pac1371

I heard that UC Irvine claims that they rarely admits international students. Not sure how much could that be generalized to other campuses. Also heard that funding for international students under the UC system is highly competitive. I am not an insider. These are heard from other graduate student, so please take it with a bit of salt...

I am not 100% sure, but I heard that UC schools aren't really good bets for international students, especially considering their funding situation.

According to my personal experience, I would not put much hope on the U.S. sociology programs. GRE seems to play a substantial role if you are "the average applicant," by which I mean no special connections or very strong records. Two years ago I applied with qualifications similar to yours, and did not make it to any programs I applied to, including some second tier programs. I would guess that a combination of verbal and quantitative to 1200 would be a minimum to not be dropped down immediately. The more the better. Of course there are exceptions. Given the programs you listed, it seems that you are more qualitative-oriented. You also have consider research experience, so maybe you are also pretty sure about the topics you are going to work on. I think there is still a chance if you can be a good fit to the programs, and contact professors that you want to work with. Good luck!