[When/how to go about updating your CV in Grad School?]

I'm about to start a PhD program in the fall. I put together a pretty convincing CV when I was applying to schools, but now that I'm actually in and about to start, I'm not sure how long I should keep my undergrad experience listed on my CV.

I was involved with about three independent projects throughout my undergrad career and presented them at conferences and etc. Needless to say, though, the work I was producing as a 2nd year undergrad is a far cry from what I want to do now. Really, only the most recent project (my senior thesis) is something I'd like to be associated with going forward. But including all the other things just makes me look so much more prolific. It's weird to have worked this hard for the last four years to accumulate all this experience, only to wipe the record clean now.

What do you think-- do you keep your undergrad experience on your CV indefinitely, gradually purge it as you get involved with more serious work, or just start with a more or less clean slate in grad school?

Thanks!

[Dilemma: Should I apply this year or next]

I'd say go for it. It can be really difficult to gauge where you're going to get in, especially with an atypical background, so why not give it a shot? Plenty of people get into top places without publications, so don't take that as a requisite-- it's just icing on the cake, and, as socialgroovements points out, you still get mega bonus points for being able to say you have a publication in the works on your CV and to be able to discuss it in your SOP.

The fact that you're involved with publishable research is probably much more valuable than the merit badge of the publication itself. I think some times people get overly concerned about these little frills and demarcations of having done work rather than the content and quality of the work itself. AdComms generally care if you have interesting, sophisticated, and/or creative ideas and experience carrying out research as much if not more so than whether or not you've published (and the fact that you're in the process still says a lot about your seriousness, ambition, etc). Anyway, I'm rambling at this point, but I would just say don't lose sight of all the valuable work you've done!

I almost waited to apply this year (I applied last year), and in retrospect I'm really glad I did it sooner rather than later. We can all rationalize how we'd be better if only given a bit more time to improve ourselves and our records, but you'll just never know how you stack up against the competition until you actually apply. If it doesn't work out, you can always apply later!

[Best Universities in Demography]

Hi, Yolanda.

I'm not doing a degree in demography, though I minored in it as an undergrad and considered pursuing it further for about a minute. I just went through the application process last year for soc programs, though, and I can tell you that all programs seem to be looking for people from all different backgrounds. There were plenty of people I met looking at schools who were coming straight out of undergrad (usually with lots of research experience, but not exclusively), most with a Sociology degree, some with a more minimal background in SOC, a few with no SOC background whatsoever; many had master's degrees, many did not; people came from all sorts of professional backgrounds, including non-profit work, research, law, medicine, political activism, work at research centers, TFA, business consulting, and I think one person had been working as a speech writer for Obama. Talking to professors and current grad students, there seemed to be an increasingly high proportion of straight from undergrad types in the last few years' admitted cohorts, but the general consensus was that more people were probably applying straight out of college since there aren't that many jobs out there rather than any shifting preference on the school's end. All the things you listed sound like really great experience that I'm sure will help you when applying (and, you know, when actually pursuing the degree) so I wouldn't worry about not having a master's etc.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I highly recommend contacting students in programs you're looking at directly. You're kind of sending out a message in a bottle here and you don't know that it's likely anyone with relevant info will find it. Most schools list contact information for graduate students on their website, and if they don't you could email a prof or administrative personnel saying you're a prospective student and would like to be put in touch with current students in the program. It happens all the time, so it's no big deal for anyone on the other end. I did this for every school I applied to, and it was extremely helpful both in helping me figure out which schools I really wanted to go to and in helping me figure out how to tailor my application to schools. This was probably actually the best resource for me when applying.

Good luck!

[Stipend]

Can I ask why you're asking?

