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hoobers

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Everything posted by hoobers

  1. In any given year, there are only 5-10 PhDs on the job market with top tier publications. So, there is definitely no requirement for an excellent pub from someone just applying to a PhD program. By the way, via OrgTheory, crowdsourced soc journal rankings: http://www.allourideas.org/socjournals
  2. @Anthro14, I think you have a decent shot. The reason they say they so rarely reverse their decision is that most people are disqualified for a good reason. In your case, it really sounds like they messed up. Anyway, best of luck.
  3. This isn't my subfield, but I am going to give this answer a shot. I am guessing that by "social theory" you might mean one of three things. If you mean exegeses on the writings of one or more social theorists (e.g., your interpretations of Durkheim or Foucault), then this kind of research is pretty much a ghetto in US sociology: the major journals do not publish this work, and it gets rarely read outside of a very small circle of people. Many departments will have someone studying it, but it's definitely a moribund subfield. Berkeley (Burawoy, Fourcade) and NYU would be the places to do it, though I am not sure I would recommend it career-wise. I suspect it might be better in Britain. To a lesser extent, the same holds for another meaning of "social theory"--the production of largely non-empirical comprehensive accounts of the social world operate (e.g., Marxist theory, feminist theory). It's easier to find people who do this kind of work, even in major departments--however, your prospects for being published in a good American soc journal are still pretty low, as are your aspects of getting a top-tier job afterwards. If you do not care about these kinds of things, then you can find lots of people to work with (I am guessing especially at NYU); however, this kind of work is much more at home in US anthropology or in comparative literature. It is a major part of the discipline in Britain, however. Finally, by "social theory" you might mean the analytical philosophy of the social world (e.g., questions about social ontology, micro-macro links, meaning of causation). Unlike the previous two meanings, this kind of work is simply rare in US sociology: it is much more common in philosophy departments. I've not seen much of it make it to major Soc journals either, though my guess is that this is in part because there is just very little such work submitted. I don't think your odds would be as bad as with the first two types of theory, though it is again a very tiny subfield. Some people to consider studying this with are Swedberg (at Cornell) or JL Martin (at Chicago). In the UK, Oxford would be the place to go (Hedstrom). Anyway, good luck with your search. This isn't an easy subfield to get situated in, though this doesn't mean you can't do it. But once again, if it's one of the first two kinds you are after, I would recommend looking outside of the US. P.S., I am borrowing my typology from Gabriel Abend (2008). Look it up if you are interested in just how confused the concept of "theory" is in sociology.
  4. I think I would take the US N&W rankings over the All Our Ideas (AOI) rankings as well, but I think the two are pretty complimentary. US N&W rankings are equally subjective: they just field a survey that asks 2 faculty in each program (dean and DGS, I think) to rank all the other programs. There are no "objective" criteria used in US N&W rankings--it's just the opinions of senior faculty. (NRC rankings were supposed to incorporate such criteria, but it is clear that they failed.) So the biggest difference between US N&W rankings and the are based on the opinions of a very small number of senior scholars, while the AOI rankings are based on the opinions of a large but haphazard group of interested people (presumably, heavy on grad students and junior faculty, but also featuring a smattering of undergrads and totally random people who like to click on things). This definitely makes it much harder to describe what exactly the AOI rankings *mean*, which is why I find US N&W more trustworthy--but I wouldn't say this makes AOI rankings useless. Senior faculty may be less likely to be in touch with which departments are up and coming, and the far smaller number of respondents makes US N&W much easier to "game" strategically. But all these considerations aside, if you compare the two lists, they are so damn close to each other (at least near the top) that I am not sure it makes sense to spend too long dwelling on which is better--they seem more or less interchangeable. Presumably, AOI is more up to date--but then again, it might just echo the results of US N&W.
