heathenist

I've been here for about a year, and I get by just fine without a car, in fact, only two people in my cohort have cars, and I know a ton of other grad students without cars, it's very doable, especially if you live in West University, Pie Allen, Downtown, or Sam Hughes, etc (really any of the neighborhoods near campus). I live near downtown and campus is a very easy bike ride away, and I don't really find myself needing to leave the downtown/campus area very often. The buses are not great. Crowded and they stop running very early. It makes going to see a later showing of a movie or anything like that, kind of a hassle. The biggest problem for me has been getting groceries, but I recently discovered that safeway (a bigger grocery store chain in the area, think Kroger, Fry's, Food Lion, etc) deliver's for a very reasonable fee, and if you are patient you can very easily get coupons for free delivery. I think the standard rate is like $13, but it's very easy to get that reduced to around $6-7 even without coupons. And speaking from experience, it's totally worth it just to avoid the hassle of dealing with getting grocieries on the bus. I really wish someone had told me about it my first semester here. Also, Sociolite, feel free to pm me, I'm in the Soc department so if you have any questions let me know.

They seem to be heading in a really great direction, apparently they have 5 new faculty coming in for the Fall semester.

I'll be sending out my official decision to University of Arizona any day now.

When is it appropriate to ask about things like transfer credits if you're coming from finishing an MA?

Easy, Chicago rules, Northwestern.

Any speculation about Vanderbilt?

Word on the grapevine is that UMass has hired a very prominent social movement scholar who will be starting in the fall.

I could see UC Irvine breaking the top 20 easily. I agree with ND going up too. Rice could be represented in the rankings now, and if so, they should be ranked fairly high.

Congrats! Robert Benford was the chair at my current department before he left for USF (he left before I got here), but I think he is a pretty big name in social movements because of his contributions to the framing literature.

Congrats! How did you find out if you don't mind me asking?

OP- I'm not sure how privy you were to this information, but what do you think were the deciding factors when handing out fellowships (vs standard assistantships)? Are they just given to the student with the best GRE score or something like that, or is it more subjective?

I'm about 98% sure where I'll be attending in the fall. I still haven't heard from 2 places that would maybe make me second guess my decision, and those are expected rejections. It's definitely nice to know where I'll be in the fall, now I'm just hoping my partner ends up getting accepted there too (in a different PhD program), but we won't know for probably another 2-3 weeks unfortunately. EDIT: After checking my decision status on the UMass website, I'm now 99.9% sure I know where I'll be going in the fall.

Yeah, I don't really know the etiquette behind submitting the same paper to multiple conferences. It seems like it would be frowned upon, but I really don't know.

Absolutely. I recently told my graduate director I wouldn't be continuing on here for my PhD, and while it was a little awkward, I did it to free up funding for other people, and she seemed very appreciative of that.