giacomo

@SG: Yup, contemporary. I guess I wanted the question to be a more general, open-ended one. I'm curious now, though, to what extent could the question be understood dangerous (as in your initial understanding of it)? @SH: I do think you did answer the question. It was pretty ambiguous anyway. But I guess I didn't want it to be specific ("influential to the general audience," "influential to scholars," "influential to you," etc.). I think your observation ("things that seem hugely influential to me and others in my field might have little to no meaning to the wider populace") is right on.

"Influential" may be replaced with "paradigm-changing," "downright smartest," etc., I suppose. Anthropologists? Economists? Historians? Legal scholars? Linguists? Philosophers? Political Scientists? Sociologists? There's a good possibility that this might go down as the stupidest thread subject in the history of the Forums, but, hey, it's still May. Let's do some mindless things while we still have time.

@brent09 and @kalapocska: If I may, were you guys funded at your first school?

Me, too.

Much of what I'll say here has been already said or inferred in one way or another, but I'll add that, while U.S. Ph.D.'s are generally more prestigious than U.K. Ph.D.'s,, an Oxford degree will probably go farther than a BC degree at the same master's level both in the policy circle and in the academia (whether a master's degree can be helpful in the Ph.D. admissions is another discussion). I suspect that both programs will be more than an adequate stepping stone for a PhD program, but, for the same expensive price tag, which program would be a safer bet? BC wins in the U.S. networking category, but Oxford probably wins in the rest of the categories.

jacib's posts are all golden, as are yours, SG.

Why don't we do this, too?

I've been meaning to ask the following question to the fellow forum goers, but do teaching colleges and community colleges have tenure track positions?

What are some of the main arguments behind sociology being the first to be eliminated? Are they at least plausible?

Does this mean about, say, 70% of us (excluding varied anomalies) are doomed before entering grad school?

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. What an unfortunate waste of tenure.

Sorry, off-topic, but just a quick question. When something like this happens, what happens to the tenured and tenure-track faculty members?

Out of curiosity, how would you guys put the following variables in order of importance in landing a job out of grad school: - publication - quality (rank?) of your school - letters of recommendation - other (please specify) I guess I'd put them in this order, but I'm not even in grad school yet, so what do I know? (and I can't even think of a fourth one.) EDIT: Oops, sorry, this is kind of off-topic.

After all this wait, there'd better be good news. Bah.

Thanks, @tt503 and @barilicious. Good advice all around. @barilicious, are you and your colleagues presenting the papers written during your first year? Are you presenting them at grad students-only conferences?