sciencegirl

Congrats Avee!!!! That's really awesome. You deserve it!

@splitends - it's also quite hard to judge socioeconomic diversity and its a very awkward subject to broach for departments and schools as a point to highlight. Students often who are at the graduate level from such backgrounds are also very adept at covering that status and don't often talk about it as their primary identity (and it would also not be acceptable for the chair of a department to say something like - "tommy over there comes from a poor family too" in a conversation). Quite a few of my friends in academia are first gen college students and/or from working class families, and you would never guess it unless you knew them really well. You can't really just look around a room in the way you can with race or gender and judge diversity in that way. Anyway, my point is that my impression of sociology departments is that they are quite aware of the challenges of SES factors in higher education and are much better at recruiting such students than maybe other departments and disciplines but it might not always be evident at first glance. One good suggestion is to contact a diversity point person at the university you are looking at and to meet with them about any and all your concerns.. a lot of universities have specific positions whose job it is to look out for people from diverse backgrounds at their school and who know the numbers and have the license to share them and point them out to you. This is most likely out of the dean or provost's office, and you can probably find the right person by just asking your department if there is a specific person in the dean's office that could meet with you about your concerns about the diversity in the program/school.

I'll add some thoughts to @splitends here - I've been doing a few visits, and will have some more in the next few weeks before making a firm decision.. my background and interests have all been in qualitative methods and plan on continuing working in this manner, perhaps also in mixed methods depending on the situation -- but most of my line of questioning for the schools I'm considering has been based on the ability for me to do qualitative methods. One program that wasn't mentioned before was Northwestern - incredibly strong. In fact, I've had some professors in the field and current graduate students remark that it might be strongest right now for qualitative methods above other ones mentioned. Solid faculty, great training, top notch reputation for qualitative methods that has been only getting stronger as of late. I would disagree with @splitends comment that you "essentially won't be able to do ethnography at Stanford" -- @splitends and I actually PM-ed about this a few weeks ago and I was ready to write off Stanford from my list after our conversation. But I've been speaking to some current graduate students and professors from Stanford and I'm realizing that the department isn't against qualitative methods at all. That being said, Stanford definitely has a reputation for quantitative methods, and I think that a decade ago, it was probably much harder in the program if you were a qualitative scholar. But I'm also beginning to think that this reputation seems to be augmented more so by Berkeley people I speak with (the joke at Stanford seems to be that all Berkeley sociology students want to do is theorize about Marx, while the joke at Berkeley is that Stanford students just sit in front of a computer crunching numbers without going into the real world). I'm impartial to either school, so my observation is that while Berkeley is definitely a very strong qualitative program (and great in theory), Stanford would also provide very strong training in qualitative methods (the class is now taught by Dr. Jimenez), while also providing top notch quantitative training. I really do think that you would have great qualitative training in any top 10 program and be fine working in those methods. Incidentally, from the most recent graduating cohort from Stanford, their best placement (into a top 5/UNC) was a strongly ethnographic qualitative scholar: http://sociology.unc...-laura/curvitae

I am picking based on how good their football team will be

I know at the top tier programs.. if everyone is freaked out about letters of rec for your applications now.. the tenure process is pretty brutal...

@splitends.. I just wrote you a much more personalized PM so hopefully you'll get that.. what I'll say here though is that it sounds like you had a wonderful, amazing, magical time as an undergraduate at that department. In some ways, it would be best to almost leave it at that.. keep those memories really special. Graduate school can be a cruel, eye-opening, terrifying, gut-wrenching reality check. Why not have those not-so-great memories somewhere else, lest you taint the wonderful undergraduate experience that you had? Perhaps this is the romantic side of me, but I also had a really once-in-a-lifetime undergraduate experience that I'll always want to remember as simply that. I know I can't go back to it and I don't want to. I also realized when I graduated undergrad (many years ago) that I had to leave those memories and that place behind. It was just part of my growth. Yes, the first year in another department might be really difficult, and you'll miss it a lot - but leaving it behind and missing it is just part of growing and learning and being a better scholar of the world around us (and knowing yourself better as well). And who knows, maybe some day down the line you'll be asked back, but this time not as a student

