faculty

I agree that you should relax, although it wouldn't hurt to start reading ethnographies or whatever social science books you're interested in for pleasure (not in they same way you might if you were studying). If it's possible, also move to the new place sooner rather than later. A lot of students arrive the week or two before classes and it doesn't give them time to acclimate to their new town, which can be important for a smooth transition.

I agree that this is a ridiculous decision. I wonder if there will be push back and any access to the 2012 scores by themselves. Given some schools' movement (e.g., Notre Dame from 48 to 42), there must have been select schools with significant variation between the two scores. Does anyone know where to access the 2009 scores? If so, it would be fairly easy to figure out a basic average from this year given there are only two means. It wouldn't be perfect, but would be something.

On their website, USNWR reports that they're using the same methodology for the social sciences as last time, and that was solely peer review. They collected those ratings last fall.

This type of thing should be much more important for where people choose than too much attention to the rankings. It's that time of year when people announce that they're moving (e.g., I heard that Robb Willer just announced he's moving from Berkeley to Stanford in the fall). Ensure that your decision on where to attend is made with the best information possible. I've heard rumors about other movement, too. It's okay to ask students if there's anyone that people think is going or coming. While they might just be rumors now, it's better than nothing.

I'm not much of an insider, so take it with a grain of salt. For what it's worth, I'm just as excited for them to come out as all of you! Changes, regardless of how small, could be quite interesting (and telling).

There is tremendous consistency in the rankings. Because they're all about peer-review, and a lot of what people know is what they've read in rankings before, there's not usually much movement. While I agree that departments mentioned above are on the rise, their movement in the rankings might depend on their approaches. For example, UMass, Notre Dame and others are building mostly with junior hires. Cornell, also, has great junior people. Traditionally assistant professors, regardless of quality, don't affect the rankings much. Because Duke and Irvine decided to focus more on recruiting senior stars, they might see more of a shift. Of course, this is all conjecture. Only time will tell.

It looks like they will be online March 12th and in print in April. http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2013/02/14/best-graduate-schools-rankings-coming-march-12

There will be new US News rankings next week. Traditionally, the NRC were more highly regarded in most departments than the US News rankings, but they come out less often and the last set caused a huge brouhaha (http://www.asanet.org/images/press/docs/pdf/2010_NRC_Rankings_of_Doctorate_Programs.pdf).

There's no reason to be embarrassed. There's no reason to actively keep it quiet - or to shout it from the rooftops. You need to figure out what approach will make you feel most comfortable in your own skin. The first year of grad school, in any program, there might be a bit of sizing up going on. Who got into which other schools, who had the higher GRE scores, who was the presumed superstar, who was pulled from the waitlist, and who was awarded this fellowship or that. It is hard to inoculate students against any ill-effects of this - including questioning their career choice - but I am here to tell you that these pissing contest qualities as seldom correlated with any real outcomes. Most of the superstars from my own grad program were pulled off the waitlist, many who received fellowships never finished, and the biggest "star" of my cohort - with job offers from three of the top five places when she hit the market - came in with the lowest GPA and no one in the department really expecting her to amount to anything.

The key here is to consider the audience. If the audience will be the same, you shouldn't present the same paper. I'd assume, too, that the ASR and SSSR audiences would be really similar (although not total overlap). The examples that Jacib provided demonstrate this well. The seminar RLT and Desmond presented at is an interdisciplinary group of people at Wisconsin, whereas the ASA has sociologists from all over. Goffman's papers were often presentations in departments. If there was a paper that was at two conferences, they were quite different venues or audiences.

Re: MA Programs - I agree with socgrad2013. Faculty want their students to succeed and understand that might mean that they will move elsewhere. We're used to writing letters to students who want to go bigger and better places, even from highly ranked programs. Terminal degree programs generally come in two stripes. One prepares their students to get jobs immediately afterward (e.g., teaching at community colleges, doing applied work) and the other prepares them - and some quite well - for going on to a PhD program. Some are able to do both (e.g., UW-Milwaukee was this way, and now offers a PhD). PhD programs that have students reapply might end up with both types of students and simply want a natural path out early on to dissuade students who aren't as interested, or as capable (for various reasons, including life circumstances or fit), of earning the PhD. Like others who are weighing places based on job placements, If you choose to pursue an MA program, you should do your research on where they've placed those MA students. Re: Visiting - I would not spend money to visit someplace that I was waitlisted. Waitlisted for funding could be a different story, but could also signal a school that is having problems funding their students more generally. I would explore how funding is determined at Rutgers for continuing students. Is there a guaranteed amount for a set number of years after someone gets funding, or is it more precarious than at other schools? You have two funded offers from tremendous programs. I would think of them as your options until you hear otherwise.

