migrationdude

Okay, okay, I know I'm over-obsessing right now. I do want to make a quick decision though because I need to start thinking about the summer as well, and a host of other, grad-school related things.

Jortylander, Yes, I am on the shortlist at Harvard, and if I got in everywhere, I would be deciding between Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard and Princeton. I'm happy enough to have the first two terms of this choice available right now, and don't want to think about Princeton and Harvard. The complexity of the decision will only increase if I got in I suppose, but right now I am trying to compare the two big Bay Area schools. I do have some geographic concerns as well, and that's because I love the Bay Area, and that would be literally the best place in the world for me to live.

Okay, so in the past few days I've been going crazy trying to decide which school to pick. Right now Stanford and Berkeley are top of my list, and while I'm waiting for other decisions to come in, I think these two schools will definitely be among the "finalists" in my choices. So, I was wondering if anyone cares to weigh in on the subject. To provide some background, check out the following article (first two pages in the pdf): http://www.stanford.edu/dept/soc/doctoral/documents/soapdispenserspring2004.pdf What do you think, does the piece do justice to the two departments? Also, how do the two schools compare to each other in terms of atmosphere, bureaucracy, living costs, facilities etc.?

Since some people were wondering what to read, here's the YAF reading list ): http://yaf.org/students/activists/resources/reading.cfm Some of the titles are quite okay (Orwell, Solzhenitsyn), but the general theme is ridiculously cold-war: "world is black and white, we are right, everyone else is wrong. woo hoo!" My apologies to those people reading this thread hoping to find out something about Indiana.

Hah, I knew someone would dig that list up. Yeah, the class is actually quite a good introduction to Marx, I hear. Inadvertently the YAF listed some pretty interesting classes while giving full measure of their narrow-mindedness.

Omg, you scared me - I thought they started notifying people. I think their projected cohort size is 12, so they will accept more people -- though I would expect them to give out only 12 acceptances first and then move further down the list when some of the accepted people turn them down (that's because if you're aiming for, say, 4 people in your social policy program, and you give out 4 acceptances, there's still a good chance that none of those people will turn you down).

Haha, thanks. I didn't really minor in Philosophy (more like Econ and German), so at least the coincidence doesn't go that far. Most of my research work experience is tied to history though -- I've been working with a history professor for the past four years now.

Haha, one of my profs actually made a list on the Young America Foundation's "10 most useless classes." He was teaching quite a good class on Marx, so the YAF people couldn't help a knee-jerk reaction when seeing that someone was actually asking if Marx should be given a second chance.

Completely off-topic, but it's quite funny - I am also double-majoring in History and Sociology, but picked the latter because I figured out I liked working with current issues more, and because getting good data is slightly easier in soci.

Yay for quantitative methods people I definitely am a quant person (also Race and Ethnicity), so if I were on the post-PhD job market this year, I guess my situation would probably be easier. Alas, you can never know what the situation will be like in 5-8 years from now. I am thinking though, that if I end up doing something fairly number heavy, there will always be a back door into industry afterwards: mind you, I'm not doing my PhD for this, and see a Professor's life as the ideal career, but you can never know, and I guess it's good to have a litle bit of insurance just in case.

I definitely agree that the site is still young, but it does feel like it's reached a tipping point. It's also instructive to see the number of acceptances (and rejections) posted for Wisconsin and UCLA. I think I'm gonna cook up a survey to find out more

Speaking of this year's applicant pool, here's a fun fact. In 2007 and 2008, only one thegradcafe user posted their acceptance on the website. This year it's been six users... I know someone has pointed out before that Stanford has probably accepted more than the 7-8 students they hope to enroll, BUT I wouldn't assume they are taking a lot of chances. I don't think a small grad school can use "yield" in the same way an undergrad institution does. It's one thing to be doling out thousands of acceptances, case in which you can be sure that some people will almost certainly say no, and a completely different situation when you only have a couple of spots you can afford paying for in the program. Something tells me that they were probably prudent and did not accept more than 9 or at most 10 students. So we're looking at anywhere from 60-75% of people accepted into Stanford using this website for this admissions cycle. Pretty neat. But what happened this year? (Or is it just chance?)

No, chill out. I had a non-peer-reviewed published paper as my writing sample, that had pretty execrable style, and was based on a ridiculously small dataset (sample size of 55). So far, so good

I am, though I am not too excited about it (mainly because of the location).

Congrats neutiquamerro! See you in mid-March

I'm a pretty good test taker and I hate the GRE with a passion. I do realize these scores have helped my application by dispelling any adcom's doubts about my numerical abilities and/or my level of English. Still, I see them as a barbaric form of evaluation and am extremely happy I don't have to take standardized tests again. I feel lucky for being able to get high scores, but I do think that the correlation between high scores and ability is very imperfect, to say the least.

I would say cautiously hopeful. You're most likely on a waitlist.

Oh yes, I definitely think Berkeley is only beginning to announce admits. They may take a while until they release the next batch of notifications though.

It seems likely. At this point I would say no news is good news once more. They have sent out invitations to their open house, so I suppose they will decide on the waitlist candidates as they hear more from those accepted into the program.

Sorry to hear about that, waitinginohio. I'm sure some of your other schools will come through. But 7-8 spots? That's ridiculous. Weren't there 6 people posting on this forum?

The Berkeley funding deal is not so bad actually. I know nothing certain, at this point, but they did indicate the potential for 4-years guaranteed funding (two fellowship), and a decent summer stipend for the first two. This being said, I would definitely feel more secure weathering the recession at a private institution like Stanford. I would also imagine getting a job on the side would be easier at Stanford (because I'm international I can only work for my university).

About housing, Stanford and Berkeley seem comparable. There are always cheaper and more expensive options, I figure, although being in Silicon Valley would certainly mean I'd have to live on campus. I wish they had their visit weekend earlier than the beginning of April though. https://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-b ... ge_id=1683

Well, I'm international and broke. I guess I'm on the right course to the PhD comics lifestyle. If only I could master the art of chair-napping! (http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=464)

I am starting to incline mildly towards Stanford, if only for financial security reasons. I have to see what their aid package looks like first. I just hope my life at Stanford would not be like in PhD comics

Wait, are you people saying that Stanford wins automatically? I'm a little disbelieving about it (given that Berkeley is so highly-rated) but sure