@splitends I think part of the difference in opinion might be that your specific school is an outlier. You actually got me thinking all day, and I realized I know a lot of top academics who did both undergrad and grad at your university in a lot of different fields... and it's probably the one same school combo that is repeated the most. Hence, you are probably also getting a lot of feedback there that confirms that it won't affect your success, since well, there are a lot of superstars right now who have that combo, proving in some ways that it isn't a bad thing at all. My own ramblings on why this happens with your school and not others: my guess is that part of it has to do with the belief in a top public school education that you mentioned for yourself, but also because you don't really have too much freedom to move around if you wanted to stay at a public school in the same state and also if you wanted to stay at a top ranked program. You essentially have one other choice, which might as well be in another planet. Contrast this to say a Yale graduate, who was the reverse of you - wanted to stay private in the same region... that person could go to Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, NYU, UPenn. I think then you see a lot more school-changing on that side of the country, so that becomes a more dominant and respected practice. I think the scenario of "affirmative action" does happen in other fields (and maybe more in top private schools) - which is maybe why both @jacib and I brought it up. It certainly is the case for some top law schools to prefer their own undergraduates.. and friends of mine in the humanities have told me that if they wanted to stay at their top undergraduate school, they could as a back up if they didn't get into other top choices (perhaps sociology is very different). The things though for you to really focus on is broadening your base. I actually had a really wonderful conversation from a fairly recent graduate from your program who also came undergrad from another UC. This person strongly advised me to go to a different type of program from where my current networks were.. that on the job market, this person felt that only coming from the same school system hurt in some cases.. mostly in just not being able to expand very much from your current networks. Had nothing to do with the strength of the program - just the location and types of professor circles that were limited by this. For tenure at the top schools, don't you need like 10-15 blind letters from top scholars in your field supporting your tenure.. won't it be much easier if you went to another program and then got to work with and study with twice as many potential letter writers during your academic career?

I think conventional wisdom would advise strongly against it - unless it was by far the best and only option you had. I've had advisors say to me that it just looks funny on a CV, and that there is an assumption that someone chose to do that because they didn't have other options, and actually makes someone a tiny bit weaker on the job market. Here are the mentioned tangible reasons why someone should go elsewhere. 1. Networks. These are some of the most important things you do as a graduate student. Going to another program allows you to broaden your base of contacts, who in turn have contacts as well that you also develop. If you were the superstar undergraduate in your department, you can always rely on your undergraduate advisors as a back-up firewall for your support. You will see them at ASA and other professional events. They will always be proud of you and look out for you. They will keep an eye on you, and sometimes even give you a heads up on publishing opportunities. If you have a close superstar professor that wants to continue working with you, they can serve as an outside person on your committee at another program. When job market time comes and by chance there is an opening at your undergrad school, the department will remember you and may be even more inclined to move you up on the short list of a hiring search when you are on the job market. (It is much more common for departments to have hired their own undergrads who went elsewhere for a phD, as rarely do departments ever hire TT their own graduate students). Staying in the same program as your undergraduate program, puts you at a disadvantage to everyone else who is developing these two sets of professional networks, one from their undergrad (some who have them from masters programs) and then new ones from the phD program. 2. Methodology training. Many programs have their style of doing things. They have their focus, their strengths, their biases. Going to another program, one that might be completely different from the one/style you are used to, will only make you a stronger sociologist. I am currently facing this debate with my choices. I am a qualitative scholar.. and some of my schools I am looking at, are great at qualitative work so it made sense at first for me to only consider these. But after some consultation with advisors, they've urged me to strongly look at a program that is also quite strong in quantitative methods. Their reasoning is that when I go on the job market, I would be seen as a very well-rounded candidate. (They also argue that going to a program different than what I already know may also strengthen my dissertation) 3. Experience for teaching/seeing other programs. Schools are vastly different - particularly between public and private programs. Going to another school gives you perspective on how things are done "the other way." If you were used to large 500-person lectures in a UC school, 10-person undergraduate seminars at an elite private are going to be weird - also, conversely if you were coddled at an Ivy as an undergrad, trying to get a handle leading 30-person sections at a competitive public school will definitely be a learning experience. I'm not saying that if you went to a private undergrad you should go to public grad, and vice-verse.. but rather, highlighting the fact that "learning" in grad school happens a lot when you are given new experiences. And when you are staying in the same program, you only heighten your sense of tunnel vision of one particular way of learning. In a competitive job market, and when it comes down to two candidates who are essentially even in capability, I can imagine then the candidate with a more diverse array of educational backgrounds would get the nod. Given these reasons, I could understand why many frown upon going to the same program, and also why many assume that when people do this, it was because they most likely didn't have other opportunities (ie, they applied everywhere and only got into their current program).

