socieconomist

@Sciencegirl - I got nixed from Princeton along w/most - lol - but I TRULY had no desire to spend the next 4-5yrs in NJ (nor did my partner... even less than me) - I wanted to be at Davis from go. So strategy successful. Applied to two schools (thus saving a lot of money), get into one, happened to be the one I wanted. Time to finish my Phd with wonderful weather, surrounded by some great friends and w/some profs who I really enjoy. Couldn't have worked out better, truly. In short - Thank you! hehe

Accepted - UC Davis.

There's a President to re-elect. I've been on it since March '11. I'm on it now. I don't see that changing regardless of grad school outcomes. It's simply too important. After election night '08, one of my closest friends and I spent the evening on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Stayed the whole night. We watched the sun come up. It's an excellent memory. I plan to have a similar evening this coming November. But there's plenty to be done between now and then... plenty.

This whole board just made me burst out laughing only b/c I was thinking all the same things... took a long, healthy break from the forum. It started to make me hyper-crazy. But I just jumped on and saw this and seriously almost fell off my kitchen stool

Attitudes definitely run the gambit. also, if the "activism" evolves into effective policy work - that's not looked down on so much. in fact, my take is that it's become pretty trendy for sociologists to have "policy implications" in their work... the irony being that many sociologists don't then take that paper, develop relationships with policy makers and get their research actually embedded in the policy structure. so in the end... it's almost like many folks just slip in the policy implications to say they did. that said - folks at many top tier schools actively engage in the policy arena: ucla, ucb, princeton (which has a joint phd w/woodrow wilson school), cornell, etc., etc. just as some examples. so I disagree also... i mean, one just has to know their interests... if policy or applied sociology is your thing, then don't apply to a school that at best gives lip service to policy and at worst totally doesn't care.

YES! I did so bad on quant section i might as well have guessed on nearly everything... wait scratch that... that's exactly what I did! lol - guess I'll know why if I don't get accepted... still - sociologists use spss or stata... who the hell out there is a sociologist studying fractions and geometry? the whole ST industry is a racket.

well... yea - paulo freire (also see banned books in Tucson, AZ) if you haven't, then check Ann Swidler re Cultural Tool Kit... and for a cogent definition of "tactics", you should probably read up on your De Certeau. SUERTE!

1000 words or less... i think one of mine was under 800.

when did Princeton start contacting folks last year?

I agree with ThisSlum - on the well known point - i'm told that those lor's get much more weight, particularly if there are personal relationships w/people in the department where one is applying. if an lor author si both unknown (in the field) and has no particular relationship... that's less effective. makes sense, yes?

Sorry to take a while to weigh in - busy weekend. I think you both have valid points and equally valid concerns. I appreciate them both for different reasons, some from the perspective of scholar (also ethnographer) and some from the perspective of Latin@. So, as a Latin@, I do find it really problematic that we are so heavily undrepresented in academia, across the board, not merely in sociology. This is true for the arts, for the social and physical sciences, and as well in the "professions". Obviously that's going to take some time to solve. Then there's the question of "white" folks studying Latin@s, African Americans, etc. I think the first thing to acknowledge is that this is pretty much the historical norm. And there certainly is a problematique regarding this. Just like there is for outsider community organizers. So, on the one hand we have to recognize the irony of white folks coming in and "organizing" and "studying" (for example) Latin@ communities. I mean, Edward Said points out many of the problems here when talking about "Orientalism", yes? On the other hand, b/c of the color line embedded in high academia and the organizing community, we have to ask the question who else is there to do it? (re CO, I also come from that tradition and always looked around at my white colleagues thinking, "hm... why no more Latin@s?" A: it's complicated.) So, among all of my academic advisors and mentors, across my undergraduate and m.a. program, you might ask how many have been Latin@... A: none. (I have a huge problem with this... b/c it's always in my face that I can't look to my own for guidance...that's hard on a person.) And some of those people have been researchers looking at immigrant, specifically Latin@ communities. But... here is the counterintuitive upshot - while my advisors have been White (mostly women), I as an aspiring Latin@ academic needed training, and the best people to give me that training were not Latin@... but they were conscious of their outsider position and the tenuousness of it. Because I am an insider, they recognized that there were a couple things going on... they were using me for my insider capacity so they could publish their papers, and (legitimately) help figure out possible solutions to complex problems, but also that they had to be willing to give back to me the things I needed and cautiously heed my advice while in the field (in this sense the power position was interestingly reversed whenever a P.I. and I were in the field together. And I too got the publications (not just mentions) I needed.) I'm probably sounding a bit convoluted, but that's b/c it's too complex for a message board - lol. Anyway - I think the main point from my perspective is yes, there is absolutely a racial power problematique layered on top of other SES related privelege stuff... specifically for White folks studying any minority community. And this isn't necessarily something I as a Latin@ have to contend with while studying the Latin@ or my own community. I still have to contend with the SES stuff in general, however. But it is NOT the same. The absolute best a the former can do is try to remain grounded, and conscious of their relational position. I think Duneier does a great job talking about this very thing in Sidewalk. The fact that he was always the "outsider" even when he thought he had gotten "in"... something he figured out when he accidentally left his recorder going after he had walked away from it... it recorded the participants talking about him as though he weren't there (and as if the recorder were off). I mean, what else can you do though? You can't not be White—lol—but you also can't reject you research interests because of this. And in my own experience, plenty of white researchers (not so much organizers in my own experience) come up with some great solutions to complex problems that minorities face. Best case scenario: I do think that the best case scenario is that Latin@s are studying Latin@s with some white folks (and other allies) in the mix as well. I also think that the Latin@ community is in its best position when Latin@s are organizing themselves. But these are also effects of other problems: how do we raise up leaders from within our ostrisized communities at the educational and organizing and political, etc. levels when we don't have but a handful of people from our community to look to for guidance? And sometimes they don't even care. I don't see Gov. Bill Richardson out cultivating a cadre of potential Latin@ political candidates, ya know? The answer is, as in my case, sometimes we have to look to white folks for guidance up front b/c they're the folks who already have the expertise. As more insider leaders develop, then we can turn that back on our own communities and develop from within. Does this make sense? It's not entirely different from saying the LGBTQ community is at its strongest when it has LGBTQ leaders. The same goes for the African American community. Or the indiginous communities. But that doesn't mean these communities don't accept outsider allies to help in the struggle... right? So I don't get upset at white folks when I see them studying or organizing Latin@ communites. I get upset that we're still in a place where the white folks are leading and we're following, even w/n our own communities. I don't ask, how do we stop white folks from doing this. I ask how do we develop greater insider leadership so we can become stronger, more equal. Does that make sense..? Sorry, could have been more cogent, I'm sure. But I hope my point(s) get through.

