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You just do it. It gets easier the more practice you have. The first semester is a little rough (you'll probably learn more than the students do), because you're just trying to find your groove. Don't take the assessments to heart (if they are bad)--you'll get better. If you don't know the answer, there's no shame in saying, "I don't know offhand, but I'll find out." You're not expected to know everything, but chances are you'll know more than your students. My first teaching experience was teaching English to 30 students and I didn't have a Master's degree in it. It is intimidating, but I'd suggest you search online for good tips. I like to play games during some discussion sessions (think Jeopardy), or bring in relevant YouTube clips to help start discussion. Most students seem to appreciate when you don't have the same lecture style every week, because it's not as boring. :-)

This week I have to lecture to 70 students on a subject I know nothing about. I'm not sweating it. (This comes after 5 years of teaching.)

You just do it. It gets easier the more practice you have. The first semester is a little rough (you'll probably learn more than the students do), because you're just trying to find your groove. Don't take the assessments to heart (if they are bad)--you'll get better. If you don't know the answer, there's no shame in saying, "I don't know offhand, but I'll find out." You're not expected to know everything, but chances are you'll know more than your students. My first teaching experience was teaching English to 30 students and I didn't have a Master's degree in it. It is intimidating, but I'd suggest you search online for good tips. I like to play games during some discussion sessions (think Jeopardy), or bring in relevant YouTube clips to help start discussion. Most students seem to appreciate when you don't have the same lecture style every week, because it's not as boring. :-)

This week I have to lecture to 70 students on a subject I know nothing about. I'm not sweating it. (This comes after 5 years of teaching.)

I'm not sure about Georgetown, but I'd be VERY surprised if you didn't get in at Harvard MTS--most likely with a significant scholarship. They are notorious for accepting anyone above a 3.7 GPA, regardless of other qualifications.

The thing you have going for you is strong quantitative skills. I read somewhere (I don't remember where...probably here) that the typical sociology applicant was a sociology major in college, no real research experience, with an average GPA, good GRE verbal, bad GRE quant. Nothing really to distinguish themselves from anyone else. At gradcafe, this is a self-selecting group of overachievers, so it is easy to think the data is skewed--this is not to say the process isn't competitive. It sure as hell is. I would make sure to play up your quant. skills in some way to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack.

If I were you, I'd ace the GRE and use your SOP to justify why the switch between engineering and sociology. You can certainly propose ideas, but the committees are interested in "why sociology?" and "why sociology at our institution?"

I don't know how "far ahead" you are in terms of other applicants in terms of having "focused ideas" instead of "broad categories." Many people write that they are interested in "nationalism" or "ethnography" or what have you, but they are also interested in these topics in very nuanced ways. I put these broader categories on my CV, slightly modified to each program (and I'm applying for 2013), to show that I've done my research and I can "fit" their particular rubric. I certainly have loads of ideas I could do my dissertation on NOW, but everyone expects it to change anyway. I'm certainly not studying the same thing I was 3 years ago, and intellectual evolution is something that is necessary for continued growth in your career.

Something that you should be aware of before you write your personal statement is your writing tone. Overall, the original post's tone came across as really arrogant. Not only that, but like I've stressed in other posts, schools don't want to hire theorists, they want to hire researchers/teachers. You're going to have to find a way to reconcile that in a specific project that is marketable to schools who will potentially hire you.

Guys, as someone who just went through this process last year (and admittedly who only discovered this site after I had applied and started hearing back from schools), this seems potentially immensely anxiety inducing while offering little constructive payoff. I'm not sure what the point is, other than trying to size up your competition (or possibly to brag?).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would encourage you to not drive yourself crazy by trying to compare your "stats" this early in the game. This process is already strange and stressful enough, and it's arbitrary and unpredictable enough that you will inevitably all be surprised at some of the places you and others do and do not get in. So do what you want to do, but I don't think this is a great idea (though the last two questions seem reasonable..)

