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Dragon

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  • Application Season
    2013 Spring
  • Program
    Sociology

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  1. What would you do if youre famous POI left the university? Not unheard of!
  2. Hi everyone, I was reluctant to post this b/c I'm very hesitant to post stuff online, but I can claim the Columbia admit. If I could guess based upon the call and that there have been no other admits on the board there will be more admissions coming, but obviously I don't know for sure. Sorry I don't want to share any more of my stats than I've already shared. Good luck!
  3. Umm...while that may have worked out in your case I'm not sure it's the best strategy? Usually it's pretty clear when you've messed around with the margins - the admissions committees usually print out the applications. I've heard faculty get annoyed when students try to mess with the margins and font to make the cut off. My advice for future applicants would be to through your application with a fine toothed comb and make sure all the parts are in the same font, same margins, etc in order to appear as professional as possible. First impressions matter!
  4. I agree with this post almost entirely, especially the section on sob stories. You want to convey professionalism and knowledge of the discipline. I would also add that sociology SOPs are different from political science or other disciplines. You really need to get a sense for what is typical/what the admissions committees want (for example in history they want a very specific research agenda - almost like a research proposal - whereas I recieved feedback that my statement was too specific in earlier drafts for sociology). You don't need to be married to this proposal - the admissions committees know that you research agenda may (and probably will) change over the course of your PhD - you are signaling with this your ability to think like a sociologist and knowledge of the discipline. I think a good general format for these things are introduction (why sociology - which will probably include some personal stuff), your background, research agenda, why you want to go to that specific school. The one point I disagree with is that you should not edit your writing samples. This is not the advice i got - you want to put your best foot forward. If you were worried about submitting something that was far afield from what you originally submitted for a class, you could always explain on the first page header that this is a paper based off of a paper you wrote for xyz class. I agree that it's really important to be honest with the applications (as in anything in life!), but it's also important not to submit something riddled with spelling errors. One thing I've realized through this process is that (among many other things) access to the information required to make a good application is very limited and unfairly distributed. I went to an elite private unviersity and got all the advice that Alasdair so kindly put together and published well before my application. I guess what's great about this site is that we have an opportunity to spread more of this information, although it's always so tricking putting things online. Good luck everyone.
  5. If ya'll want to read some very interesting scholarship related to rankings and quantification (which, in addition to jacib's words, may make you think twice about relying on reputational scores as a measure of quality) check out wendy espeland's work
  6. To be honest, I find these sorts of things pretty unkind.
  7. I think this conversation also moves us away from what (in my point of view) may be more important - that telling someone they should abandon the idea of getting a PhD without any idea of their background, interests, field of study, etc, isn't very helpful.
  8. Hi everyone! I've been lurking for a while but have been enjoying reading your posts. This is anxiety-induced researching, but I was looking on Petersens website and it seems like polisci programs on the whole have some of the most competitive admissions among all the different disciplines (across humanities, ss and hard sciences). Is that the impression that you guys have as well? Of course, just comparing admissions statistics doesn't really tell us whether it's harder to get into poli sci prograsm than others, as there may be an even stronger selection bias among applicants for some disciplines (I could see this in the sciences especially).
  9. Okay, thanks guys! I think what you guys are saying makes sense.
  10. Hi everyone, To the admitted but funding wait-listed students: Does anybody have any sense how long the waitlist is? I got the sense that UCLA admits many more students than usually accept their offer, but because of funding constraints they can only give $$ to exactly how many candidates they can fund. Under this scenario, it's pretty likely that funding waitlisted kids will get money eventually (when other funded students turn them down), but maybe I'm being overlly optimistic. It's just kinda strange that they admitted a lot of people without a guarantee of funding - if they really wanted us they would offer funding up front, right? Thanks!
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