Derrick Rose
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Posts posted by Derrick Rose
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I am a Taiwanese student.
Up to now, I am luckily admitted by UCSD, UMass, Syracuse, but rejected by lots of schools like UCB、UMich、Stanford、UW-Madison、UMN、OSU、NCSU、Oregon…
I guess there’s no denying that the application of international students become a little bit difficult these year because of the financial consideration and the limited "quota" for outlanders.
So….I am just curious…
Are there any international students here who apply for 2011 Soc program? And your results?
i am international from china mainland. i am pretty sure the private schools, especially the top ones, like the ivies and stanford don't care about your nationality. but for state school, even good ones like berkeley, internationals are MUCH harder to get in. for that reason, i didn't apply to very many state schools.
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Well, I got my rejection from Northwestern today. So far I've been rejected at 8 out of 10 of my schools and I'm expecting rejections from the last two as well. (rejected from Princeton, Stanford, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, Columbia, Northwestern and Wisconsin. Expecting formal rejections from Chicago and Yale soon)
Northwestern was tough because I had received really excellent feedback from numerous professors, two of which went so far as to say that they were looking forward to me being there for the Fall semester. Receiving a rejection with no explanation after that is very confusing. I certainly wasn't expecting to get in everywhere, but I was expecting to at least get in somewhere! Just for morbid, self-pitying fun, here are my stats:
Undergrad GPA in Political Science and Sociology from an Ivy - GPA 3.8
Masters from an Ivy in Sociology - GPA 4.0
GRE Verbal: 750
GRE Quant: 800
GRE Analytical: 6.0
4 years of international development and government funded sociology research
3 peer reviewed publications during grad school
over 20 awards, scholarships and research grants during undergrad, grad and post-grad
excellent recommendations from professors with ties at most of the universities I applied to
contacted people at all schools I applied to and received favorable responses from all
I've worked very hard to succeed in academia and I thought I had a really good shot at most of these schools. Maybe I was too arrogant in thinking I would be admitted.
your stats are good, but the thing is, all the schools you applied to are very competitive, and pretty much all those who got in have similar stats. i am sure you would get into any second tier school though
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did anyone get into brown?
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Oh so the interview short list has gone, is it??
If you dont mind, can you share your profile ? GRE 1510, GPA 3.5, publications in math, solid recs, and pretty good ps, i guess.
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Hey people
Between Harvard and Princeton, can you guys give some pros and cons for each?
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I really am not interested in ruining your wedding anniversary. Maybe it's best to go for dinner, exchange gifts, and realize that grad school is not so much where you get in but what you make of it while there. This might be an annoying way to respond, but having recently seen family members' marriages fall apart, I'm thinking it's more important to have love in your life than to get into a grad school. Hey, looking at your stats, did you turn down your Duke interview? I am also thinking of turning it down but they already booked my ticket and have everything set up. I don't know if turning them down for interview at this point would appear rude.
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got an interview with them. but i probably won't do it since i already have a few other ones in mind. they sent out interviews to all their shortlist candidates
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Waking up to the reality that I may have spent all my money applying to graduate programs, in vain. Still holding out for UPenn - all the while attempting to not relegate myself to becoming inured.
Yeah, the application fee is such BS. I applied to 19 schools (because i am not sure where i would get into) and I spent 2000 on it. As an international, I can't get waiver either. That, plus GRE testing fee and sending score fee, totaled 3 k for me.
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I am sorry to hear your situation. Your application seems very competitive, maybe you just miss the cut for these top PhD programs.
I think your GRE score may be the reason why you are not getting offers. Usually PhD programs expect GRE scores at least around 1350, your GRE quant score is especially low for someone who has taken lots of math/stats courses. So I think if you retake GRE next year and get a better score then you should be able to do well in your application endeavor.
Good luck
There are so many fewer rejection posts than acceptance posts.
Like my grandfather said, "when you laugh, the world laughs with you. when you cry, you cry alone"
I graduated from a top-tier sociology program, with accolades, three years ago. I just received my MA from a different-but-related discipline. I had 3 solid recommendation letters, and used a meritorious NSF proposal for my writing sample. I have a 610 verbal and 620 quantitative GRE score. My UG GPA is 3.74, and was 3.9 for Soc courses. My grad school GPA is 3.86. My SOP was rather quite decent. I have considerable RA experience, since sophomore year.
The only thing I did not do was correspond with faculty members from each program I applied to, only at 3/4 of them. I guess the flagrant rejections I must now deal with reflects the omnipotence of good quant GRE scores (even if one has taken 9 college math/social statistics courses).
And yet:
Application to Wisconsin: rejected
Application to Michigan: rejected
Application to Princeton: rejected
Application to UNC: waiting on an official rejection
Application to U Penn: still waiting
From the loser's corner, have a great day. Please.
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Do most people who get into Berkeley/Princeton/etc have multiple publications, presentations? I'm trying to do as much as possible (as an undergrad), but don't really have anything to aim for.
Also, how do they regard research in divergent fields, like in social psychology?
I think the purpose of research experience is to show that you are interested in sociology. I don't think the research itself is that important. I have done only one research project and no publication/presentation in sociology. Especially for undergraduate they don't expect you to do a lot of research.
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Anyone know why Princeton is ranked so high these days. It was ranked outside top ten by most standards five years ago. Did it add more faculties or something?
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I think you'll be fine. If they give you five years funding, then they will give it you. I do know that it is extremely difficult for international students to get into UC schools with funding because of the budget situation, which means that these schools, especially the top ones, would unfortunately lose a lot of qualified students.
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which ranking system are you using? there are two dominant ones i know of:
USWNR
http://grad-schools....iology-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-scho...______________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.
Thanks for the detailed info. Btw, how do you find acceptance rate for each school? I do think acceptance rate is a good indicator, but then there is also the issue with the quality of the applicant pool
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I don't think GPA is that important. I have a 3.5 and I am getting into all the top schools this year
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Obviously I can't list out all the sociology programs out there. Which other ones are you thinking about?
So here is my rational for listing these five. UChicago has been ranked #1 historically, except in recent years. Wisconsin is the current #1. Berkeley has been consistently ranked in top 3. Harvard and Princeton are also ranked in top 5 according to the recent ranking, and they are two of the most prestigious universities overall. So the hardest school to get into should probably come from one of these. Of courses, some others schools are also very difficult to get into.
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Can you explain why/how you decided to list those programs and not others?
Obviously I can't list out all the sociology programs out there. Which other ones are you thinking about?
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I am just curious as to what people think as the hardest sociology program to get into
any internaional applicants here?
in Sociology Forum
Posted
that depends on your financial package. all things equal, definitely riverside. you'll have so much fun there.