ewurgler

I agree. Even if your grad school experience is unbelievable and a perfect fit, it is really hard for anyone to find good TT positions, even those from the very best programs. I would not dip below the 20-25 mark if I could help it. Glancing through "placement" info or "on the market" PhDs is frightening. It is really tough.

I see your point, but I would think they may lose top applicants who accept offers from lesser programs (perhaps top 15) because they have full funding. If I was accepted to a top 5 with no funding and a top 20 with full support, I would most likely take the latter. It would be revealing (to me) that they are not very supportive of their grad students in general. Would they have travel stipends for conferences or other smaller, but important signs that they are invested in your success? I don't know anything about wisconsin, but are they poorly funded by the state? The UCs have had MASSIVE cutbacks for like 10 straight years, especially in the social sciences, but they still manage to get everyone something, at least a sucky TA job with the freshman writing courses. Sorry if this sounds discouraging to those accepted, I don't mean it to be that way. This is just my anger with the state of higher education--especially social sciences at public universities. Seriously, CONGRATS to those in at Wisconsin. That is quite an accomplishment!!!

That really sucks that one of the very top programs won't fund their students. It is like they're abusing their high ranking, knowing people will still come without funding.

Congrats Hardboiledegg!!!!

Yes, my school selection is ambitious....a rookie mistake I think. If I don't make it in this round, I will definitely rethink my selections. It is so hard to know what is a reach and what is not. My stats are all "inside" their averages, but looking around this forum, I think I seriously over-reached. But, my LORs are from some serious heavy hitters (one benefit of a strong undergraduate institution). God, this is making me crazy.

waitinginohio: Mine also says "(L) complete-sent to program." I have no idea what the L means. Minnesota is my safest bet, in terms of faculty fit (super perfect fit) and stats. If I get a rejection right out of the gate, its going to be a rough couple of months.

Anyone here apply? I figure this will be the first program I hear from, and hopefully soon!

Whew! Thanks for the reassurance.

I've spent the entire morning reading through all of my SoPs and I am feeling confident with them, but after talking to a friend who applied to various american and performance studies programs (and has been accepted to berkeley performance studies), I'm feeling sick about the length. I know length is no measurement of quality, but this friend said his SoP was generally around 4 to 5 pages unless there were speicific constraints. Does this sound extremely long to anyone? Mine was a around 700 words (except for one with a 500 word limit), approx. 1 and 1/3 pages single spaced. Was this a huge mistake? I covered all things I wanted to, just worked incredibly hard to make it so tight that they would be forced to read the entire thing well, and would not be annoyed by rambling. This is a stupid and trivial question, as all of my apps were submitted long ago, but what was the general length of your SoPs that had no word limits?

Hey guys, I'm sure you are all in the same anxious boat, nearly dying during this wait. If you are like me, you want to know everything you can about every other possible applicant and how you measure up. So far I haven't seen a sociology-specific thread about research interests and where you have applied. One thing I am curious about is how many people are interested in x,y,z, and if they are applying to the same places as me. I will start: I am mainly interested in sociology of religion, cultural sociology and political sociology, with a specific interest in epistemology of evangelical, far-right protestant communities. I have applied to Indiana, Minnesota, Berkeley, Northwestern, Penn, U of Chicago, Michigan and UNC. Anyone else want to share so that we can all recalculate our chances?

Tritontelephone: I just saw that you applied to ucsd (my undergrad institution). Though I was not a soc major, I am familiar with the faculty and many grad students. What are your research interests and who are you looking to work with?

I went to UCSD, an excellent, but very large research school. I have references from highly visible and very well respected profs, and did a few research papers with faculty advisers. But, at least in the social sciences (outside of psychology), undergrads are virtually never offered RA positions, they have enough grad students who need that funding--I was never involved in any research other than my own thesis, etc. Do top schools in soc expect that one has?

sorry, I meant people who were TAs and RAs at small liberal arts, or lower ranked universities?

Hey all, I am very new to this board, and I am wondering if you guys have talked to faculty at top programs about how they evaluate and/or compare files of people who went to big research schools who have really no chance to TA or RA as undergrads, versus those you have 4.0 GPAs, have TA'f for 4 quarters and were research assistants? thanks

Hey all, I attended ucsd as an undergrad, have lived here for 5 years, and am dating someone who did undergrad and currently grad at ucsd. It is a fantastic school and place to live if you know the right things. Couple of notes: Neighborhood: Do not live in La Jolla. It is terribly rich, isolated, and hard to commute. The grad housing is ok in price, but you can get a much better deal if you are willing to drive a bit or shuttle to get to school. The neighborhoods I have lived in and recommend are: South Park (15-20 mins to school). It is old with great prices, cute coffee shop, restaurants, bars, close to downtown, balboa park (museums, hiking trails), close to cheap grocery store. North Park: Has a bit more "character," a bit louder, but still charming with great housing prices, tons of bars, old shops, coffee, walkable events. Close to balboa park and hillcrest. Hillcrest The gay neighborhood, filled with unique and fantastic restaurants, bars, bookstores, coffee, close to balboa park, near a UCSD shuttle service. Slightly more expensive than north or south park. San Diego has lots to do, extremely moderate weather, and is a surfers dream town. However, public transportation is nearly non-existent, and the area ucsd is located in is rich, stuffy and rather isolated. That said, I loved undergrad and am looking forward to a new city for grad school. My boyfriend loved undergrad and loves grad (comm). But, if you like to watch the leaves change color, enjoying wearing scarves and cuddling up with hot coco, you will not like. It is honestly 80 degrees right now in january.