they did interviews or plain acceptances. Interviews seem a little more rare in the field than my other field I applied to (Social Psychology). UT Austin and Columbia both don't do interviews historically. Looking through the results panel I estimated that Columbia responses usually come as Acceptances in early February (occasionally mid February, but I have ignored 2020 for a lot of my metrics because departments were struggling) and UTA usually sends out Acceptances in early February or occasionally late January.

Hi all! Currently waiting on UT Austin, Columbia, Yale, and Northwestern. With UTA and Columbia as the first submission deadlines I am hoping to hear back from them soon. I would love some insight about what schools typically send acceptances/rejections/waitlists without interviews and what schools first request interviews - I have received a lot of mixed messages. Crossing my fingers for us all!

Oh god, that sent a lump in my throat! At UT has started to review, I was wondering when they would. ?

Congrats with the interview and good luck! I am seeing several interview invites from the result page from Rice and UChicago. I expect there to be more invites from these schools coming in the following weeks now that the long weekend is over.
It can feel anxious to see other people receiving interview invites. I have been, for a last couple of days. If anyone is feeling overwhelmed, friendly reminder that you are welcome to log off this site and give your self a break!

It’s so quiet in here, but I’m really dying to hear back from Michigan, Washington, UCLA, and Yale. UT and UNC are up there too, but we’ll see. I wonder why UCLA is taking so long this year? They appear to be one of the fastest, historically. I was stonewalled and summarily stuff-armed by Ohio State, University of Chicago, and I’m chalking Rutgers up as a rejection too. It’s cool. I’m not the biggest fan of cold weather as a native Floridian, so that’s the ego ploy I’m using to make myself feel better. Out of the four schools I’ve heard back from, I’m at a 25% success rate. I can live with that. 
 
Please Michigan, pleaseeeeeeee! 
 
 

Has anyone heard anything from UT Austin or Toronto?
Historically, they will send out results next week! 

I’ve also applied to Criminology and Criminal Justice programs for fall 22! I’m anxiously waiting for results ..

Same here! Sending in two today to FSU and UCI. Also applied to the JSP program at Berkeley and some Sociology programs with strong Criminology faculty. Anyone have good ideas on when we should expect to hear back? Crossing my fingers for us all!