maximus82

Most of the private school will pay you to fly and visit... or at least give you some money to help cover the cost

Was it the DGS who emailed you guys about the interview?

People keep saying that getting a good score in the GRE only means that you are good at taking standarized tests... that's nice and all, but it's not entirely true! Getting a good GRE score means at least that a) you're good at working under pressure (which you will have to do in grad school); that you are flexible and good problem solver (which you will have to do in gradschool); and finally it shows you know how to manage your time!!! If you were in a committee and had to read 600 applications you would also look at standarized tests before anything else. And just to be clear, Super, you're score isn't bad at all. like you said, you're at about the 75% percentile. That's pretty good. The real problem is that you applied to schools that are just TOO competitive. it doesn't say anything bad about you. In terms of what you should do to improve your application: have a professor, hopefully a professor who has been in a graduate admission committee, go over your personal statement. When i first my personal statement I spend half a page talking about your extracurricular activities and how i was president of this and secretary of that. Honestly, once you get to graduate school, no one cares. The kind of stuff that you need to say in your personal statement is very different from what most people think.

First of all, having one rejection is not the end of the world. You still have a number of school to hear from, and you should definitely apply to MA programs. But be aware that those programs don't always offer financial aid, so you might have to get more loans. If you get rejections everywhere and don't get into an MA program, here's what I think: The first time I applied I didn't get anywhere. It was horrible. But if you really want to do this, it doesn't matter if you start this year or next or the year after next. You just have to be realistic about your chances and where you can go. While fit is the most important thing when looking at schools, you also have to consider the possibilities of getting into a program. So keep working, try to finish paying your student loans.Try to apply to programs that aren't as selective as the ones you applied to. I don't know about UC-Boulder or LSU, but ann Arbor and UT Austin are very VERY selective. Maybe you want to try and get into schools that are less selective?

The power dynamic of the insider/outsider is going to be there all the time. Language just makes that dynamic more visible and perhaps more complicated. But that dynamic is something most ethnographers deal with at one point in their careers... you can't study your own people ALL THE TIME. otherwise you'd have to go to school, get a job, and do research all in the same community within the same city for most of your career... I don't know about you but I don't know anyone who has pulled that off. Regarding competency and proximity, I think that's something you need to think about really hard. What's more important, competency or proximity? and I don't mean "perfectly capable sociologists"... I mean, who has the really good questions and who is really good at answering them... regardless of how proximate you are to that group. Think about people like Venkatesh... While I find the whole insider/outsider thing a bit problematic, you should be aware of the fact that being an outside gives you a perspective that others don't have. Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: no one gives anyone the right to study anyone... it's a privilege. And you have to be aware of that. It's something you (whether you are white, black, brown or whatever) have to earn, and once you've earned it you have to take care of.

The biggest issue is access. Can you get access to the group of people you want to work with? this is not just an issue for white studying latin@s, or a racial issue... this is an issue any ethnographer has to deal with. Being an outsider just makes it more complicated. In terms of how appropiate it is, I honestly don't think that's a problem. Just like it is okay for a latin@ to study things that are not related to latin@s (for example, I am interested in religious identity among white converts to Japanese Buddhism), I think it is perfectly fine to study latin@s as an outsiders. I think there's a bigger issue here, which you kind of point out when you say "what are the ethical issues around being a white person studying Latin@s at the same time when Latin@s are underrepresented in our profession?". You're bringing up two completely different issues here: 1) Latin@s are underrepresented in the profession 2) Latin@s are understudied While i think these are both very real issues (especially number 1), I don't think that they are the same.. and you're making it seem like Latin@s should only be represented in the profession so they can study themselves.

Duke did a couple of years ago... they had a list of finalists and invited them to visit before making the final decision.

Can you give me an example, with specific films if possible, of how cinema is a public danger?

you expressed your views alright, I just wanted to get your opinion on free speech.

What about free speech? Is that dangerous then?

You might want to contact the organizer to check on the status of your paper.

Have you visited any of the programs? The visit made a huge difference when I was in your situation. one important thing to think about is location. A happy graduate student at program ranked 17 can be much more productive than an unhappy student at a higher ranked program.

I think this depends a lot on what your areas of interests are, and also where you see yourself when you're done with the PhD. I would suggest looking at(or asking about)each school's recent placements.