I think thisslum's numbers are accurate based on my experience, but I would add that there are so many little variations in policies from school to school, and that a lot more of it is negotiable than I originally realized. Some schools have little goodies stashed away for their students-- travel funds, book buying allowances, computer allowance your first year, relocation costs, etc. And different schools will have very different obligations attached to the money they offer. Some will require you TA or RA to get the money, some won't require anything, some will offer you extra money on top of your stipend if you teach or advise theses. And TAing in some settings will be very different from TAing in others; RAing for some professors different than RAing for others. Also, different schools might advertise the same stipend dollar amount, but some will guarantee it for X years while others get fuzzy on the numbers after the first year or two. Anyway, I think my point is that it's harder to make direct comparisons between funding practices than you might think (even beyond the issue of different costs of living in different areas), so I wouldn't worry too much about it until you have the numbers and other details in front of you so you can sort them all out.

Of course, if you're just asking because you heard it's abysmal and you want to double check, then, yeah-- I will reiterate the general knowledge that you're not going to get rich. 14K-30K was the range I saw (though if you're an NYU student with an NSF or similar grant who teaches, it can be more like 60K....but that's a weird outlier.)

[At what point is it ok to shift to the first name?]

Haha...this was such an issue for me! I was fairly close with my professors in undergrad, and the ones that knew me well would often sign emails really informally, as in "-mike." But I never felt comfortable actually calling them by their first names. I would just avoid it in person, but emails were awkward and I usually stuck to Prof So-and-So. It wasn't until after I officially decided to accept their offer to the grad program that the DGS emailed me back (I had sent in an email saying Dear Prof So-and-So) saying "For goodness' sake, just call me Heather!" Now it's all first names. I think you're probably safe sticking with titles as an undergrad, then switching to first names in grad school. If you don't feel comfortable, err on the conservative side.

[Is grad school even an option?]

If you have over a 3.0, you've definitely got a shot. Admissions committees can see your transcript, so they can see the pattern of grades you got and will be able to see what's going on with your bio classes. Getting better grades in your field and toward the end of your undergrad years is going to help mitigate the damage of a less than competitive overall GPA.

Of course it would be better to have a higher GPA, but there's nothing to do at this point but play up everything else you've got going for you. Research experience is a huge plus-- there was some variety in GPAs among the people visiting the departments I looked at this last year (all top ones in my field) but the one thing everyone had in common was having done research as an undergrad. Based 100% on anecdotal information from a different discipline, I would be much more concerned if you were on here saying you had a solid GPA but no research experience than I am hearing that you have a less competitive GPA and two publications. So I would get as much mileage out of that experience as possible, and work really hard at getting a competitive GRE score (having higher numbers somewhere will probably help you not get screened out early on). Good luck!

[Berkeley, CA]

@Carlisle: BSC co-ops are a fabulous place to live, especially if your main concern is meeting new people and having easy access to an active social life outside your department. I lived in the co-ops as an undergrad and am about to move into a grad student only co-op as a PhD student. We've had a few graduate students and older undergrads (24-27ish) living in my house over the years, but I wouldn't really recommend living in the not specifically grad student houses (Hillegas Parker or Convent) if you're older and don't want to risk living with a bunch of 19-20 year olds (though I've known many people who have done it and loved it-- it really depends on what you're looking for.) The BSC apartments are also a great price for living so close to campus, and offer a bit more community than the average apartment, but no where near as much as the houses.

It's actually a bit late in the game to get on the waitlist for co-ops this fall, though you would have an advantage as an international student. If you are seriously considering this option, please PM me and I will gladly dish on all the specific houses and other pros and cons of cooperative living in Berkeley. Good luck!

P.S. IRFuture: There are 17 different houses and 3 different apartment complexes in the BSC-- while the average co-op is probably more than deserving of the cleanliness remark, there is a ton of diversity in house size, culture, etc and I guarantee there are exceptions to that general rule!

[Roll Call]

Guys, as someone who just went through this process last year (and admittedly who only discovered this site after I had applied and started hearing back from schools), this seems potentially immensely anxiety inducing while offering little constructive payoff. I'm not sure what the point is, other than trying to size up your competition (or possibly to brag?).

Maybe I'm missing something, but I would encourage you to not drive yourself crazy by trying to compare your "stats" this early in the game. This process is already strange and stressful enough, and it's arbitrary and unpredictable enough that you will inevitably all be surprised at some of the places you and others do and do not get in. So do what you want to do, but I don't think this is a great idea (though the last two questions seem reasonable..)

