FertMigMort

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Javits is cancelled for next year: http://ucsdgraduatefunding.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/jacob-javits-fellowship-canceled-for-2012-2013/ For some reason I thought it was cancelled this year too, but I can't find the article now. I have an NSF GRFP and I always share my essays with new students at my school. To be eligible for the NSF GRFP you can't have taken any graduate courses between undergrad and your graduate career. If you already have a masters, you are ineligible. I would check to see how sociology majors faired in April when these fellowships come out. Since they cancelled the NSF DIG (see below) this year, I am concerned that they are also going to defund NSF GRFP. I will also mention the NSF Dissertation Improvement grants, but those are specifically for research. Unfortunately, the government is defunding those as well. We had 3 people place in the top 1 percent, but they could only fund one. They also cancelled the February round of funding. <_< Check your university, fellowships are frequently offered by the college your department resides in. Sometimes your department chooses, but sometimes you can apply for them. Ford is a great option as well. You can't get any extra funding unless you apply for it.

Excellent advice. Associate is tenured at my school as well, although some people never move beyond associate.

Not a dumb question. I think the general terminology is assistant prof = non-tenured (usually TT though); associate prof = tenured, but not full; professor = full tenured professor. Check the school's website and the professor's CV. Those are usually the best sources of information. When in doubt, call the office and ask the secretary/admin assistant. They will know a lot of times. ETA: You don't have to reveal who you are. Just say something like "hi, I'm trying to contact Professor X. Do you know if they are tenured?" It's kind of a weird question, but they shuold know the answer. I used this trick when I was trying to determine if someone I met on my visit who was up for tenure got tenure. No one was straight with me on visit weekend, so I called the department's office and a lovely admin assistant told me that Prof X was leaving the program. Oh and future students, be VERY nice to the administrative assistants. They can make your life so much easier.

On which part? I'm honestly getting a little nervous saying as much as I have. I hate dissing other schools, I just know that my friends in the UC system are really unhappy and they mostly attribute it to the funding situation. I think UC schools are still doing fantastic research and they are still ranked very highly in our discipline in USNWR. The poaching is what concerns me the most.

Has anyone else struggled with medical issues in grad school? I was diagnosed with a "benign" tumor right and had to have radiation treatment. I'm super lucky that my amazing grad student insurance covered all of the bills and I got to go to the University's amazing medical school hospital for treatment. That said, I'm still struggling with some issues related to the tumor and am wondering how others deal with medical situations in grad school. Are there even others out there like me? Where do you get support from? Do you feel like you face a stigma from your department? How has your advisor reacted? ETA: If you don't want to come out with it on the board, maybe you would be willing to PM me? I know that some people are private about medical stuff and don't want to talk about it.

Here is my experience with TT vs. tenured professors as advisors, mentors, committee members, etc: TT faculty seem to be under a lot more pressure because of the amount of pubs they are expected to have before they can get tenure here. On the plus side, that means they are publishing like crazy and are super productive. On the other, that makes them a risk. If they don't get tenure and you've invested all of this time in them, it can really hurt your future career if they don't get another job right away. They are also untested. I was the first person to put a certain TT person on my dissertation and comps committee. It kind of bit me in the ass, because that person's questions were AWFUL. Comps is stressful enough without getting incomprehensible questions on top of the stress! TT just didn't have enough institutional memory to write good questions. Luckily, I had balanced my committee with older more established professors I knew TT wanted to impress and it all turned out alright. The two full professors that I work with are both exceptionally productive even late in their careers and are producing some stuff that's cutting edge because they aren't worried about tenure. So I would agree with your generalization there. I also know full professors who are super lazy now that they have tenure and barely publish at all. Those people are easy enough to weed out, just ask to look at their CV.

Y'all are ridiculously nice and I am BLUSHING Let's see... adivsors. I'm actually not sure I have much advice here because my advisor fell into my lap. My topic is sort of esoteric in my department; only one professor works exclusively students studying that topic. Since that professor had the max number of students, I had to pick a second choice. They assigned me to my current advisor and it's been a disgustingly pleasant relationship since. My advisor has a few shortcomings, but I make up for them by seeking advice from other faculty members and making connections outside of my home institution. I also think that advisor fit is really personal. I prefer to meet weekly and have more oversight on my work (feedback on drafts, guidance about job applications, etc.) whereas some of my friends prefer to meet only monthly and don't want as much input. Can you take harsh criticism or do you prefer the blows be dropped by degrees? I am not great at having someone say "well this just sucks". I need someone who will say "your work is weak here, here and here. Improve it by doing this, this and this". Ask their other students what it's like to have your advisor. Use your gut; you can usually tell when people seem unhappy. I found the chapter in Getting What You Came For (http://www.amazon.com/Getting-What-You-Came-Students/dp/0374524777) to be pretty helpful in advisor selection. I'd definitely reccommend that book. It doesn't ALL apply to social scientists, but a lot of the information is general enough to help. A few things *I* look for in an advisor: (bolding the I, because advisor fit is personal) Advisor's network: Who do they know? This becomes more important when you go on the job market. Advisor's student's placements: Are they all non-academics? Are they post docs? Do they get TT jobs down the road? Do I get along with my potential advisor? Who do they colloborate with in the department? Outside of the department? Are they generous with student publications? (This one is SUPER important! I know some really great advisors who are also super stingy with pubs and my cohortmates are not very happy on the eve of their job market search.) Does my advisor give me what I need? If not, can I get what I need from others to supplement what I get from them? Maybe some other students already in school can chime in? I'm certain that my perspective isn't the only one.