Anyone else catch this article on facebook that came out today? After reading this, I'm now very inclined to suggest for everyone that whatever you post on facebook should be something that you wouldn't mind having a student, employer, parent read. I actually don't see friending a student as a conflict of interest as long as you friend all students and make that policy known to your classes (a professor I know does this and says its a great way to keep someone's facebook page strictly "business/school related" and not "personal"). I also know that for personal stuff, friends have a second fake account with mismatching names and absolutely no connection to that person's school as a solution to have the more "personal" facebook account. This article was really surprising - that coaches, schools and employers are now asking candidates access to their "private" facebook accounts: http://redtape.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/06/10585353-govt-agencies-colleges-demand-applicants-facebook-passwords

I wouldn't be as cynical as @wannabeaphd here.. especially since placement rate doesn't get reported in any way to USNWR or have any affect on grad school rankings in the way that graduation rates have for undergrad rankings. I think an easier explanation is simply that UCLA has had historically large cohorts (this past year was 20 which I read somewhere on their Sociology newsletter awhile back).. most top private programs only have incoming cohorts in the range of 7-12... when you have that large of a cohort, and larger faculty to grad student ratios, students are more likely to fall through the cracks, not get the support they need, etc. I will speculate however that UCLA may be shrinking a bit, similar to what WIsconsin has done... this seems to be a real trend now, to move away from large cohorts and get smaller ones so that they can be better supported, both financially and with faculty energy.

No one gives this advice, but make sure to sign up for the GRE months ahead of time especially if you wait until Oct/Nov to take it.. spots fill up insanely fast starting from mid-September and by the end of October, there is nothing left for a time slot for the rest of the year in many places. You can also change the time for a fee I believe - so its best to just look ahead in your calendar for a time and then just pick it early.. if later on you want to change it, you can at least see if there are spots available to do that and you have at least something booked. A friend of mine waited too late to register for a spot in November and got really messed up since the only opening dates were in late December, messing up their applications quite a bit.

I think there are a lot of people freaking out about this in other forums... in Sociology, nicely, it seems that most programs are funded (whereas in the arts and professional programs this isn't the case). I heard this segment on Marketplace Money on NPR the other weekend, and it terrified me.. I felt so bad for this guy who had over $100,000 in student loan debt and had no way out of it (even not in bankruptcy).. just a cautionary tale. Be really cautious of private loans, especially since the government ones are ending soon: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/your-money/getting-personal/getting-personal-perils-private-student-debt

I am not 100% sure of this... but aren't federally subsidized loans for graduate students going away? For some reason I read this somewhere...

@tt503... yeah, that's sort of my understanding with Stanford too.. that they seem to balance out a cohort so that no one's interests overlap so there isn't a direct competition. It would be helpful I think for posters to be a bit more descriptive maybe in what they mean as cutthroat for an environment. I mean, I think at all the top 10 programs, you will have smart, ambitious people - and naturally people will feel pressure to succeed and do well, but I think OP is trying to figure out what programs seem to be more collegial vs. competitive.. I don't get a sense at all from Stanford that its not collegial (the grad students I've spoken too seem incredibly warm and nice and no one has mentioned the word cutthroat). Stanford's program also has a lot of teams working on experiments together which I think adds to a more collegial feel among these students. So @lovenhaight's comment seems really odd from what I've encountered interacting with the students there - are there certain professors who encourage students to compete with each other? My sense from what I'm feeling out from that program is that its probably not as warm as Northwestern, but no where near Chicago on the other end of things. I think its just more helpful for some of us to actually to get details - and of course, PM us if its stuff that you can't post.

@socscholar... OK, so this is how detailed I am.. but the studios have full size extra long beds so no twin size beds... lol (ok, so we think alike I guess). Some grads actually move to SF... if you would believe it. I think we are just coming from different frames of reference... you can find "cheap" housing if you work at it... "cheap" being under $1000. I even had friends who said that getting a bedroom in a shared house or apartment off campus would run no more than $800. Of course this isn't the midwest or south though, so if you are comparing say Duke to Stanford, I think there are cheaper options in the Raleigh area if you live off campus and better quality of life for bang for the buck.

Ooops, you did outpost me @socscholar! Sorry I didn't read your message before posting! I am actually looking at the $1100 studio in EV as an option if I go to Stanford... and when compared to the cost of a studio in NYC, about half the cost. Crazy the difference in cost of living across the US...

@socscholar.. I had this convo earlier with someone about this, but did you look at on-campus housing options? They guarantee it your first year, and you can get your own room for between $700-1100. I am going to be honest, I tried to rationalize everything before about why the Stanford area is expensive with some friends and they made me realize that it's not like I'm buying a house in Palo Alto and raising kids there (you might be though so maybe we are in different situations). My graduate school friends said that the online calculators of cost of living are not good measure of graduate life. The key things are housing (on campus options listed above), cost of groceries, books, conference travel, research, transportation ($300 a month in my estimates for a car if I can't stand biking), and an occasional celebratory meal out. Movies are free through on-campus screenings of cool new documentaries. I dug this up actually for someone else... but from what I gather, as long as you enter the Stanford housing lottery as a first year by May before summer/when you start, you are guaranteed a place, and that they try to give you an option that is not in the $1200+ range: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/cgi-bin/drupal/housing/charts/graduate-residence-chart Most apartments seem to be between $670-940 in cost per month. This is of course if you are single/not married without kids.. if you have a family, then things might definitely be pricier. I agree with @splitends here... I don't see Palo Alto as an expensive place compared to NYC or SF or even parts of LA even, when you figure living on campus at those rates. I'm super surprised that Stanford gets flack for being in a high cost living area when we don't hear much about Columbia or NYU (and honestly, if I have to wait in another 30 minute line in the Trader Joes in Union Square just to get cheap wine on a Friday night I will go bonkers).