[Older Applicants?]

From what I've seen, there's a pretty solid mix of people going straight through and people coming in with more work experience at top programs. When visiting schools as a prospective student, I have heard general agreement that the last couple years have had younger admits on average, though I'm sure that has more to do with the recession pushing more students into grad school earlier than they might otherwise apply than anything else.

But I'm sure admissions committees will see the same pros and cons that you do. There are a ton of benefits to having outside experience, and I think the best thing you can do is leverage those experiences and skills as much as possible in your applications. But, other than maybe having a bit more trouble than a recent graduate when it comes to getting letters of recommendation, I can't imagine you'd be at any disadvantage.

[Ranked Terminal Masters Programs]

I totally agree with you, xdarthveganx. Obviously, advice on where you should or should not apply is not going to be very useful unless it's coming from someone who knows both you and the field pretty well, but in general I agree with that it only makes sense to apply to places you would actually attend if you got in. That was my mindset when I applied. Since I was more or less straight out of undergrad and relatively young, I only applied to seven schools that I knew I would actually attend if they were my only option. It ended up working out well for me, but even if it hadn't, I knew I was willing to apply again next year rather than risk hurting my future job prospects by going to a less prestigious program.

I'm always surprised when I read things on this forum along the lines of "I only got into my safety school-- should I go or wait another year and apply again?" If you aren't willing to attend a school, why would you invest the time and money to apply?

But back to the original topic of the conversation: I didn't look very far into terminal master's programs, but don't some of those programs let you apply for a PhD and then recommend you for the Master's program if you aren't accepted? I know a few people who were in that boat from Chicago and Columbia. Is there any reason why it would be more strategic to apply directly to the MA rather than applying for a PhD knowing that the MA is an automatica backup plan if that doesn't work out? Just curious.

[Choice regret]

I got two good pieces of advice on this from friends:

1. (The advice I think many people will have heard): They're all good decisions-- no matter which you choose, it will be a good decision so there's no reason to worry no matter which you choose.

2. (A different twist on the same theme) You're going to regret it no matter which you choose (especially when you're at a difficult point, which you will experience no matter where you go). So there's no reason to worry no matter which you choose.

Either way: You made the right decision. Don't fret.

[Hard to say 'No'?]

The main story I heard was about someone accepting an offer at one school on the deadline, freaking out and taking it back, accepting an offer to a second school, freaking out and then taking it back, and then finally sticking to a third school.

I laughed and said I hoped that didn't turn out to be me, and the professor telling me this story just said "People remember things like that..."

So, a bit of an extreme example, but apparently these things happen.

[Hard to say 'No'?]

Also, the point about closing the door on potential futures reminded me so much of this passage from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (once upon a time, my go-to source of comfort in the depths of pre-teen angst):

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”

[Hard to say 'No'?]

This has been discussed elsewhere on the forum, but I think the general consensus is try not to stress out too much. It's a bigger deal for you than it is for them.

I'm not of the frame of mind that you should just suck it up, realize they don't care, and expect they will just mark your name off a list and move on. This is a small world (as a prof in my department pointed out the other day, you can fit all of the active members of the field into a medium sized room), and people remember things. I heard a few great stories while visiting about past students who had made some serious faux pas while rejecting schools.

Personally, I haven't said no to any schools where I felt especially connected to faculty, so I just emailed the DGS and that was that. I do think that taking the time to acknowledge and thank certain faculty will probably just help you stick out as a genuinely nice and thoughtful person, so I wouldn't stress too much over the content. I think the gesture is already pretty sweet.

[Harvard... but not my dream school.]

Hey!

I'm making the same decision (Harvard v. Berkeley), though with a very different set of complicating factors. Berkeley doesn't have and never will have Harvard money, but they were reasonable enough with my funding package that I don't see that as a deal breaker. One thing you should do if you haven't already is talk to current PhD students about how they get by. One of the Berkeley students in my department pointed out that everyone makes it, no one drops out or does badly because of lack of funding. That doesn't mean it will be as easy as it would be at an Ivy League school, but it was still reassuring to hear.

