FertMigMort

This is a money-making scam. It seems to be a rising trend. You're better off applying again next year to the Ph.D. program or going someplace where you got funding even if it's not your first choice.

Hi Neal! I'll chime in and say that on the committee I described in my AMA, the cutoff was for each test. We did not have a cutoff for the writing portion of the GRE.

It does indeed. I finished my Ph.D. and got a non-academic job. I am so much happier and healthier now that I've left. To avoid outing myself, if anyone has questions about leaving, please feel free to PM me.

Hey everyone, just wanted to say that I'm going to retire from answering questions. I've graduated and have a real job in the real world now. I'm definitely not a source of information for academics anymore. I'm glad that my thread was helpful and I hope that it serves as a resource for many people to come! Best of luck in academia!

I hope this isn't too late, but I don't remember this affecting applications. I know of several students who had divinity degrees, in my program and others. Hopefully, you've gotten in and this isn't a concern.

I'm not as familiar with Canadian applications, but in the US, most schools give some sort of preference to minority students. The type of preference varies from school to school.

The problem is that people have been saying this for years. When are we going to wise up and admit that the landscape has changed in such a way that for the majority of graduate students, a TT job at a HRM is not in the future? I would caution against it unless you have a clear need for the degree in your future occupation. Most of the people I know who are doing well have left academia.

Yeah, not to overstate it, but your professor is full of shit. Go look through the AMA I did on getting into grad school (stickied at the top of this forum) on more info about fit. If you have a stellar GPA/GRE we might let you in if fit is just okay, but not if fit was out and out bad. We also didn't like to admit students who didn't have a clear idea of what they wanted to do, even if it was just an area.

I talked about this a bit in my adcomm AMA, but we did not look at a total score. There aren't any guidelines that I could find for a total score percentile, just one broken out for each category. The GRE score was kind of a weed out tool. We had a cut-off and didn't look at students below that cut-off. Contact programs you're interested in or check their website, some of them have guidance or mean GRE scores that you can use as a guide. Best of luck!

Most schools are willing to work with you and create an unofficial recruitment visit. We usually had one or two students do this every year. You don't have to state your reason for missing it, schools know that you have other offers, you can just say that you have a conflict.

You're too kind. I assure you that I can't take even 1/4 of the credit. Y'all worked hard and got in on your own merit + the admissions crapshoot. I'm not here often anymore (real world job), but if anyone has questions, just PM me. I still get some and try to answer them in a timely fashion. Unlike some advisors ... ba-dum-cha! I can't agree with this point enough. Talk to AS MANY grad students as possible. I was happy to answer the same 3 questions repeatedly during recruitment weekend. Current grad students have different agendas, but my personal one was to make sure that the people coming here were going to contribute in a positive way to our department, which included them being happy and completing the program. Also, departments stash problem students sometimes. Some people in my cohort were never invited to email prospective students (made me so mad) because they weren't sunshine and smiles about the department. Nothing they said would have prevented me from going to my school, but the GA decided they couldn't take that risk.

As recruitment visits are approaching, I thought I might start a topic on what questions senior graduate students think are valuable to ask AND who you should direct them to. A few suggestions: What direction is the department heading in? (to the graduate director or the person you'll be working under) If you're coming into a department wanting to do education and there is a huge new push towards health research, that's something you need to know. How do you like working with X? (to ALL of their graduate students) Don't base your opinion on only one of your potential advisor's students. Try to get all of their opinions. What is the pass rate on comps/defenses? If you fail, can you retake them? (I would ask this of the grad director AND the students. Sometimes grad directors have reasons to inflate this number.) These are just a few of the questions I came up with off the top of my head. I'm sure that other faculty and older students here have others.

I was talking more from the perspective of being on an adcomm. Faculty members on the adcomm were very wary of students who had finished coursework and quals and wanted to transfer. I know people who have done it, but they have had to repeat coursework and/or quals.

First, I'm very sorry about your situation. There's no way around it, that sucks. Second, I concur with the things that have been said here. I would start by talking to your professor and seeing if there is any way that you could move with him. At this point, there is a week before the April 15th deadline and there is still some chance you could move (depending on the funding situation in his new department). If that isn't an option, look at where you are in the program. Have you taken your qualifying exams? Are you done with classwork? If you are, then your best choice is probably to stay where you are at. Some professors will continue to work with students even when they've moved away and some schools let you have an outside university member on your committee. Explore those options. Third, if you still have a ways to go, I would consider applying to another program. The downside of this is that you'll probably have to wait a whole year to start somewhere new. Schools are also hesitant to admit more advanced graduate students. Make sure that you detail your circumstances in a new personal statement. Best of luck to you.