  5. These ratings are really, really bad. As far as I can tell, this was a fairly unanimous appraisal of them, including by their authors (who recommended that they be taken with a grain of salt at the point of their release). A combination of low-quality data and poor research methodology has created results that so badly fail at face validity that they are pretty much a laughing stock. See more details here: http://chronicle.com/article/A-Critic-Sees-Deep-Problems-in/124725/ . Coincidentally, some good folks over at orgtheory have just launched a new rating system today. You can study--nay, contribute--to these rankings via the links here: http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/crowdsourcing-sociology-department-rankings/.
  6. This is around the time of year that NSF sent out its disqualification letters in 2009. Has anyone gotten one this year?
  7. You could probably do any of those, but sociology is still by far the best place to get a solid social networks training. Off the top of my head, I can think of three sociologists who do networks/national security: Brashears at Cornell, Carley at Carnegie Mellon (she teaches in computer science there), and maybe Carter Butts at Irvine. Any of the three should be a good fit for you.
  8. hoobers

    NSF GRFP

    I don't see percentile rankings on my rating sheet page. Do you know if some disciplines just don't list those? I am in Sociology, btw.
  9. Places like Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Vanderbilt etc might be strong in social movements, but they aren't "top 10" schools in the discipline. If you are choosing between a medium-ranked department that is very strong in a subfield and a high-ranked department that is only ok in the subfield, you should go with the high-ranked department. In an ideal world this would not be the case, but the prestige of your department determines a lot about where you can get jobs in the future. It is very hard to get a post at a department that is higher ranked than the one where you got your phd. The specific strength in a subfield is important for the quality of education you will get, but it doesn't matter nearly as much for your future ability to teach in a top-tier school. The top 10- or 15- programs essentially exchange graduate students, with few people from elsewhere even given interviews. If you think you've got the record (and the obsessive workaholism) to be aiming for a top-15 job in the future, then study up on those US News & World report rankings.
  10. You should have a shot at an awesome program if you show that you have done your homework, much as Tomi suggests. You might want to read up some back posts on orgtheory (http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/) to get a bit of an insight on the relationship between econ and soc, which is pretty complicated. Aside from this, it is an enormous asset for an economic sociologist to also understand neoclassical econ and have worked in finance. Some flavors of social psychology on the other hand have a very good relationship with behavioral econ. So, those are two major points in your favor. Beyond that, there are econophilic professors (and departments) to whom your econ background would be a real plus; there are far more who see lots of good aspects to econ but are critical of other aspects(e.g., its lack of methodological pluralism, overreliance on deduction, etc.); finally there are many who are just plain econophobic. You probably don't have a good shot with the latter anyway (unless you want to do some sort of born-again act), but you should know how to pitch your background to the former two categories.If you want a guess as to what camp a prof is in, see whether they have publications in Mathematical Sociology (or to a lesser extent in Social Networks): it would be a pretty good bet that they are at least partial econophiles. My bet it that being slightly critical of econ but also highlighting the benefits of knowing it is the way to go. By the way, I am not too familiar with British departments, but I think they are far far more econophobic than US ones. You might have luck with Oxford, but other than that I would try for US schools if I were you. Overall, sociology is an integrative discipline, located at the crossroads of social sciences and humanities--your varied background could make you very successful!
  11. This isn't my field, but you should look into Stanford--McAdam is there and he is a big player in political soc, and stanford has some very strong networks people (both in sociology and in other departments--education, econ, computer science).
  12. Poststructuralist theory never really took root in sociology in the United States, though it did in Britain. You are unlikely to find a program that will offer you a strong training in it, though I am sure a few departments will have a professor or two versed in it. More importantly, you are going to have a hell of a hard time on the US sociology job market with a poststructuralist dissertation. You are also unlikely to get any respected US sociology journals to publish this kind of work. Sorry if this sounds harsh, but going into a US sociology program expecting to study poststructuralism is a bad idea. If you are determined to stay in the United States, you should really look into Anthropology. That is the main disciplinary home of poststructuralism in the US social sciences. (Communication, Cultural/Media/Ethnic Studies, and Comp Lit departments are other places to consider.)