But I completely understand the whole superficial not wanting to say no to Harvard thing. There is something very exciting about the prospect of telling people that I go to Harvard. I think you just have to bracket that and realize that it will probably be exciting at first and then maybe again on a few scattered occasions for the next few years, but that going to a school means spending every day there for years, most of which will not include anyone oohing or awing at your prestigious affiliations. When you're out sunbathing on your roof in 70 degree Januaries in Berkeley (I live there now and that's how I spent this last winter) then you probably won't care.

Personally, I'm at the point where I really wanted to want to go to Harvard, but I just think Berkeley is the right choice for me.

Anyway-- good luck with the decision!

[How important are extra curricular activities for grad school applications?]

First off, I have to admit that I don't totally get the upvote and downvote system and don't use it.

But I do think that the information you shared doesn't really jive with the rest of our experiences. Of course, most if not all of the people here are people who have recently been through the admissions process and are sharing information based on advice we received along the way. That being said, I'll repeat that all of the advice I've gotten from professors, advisors, and grad students at several top universities (I spoke to several grad students from other universities who had served on admissions committees before applying) is that if it doesn't have anything to do with your academic life or research, it's not really relevant. Yes, it might be interesting to have a musician or a painter or an athlete or a swing dancing enthusiast around the department, but taking part in any of those activities as an undergraduate will not help you get into a PhD program in sociology.

That doesn't mean that applications are done strictly by the numbers. There are lots of activities that you could participate in that strengthen your application, particularly anything to do with teaching/tutoring and involvement in activities directly related to your research interests. Interested in housing issues in the U.S. and spent two years volunteering for Habitat for Humanity? Probably makes sense to discuss that one. Interested in housing issues in the U.S. and spent two years in a modern dance performance group? Maybe a little less helpful.

Anyway, I'm not saying that there are no outliers in this process, and it's totally possible that some professors here and there might like to see "well-rounded" applicants. I am saying that it's counterproductive to get in the mindset of someone applying for undergrad and start thinking "If only I become the president of every club, then they will definitely let me in!" If you're interested in making yourself more competitive to an admissions committee, focus on getting research experience, presenting at conferences, and doing well in your courses. And don't sweat it if you weren't president of any clubs in college-- no one will care.

[How important are extra curricular activities for grad school applications?]

The short answer: they don't.

You're applying for an academic research degree, so for the most part admissions committees will be looking at evidence that you can succeed as an academic. Extracurriculars can be icing on the cake, and they can maybe show indirect things about your ambition and leadership and etc that might put you in a positive light, but it's not like undergrad. Nobody cares if you did sports, etc. Volunteer and work experience is only really relevant if it has something to do with your academic/research interests.

[Impostor Syndrome]

[i posted this in another forum on this site, but I would also be interested to know if anyone in the smaller world of Sociology has anything to say on the subject...]

I've always been relatively confident in my choice to go to graduate school and in my ability to do well in my field. After getting into several top schools, I was feeling even more so. But since I've started visiting schools, I've started developing some serious impostor syndrome. I don't know if it's from having to repeat my somewhat shaky research interests over and over again, or from meeting so many super accomplished prospective students with really interesting and/or well thought out plans for grad school, but I am definitely starting to feel like maybe I am not ready for this.

Has anyone else dealt with these feelings? Do they go away at any point? Any tips for managing them?

[Impostor Syndrome]

I've always been relatively confident in my choice to go to graduate school and in my ability to do well in my field. After getting into several top schools, I was feeling even more so. But since I've started visiting schools, I've started developing some serious impostor syndrome. I don't know if it's from having to repeat my somewhat shaky research interests over and over again, or from meeting so many super accomplished prospective students with really interesting and/or well thought out plans for grad school, but I am definitely starting to feel like maybe I am not ready for this.

Has anyone else dealt with these feelings? Do they go away at any point? Any tips for managing them?

