sciencegirl

Hmm... interesting. I don't think "competitive-ness" necessarily would turn away a person from NYU. I think if you are going to want to go to graduate school in a place as expensive as lower Manhattan, the application fee is sort of a non-issue. (The only limit to the amount of schools you can apply to are your own finances). I truthfully could not afford to go to graduate school in New York unless the stipend was in the $40,000 range). I live here now and it is by far the most expensive place to live in the US. In terms of my own psychology in applying, the major reason that I didn't apply to Madison was because of its reputation in years past of not providing good funding and the type of competitive cohort environment this created... and ironically, this year, it seems that they are admitting less people but giving them good funding. I wonder if I had known about this if this would actually be more of an incentive to apply for me personally. Add to this situation, the general human behavior among type A successful people of desiring something more when more people want it (ie, over the past few decades, as Ivy League schools have become even more competitive to get into, their application numbers have steadily increased.)

@sleepycat... what do you mean?

So thank you everyone for not flaming me off this site... it was hard for me to post in a brutal type honesty sort of way.. but my main point was the attitude. Go into this like its a professional career. Set your goals and go for them. One of them is to not be poor (notice that I didn't say to be rich). Of course the economy is bad, but if you start making excuses now, before the process has even begun, you've already defeated yourself, imho.

I hate to come off as annoying in this situation, as everything people have said already is very commendable. I will however just add that one of the most memorable conversations I have ever had was when I was considering a phD and one of my masters advisors had an amazing heart to heart with me. She said "Listen, it's clear that you have a passion for academia and for your intellectual interests, but your goal needs to be doing everything you want to do, and not being poor. You can have a very rewarding life, both financially and academically - but don't get caught thinking its a decision between one or another. Otherwise you will be trapped trying to always fulfill what you want while being held back by not having the finances. Don't get a phD if you can't start thinking as if you will be a success in both. Almost everyone who has been a success in academia has believed in themselves that they can and will be able to do both." The main message to me was to go after both a stellar academic career, and a great tenure track teaching/research job. To stop being high and mighty with the whole "I am only in this for the academic reward" - as almost everyone in grad school has this. But also be conscious that you need the financial part to work if you are going to keep doing the research you want to do. After this conversation, my attitude really changed about going to graduate school - I still wanted to go, but it was more about the big picture, the whole process, and not just about "doing research that to me was amazing and meaningful regardless if I'm poor and don't get paid." I began to see how in some ways this is a destructive and almost self-fulfilling prophecy-type of thinking. Sorry to be somewhat an a-hole in saying this and to ruin the spirit of this thread, but my go-get-em thinking has really changed my outlook and confidence in this really really crazy journey and someone else might also find this message helpful.

honestly, i heard from a few people that it's often more a requirement imposed by the graduate school at large at many of the top universities for rankings and publicity purposes... if it were up to the sociology departments, many would probably do away with the scores. And apparently the scores are very important for funding. At some places, the centralized graduate school higher ups pressure the various departments to try and admit a certain GRE score median and mean of their incoming classes to keep their rankings at a certain level. The Sociology adcoms often have this love hate relationship with the GRE score requirements. Basically, all of your points are true and the GRE's/standardized tests are terrible indicators of our success as sociologists, but some old guy trustee in a suit on an Ivy League corporation board doesn't really care. sucks to be us. I need to go to bed... its way too late for me to be up and to be spending time on this forum!

Probably in this order: 1. UCLA 2. Princeton/Stanford (tied) Haven't honestly thought of Harvard/Chicago/Yale as real possibilities since I feel like its more of a crapshoot to get into those places based on my interests. immigration, race/ethnicity, qualitative/mixed methods, gender

@kbirch... this part was exactly what my friends already in programs told me too... the importance of being specific and structuring a well-thought through research question and project. Apparently, not having this, or having a poorly thought through one, was an immediate dismissal from consideration in their adcoms, no matter how high someone's GRE scores were.

I herd Microsoft Bing is better.

I think political sociology is well covered at many of top schools... it seems that not only do they have faculty working on those issues, but recent star graduates, such as those being placed into excellent teaching jobs or post-docs, seem to be doing work in those areas. I noticed some amazing graduate profiles doing work in political sociology/social movements when looking at the grad students at Stanford, UCLA, Cal, and Harvard). Looking at their profiles and research actually made me feel a bit intimidated that their accomplishments are the standard as to what I should strive to be with in 5-6 years.

@sleepycat... are the top 20 schools too much of a reach? Yale is both great a religion and also really LGBT friendly (look at their Am. St/Queer programs for instance). I also wouldn't write off a school immediately because it is in a "red state" - the college campus towns are far more progressive than the outlying suburbs. (compare say Chapel Hill vs. rural North Carolina, or Kansas City vs. the rest of KS or MO).. I have a few gay male friends who did undergrad at such places and they said it was great (some actually joked that now living in NYC, dating is much harder since there are too many gay men and the 'scene' is too distracting and would find going to school here impossible)... though you might not be a gay male... and my gay male friends here in NYC are a bit crazy but that's for another site and forum However, I totally get you when it comes to location being super important. I posted in another forum my desire to move back to California. Totally irrational and an emotional desire. Nothing to do with "Best fit and program". But I did apply broadly and didn't limit myself just yet.