I agree with wildviolet. In our field, there are quite a few UC's in the top 20. I don't want to piss off everyone who applied to the UC system over in our forum, but none of my friends at UC are happy. They say the funding is more piecemeal and it causes them a lot more stress. There is also at least one department in the UC system (not Berkley) where my friend from UG told me they have sent out department emails about making payroll. We are in the process of poaching a top UC professor and another top 10 school just invited in 3 UC professors for a "colloquium". At this point, I wouldn't touch the UC system with a ten-foot pole. That's my two cents though. I was in a similar situation when I applied (one place offered 5 years without summer and one 5 years with) and I took the sure bet. Grad school is stressful enough without having to worry about your paycheck. To qualify all of that, if Berkley is doing great research in an area you're interested in and current grad students say that the funding situation isn't that bad, then I'd say go for it! Good luck!

Hey guys, Just another warning that I posted last year. It's fine if you want to share this information with others, but recruitment chairs and grad directors are aware of the existence of this board and can easily use this information to link you to your application and your comments on this board. As much as I'd love a full demographic run-down of everyone (look at my name after all) I just want to help y'all maintain your anonimity. Don't worry, I'm not on our recruitment committee this year. I won't tell anyone. And if you don't care about being identified, then post away!

Hi fortesdelena: First, here are the USNWR rankings: 1. UWisconsin - Madison 2. UC Berkley 3. UMichicgan - Ann Arbor 4. Penn State 4. UCLA 4. UT - Austin 7. UNC - Chapel Hill 8. UC - Santa Barbara 8. UMaryland - College Park 8. UPenn 8. UWashington Some other programs I'd give an honorable mention to not in the top 10 are Princeton, Brown and Ohio State. What do you want from a demography program? If you want an additional or separate demography degree, only a few programs offer that (one of which is Berkley). Some programs are structed so that you get a joint degrees, one in something else and one in Demography (Penn State, Princeton, UPenn, Florida State). Another thing to look for is a pop center. Here is a list of pop centers, some located at schools and others at places like the Pop Council (http://www.popcenters.org/member-list). Pop centers is a sign that the university has seriously invested in their demography training program and have money to fund it. Hope that helps!

That's the hard thing about giving people advice about repuation. Everyone is probably going to disagree slightly about how good a school is because of their own placement, specialty and advisor connections. I fully admit to not knowing everything about every school. I only consider them hidden because my friends at private schools never mention UNC, despite it's ranking. I think UNC is an outstanding program and would be really excited to get a postdoc there. I finally found their placement page http://sociology.unc.edu/people/alumni-and-recent-placements if anyone wants to look for themselves. Looks like before the economic crisis they were sending lots of students to TT jobs at top 20 schools. That is fantastic placement!

Ours are. So are a lot of fellowships, but that varies.

Depends on how they fund summers. Our stipends are released in equal increments for 10 months and then summer funding is released over 2 months and is about $400 less than the stipend during the other 10 months. Fellowships are usually released in equal 12 month increments.

It's not clear to me from their websites. For example, if you look at Harvard's website (http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/gs/gradstudentplace.html) they only show placements at top schools. Furthermore, it's pretty out of date, because I know that Turley is at Rice now, not Wisconsin. I know that UNC's postdocs place really well and in the field of demography, postdocs have become the norm before a first academic job. I would consider UNC a school with good placement, but I don't have any data to base that on. Just a feeling. Wow... that was probably the most unhelpful thing I've said thus far. Please forgive me!

This is coming a little late andy, but I think of UNC as one of those hidden public school gems in the same category with UT-Austin, Penn State or UWashington. Excellent pop center and lots of potential mentors to colloborate with. If you're interested in demography at all, you should strongly consider UNC.

Jenjenjen, Washington is one of the lowest public school ones. I think only UTexas's is lower and Austin is much cheaper to live in. This is based on the offers I was made in 2008, one of which was from Washington. ETA: I should add that this is among the top 30 schools or so. I don't know what the trends are outside of there.

