slothy

And I should add that there are conversions within the US and between majors too - although adcoms rarely quantify these factors, makre no mistake that a BA with a 3.6 from Princeton with a double major in physics and literature and loads of heavy math courses will trump a 4.0 in physical education from Cal State Chico.

Never do this!!!!!!! You are selling yourself way too short and yes you are vastly underestimating the intelligence of Americans. (Well, American academics at least...). You are most definitely not the first person to apply from a commonwealth country (unless we're talking about a Master's in Social Work at EWU or something like that, and even then...). Most places will either not bother trying to understand your grades and rely on LOR's and your GRE score, have an expert in their graduate school do the grade conversions for them, or at a minimum look up one of the websites that describe international conversions for a rough guide.

Are you sure you did that conversion right? How did you come up with that number? I had always thought anything with distinction (I assume we're talking first class or high second class honors) in the UK would be translated by most schools in the 3.5+ range, although I admit to not being an expert on the messy art of international grade conversions. When I translated my ECTS study abroad grades (which I avoided whenever I could) I gave estimates based on what a similar class rank would equal in my university's hyper-inflated soc grad program (with the disclaimer that that's how I came up with the conversion)... perhaps that was going a little too far, but modesty isn't a virtue in grad school applications from what I can tell.

I think and hope this is right. My impression is that Harvard didn't extend offers to any more applicants than their target cohort size just in case, and I bet a lot of other programs are taking the same approach. I know that Duke only admitted 11 for a target cohort of 6, which seems rather conservative given the types of students I believe are in that 11. I also wonder if I'm not the only one who applied for more schools than I would have in a normal cycle given the economic situation; if so, that might help waitlists move along quickly now that almost all the top programs have extended some offers to their top candidates. As for the other question, I would also say that Northwestern is a top choice but not my top choice - if they extended me an offer right now I'd say there's a 50% chance I'd end up taking it, but I'd of course visit and consider it alongside my other options.

Just waitlisted. Email came right after an acceptance from Cornell though, so it hurt a lot less.

I'm American. No word on cohort size or anything like that, unfortunately. It didn't seem to be a mass email though. Good luck!

Just accepted by Cornell. They emailed me about two hours ago while I was in class. Very strong funding offer - 21.5k for 5 yrs (2 w/o TA/RA commitments) plus around 4.5k for 4 summers. Can't wait to visit!

While I was doing an "Erasmus" semester in Europe (i.e. study abroad where 90% of the students were being paid to be there and sing Kumbaya aren't we all a big happy European family... don't get me started on the EU) I met an American soc ABD (despite being a poli sci department) who was doing the standard master's level study abroad courses because she had been advised that she would have to have a substantive experience in her country of study beyond data collection if she was to be taken seriously in the job market, and it makes sense. If there is a particular geographic dimension to your dissertation, you should have at least six months of day to day living experience there if you want to be any sort of authority on your subject, even if most of your data is archival. And I think this doesn't just apply to foreign countries - if your topic is specific to, say, Indian reservations or New York City you should have some experience living there. Just my two cents.

I know I've felt that way just looking at my undergrad soc cohort...

Just out of curiousity would this department happen to be Duke (since it looks like you didn't mention it by name)? If so, could you PM me if you don't want to post a public reply?

I'll be 22 when I start, although I understand that's rather young to be starting in my university's program.

I've applied, but no word.

If it was a joke, it wasn't funny...

The main reason why Wisconsin is ranked #1 is, to my understanding, the simple virtue that they probably have the most alumni among the department chairs who get to fill out US News surveys. I wouldn't read much into that ranking at all. There's little doubt that Wisconsin is a top-10 program, but #1 is a real stretch. As others have noted, it's very premature to be discussing these things before you've had the opportunity to visit both... I would think that it's really important to meet your prospective mentors in person and get a feel for who you would get along with best.

Regardless of your subfield, as someone presumably on the Harvard waitlist I would strongly encourage Wisconsin. Madison and Boston are probably about the same in terms of climate, but I'm sure the cheese is much fresher in Wisconsin. A serious quesiton to ask yourself is whether you'd rather be a star at Wisconsin or just another talented student at Harvard. There are pros and cons to both options and you need to think seriously about your personality. You should really post some more details on your situation for us to help you out. When you say you're deciding between Wisconsin and Harvard, does that mean that you've suddenly ruled out all your other offers, or are you just forecasting a hypothetical situation you might be facing down the road once you've learned more about your options?

*sigh* another one of my top choices gives me the silent treatment. Could I really be waitlisted at Stanford, Chicago, Harvard (even though I thought my interview went well) *and* Northwestern? I thought waitlists tended to be pretty small. I guess I'm cautiously optimistic; I think I was the last on this board to hear from Berkeley, but nonetheless it's really frustrating.... I guess I should be thankful that I haven't been handed any rejection letters yet, but at this point I'd really just like some certainty.