Of course funding isn't the only consideration, but it's much easier to live in lots of places on a smaller stipend than it is to live near Stanford on a larger one. That said, if money is an important part of your decision, remember that there are so many variables in determining how far your stipend goes (the availability of student housing, whether or not you have to pay part of your health care premiums, opportunities for summer money, etc.) http://money.cnn.com/calculator/pf/cost-of-living/

While I agree that communication (or anthropology) might be better places to look, there is actually other sociological work on online environments. You might check out the work of Simon Gottschalk on "SecondLife" and "Videology" (both in Symbolic Interaction), Mary Chayko, or Dennis Waskul for starters. It's a good idea to acquaint yourself with some of what is going on. You can read through their references and see who they cited and use scholar.google.com to figure out who cited them. Even though many of the people working in the area might not be at places with grad programs (save Gottschalk, who is at UNLV), looking over some of that research will help you get a lay of the land and learn some of the key search terms in the area.

I agree that some schools wait too long to notify students about admission decisions. It's a complicated process, though. Students with an array of interests (or methods, POIs, etc.) end up in the first round of admits. If all the gender people decide to accept and none of the political sociology people do, political sociology people will likely be pulled up from the wait list (or, at schools without an official wait list, an unofficial limbo list). But, we need to keep the gender people in that auxiliary pool too in case the reverse happens. For what it's worth, some students wait too long to notify schools that they're definitely not planning to attend and exacerbate this problem. Once you've considered your options, choose one. If you're still waiting to hear from your dream school, you can make the one other school wait until April 15th. You don't need to make them all wait. You could also call (not now, but after you've visited others and you're trying to make a final decision) the one or two you haven't heard from but would love to attend. Let them know that you're hoping to make a decision and would like to know the status of the application and if other acceptances are likely to be sent out and when. As earlier posts in the forum suggest, sometimes schools will tell you to hold out until mid-April, but other times they'll tell you that further acceptances probably aren't forthcoming.

If you know that you're not going to attend the program, it's never too early.

You can move toward Sociology and quantitative methods without getting a degree in Sociology. The Society for the Scientific Study of Religion is one of the most interdisciplinary I've seen. To be well-versed in Sociology literature and methods will only improve your status in the field if you opt to stay in Religious Studies. I agree that Mark Chaves is a wonderful resource, but I would be surprised if you didn't already know him given his cross-listed appointments. You can ask him, or others, about taking some classes (stats or otherwise) in the Sociology department. I realize that you're not thinking about PhD programs in Sociology right now, but just to clarify for you or anyone else, people have moved around a bit since Jacib was exploring religion programs. Craig Calhoun is now director of the London School of Economics. Chris Smith is no longer at UNC. He now heads the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at Notre Dame. UT Austin lost a lot of clout in the sociology of religion after they lost Ellison (exacerbated by recent controversies with Regnerus), but other Texas programs have gained significantly in the area (Rice and Baylor).

I agree that there is no point in attending a visit for a school that you know you won't attend, but ideally you only applied to schools that were viable possibilities. If there is any school that you're on the fence about, definitely do whatever you can to get to the visit weekend. When I applied to grad school, I really wanted to get back to my home state and there were two strong programs that accepted me there. An undergrad professor urged me to not jump the gun and to visit as many schools as I could, even though it meant taking valuable time off from work and stretching myself financially. It was fantastic advice. After visiting other places, my two finalists ended up being neither of those schools back home. In fact, I ended up being torn between two schools that I really hadn't considered and had just applied to because it seemed like a good idea given my interests. I can't imagine how my life - and career - would be different if I hadn't visited them and instead had chosen a program based on location or a particular faculty member or something more superficial. A visit might give often give you an artificially positive view of the department (although I'd argue the reverse can be true and students will leave with an artificially negative view of a school, just depending on how the visit goes down - it's all a crap shoot), but it gives you a much more holistic view than a ranking or website or an internet forum.

I didn't misunderstand - and I appreciate it, Willows, as it's nice to be thought of as insightful - but I also realized that others might have different perceptions. Eigen and ohgoodness bring up good points, though. Even though I said I didn't need them, I truly appreciate people taking time to provide reasoned responses.