[Decisions about Programs]

In Ohhello's, defense...I feel like the issue being addressed here might not be the specificity of research interests per se, as much as it might be about what I imagine will be the touchy subject of the "quality" of the cohort at the schools you're considering. "Quality" is the word a professor used when giving me this advice, which I think he meant as a metric of how smart/interesting do you find your prospective cohort. I don't think this is necessarily an absolute measure, but I do think it's important to feel intellectually stimulated by your colleagues and/or supported in whatever arenas you value.

Of course, I'm totally reading into the original comment, and this might not be what Ohhello meant at all. But I do see how specificity of research interests coming into the program could be (though isn't necessarily) a proxy for how familiar students are with the field of Sociology in general, or how serious they have been as students (especially if they're not coming from another discipline), which could be a proxy for "quality". This might not matter in the long run as you'd all end up with similar training, but I think it's totally reasonable to be concerned about feeling like a big fish in a small pond while others play catchup. In more general (and maybe slightly less arrogant sounding) terms, I think it's reasonable to be concerned if you feel like you're not intellectually or otherwise on the same page with your cohort, whatever that might mean.

[Inquiry from a worried undergrad]

First off, I have to wonder about the validity of the responses you'll get on a thread like this. After all, this forum seems to be mostly populated by prospective students who have just gone through the process or maybe a few grad students. So we're mostly going based off the limited experience we have with our own successes or failures, those of our friends and classmates, and whatever advice we were given along the way. I really think this is a conversation you should have with professors or other people who know you and have been on the other side of the admissions process.

That being said...yeah, you seem like you're perfectly competitive for a PhD program. It's still an inherently competitive process, so you should do everything you can to give yourself an edge. Study hard for the GRE, get in whatever research experience you can between now and application deadlines, get lots of feedback on your SOP, polish up your writing sample, do your research on which schools fit you best, etc. (I've gotten a little annoyed at conversations about "This part of the application is really important!" I've rambled about this at length in other forums, but the fact of the matter is that different professors on different committees in different departments are more or less impressed by different things, which means essentially that everything is important because at the end of the day you don't know who's going to be reading your application. You just have to do your best with what you've got.)

Also, the GRE advice above might be a little dated/inaccurate. The new GRE is out of 170, not 800, so worry more about %ile than raw score (admissions committees are still figuring out what raw scores mean...) And according to the old GRE, a 600 in verbal and a 600 in quant are radically different-- remember that we're taking the same test as math and engineering students, which really distorts the quant numbers (something the new GRE tries to correct for). This is pretty anecdotal, but I get the impression that it's not unusual for SOC applicants to have significantly stronger verbal scores than quant scores (I scored in the 98%ile verbal, 75%ile quant and got into several top schools), though the expectations might change if you emphasize an interest in more quantitative methods. But really, who knows?

As for the SOP advice...I would definitely disagree here. Maybe if you're out of school and working in a field totally unrelated to what you want to do and are sure that nothing will change at all between now and the November/December/January deadlines, then it would make sense for you to start writing a SOP. But if you're still an undergrad/recently graduated, and especially if you're still working on research right now, than I think it's pretty likely that things will change enough between now and then that it would be silly to start writing now. I had a lot of undergrad research experience, but the interests I wrote about in my SOP only really started to crystallize the fall I applied.

Anyway-- go talk to your professors, and good luck!

[Help me pick which intro to use!]

I think intro #2 is MUCH stronger.

The first one seems off topic, and frankly a little sappy. If those sorts of intros aren't done extremely well, they can really turn off admissions committees who have to read tons of these things...

[Rejected from BU, but admitted to Harvard + UPenn..how does that make sense?]

Do you know the ranks of the programs? It could be that Columbia is #1 and Harvard and UPenn are lower ranked.

In IR, for a Master's, Harvard is actually ranked 3rd, below Georgetown and below Johns Hopkins. So while someone might get an admit for Harvard and a rejection from Georgetown and JHU, it's really not confusing as to why. Rankings.

The application pool gets more competitive each year.. which might be why you were wait listed two years ago and rejected this time.

I think this is a pretty oversimplified idea of how rankings work...