I am a big fan of David Harvey's The Condition of Postmodernity

You just do it. It gets easier the more practice you have. The first semester is a little rough (you'll probably learn more than the students do), because you're just trying to find your groove. Don't take the assessments to heart (if they are bad)--you'll get better. If you don't know the answer, there's no shame in saying, "I don't know offhand, but I'll find out." You're not expected to know everything, but chances are you'll know more than your students. My first teaching experience was teaching English to 30 students and I didn't have a Master's degree in it. It is intimidating, but I'd suggest you search online for good tips. I like to play games during some discussion sessions (think Jeopardy), or bring in relevant YouTube clips to help start discussion. Most students seem to appreciate when you don't have the same lecture style every week, because it's not as boring. :-)

This week I have to lecture to 70 students on a subject I know nothing about. I'm not sweating it. (This comes after 5 years of teaching.)

If you can, I would definitely go to a good soc program. Criminology and criminal justice programs will always hire sociologists, but sociology programs will rarely hire criminology-trained phds--pure bias. There are a ton of crim jobs available right now, and 99% of them are in soc departments.

I do not doubt the strength of your credentials and connections, but having been through the process and watching several others having gone through it as well, I can tell you it's very easy to underestimate the strengths of the people you'll be competing against, as well as the random variation of the process. Trust me: the importance of choosing a department with a good fit and being careful not to apply only to top programs cannot be overly stressed. If Victoria is your safety option then you may be adopting a good strategy, as I said, I don't really know about it.

Another thing to keep in mind is that sociology programs are currently taking in fewer applicants than they did in previous years, so the success stories of past applicants are not necessarily going to come true in 2013. But I suppose I should take the hint about you not wanting advice from a stranger.

@xdarthveganx: BTW, I just looked at your signature, and you're aiming only at programs where it is usually very difficult to gain admission. The only one I know nothing about is the University of Victoria, but even British Columbia is very competitive. No matter how strong your application, you should apply to at least one which is not a Top 40 institution (in the case of US schools). Just a word of advice.

* Note: the New School may be outside the top 40, but it's hardly a safety school.

I may have been exaggerating a bit for the sake of argument and effect, but having been through this process, I can tell you there is no single element that will guarantee you admission to a graduate program (I did not save any children in Africa, mind you). If you go to the Peace Corps, do it because it's the right thing for you, not because you believe it's going to be a sure ticket to a graduate program. It most likely won't.

Ordinary grad student, yes. Ordinary first year? No. You might take a year of theory and stats while TA-ing. But not many first years are doing conferences or publishing. Andt most of the first years who are doing these things are either savants or incredibly underprepared. There's not a lot of middle ground on that.

Why don't you contact the POI at the school and explain what your position is and ask if you should receive a Fulbright, if you could defer your enrollment for a year?

This isn't true. One of my letter writers who is on the grad comm said she explicitly looks for those kind of things because she wants a well-rounded person. She wants someone who has worked before and shows they have had prior responsibilities so being a ta/ra isn't a slap in the face when there are duties and deadlines one has to meet.

Like I said, there isn't a clear cut answer to anything. You're better off including things that someone might just overlook than excluding things that might catch someones attention.

It's not to say it's a make or break on an application but it can certainly help you be remembered more or just give you a little bit of character to your application.

lawl, I was downvoted for forwarding information my university's grad comm told me? The hivemind is strong with this one.

The only thing I have to add is that whenever I talked with potential faculty, they would talk about my research interests and research background from my SoP but none have yet to mention my extracurriculars, even in casual conversation. But of course that's not going to be a universal experience.

With regards to what largo said on Cornell: I got into Cornell with absolutely no extra-curriculars (save for editing the undergraduate sociology journal). In general, grad school commitees do not care about extra curriculars (unless they are extraordinary). Research, fit, and numbers are much, much more important.

The short answer: they don't.

