Darth.Vegan

Personally, I consider the GRE virtually worthless, and studies have proven that after a very minimal level of competence (50th percentile or so) has been reached, the predictive likelihood of the GRE on graduate success is limited at best. That said, this will hurt your application, and you should retake.

Sorry to say but if you're looking to top programs, you need to pull those GRE scores above 50%, and the verbal should be above 75-80. It's not impossible, but while your undergrad and grad GPA aren't that low, they aren't exactly stellar either. Those two combined will hurt a bit.

I've been vegan 18 years, but am not looking for a roommate. If you have other vegan related questions regarding Irvine and southern California more generally, feel free to PM me.

You may want to think about potential research projects you could propose for the NSF GRFP. The deadline is quite early in the fall and there was tremendous pressure from my department to apply for it. I was eligible to apply twice as I came into the program straight out of undergrad, so I decided to forego applying this year and I'm glad I did. I now have a decent research proposal that I can adopt for the application. That said, had I really put time in thinking about it over the summer, I may have had something I could use and would have had the added advantage of applying twice.

This isn't exactly what you were asking for but a friend of mine is co-founder and co-director of the Global Center for Advanced Studies, and it might serve as a helpful starting point. http://www.globaladvancedstudies.org/p/about.html

Last week: Globalization and the Postcolonial World: The New Political Economy of Development Weber: General Economic History This week: Kicking away the ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective The Civil Wars in Chile: The Bourgeois Revolutions that Never Were Next week: Locked in Place, State Building and Industrialization in India Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America

Can I just say, not all of these things are true. To suggest that coming out of say a top 10 program will give someone a better grounding in theory than someone in a top 30 program, ignores the differences between programs. I am taking a class at UCLA right now and one of their first year students told me that they don't even have a graduate theory course.

What Gilbertrollins said is probably true if the only publications you care about are ASR, AJS and Social Forces. Then again my department is outside of the top 20 and publishing in those journals anyway. That said, even getting a pub in the top 3 is a matter of privilege, and it's well known that certain "in" subfields are valued over others.

Amen.

Okay John Zerzan.

I have an iMac and a Macbook Air, and it seems like the perfect combination. The air battery lasts all day and it can do anything I need it to, including statistical analysis in Stata. I also use preview for annotating and highlighting articles.

Washington State has a great program, congrats!

I'm taking Sociology of Development at UCLA this quarter, but that's not quite what you're asking.

I would just thank them for the acceptance but inform them that you are unable to attend without an offer of funding and will be reapplying next year.

I suggest emailing your first choice to let them know you're still interested and want to check on the status of funding.

My best SOP was the one that ultimately got me into Irvine, and it was 2.5 pages with 1.5 spacing. It involved creating a narrative that supported my interests and grabbed the readers attention, while leaving room to talk about personal achievements and fit. You just don't have room to do that with such a short page length requirement. Paragraph 1: Introduction into my area of interest Paragraph 2: Get more specific about which areas I'd like to study and why Paragraph 3: Personal achievements that prepared me for graduate study Paragraph 4: Faculty Fit at Irvine Paragraph 5: Department fit, school fit and conclusion These were all relatively long paragraphs. I'm happy to send mine to some folks if you need some ideas.

That was the worst. Toronto is one page too, I just jammed as much in as I could lol

4.5 AW is perfectly fine even for T10 programs in my opinion.

I'm sooooooo tired of these threads. Social movement scholars still get jobs, pretty sure my department is proof of that. Plenty of programs outside the top 25 and even some outside the top 50 are doing a relatively decent job finding tenure track positions for their students. As I've said 10000000 times here before, if you're concerned about job placement, look at the placement record of the department you're considering, that's more important than ranking anyway.

I don't think anyone is saying that we shouldn't be concerned about the job market. The reality is that OP's post exaggerated the problem. There are plenty of programs outside of the top 20 placing students into tenure track jobs, you just need to find which ones. Job placement should certainly be a factor in the decision making process, it weighed heavily on mine. It just isn't a top 20 or bust kind of scenario.

Just FYI, I had the 2012 version back when I was applying and there were a lot of errors.

This is hyperbole. There are plenty of schools in the top 50 that have been placing their students. Long story short, look for the job placement stats of the programs you get accepted to, if they don't have it published and/or won't give it to you, be very weary. Oh and great answer RandomDood

Seems like the biggest factor here is job placement. Is Brown at least placing their students in tenure track jobs? And how important is a prestigious placement? While a top 20 placement is rare anyway, it's extremely rare, almost impossible, if you're coming from a program outside the top 20. Also, why is Wisconsin off the table?

Not sure this is the right sub-forum, but first you should make a list of potential schools with programs in credentialing and secondary education. Some schools (like University of San Diego), don't require the GRE, but do require things like the cbest. I used Barron's online for GRE prep. Improved my verbal from 157 to 163.

Sorry to hear that Meowth. I was very hopeful they had a funding package for you. At least you have some good options already, and who knows, maybe people will decline and funding will open up for you.