neutiquamerro

It was pretty generic: congratulations, nominated for fellowship, part of 5 years of support, will receive an invitation for Graduate Admissions and the University's Diversity weekend, etc... But I'm still super excited!

Got the e-mail about 5 minutes ago. I'm in!

someone really received an acceptance? the message was edited out and no one else responded with results, so now i'm confused... : /

Also, according to my interviewer, Harvard had about 300 applications, planned to interview 20, and look to accept around half. The final decisions will be out by mid February (eee!). Good luck, everyone.

I just had my interview. It was relaxed and pretty straightforward: Why sociology?, Why Harvard vs. the other schools you applied to?, etc. I really enjoyed the conversation (but I'm trying to not get my hopes up too high!).

has anyone interviewed for a sociology program before? what sorts of questions were asked? any general suggestions? thanks so much!

i asked one of my professors/recommenders this question in november or december. he said that it actually happened the year or two before. the first time the committee wasn't sure if sociology was the applicant's best fit, if the applicant was really ready for sociology, if the application was very well thought out, etc. but when the applicant applied a second time, it (and that the applicant had really worked on his application) proved to the committee that applicant was dedicated to the field, so they accepted him. it sounded like a statement of purpose issue, but the professor didn't really specify. hope that helps.

The interview's for sociology.

I wouldn't worry about that for a couple of reasons: First, Yale is social sciences and humanities-heavy at the graduate level. Its very top-ranked programs are English, history, psychology, economics, political science, etc. The only similarly ranked programs are professional, such as law and art. Most people, whether of the social sciences, humanities, hard sciences, or professional variety, know this. Second, there are some natural divisions between the social sciences and the humanities and the sciences (schools/department/lab locations are a big factor in this, for example), so there's less chance of that happening in the first place. Third, Yale is a very relaxed place overall. The snottiness that one would automatically associate with the university just isn't there when people from different departments do interact with one another. And lastly, depending on your subfield, Yale's sociology department is great. It has some of the best memory studies folk in the world, for example. It's small, yes, (ironically, mostly because one of our former Presidents who tried to gut the department - and others in the humanities and social sciences - to free up funding, space, etc. for the hard sciences), but it's very solid.

I'm an undergraduate at Yale, so I know the school (and sociology department) pretty well. I didn't apply here for grad school though.

I'm worried about Berkeley, Chicago, and Columbia since their deadlines were in the middle of December. I guess I'll see what happens. Oh, and good idea samoth. I'll look them up. Also, if you want to know anything about Yale just let me know.

One of my recommenders submitted her recommedation just last week. Is that too late to be added to my file? Eee!

As long as you explain your change of mind (in the Statement of Purpose, for example) and have taken at least a few sociology classes, you'll be fine.

You have a strong academic background, but your GRE scores are quite low. Last year Berkeley's admittees had average scores of 655 verbal, 700 quantitative; UCLA's were 643 verbal, 712 quantitative; and Northwestern's were 680 verbal, 720 quantitative, and 5.0 writing. I'd expect Columbia, Harvard, and Duke to have similar average scores.

start reviewing applications? Any idea?

again, thanks!

thanks for all of the help.