First off, rankings are an extremely imprecise science. There is no real way to quantify and compare the quality of an academic department. Yes, you can make rough approximations based on a few variables, but no variables are universally agreed upon as markers of quality, and there's definitely no way to decide which variables are the most important, and on and on and on. On top of that, official rankings tend to lag behind widespread perceptions of a program by a few years. And on top of that, the overall ranking of a program may not be the same as a specialty within the department. In other words, a department may be strong overall, but weak in a particular subfield, or weak overall, but exceptionally strong in a particular subfield. In the vast majority of fields, you're really not going to see a huge difference between schools in the top five, and probably ten, when it comes to perceived or actual quality.

It's also a pretty inaccurate portrayal of how admissions decisions get made. Being ranked more highly does not necessarily mean that school is more likely to reject you for many, many reasons. First off, as has been mentioned several times on this thread already, fit for a program is extremely important. You are more likely to get into a highly ranked program if your background, goals, and interests fit the program perfectly than you are to get into a lower ranked program where you're ill-matched. And there are just so many other factors at work: the size of the program and the cohort they admit; networks between your LORs and the profs at your prospective schools; random fluctuations of fate.

Basically, it just doesn't work like that.

[Sociology SOP]

(This might be something good to post in the Sociology forum?)

My feeling is that (within certain parameters) there is no "right" answer to the question of what you want to study. Different students will have a different range of interests, and some will have more well developed interests than others. I get the sense that neither route is inherently more effective than the other-- it's all in how well you make a case for yourself.

If you honestly have several interests, than maybe emphasize the ones that make the most sense with your undergrad experiences ("I want to continue with my work on X topic, specifically exploring the issues of blah blah blah...") and then mention that you are also interested in studying other subfields, if possibly tying them to you interests you have more experience with, at least tangentially. If the interest is only casual and you don't have any real experience with it (haven't taken a course, written a serious paper about, done research about it, etc) then I dont' think it's worth mentioning. (I have an ongoing casual interest in health and illness-- read one interesting paper in a Soc of Culture class and read lots of pop science about it, but I didn't discuss it as an interest in my SOP, even though a small part of me can see myself going that direction in the future.)

One other thing you might keep in mind is that you can (and should!) tailor your statement to different programs, emphasizing different interests where appropriate. I think this route especially makes sense if you're on the more open minded end of the spectrum where your interests are concerned. For instance, if Program A specializes in Subfields 1 and 2, emphasize research interests 1 and 2 in your statement; if Program B specializes in Subfields 2 and 3, but not 1, then maybe switch the focus in your SOP accordingly. This approach won't really be helpful if you have an extremely clear idea of what you want to do, of course.

I think I listed three major subfields in my statement, but switched emphasis a bit depending on the school. I listed specific interests where these subfields intersected, but didn't have a specific research project laid out. (A friend of mine was also very successful with his application, but his statement was like "I will do EXACTLY THIS." So again, I think there's no one right way).

What ARE your interests, exactly?

[What did you put in your SOP?]

Looking back at my statement, it looks like most of it is actually a description of the research I've done-- tracing how my interests evolved through different experiences and what I got out of each experience.

Here's an outline:

I. Anecdotal introduction that brings up my personal background and lays out my passion/motivation for my field

II. Description of first independent research project: what I did, what I learned, etc

III. Brief paragraph explaining transition from early independent research interests to later ones

IV. Description of more recent independent research projects, including my thesis: what I did, what I found, etc.

V. Description of research assistant experiences: building a skill set/laying a foundation for my work, how it ties into my interests, etc

VI. What I want to study in grad school + Why this school is perfect for me (including listing specific faculty)

VII. Brief concluding paragraph, reaffirming why I want to study my field and long term goals of my career (kind of fluffy)

I also had one school that divided the statements into a Personal History Statement and a Statement of Purpose, which I also preferred. It was a little awkward condensing personal history in with academic goals in my SOP (though I think I eventually hit a good balance), but I liked being able to explain a lot more of my relevant non-academic experiences in the personal history (mostly teaching and volunteer work that were a huge part of my undergrad life).