Graduate Placement for Various Departments

[soci_student]

I'm kind of new to this place so I'm not sure if this is the best place to post. Anyway, I'm trying to find any information about recent placement for PhDs graduating from various sociology departments. I know some departments list recent graduate placement on their websites, but I'm not sure how up-to-date these are, and if they may be selective in what they post. It would be interesting to know how many graduates go on to post-doctoral programs vs. academic jobs vs. the private sector and where they go. That's probably more information than I'll ever get, but it seems like there must be a better resource for this than graduate department websites. Does anyone have any ideas?

[sinequanonsarah]

hmm... good question. What I've done with the departments I'm interested in is to email the graduate secretary directly. They have to keep this sort of information for records. Another option, though, for individuals who are members of ASA, is to see if ASA has any sort of program profile that includes this sort of information... I'm not a member anymore, so I can no longer access that "special-members-only" type info on the website... But if anyone else is, I would be interested to know if this is possible!

[alienatedlaborer]

PhDs.org has some breakdowns that might be helpful. No specific info on where people get placed, but helpful all the same:

http://graduate-school.phds.org/rankings/sociology

[misterpat]

It seems to me that schools that have better success placing PhDs at desirable schools have the most detailed info on their websites. Schools with decent but not great placement seem to more often just have a section like "Our students have gone on to positions at schools like..." and then they list a few major R1 schools but with no info as to when this happened or how often students end up at places like those.

Someone correct me about this if I am wrong, but a good person to e-mail might be a potential advisor you are looking at for that school. I've heard that your advisor plays a role in your job search, so that individuals placement record might prove useful if the website has a dearth of placement information. Some professors even have this information in their faculty profile.

[rising_star]

misterpat, I think contacting potential advisors is a terrific idea.