Did not know that about Stanford... which faculty there did students mention? I always thought Stanford was super strong in social psychology and gender...

@panasic - it seems then that location is the most important factor for you? As those two schools aren't necessarily at the very top for race/immigration... Princeton would be better than Stanford, and UCLA stronger than Cal in those fields... of course, not bad schools at all, but it seems that your choice of applying seems motivated by being the bay area.

@supernovasky... after reading a lot more about you, I think you have a ton to offer a program, but maybe your statement could be stronger? I started crafting my SOP in August.. luckily I have some friends in some really good programs who were willing to go over my statement. After my first attempt in August, they made me redo it completely. I went through 5 rounds of this, and afterwards, I realized that it was hard for me to express my strengths in the SOP in a way that would impress a sociology adcom. What an adcom is looking for is a student ready to start research with fairly defined research interests... what I spent too much time focusing on was my past. One of my friends who has sat on an adcom committee gave me this advice from her time spent with faculty on the adcom in her department: everyone has a great undergraduate record and accomplishments if they are applying to a phD program, but most applicants in their SOP have terrible defined research goals and what they are interested in... or they were so vague in their interests that the application rarely stood out. For instance, "I like quantitative Sociology"... "I want to study gender"... "Because of this professor, I found social networks interesting and wish to study this more in a phD program""... but nothing more concrete, unique or interesting than that. I also realized that my first SOP fell into this trap... it was all focused on me and what I had done before, and nothing about what I want to do in the future that would impress an adcom committee. I only mentioned this because in your listing of "you" - its very focused on the past and what you have done. But I'm so curious about what you could do... seriously: an intensive study on the habits and patterns of people buying used cars?? THAT WOULD BE AWESOME. Broken down by race, SES factors, gender, age etc... I doubt any schools get applicants who have spent two years selling used cars. Sociology is examining our society, and you have spent 2 years "examining" it in a way that no one else in sociology has really done. A well-defined SOP focusing on that would make you stand out in a way that would give you a very good shot into any program. Also, given that you are a first generation college student, this is THE MOST underrepresented group in phD programs. You should be getting all of your application fees waived (no excuses from you if you don't get them waived.. that just means you didn't try hard enough since it should be really easy with both your current income/loans, and also your first gen. status). You should apply to 15 programs for free. Sorry for the tough love... I am lucky that I have some amazing friends who have guided me through this process, and hopefully we here on the forum can help you get through this. PS: It's been beaten to death, but GRE scores generally are important only as a threshold.. ie, of course Columbia looks at GRE scores first, but they do a soft weeding out with this info - they will probably set aside everything below 500 or 550 on a verbal score, and then go from there to look at other parts of the application. A decent/good GRE score is necessary just to make that first cut-off.. so yes, scores at what they might look at first, but not most important in the overall application.

It also seems that from past years, there seems to be a set of students that are "on hold" for a few weeks for whatever reason... they also seem to not get as great of funding as the "4-5 year" packages we are hearing about right now.. its sort of like an unofficial wait list that isn't announced. After reading all of last year's forum, it seemed that no one really got off of official wait lists to get in, but there were students who for some reason heard of admits later than everyone else. Its almost as if the "wait list" is a gentle rejection, where the true wait list is during the month of Feb-March, where people don't hear back immediately and their application is "on hold".. any thoughts? Maybe I'm reading last year's forum posts wrong.. but I was surprised that almost no one got off a "wait list" and that people heard back from schools surprisingly at very different intervals.

I think a trend that is going on with some of the top public schools like UCLA is that they are placing a lot of emphasis on making sure all admitted students have decent full funding packages, which would lend to a lower admit rate and also a higher selectivity. This is probably what is happening at UW. Both Wisconsin and California got hit hard by state budget cuts, so this probably means that they have less funding, and in turn, probably less spots. I know in years past, the public schools got known for being a bit cutthroat with the cohorts competing against each other for funding in their first two years, but many of the schools now seem to find this model unproductive and are leaning away from it. I noticed on the UCLA site that they gave every student some sort of funding last year? And someone just said this about UW? If this is the case, then that is very different from years past, and perhaps UW is also following this model of funding all its students and cutting its admit rate. Both good and bad for us I guess...

Of course the random exceptions to this rule if you wind up a superstar... though often, these movements are only say from top 20/30 into top 5/10, and then when they happen it is because you are a superstar in your subfield - and honestly, these cases in my mind only come up few and far between (M Zhou comes to mind, but can't think of too many others like her).

Yes... but it was a repeat first aired awhile ago.. (they do that sometimes)... the Reagan library one is a classic episode. For some reason, the This American Life episodes that feature children are the most fascinating.. I still get chills thinking about the episode with the two transgender children "Somewhere Out There" - amazing radio. I'm surprised Ira Glass hasn't gotten a MacArthur.