  13. Assuming you are already somewhat familiar with classic sociological theory, I wouldn't read more of it before grad school--you will read plenty of it soon enough. Otherwise, Bourdieu is a good (if terribly unclear) synthesizer--"Distinction" is as good a summary of sociology's take on the world as any. With this background in place, I would instead focus on acquiring basic knowledge about humans and systems from other domains. Specifically, I would look into books on cognition, genetics, evolution, social networks, complex systems, and game theory. The real advances in academics come not from pursuing a single theoretical direction or line of research, but from weaving disparate research traditions together. All the fields I list above are currently hot, generating lots of fabulous research. There is much stuff to import into sociology from them. Also, chances are that if you come from a Soc undergrad your skills at math are insufficient for keeping up with quantitative sociology or related fields. I would sit down with a good book on probability/statistics, and also brush up on some linear algebra (for networks) and calculus (for game theory and evolutionary models). The one thing you will never regret is spending more time on math.
  14. Sociology programs are easily amongst the safest places to come out. In my experience, majority of soc grad students are warm, caring, and understanding. There might, as always, be some weirdness about it. My really rather uninformed advice is to play it by ear: start out on a need-to-know basis, and then tell people when you are comfortable with them. (P.S., I am sorta surprised everyone took 2bphd's bizarre remark as something hostile. My first thought was that he was just expressing surprise at the question, as opposed to being a boorish asshole. What the hell do I know. Anyway, I would *not* take his remark as evidence of rampant homophobia in soc/grad student circles--I don't think there's much of it!)
  15. You shouldn't have to pre-specify the top universities yourself. Since the placements take the form of a directed graph, finding the top universities can be analytically solved for using eigenvector centrality (though the cutoff will still be arbitrary). Think Google's PageRank algorithm: the top websites are those linked to by the most top websites.
  16. The divide is fundamentally a methodological and epistemological one. It is between positivist epistemologies, which are largely statistical on the macro end and experimental on the micro end, and non-positivist (including marxist, feminist, postmodern, etc) epistemologies, which are historical or "theoretical" (e.g., non-empirical) on the macro end and ethnographic or interview-based on the micro end. These are unevenly distributed throughout the subfields of sociology, but this division looks very different depending on where in the discipline you are looking. For one thing, this is because the most quantitatively sophisticated people are rarely found outside the top-25 depts. This is in part because the discipline is far more quantitative at the top of the prestige hierarchy, though there are highly prestigious solidly qualitative departments as well--think Berkeley or Northwestern (though both of these have been hiring more quant profs too). But this is also because, as Mocha mentions above, quantitative PhDs are far more employable outside of the academy, and so non-academic jobs siphon off a lot of the quantitative sociologists who cannot get top-prestige academic posts. For another thing, the subfields of the discipline are less defined at the top than they are at the bottom. Unlike the lower-ranked departments, most of the top departments do not hire professors by subfield, and many top-dept professors change subfields or publish across multiple subfields (this could be because they simply have more time and resources to do so). Furthermore, some subfields are low-prestige throughout the discipline, and are rarely found in top departments at all (e.g., criminology, and also increasingly anything hardcore postmodern and feminist); others are small and largely high-prestige (economic sociology, social network analysis) and are rarely found on the bottom. So, the balance between subfields looks quite different at the top and at the bottom. As to which subfield has more interesting people--this question is additionally too much of a matter of taste for me to judge.
  17. The networks people in Irvine are very respected in the Networks community, but virtually unknown outside of it. They do work that is very important to the subfield, but they don't tend to be in much of a conversation with the discipline of sociology as a whole. (On the other hand, people like Granovetter or Christakis are well-known both inside networks and inside all of soc). Stanford and Chicago both have very strong sociologists doing networks: Granovetter and JL Martin. But the soc departments aren't necessarily the centers of the network communities there. If my memory serves me right, Stanford has networks people in econ and perhaps in education, while Chicago has people at the business school (Burt--he's huge) and in political science (Padgett). You should have no problem studying with them if you get in, but you won't be able to have them as your primary advisers (though both Granovetter and Martin are, I am sure, excellent advisers.)