Some more details on your circumstances might be helpful. Are you officially waitlisted or just assuming you're on a waitlist on account of not having heard anything (that's my situation with Stanford)? It's my understanding that if you've, say, aced any hardcore methods courses or had a paper accepted for publication in the time since you applied, it might not hurt to send a quick note when you're waitlisted. (Or, better yet, have a professor send it as an addendum to his or her letter.) On the other hand, if your application credentials are basically the same as what you submitted, you've really just got to wait things out, although it might not hurt to send an email to the DGS every few weeks saying that you're curious where you stand so they know you're still interested in them. Hope this helps!

All I've heard is what was in the generic letter on the website from the grad school (mine said nothing about funding); I'm really surprised the department hasn't contacted me yet with any details, although I can be a little patient.

It means they're struggling budget-wise along with everyone else and they want to be especially sure this year that they don't end up enrolling more people than they can afford. They're probably just trying to make sure you would be likely to attend if they extended an offer to you so they don't end up tying up slots that could be used to recruit other people. Reply quickly and enthusiastically!

Or maybe someone is just playing mind games with us?

I should have made clear that I was sharing my general impressions of NYU; I really don't know anyone in the sociology department, so I really can't say anything definitive about the program. It's just my understanding that they have more toxic programs than most of their peer institutions.

I seriously considered applying to NYU as a fall-back although I ultimately decided against it (and with the two acceptances I now have in hand I'd say it would have been a waste of time and money). NYU probably ranks somewhere between 15-25 depending on subfield (I think it's US News rank is somewhere in the teens; I'm too lazy to look it up - US News tends to be decent as an approximate guide of what tier a school falls in but very imprecise). Once you start getting down into the teens in sociology you end up at a serious disadvantage on the job market over top-15 grads; however, I suspect NYU might be as competitive as some top-10 programs because it is in a very enviable location (to a lot of, but by no means all, young adults). In my field, they had a few interesting people, but they were by no means renowned. As a university, NYU has some serious problems with funding and caring for its grad students, and NYU horror stories probably made me a bit prejudiced against them from the beginning. Their overhead is extremely high due to their location(s) - my impression is that they spend more on security alone than a lot of R1 universities spend on their libraries (this might be an overstatement). And those busses that run all over Manhattan? They add up, as do those fancy housing facilities right on Washington Square. I wouldn't go there without an ironclad 5 year funding package, since their tuition is sky-high and they do make a good portion of their grad students pay it, even if most of the students getting stuck with these bills are in their intriguingly-themed terminal MA programs (Draper, Social Theory, ect...). They (the university) have an interesting incentive program where they match external funding you win, but to me that sounds like a sign that their students lack the guaranteed level of support enjoyed at other big private schools.

Sounds like my suggestions didn't go over very well. Let me defend myself: I was thinking of my own work - work and labor with a policy focus - when I made the suggestion that the OP should be reading quality news sources, but I completely understand why that would be a lower priority for a lot of other sociologists-in-training, and I agree that it's advisable to at a minimum be browsing the big journals. In fact, I really do agree with the comment that it probably would be quite bad for a sex/gender person to pay too much attention to some popular press sources. I also realize in hindsight that the New York Times was probably not the best newspaper to mention on this board given some of the things that have been said here about one of its star columnists. I guess my failure to think of sociologists who might have different interests than myself is just an example of how fractured our discipline can be. I was also in the mindset that I feel like I need a little break myself from intensely scholarly stuff before starting the Ph.D., not that they wouldn't be useful to someone without a soc major. I was expecting that my comment about Marx/Durkheim/Weber would stir up some discussion. I would be truly surprised to see a field exam that drew extensively from them (that's not explicitly in social theory), and I made my comment fully cognizant that the OP will probably have to take some theory course along the line where he or she will get a healthy dose of them. I don't feel like it's necessary to be reading from them prior to that course, although I respect differences of opinion on that. Personally, I was happy to rely on Wikipedia/Cliff's Notes to get my A in theory, but I realize that many people out there enjoy reading directly from the source. (Somehow I have a terrible feeling that some may not respond well to that comment, but I truly feel that I'm primarily here for the applications, as important as it is to have people out there who understand the underlying theories.) As for the other theme of this thread, I've been assuming with a couple exceptions that most of the posters here are male like myself. The thought of a poll did actually cross my mind a couple weeks ago though. Now my schema of you all is shattered...

I think there's an argument to be made that Marx/Durkheim/Weber aren't really that important for being fluent in sociology. None of them self-identified as sociologists; at some point in the 60's-70's American sociologists discovered them and claimed their work for the domain of soc (and somehow decided to throw out all the theory stuff they were teaching before to focus pretty much exclusively on them) but they are really interdisciplinary social theorists who far from dominate the field. You should have an idea of their basic tenets (i.e., Marx: class conflict is responsible for everything), but it's relatively uncommon to see a journal article that mentions those classic theorists more than just in passing. IMHO, reviewing a stats textbook (Babbie would be fine, although I might supplement it with a more mainstream "Dummies"-esque guide) would probably be far more important for soc success than reviewing classic theorists. I also think reading the NY Times/Economist/ other current-affairs publications (if you don't already) might help you start thinking about research topics down the road.

That's about what I expected based on history...