I've never started a topic here because I wanted my role to more of a supporter than a participant, perhaps a resource rather than a source, but I felt like it was important that I say something after Willow mentioned my presence in another thread. I have always feared that my presence here could influence students' comfort in the forum. But, given the candor that people speak with, assumed that wasn't the case - until now. I first came here when I was chairing an adcomm, not to get dirt on applicants, but so that I could get in touch with student concerns - in general - and better connect with the students who visited my department and those who eventually enrolled. My role in my department has changed (I'm completely disengaged from admissions today), but my connection to my own graduate students, and students who want to join the profession more generally, has not waned. I see it as a tremendous privilege to get this "insider look" that few of my colleagues know exists and even fewer care about. This forum has offered me that perspective and I have tried to occasionally pay back by adding insight that I felt was relevant. However, I am more than happy to bow out and stop visiting if students prefer it. I don't know that it will stop faculty presence on the forum (I heard about this place from a colleague at another school), but if it increases students' comfort and candor - although there's been an awful lot of that lately, with little benefit - here, I feel more than comfortable taking this off my regular list of internet stops. There's no need to respond. You can PM me your thoughts if you'd like, or just ignore the post. Perhaps just putting it out there that - while I won't share my gender or specialty or school or anything else, for similar reasons to many of your own - I'm not here to spy on you, will help.

While not directly related to your questions here, there was a thread on first year courses last year where I posted some thoughts that might be helpful here: Don't underestimate the challenge of the first year in sociology. Comparing it to economics is apples to oranges. Yes, economics is brutal, but there are benefits to having a first year that is centered almost exclusively on studying a rather finite amount of material for an exam rather than a first year that is mean to open you up to an entire discipline and begin professionalizing you for academia immediately. It can be tremendously overwhelming, conjuring up all this uncertainty that others have alluded to. I agree that it's fine to ask to test out of the first stats course. This is fairly common practice and the first course is usually referred to as "baby stats" or "intro stats" and is seen as a prerequisite to the actual sequence that starts with the subsequent course. However, I also agree that it would likely be frowned upon to take classes in econ instead. Departments generally prefer that student take classes in the department unless it's something that the department doesn't offer and is something that would enhance a students sociological work. Testing out will mean that you'll get an additional substantive course, keeping you busier with reading and writing than most other first years. You'll take classical sociological theory that first year, but a number of departments offer a contemporary theory that you can take later that will look quite different. There is formal theory in sociology, although I don't know how much of it you'd learn even in the contemporary class. I see it as more common in social psychology - reflected well in Stanford's program - than anywhere else. You should get a bit of symbolic interaction in standard theory courses (either classic or contemporary, depending on the program - I know that my first theory class was just Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and Simmel). Like previous posters have said, the first year varies a lot by department. In my experience, though, it varies even more by student, as it's ultimately what students are willing (and able) to put in to that first year than influences how hard - and fulfilling, productive, etc. - it will be.

I would mention Bart. It would seem strange to leave him off if his interests are closely aligned with your own.

Willer definitely has tenure. Whenever it's someone who is the only of their kind in a program (like Willer is), it's more of a risk listing them. Even if he isn't leaving (and he certainly could be), he could already have an overwhelming number of students and/or the faculty on the committee could wonder who else you would connect to. If it seems like he is all you have in sociology, it might be a problem. I've recommended in the forum before that the best thing to do is to apply to a department that has an enduring strength that you're interested in, not an individual that you're interested in working with. And certainly don't apply to a school - rather than a program - that has people that you like in it. If a faculty member isn't affiliated with a department (and even joint appointments whose tenure or teaching homes are in other places at the university), chances are that they won't be able to be that involved in your academic training or professional development. Even taking class in other departments is generally frowned upon in top programs. If you're not sure what you're interested in studying - which isn't the case for econosocio, but others in this forum - then choose programs that will give you the best broad training (e.g., methods, theory, major areas) and has a record of strong professional development and placement in schools/positions where you would eventually like to end up.

No harm, no foul. I just thought that you'd like to know about the literature, given your interest in switching disciplines for graduate studies.

There is actually an entire line of research in sociology on social exchange (Richard Emerson, Karen Cook, Ed Lawler, and Linda Molm are some of the key names) and some of the more recent work in the area suggests that it's more than the scarcity of resources that creates tension, inhibits trust, etc.

For budding sociologists, the ASA provides all kinds of professional research briefs that might be of interest: http://asanet.org/research/briefs_and_articles.cfm Particularly pertinent here: http://asanet.org/documents/research/docs/Mothers_Ideal_Acad_Careers_2012.pdf