WOOHOO!! Yay! At least one other I was really not hopeful to get a response! Anyway - Chicago is an awesome city - And those are great schools. Best of luck to you! My interests are: immigration, economic sociology, historical sociology, ethnography. I applied to two schools; that's it: Princeton and UCDavis. I'm fairly confident about my chances. I guess I'd better be since I only applied to two! lol - if they don't pan out, then I suppose I'll widen the net next year... I suppose we'll know shortly, though, right? I think schools ought to be reaching back out for sure by mid-feb, yea? I don't know the schedules of your schools, but in general I suppose.

many folks in the Hispanic community use @ in place of o/a as a written inclusion mechanism re gender and sexuality identities outside the M-F/heterocentric binaries. lgbtq speak...but en español. Make sense?

lol - ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid - I agree with the second statement, too. and you put it hilariously - well done

ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid - I don't know why that would be your blanket assumption. I know lots of folks are on here and have no POI. My partner was on here last year and had 0 POI's, applied to 7 of the top 10 programs in her field and was accepted to 4... Clearly I can see the folks who say "my poi got back to me" - but I don't think that's evidence of any sort that the majority of even large minority or whatever quantity you'd like to suggest do or don't have POI's... In any case... what you did makes sense to me. That's what I did, too. I'm sure many people did. But when I see people rifle off a ton of schools where they applied, many of which have one primary thing in common—rank—then it is to those folks I am directing my comment. I'd find it very suspect or very knock my socks off to know the person who had a solid POI at Princeton, Berkeley, Chicago, Wisc., Mich., UCLA... etc. Anyway... I'm not arguing w/you on the substance of your point - bc I agree with it... and it seems like your point is that you agree w/me. (maybe I misunderstood though...?)

So, given the tremendous lack of Latin@ academics around the country, I am curious if anybody other than me is Latin@, applying to sociology grad programs, and lurking around these forums with frequency. I really hope I'm not the only one, and it'd be a pleasant surprise if, in fact, I am not. In the off chance that I'm not, then to which programs did you apply and what is it that you want to study? *tossing bottle into ocean.... *bottle tossed... *waiting for return of bottle...

hm - well, it very well may be that I'm alone in this but for the record - i killed the verbal on the gre and bombed (nuclear style) the quant. And I'm ok w/that. Stellar Recs, Strong research experience, rock star work experience, nailed it on SOP and solid GPA.... there are many avenues into and out of grad school. The hilarious thing to me is that sociologists don't even do calculations... we use stata, spss or some other software and those do it for us. Anyway - I HATE math... other than statistics, which I love. I loved it in h.s., undergrad, my m.a. program. and what does the gre test? algebra, fractions, and how fast you can figure out the volume of such and such an object... who cares? The GRE is a totally ridiculous exam and many, many sociology graduate committees understand this and balance those scores against other things: work experience, LOR's, research experience, SOP's, GPA's, publications, etc. So that said... I'm not a stat person.. I'm an ethnography/ historical sociology person methodologically speaking. So guess where I didn't apply: Stanford - lol - and anywhere like it. I have one focus: immigration. So I applied to a couple schools that focus on that and aren't interested in simply running numbers to find out how many Latinos are going to be in the U.S. by 2050. more pressing questions are: what do we need to do to make sure those folks are more fully enfranchised than not? Who's asking the key questions on climate refugees? What about health care strategies? Then there is the economic question which wraps into questions regarding education...and so on and so forth. What profs at which schools are asking the questions you want to ask—whatever they are—and answering them? If you fit, you fit. If not, well... i guess we know that answer, too. It's striking to me all the people I see posting that they applied to "top 10" "top 40" or whatever... did anybody apply b/c they wanted to work with somebody? Like did anybody apply to Princeton b/c Mitch Duneier and Paul Willis are there and they want do Public Ethnography? or DiMaggio and they want to do Cultural Sociology? Or b/c they want to work w/their litany of outstanding immigration scholars? Or to Columbia b/c they want to work with Saskia Sassen? Or to Berkeley, not b/c it's UCB but b/c they want to work with M. Burawoy? Or did everybody seriously apply to programs b/c of their USNWR ranking? anyway... sorry for the rant... oh! and my point was: try not to worry so much. if you have a strong application that shows you to be well suited for a program and demonstrably sets you apart from other applicants, then you'll be fine! Having positive ties to the profs you want to work with at the schools you want to go to...well, that helps, too. ps Good luck folks!

none that I know of... but i'm sure there are some... i just don't know where they would be... i think overwhelmingly, admissions committees find it most fair and expedient to use the applications w/a heavy emphasis on statements of purpose, prior academic experience, etc.