Something fun. I remember what fun was like...

I am cross-posting this here. I underlined the portion I feel is most relevant to this discussion in case others are in this situation.

I was on an admissions committee this year and we had several students with your level of completion. They were never considered for admission when they said that they wanted to come and proceed from where they left off. Many schools will probably require you to retake your comprehensive exams and some or all of your Ph.D. coursework. I concur with others when they say that you can explain this in your narrative. Just be straightforward and forthcoming. Many committees might see you as a risk, but I'm sure that you can find a school that's a better fit for you. Best of luck!

I would argue it has more to do with the individual you're working with. I know plenty of established superstars that always publish with their students and make time for them. I also know up-and-coming scholars that are super stingy with authorships. Take a look at the CVs of the people you want to work with and check to see how many papers they write with students. That's a better indicator than their status alone.

Happened to me. Finally heard from them after April 15th that I was rejected. I primly told them that I had accepted at a better school. I don't regret it either! It only takes a minute to send that email!

Ah! I go on vacation and the USNWR goes crazy and decides to average rankings?! I guess that goes to show me that no good comes of relaxing. I came back to conspiracy theories about people in the top 10 who benefited from the averaging applying pressure. I did do a quick look at the comparison and found that schools that were hurt most by the change were almost all public. Interesting... I suspect that the bigger change in rankings for some programs led them to average it because they are selling the idea of prestige and reputation. That shouldn't be able to change that drastically (4 spots) in 4 years. This is just an unformed thought after getting off a transpacific flight.

AS, this has already been addressed, but I would just concur with what's being said. Submit your strongest writing piece that you have, regardless of the field. Most schools are okay with teaching you how to be a sociologist, but aren't going to teach you how to write.

Sorry I've taken so long to get back to you! You need to explain exactly why you have applied to each school. If both schools have pop centers, make sure to identify them correctly by name, as a resource that you are interested in. Name professors (1-3) that you are interested in working in at that school. Use the school's name (tangent: Seriously applicants!? Some of you don't do this! It was so hard to argue for you when you don't do this! We assume that you just used a generic SOP. Please, please, PLEASE don't make this mistake. P.S. USE THE RIGHT SCHOOL'S NAME!!!!) If that school has another resource (i.e. you want to do ethnography on immigrants and the school is located in an immigrant-rich city) mention it! Just make sure that when the committee reads your statement, they know why you applied to school X. Think of your SOP as an argument for your fit in the department you've addressed it to.

Sorry everyone, I've been out of town! Wait listing: So most of my experience with wait listing actually comes from my involvement in other aspects of the department rather than the adcomm. There wasn't much discussion of a wait list, because I think that we admitted a number of people that should yield the cohort size that we want. (This again was kind of murky, directed mostly by the DGS. We were given a number and we admitted that many) I could probably make an educated guess about the people who were on the wait list, but I have no idea what would have to happen for one of those people to get in. I also have no idea if the DGS contacted a number of people and told them they were on a waitlist. In the past, we have invited 1-2 waitlisters to recruitment events. Every year that I've been here (6) we've had someone get in off the waitlist. Most people know who they are, and I don't get a sense that they are thought less of. That's why I keep emphasizing some of the capriciousness of this process, because I think that all of the variables involved in admission change from year to year and even month to month during the recruitment process. Another comment about your last point: "Finally, are faculty and students equally as excited to have formerly wait-listed students join the department as they would for first round accepted students?" This might seem awful, but I wouldn't say that we're excited. Maybe faculty are, but rarely do future admits really impact what I do in the department. I'm friends with a lot of people in other cohorts, but at this point, I only meet 1-2 people out of each cohort and since I'm leaving soon (fingers crossed!) I don't have much contact with them. Also, I've found that level of excitement about a candidate rarely translates into results. If you'd looked at our cohort coming in and picked out the "top students" those are usually the ones that burned out. The person who came in with an article in ASR/AJS/SF dropped out and the person with the super low GRE score is now a superstar. I've noticed this trend a lot and as a result have quit worrying so much about my own comparative status in grad school. Sorry I can't be more illuminating about this topic! Wait listing and notifications seem to be the two subjects that give people the most anxiety and they are still black boxes.

I have a question for the people who asked me questions: Why do you think the application process is so secretive? What do you think universities gain by not being more transparent about it? Do you feel like this disproportionately affects some groups?

I actually didn't have anything to do with funding. There weren't any votes or discussion of funding during meetings. As far as I know, everyone here is fully funded (with maybe a few exceptions) although many people are tight-lipped about what they were offered. I suspect that GREs played a role in what fellowships were offered (I had a fellowship and my GRE score was really high) but that's just a suspicion.