@karlito, specifically the Soc. department or other departments at Harvard? And what do you mean by "breeding" - I don't think its necessarily a factory.. though its competitive by the nature of it being a top program... but I also think the OP is asking about specific programs being extra competitive.. and I would agree with splitends that Berkeley would not be lumped into Chicago and the old school Wisconsin... and I would also agree with @splitends about Chicago's structure.. a best friend of mine went there undergrad and said something similar about the encouragement to compete there... Its sort of funny that top programs would even be competitive since you think it would be more prevalent in the schools between rank 10-30.. where there is a lot more fierce competition to stand out and get ahead... And I also don't think it always has to do with money... I will say that some great advice was to judge your cohort if you go on visits... see if you like them, can work with them, etc. These people will be with you, for better or worse, for the rest of your life.. so you are not just entering a relationship with the school and faculty, but with your cohort...

@splitends... re: Stanford.. a few of us admits there compared and we all have the exact same thing, including some weird additional $2000 miscellaneous fund for year 1 and 2.. the ambiguity for the other years might be because I believe your salaries as a TA/RA are based on what the school sets.. (its online somewhere actually) the amounts given in our letter is the minimum, so there is a chance they could rise (or in a bizarre twist of deflation maybe even fall, but I don't think that's ever happened) based on the number the school sets for their graduate employees. Also, I think that funding in years 5,6,7 (if needed) are often done through a multitude of Stanford's internal fellowships - many of which are $34,000+, which is why apparently, the spelling out of everything seems to not be of too much concern for students there. I'm also split between some programs at the moment, but the funding at Stanford is a huge draw - though some other programs I'm looking at are a better fit. Money is sadly a real issue...

Yup. This situation seems to happen a lot at sink or swim schools, mostly publics. The privates generally seem to have the philosophy of guaranteeing a lot more funding and spelling it out in writing. This makes sense though - when your school depends on public funding, after seeing what's happened the last few years, it would be unwise to "guarantee" anything beyond a few years, in case the bottom truly fell out of the state budgets. (I don't think anyone will know what the UC school system/California budget will be in 2017, 5 years from now) When you are a private school, things are generally more predictable with the future funding situation. @bubawizam - I think that should be a separate topic maybe since the OP seemed to ask about unfunded phD programs, and the unfunded master programs debate could take a few pages

In the immediate case, it could simply be seeing who decides to enroll, and then the faculty voting on who to fund based on who has committed to programs. Another case may be where a few university fellowships are available but need to go through the graduate school/university.. sometimes these fellowships are lost if a student wins them but goes to another school.. so what they may do see who enrolls, and then nominate people from that pool for university fellowships knowing for certain that they will be at the school if they win them. My comment highlighted above is that once students get in, they spend that first year applying for university grants, fellowships, outside TA-ships etc and it does become a weeding out process.

Stanford made a bunch of offers early in Feb. already - no interviews were done and funding was incredibly generous to all those admitted already.

Is this at a public school? I know the UCs are a bit notorious for having to hustle for $. It's a large amount of stress on my friends in those programs. In most cases, the good students find funding, and when they are "waitlisted" its sort of like an initiation process of weeding out the not so strong... and I often hear about success stories of getting funding, but this may also be self-selective as the ones that don't probably don't continue..

I treat my FB account like its completely open (ie, if your mom saw it you would not have any embarrassment) - no posts that are very personal or offensive, just fun news things and an occasional update on what I am up to. Part of this is that some professors seem to really like using facebook, and so do other grad students - seems like another way people network, which is really important in grad school. (Its easy to find someone after a conference etc on facebook and say hi).

Have they asked you to take a class, or asked you to just brush of on material? I have never heard of a program "asking you to take a class" of a subject before you even start, but I have heard of programs asking you to review and brush up a bit on things. Could you just listen to iTunes U. lectures online? I love them. Been listening to them all year long and honestly, they are probably the only real sociology courses I've actually done since I'm coming in from another discipline.