You guys have to remember that committees consist of faculty (and sometimes students) who have pretty busy lives, and they meet about once a week. How many 2 hour meetings do you think it takes to go through 300+ applications? Also, once a committee makes decisions, these decisions have to go through the graduate school or the school of arts and sciences. so now you have all the departments sending in their decisions to those offices at the same time... this stuff takes time. Be patient. some times no news is good news.

The 2nd great thing about Zotero is that it works with MS Word. when you are writing a paper and you cite someone, you go to the zotero tool bar and then on "add citation" or something like that. It shows you a list of the works you've saved in your zotero, and then enters the citation in the correct format (ASA, APA, MLA, etc). then, when you are done with the paper, you click in the "create works cited" and it does it all for you! again, the correct format. it only includes works that were cited using zotero, so if you happen to make a citation on your own, you'll have to add it to the works cited. It really is a great time saving tool.

Try OneNote. Unlike Zotero, this is a standalone software (I think free), so it doesn't matter what browser you use. And as far as I know, it works just as well as zotero.

maybe someone who is more experienced with Zotero wants to share some tips here? I'll start by saying that it is free, and requires little installation. I use it as a firefox add-on. I haven't tried the standalone version. Also, you can create a free account online and synch it with your computer(s), which allows you to back up your stored references and access them from other computers.

I didn't know about Zotero or OneNote before starting school. During orientation day I went to a session on how to use them and it was really helpful. I use Zotero to keep track of articles I want to read, articles I've read, and books i've read. I just makes the process of creating a "works cited" much easier. It's specially useful for articles, because it gets all the information from the database, instead of you having to enter it manually. I

read some fiction or something other than sociology. you'l' probably have to read those books while you're in school anyway.

I don't know a whole lot about the admission process in Psychology, but I'm guessing it is just as competitive as Sociology... i mean, graduate school admissions is a competitive process regardless of the discipline, especially if you want to go to a good program. in terms of academia, I think the discipline you pick is going to give you very different career paths. The only places where I know of that sociologists and psychologies work together in the same department are in departments that are neither sociology or psychology (education, human development, organizations). I don't know of any sociologist working in a psychology department or vice versa. Both sociologists and psychologist will be able to find jobs in departments other than their own. For now, I can recommend the following: 1. take classes that might overlap. As an undergrad I had a class called "Individuals and Society" in the soc department and it was pretty much Social Psych from a sociological point of view. I also took Social Psych in the Psych department and that was very different, even thought we studies very similar things. 2. talk to your professors, even if you don't take classes with them. If you are in a school with a graduate program, talk to grad students. 3. Spend some time at the library reading journal articles from both disciplines. You don't need to read everything on both sides... but picking up a copy of Social Psychology Quarterly, AJS and ASR (all sociology journals) and reading a couple articles, and then reading abstracts and the methodology sections will give you an idea of what sociologists do. Then do the same with psychology journals. 4. Journals are a better indicator of what a discipline is and does than textbooks. So really, you should do #3. 5. think about what you want to do. think about how you want to do it. and think about where you would want to do it.

I agree with Derrick. And I used to think the GRE scores didn't matter, but now that i'm in a PhD program I realize that the quant score does matter, especially because it shows that you can handle the stats.

What are your GRE scores like? I know it's just one part of the application, but if you can improve your scores, you'll improve your chances of getting into a top 20 school.

If you can, visit the schools. It is one thing to think a school is your #1 choice because of what it says on the website, what the professors have published, the ranking, etc. But when you visit schools, and when you talk to other students, that's when you'll really know what the program is like. there's a reason they give you until April to make up your mind.

I don't know how many people applied to any of the schools you mentions, but I wanted to make a couple of comments: 1) the NRC rankings have been criticized for being out of date. The US News have been criticized for a bunch of other reasons. I'm not saying they're completely useless, but I do think you should take those with a grain of salt. 2) I've heard that one of the reasons Chicago does so well in placing their students (which is a HUGE thing when it comes to rankings) is that they accept way to many people. I heard this from someone who recently graduated from Chicago. I've heard similar things about Berkeley and Michigan. 3) As far as I know, NYU was one of the most selective schools last year, with something like 5 spots for over 500 applicants. Weird, because NYU is not as good as some other schools. I also know that Duke, Northwestern, and Indiana were all quite selective, but not as selective as NYU. that's all for now

Can you explain why/how you decided to list those programs and not others?