No... still waiting to hear anything official from my schools, but none of the schools I applied to have traditionally admitted in January -- the one random admit from Chicago might be the anomaly (no one has claimed that yet though here). My guess is that the crunch time for me will be in mid-February with some extending into early March, especially those schools where funding is more complicated (ie, the UCs). I was fascinated by the 2 pages in one day read from the UT forum... well, I guess not so fun for those of you applying to UT... it was more of a "I'm glad I didn't apply there or I think I'd be having an ulcer right now"... my heart goes out to those of you who didn't get in there... it's a bit crushing to read all the emotion from you.... it was like live-time blogging at a conference or something.

@Chuck.. agreed! My guess, is that if I was a professor, I would kindly write back quickly to as many people who write to me with helpful information if I could, but not engage too deeply (or a long back and forth e-mail thread) with a student until I had a lot more information about that student. Unless you do what some professors do (M. Waters at Harvard has a gentle "I can not respond to admissions e-mails" notice), you probably try to respond quickly and politely, but not give favoritism until the entire review process begins with all the materials in hand. It makes sense - someone who sounds completely coherent over e-mail might be a terrible academic writer, but only evident in their writing sample. Probably the most helpful thing about contacting departments though is what @avee experienced. Although, as I mentioned before, contacting graduate students might be a good way to get that type of information (who is retiring, who doesn't work with students, who is great with graduate students, etc).

I don't see it... looked and sorted the forum but did not see the UT Austin acceptance on the forum...

@Supernovasky... I sort of have something similar... not too serious of an issue, but the Ivy's/Chicago block of top tier schools I applied to are all in locations I'm not thrilled about.. I have been on the East Coast for awhile now but am from California, and would love to move back there, and my parents are there too and its been getting more and more frustrating trying to come home for the holidays. They are of course really encouraging of me regardless but I can tell they are secretly rooting for me to pick a program closer to them in the southern california area. I'm also tired of snow. Yes, first world problems and I know I am sounding like a baby, and I could easily get rejected from all the schools I applied to as the Ivy's/Chicago were a stretch anyway. But is anyone else rooting more for a "location" than program?

I agree here with @TSISoVapid... you can just send out some polite emails and see what happens... and don't read too much into it. One POI actually replied to me 3 months after I sent my e-mail -- when I first got no response, I had the standard thoughts of "this person must be terrible at working with graduates" and the also self-deprecating feeling of "I stink and sound so boring that my POI had no interest in writing back" -- then it turns out she actually just had a baby the week I wrote my e-mail and was off on sabbatical all year (but this was obviously not played up on the school's website). Oops. My bad. These professors have lives and it must be hard to write back to everyone who hounds then, even students who they think might be great to work with and have in their program.

It's so funny how I am just using this board/website to see if decisions have been made (not even bothering checking the results/websites pages of the schools themselves). I figure this site will be the first to post anything actually concrete, given how delayed and inaccurate it seems the webpages of the schools seem to be (and I also can't remember or am just irritated by all the login/passwords needed for the application websites themselves).

Aside from admissions, the GRE scores are sometimes important for fellowship/funding purposes... some programs need to send in their applicants to the graduate school at large for various fellowships that are in competition with students from other departments. A friend of mine with average GRE scores (in the 500s) still got into a top program (one of the top ten public schools), but didn't have any funding the first year (And found out later this was solely due to GRE scores). It's really annoying to be honest, since we like to think that the GRE's aren't that important and some of the top programs even seem to downplay using them at all -- but they still have a way of coming into the mix in ways that can bite us. In Sociology, I believe that both V and Q scores are looked at, with more emphasis on V, but you shouldn't bomb the Q.

Welcome @socieconomist - thanks so much for joining the posting and not lurking! Wow - lots of food for thought... I am still thinking about your comment/rant here the about USNWR rankings tier thing.. and then you drop the bomb in your other post about applying to only two schools.. brave. Very commendable. I spent over $1000 on 9 apps. That will be on my credit cards for awhile. I think one thing we've all realized though is that rankings play a role in the academic process.. for good and mostly bad. But I also think more importantly though in this process is to keep an open mind about schools and not feel that there are perfect fits or POIs... even though someone's research on paper (or on their school's website) fits your own research, that person might be really hard to work with or not have time for you. Also, I've heard of closet research in regards to some professors. When I was talking to graduate students at various schools I was interested in, I would sometimes hear things like even though so-and-so's most published work is on political sociology, they are *great* at ethnography, or even though so-and-so's work is all about migration, that person is an excellent advisor on gender. Things like that came up a lot. I guess what I'm saying is that the best advice was apply broadly and with an open mind - if you get into a program, that school thinks you are a good fit for them... so you should consider them even though it might not look like a 100% match at first glance. In regards to the 2 schools you applied to, did you already meet with faculty there and hence, feel fairly confident about getting in? I am just sitting on pins and needles right now about all of this as I just don't know if anything is a true shoe-in (and I'm saying this with really good GRE scores, undergrad, etc).. like with Princeton, an admit of 15 students out of a few hundred are not the best odds.