You're applying for an academic research degree, so for the most part admissions committees will be looking at evidence that you can succeed as an academic. Extracurriculars can be icing on the cake, and they can maybe show indirect things about your ambition and leadership and etc that might put you in a positive light, but it's not like undergrad. Nobody cares if you did sports, etc. Volunteer and work experience is only really relevant if it has something to do with your academic/research interests.

I LOVE Pilot G2 gel pens (I prefer extra fine, but they also have ultra fine, fine, and bold point). I usually just buy boxes of them at a time.

"You were wait-listed for a reason. That reason being that you were not good enough to be offered the first time around."

So I guess those who are rejected totally suck, right? Because they are not good enough even to enter the wait list.

I will not say that your attitude is negative, it is, but there is more: You are wrong. I know people who made it to the #1 program but rejected and wait listed from other departments. The program I am in right now (top 5) rejected a friend of mine, but that friend of mine entered into two other programs (top ten) which wait listed and rejected me. Now that's a riddle! Being wait listed or even rejected more often than not doesn't have anything to do with you being good enough or not. I wrote elsewhere, this application process is first of all about luck. I have a friend who is in top 3 program, but if she didn't apply in 2010-2011 but say apply this year, she would not be there right now, because her advisor only accepts students in every 5 years. Last year she was accepting students, this year she is not in the committee.

I am not going to say anything else on this topic. I only needed to write this post because there might be people who read the stuff written about and feel horrible. My words are to those: being wait listed or rejected is not related to your "quality". I have had enough experience with this whole application process for years, and I have seen enough to prove that statement wrong. If you're wait listed, hope for the best, if you're rejected, try to find other schools with better fit, and apply again. Best of luck to all of you.

Yes really. One, I am TAing during my first year, and I have discussion sections, and I'm grading 70 papers.

Two, I am presenting at 2 conferences this year, and I have a forthcoming publication, so no, I'm not just taking classes...

Those aside - it sucks because you don't really get to take classes you want. I got to choose 1 class my first year. Besides that I'm in theory for a whole year (aka reading white men) and in statistics a whole year (even though I do qualitative methods). I understand the point of taking these classes, so I don't need to be told about that, nonetheless, it sucks being in classes you don't care about. That, for me, is where it sucks!

I am not a student at Purdue. Currently, I'm a graduate student (terminal master's) at Cornell.

Essentially, there are no such things as "safety schools" when it comes to Ph.D. admissions. I feel like I have a good chance at some places, and a snowball's chance in others...but I'll be genuinely surprised if I get in anywhere since it's all a crap shoot.

I am sorry.

But this queer thing is difficult to digest for me. I dont really get the concept.
I might understand the idea with time.

Speaking personally, the knowledge that people were on the wait list at programs to which I had been accepted actually motivated me to "tear off the band-aid", so to speak, and decline offers. Because writing to faculty at these programs, faculty with whom I had developed a rapport over several months, to tell them that I won't be working with them next year is very emotionally trying, I would have liked to put off the unpleasant task. However, because people I knew (mostly on these boards) were really enthusiastic about getting off the wait list at these programs, I sucked it up, got over my cold feet, and sent the hard email.

I didn't necessarily need all the much time to make informed decisions about each and every one of the programs I wasn't going to attend. I understand that, for some programs, you do need all the time you can get. That's where I'm at now with my top two choices. But for the couple of programs that weren't on the top of my list, it was really important to me to decline the offer just to open up spots for my future colleagues. This might be a function of the fact that I am also personally familiar with being on the wait list, too. I just hope that, in all things, we can use our imaginations to empathize with those who we may not know in person.

Two cents.

i've had a very similar experience. That, and the fact that both my parents have been teachers (father a college professor, mother an early-childhood educator) had a large influence on this decision. Intellectual parents taught me to read and question, and also that the best way to learn anything is to teach it. It's all been momentum and passion from there.