Sociologia

Going to miss you at Michigan, good luck at Harvard.

Hey I think you should PM (personal message) me. I applied to a lot of similar programs and I can give you a lot of good advice. I was pretty successful. I've also been to some of these places and have spoken to some faculty with interests similar to yours. There are also a fair number of students with similar interests to yours so I might be able to give you a sense of what the admissions competition/ future colleague is/are like. Two things I can tell you off the bat: 1. You are better off at a place that can support your interest, but has other strengths; don't apply to a place that is only good at immigration. This is important because you should get great training as a sociologist/demographer and not just as specialist. This is also a paradox since you want to be very proficient in one or a few substantive areas so you can do well on the job market. 2. You need to look at more programs (it seems like you know this already). You have listed some tier 1 programs, and some very good 2nd tier programs. I think you should also look into Penn State, they are a very big department with a bunch of demographers. If you really want to reach I would say look at UPenn too. I'll say that Princeton is probably the best place you can go. Don't look into all of the U.S. world news report rankings stuff. Princeton right now is hands down the best program, esp for your interests. They have Massey, Portes, Tienda, Telles, Harris, and Espenshade (possibly others I've failed to mention). They also have rock-solid training for all of thier students, and their students have been very successful in a really tight job market. Again just PM me and I'll give you some more advice.

I don't. Read the last sentence of my post. It is pure speculation on my part.

which ranking system are you using? there are two dominant ones i know of: USWNR http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/sociology-rankings interesting thing about these rankings. they are based soley on the survey of peers (very subjective). notice that many large departments who graduate/admit many students are ranked higher (wisconsin, berkeley) and a department like PennState is ranked lower and admits/graduates less students. now don't get me wrong berkeley and wisconsin are very good and very impressive, but knowing how the ranking scheme of USWNR works you have to take it with a grain of salt. what i can't understand with the USWNR is the ranking of PSU and UPenn despite the low number of first year students/graduates at these places. NRC (outsourced to phds.org) http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/sociology/rank/_MM_____________________________________________________________U the tables are turned by these rankings which claim to be more objective. programs with a high student:faculty ratio like Berkeley (3.7) and Wisconsin (3.4) take a hit here, while a program with a low student:facult ratio like PennState (1.5) ranks higher. Wisconsin also takes a dive in these rankings because according to the data Wisconsin did not provide full financial support to all of it's first year students. in these rankings you can also glean information from the quality of their students because they list the average GRE Q score (in most cases 700+). what's wierd with these rankings is how poorly Wisconsin and Berkeley perform. (if i were admitted to one of these programs and went on a visit day I would be asking students how difficult it would be to work with a faculty member). The most difficult program to get into IMO would be whichever program has the lowest admissions rate. Using the data collected by the NRC that would probably be UPenn, Harvard, or Michigan. (Which have 5,6, & 7 first year students respectively and are ranked highly by both sets of rankings.) Because I don't know how many offers were made and how many people applied this is purely speculation on my part.

Sure. Undergrad: 3.5 GPA Top 25 (Linguistics major) Masters: Higher Education 7.0/8.0 (ed schools are wierd this is like having a 3.7. Would have been higher but an econ course destroyed me lol) (Top 5) (Took demography cognates at a top 5 soc program) GRE: 770Q 560V 4.5W Letters of rec were solid. All from profs. 1 from a prof at a top 5 soc program. The other 2 from my masters program. Experience: Brookings, U.S. Census Bureau, Researcher at a think tank at the School of Education where I got my masters. Research experience in Sociology of Medicine (currently), and I was also the data mongerer for a well-known emeritus University President. I have 2 meaningful publications on the way (1 which I used as my writing sample). I am savy with ArcGIS, Stata, SAS, SPSS, Visual Basic Excell (Excell macros), and can do a bit of CSS. I would also encourage you to take some very advanced quant coursework. I'm basically coming into a PhD program with everything but Event History Analysis, and Structural Equation Modeling on the quant side. (I'm going to have to play some catch-up on the theory and classical sociology though). My interests are immigration, education, inequality, and demography. (I can work outside my comfort zone too though. Currently with sociology of medicine, and at the Census with military data.) I applied to so many programs because I was fearful I might not get into any. As you can see my GRE verbal score is lower than seemingly everyone's in this forum. What I think has worked in my favor is that most highly ranked soc programs are quant oriented. I think my best chances for admission are the departments which champion immigration and education research. Hope this helps.

Thought I would chime-in. I'm one of those people who looked on here everyday, but never posted anything in the forum (I do post in results). I have two accptances (UPenn, PSU) and one rejection (Wisconsin). Now that I know I got in a few places my insecurity is beginning to dissipate and I feel more comfortable reaching out. Good luck to everyone and a big thanks to those who are active here (especially @Happy to be here, @Rollright, and @jacib). I'll be happy to answer questions, and help other people through this process. Good luck to everyone.