  18. Irvine is the department most dedicated to networks, though it may not necessarily be the strongest place to study networks. There are strong networks people at Harvard, Columbia, Duke, Arizona, Penn. Carnegie Mellon has lots of math soc, too. Stanford and Chicago have strong networks people, though they are not in Sociology. I might be missing a few other depts. MIT's economic soc program is extremely focused and strong, though I don't know much about econ soc. Your quant training will make your app look really good. A lot of programs will probably let you petition out of their methods training.
  19. I think Berkeley's finances really aren't that bad as far as graduate training is concerned. The cuts are overwhelmingly affecting undergrads -- state funds essentially subsidize their education. 75% of the university budget comes from other sources (like its professional schools, grants, endowment, and unsubsidized undergrad students (e.g., non-citizens)). From what I understand, graduate students are paid from this money. The big hubbub is essentially about the fact that, if the state doesn't restore funding, undergrad tuition will have to go up a lot, or the university will have to increase its percentage of unsubsidized students.
  20. I just wanted to throw in a 3rd
  21. Oh, and being international unfortunately makes a difference to public schools (like Berkeley) because you will cost them more. I don't think this is the case with private programs.
  22. It's really hard to divine anyone's chances of getting into a program from just the stats. Your stats seem all right, and I don't think anyone expects undergrads to have publications (though they help). Your LoRs are your strongest point -- if your undergrad program is respected enough (and the letters are from well-known sociologists) then you're in a very good shape. But the process of admission is qualitative and chaotic enough that I don't think anyone can tell you whether you'll get in to your top-choice programs. The personal statement matters a lot, so put in a lot of work into that. Talking to the programs that accepted me this year, I was quite shocked by how seriously they considered the match of interests between me and the faculty. So, figure out your interests really well and describe them (and your fit) compellingly. Read faculty publications, find the ones you like, show that you are aware of them. I would strongly advise against making up a fit where one wouldn't exist, because your start in the PhD program will be based on that fit, and it could really suck if the fit wasn't actually there.
  23. Harrison White is awesome, but I think he's not taking on any more students. He's turning 80 next year...
  24. What Slothy says is true -- the Draper classes (and profs) are pretty humanities-centered. However, nobody will stop you from enrolling in a quantitative methods class elsewhere, be it in Soc or in Stats.
  25. No, it won't hurt you. If you apply to the right kind of department, one that has people doing mathematical sociology (Cornell, Irvine, maybe Stanford, maybe Harvard, maybe Duke), it would actually help you. It's pretty rare to have people with strong math backgrounds apply to Soc programs, so it makes you valuable. A number work on government policy, usually in non-profits. A larger number work on the fringes of academia, like in business schools (organizational theory/economic socilogy) or medical schools (medical sociology/epidemology). It looks like there may be a career path opening up for math-heavy sociologists to work in internet companies (Yahoo just hired Duncan Watts, who was a prof at Columbia, to lead one of their research groups) -- though this is certainly an odd path at this point. Yes, absolutely. It just helps to show that you can do research. Read up on the literature and talk about why it interests you and how you can contribute to it. If you don't know how to track down the right literature, go talk to your school's librarian for social sciences (I know it seems weird, but it totally works, I promise -- it's actually their job to help you find stuff). Mention to them that you are interested in mathematical sociology. Or if you want to take it the web route, just look for people who do mathematical sociology, social networks, and maybe quantitative methodology, in top departments, and read the stuff they wrote recently. There was also a callout for computational social science in "Science" a few months ago: http://www.iq.harvard.edu/blog/netgov/2 ... _on_c.html . Any of the authors of that piece who are sociologists would be a good place to start. You could actually try emailing them with questions, too -- some might respond. Math people in sociology tend to really want more math people to go into sociology. Good luck!
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