I'm already in grad school, but I faced a similar decision when I was applying to grad school between two very similar programs. I found these listed as criteria in another thread and I'll share my two cents about them looking back on my decision: Research/Academic Fit: Both of my programs fit this well, but one was better than the other. I personally think this is the most important critereon of all. You should try to pick a place where you have at least 2 people you can work with and where others share your research interests. The people who dropped out of my cohort all cited fit as one of the reasons why. Advisor: This played into my decision in a strange way; I hated my potential advisor in one department and the other I finally chose was an unknown. I decided that the devil I didn't know was better than the one I knew. He was just awful and I could never have seen myself working with him. Financial Package: This was one of my final considerations, but not my first one. It made it easier to choose between the two schools because the one I was leaning towards offered me a financial package that was financially unfeasible to live on. They were also unwiling to negotiate. Geographic Considerations: I used this when I applied to schools. I didn't apply anywhere that I didn't want to live, so this wasn't a final consideration. Placement record of Department: One department was more open to non-academic jobs than the other. That drove my decision here, because I was interested in non-academic jobs when I graduated. Vibe of cohort: This didn't matter to me at all. If it had, I wouldn't have picked the school that I did. I found students and people I liked outside of cohort. How quickly I can finish: This was pretty important to me. One program's time to completion was 5 years, the other was 7. I didn't want to spend 7 years in graduate school. Program resources: One school really just had fantastic resources for students that the other did not. Travel funding, summer support, etc. This was probably the final thing that really tipped the scales the way that I went.

Perfect advice. I think this is a really smart way to handle things. No super secret societies! When I went on my visits there was a lot of overlap, so it's unreasonable to expect y'all to never talk about how visits were at other schools. Good luck this weekend!

This is a tougher question to answer. I would go by the feel of the person asking you. If they are just asking to get information and be nosy, you can reply with something like "I got into another program strong in X, X, X". If they are really trying to help you make a more informed decision, they should reply with the strengths of their program in X, X, X. If they are being nosy they might probe more. I also think there can be pros and cons of telling people where else you were accepted. A pro is that if I know where else you're considering then I can give you better information about how our program compares. On the other hand, a con of that is that not everyone is well informed about other programs you are asking them to compare themselves to and sometimes in the heat of the competitive moment people can turn nasty (like the person on my visit). A pro is that you can use this as a negotiating tool to get yourself a better stipend at school A if you like it better than school B, but school B gave you more money. In general, I would say don't broadcast where you're going, but if you really want to know how programs compare then go ahead and name another program. My caution about broadcasting comes from a student we had attend our recruitment weekend a few years ago. They were waitlisted at another school and could NOT SHUT UP about that other program. It turned a lot of us off, students and professors. Like I said before, we put a lot of work into these weekends and it's hurtful when someone comes and isn't interested and wastes our time talking excessively about another program. Incidentally, that student ended up not getting off the waitlist of their dream program and came here instead. I'm happy to tell your how my program stacks up to similar ones, but don't really want to discuss the inner workings of Department X when I'm in Department Z. Hope that's helpful! Please keep asking questions! I am happy to answer questions on this board or by PM.

When I went to recruitment weekends, I found the fell into two camps. In the first type, they are playing it cool. You already know they are interested, but they're pretending like they're maybe not THAT interested. They ask you a lot of questions, all leaning towards how impressive YOU are. People asked me about my other offers and they were quick to tell me why their program was better than X program. While that might be true, it kind of turned me off. On one of my visits, my POI trashed my current department, only to be really flustered when I reminded him they were identically ranked to the program he was in. In my opinion (not everyone will agree), if you're really a good fit with a program, they don't need to trash other programs you applied to. You'll figure it out by asking questions and seeing that it's the best place for you! Also at this type, the focus was more on fitting in with my own potential cohort instead of with the existing students. I had very minimal interaction with existing graduate students in that department and I wasn't entirely clear on if they were happy. This type of program tends to be top 10 (although not always) and very competitive. If you want an R1 job, don't let this steer you away from a progam. I have many friends I met on recruitment weekends at these type of programs who are very happy now. This brings me to the second type. The department I chose had a weekend that fell into the latter camp. This type of university focuses only on themselves. They talk about their resources and how great THEY are. Unless you explictly say "oh I'm comparing y'all to StateXUniveristy" they probably won't make many direct comparisons. Even then, when we recruit, we are told NEVER to trash another place. The idea is that this place is so great that we only want you to come if you think you're going to be happy and be a good fit. The culture of these programs tends to be much less competitive. I only visited two weekends like this, but the university I finally chose was my safety school until the recruitment weekend. The caution I have about these programs is sometimes they are too positive. Don't let yourself get swept up in the positive emotions of recruitment weekend and end up committing to a type II program that's a pretty good fit over a type I program that's the BEST fit for you. No program is 100% positive sunshine and roses. I don't care what they tell you on recruitment weekend, there are some skeletons in the closet and some unhappy people there. You will almost never see this side of any program on their recruitment weekend. Try to gather information and make the most informed decision possible. This is why I emphasize fit over all other criterea when advising recruits. I believe that if you're happy doing your work, other stuff falls away. Sure, I don't like the town my university is located in, but it's only for a small number of years. I picked a program with a great fit and a lot of resources and 90% of the time I'm a happy grad student. A list of questions I think are important to ask: Are most people happy in the program? If not, why are they unhappy? (This part is super important. If a theory person came to a demography-focused program and complains that it's not a theory program, that doesn't mean it's a bad program. That means that person didn't pick a program with a good fit. If people with good fit are unhappy, then you have a problem!) What is it like to live in University City? How do comprehensive exams work? When do you take them? How are people chosen for additional years of funding? Does the funding clock stop if you apply for outside funding? How many people apply for outside funding? What are the success rates and what support does the program give? What is the culture like? (This question is HARD to get a real answer too. My best advice is to stand back and people watch for a bit at the party. Are people cliquish? Are they genial? Do students know all professor's names and are they comfortable at least introducing you to them?) What are summers like? Does your POI co-author with their students? (Ask their students. If they won't answer you, go look at their CV. Rule of thumb: if they don't have a list of people they've mentored and/or some way to acknowledge their grad student authors, they probably fall in the stingy authorship camp) Do students co-author papers with each other? If you're interested in non-academic jobs, how are those placements? Is that goal supported by the department? Do grad students teach their own classes? Are there resources for those who do? To address your cocern about "holding your own". Don't worry about it. This isn't a competition. You've already been admitted. They've already picked you! Regardless of what school you pick, you will go on to be a successful person. I enjoy having prospectives that ask thoughtful, intelligent questions. I've spent over 100 hours involved in recruitment weekends since I've been here. I am always willing to take time to talk to recruits. That said, I really don't like it when they trash my university. Recruitment weekends are expensive. We spend over $1500 on average per recruit at our weekend. This is on the high end, but most visit weekends require some type of investment by the program. Our graduate students spend countless hours emailing and calling prospectives, and preparing for the weekend to make it a success. When someone comes to our weekend and says nasty things about our program or talks incessantly about another program, I am incredibly turned off. Treat every school you visit with respect. People attend that program and have some pride in it, otherwise they wouldn't be helping out with recruitment weekend. If you do this, don't be surprised if older graduate students don't want to answer your questions. If you want to compare the program you're at to another one, ask a question like this, "How does this program compare to others with academic placements?" They should be able to provide you with concrete information that you can compare later. Sorry I wrote a manifesto! Please feel free to press me on any of this or have me clarify something, either here or on PM. As you can probably tell, I love recruitment activities. I think of it as an investment in my program. If I can get the best students to come to my program and they can go on to be superstars, that reflects positively on my program and me. Hope that helps!

From my perspective, it sounds like you might be on the waitlist. Unless the recruitment weekend includes a formal interview process, it's pretty unusual for a program to invite you unless you're already admitted. That's from my own personal experience and how our program handles waitlist students. Last year for example, we invited 25 students, 7 accepted and our 1 waitlist visitor was also accepted. We've also had situations where we invited 22 students, 18 accepted and none of our waitlisted students were accepted. Places like Rice and UC-Boulder have an interview built into the weekend, so it's kind of the final round before admittance. Long story short, I don't think it's a guarantee, but it sounds like you have your foot in the door. Occasional late offers do happen as well.

*bump* I'll out myself as an advanced student who has chaired two recruitment weekends and attended 5 recruitments myself. I'm not invovled in our current recruitment weekend, so I feel comfortable answering any questions you have. Some of it will be program specific, but I can try my best to give some general advice. Ask away!

Don't wear heels. We always have one or two students who are really overdressed and it seems to alienate them from their potential cohortmates. Try to dress like you're going on a first date. So your nice jeans, a nice sweater or dressier shirt. Heels/dress shoes are not necessary. /advice from a graduate recruitment chair

I think it's very important to go. We tend to give priority to waitlisted students who show up on the weekends. It shows a high level of interest. The most common strategy I've heard for waitlisted students is to let the school know that they would absolutely attend there if they were taken off the waitlist.

Uh oh, I hope it's not my program! We have people book through a travel agent, although we pay for the whole thing. So I'm hoping that's not us. I'm sorry to hear that y'all are having trouble with recruitment travel though. Hope stuff goes more smoothly at other places!