Political Science to Sociology?

[dienekes]

I'm currently a Political Science *3.9 GPA) undergraduate at a large public university in the Midwest, and I'm interested in doing research on technology, law, intellectual property and, generally, the social, cultural and political implications of the Internet. I like Political Science, but I've become a little unenamored with what I perceive to be a kind of rigidity of theory and methodology (particularly in American Politics). I also like that Sociology seems to have made more of a place for Critical/Post-structuralist Theory (something I'm interested in and have some background in, thanks to my minor in Composition & Rhetoric), and it might lend itself better to doing a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods (again, American Politics is currently obsessed with quantitative studies). I started university as a humanities person, and I've never been able to shake that kind of qualitative style entirely but I do find it kind of tiresome to do all the time. In addition, I've noticed that a lot of the research papers I've written over the course of my career have been sociology texts. However, I don't really know that much about Sociology as a field (I've only taken one course, a class on Drugs & Society which was terrible, but I wasn't that interested in the subject and a friend of mine who is a Sociology major and took the course said it was atypically bad), but I feel like my Political Science classes are within the same spectrum as Sociology. I'm also taking a statistics courses right now which could be helpful, and I might take the second half of it next Fall if it seems useful. The soc department at my school, however, doesn't seem to have any faculty explicitly interested in Political Sociology, and so the course offerings don't seem to match my interests very well.

Basically, I'm wondering, well, a lot of things:

1. Would it be possible to get into a good grad school in Sociology with a BA in Political Science and minimal (okay, nearly non-existent) background in Soc?

2. What might I not know about Soc as an academic discipline (i.e., does it really vary so widely from Pols)?

3. What's the job market like? I imagine it being similar to Pols; not great, certainly, but there are jobs out there if you get into a good department and publish. I also have some inkling that Soc is somewhat more applicable to certain kinds of non-academic research jobs, but I might be imagining that.

4. Does my research interest have a good match with a particular subfield of sociology? I've been poking around and seen Political Sociology and Sociology of Law listed as faculty research interests, but I don't have a sense of what that would look like and whether Internet-related sociology has taken hold yet as a subfield.

[modernityisdead]

i think i have the same dilemma. my bachelor's degree was in political science and i'm currently doing my master's in southeast asian studies (with a focus on political sociology in SEA). however, i'm thinking of apply to some sociology departments for my phd this december. the reason why i'm thinking of doing a phd in sociology is because i've always worked on social movements. my honors thesis was on the emergence and development of a gay and lesbian social movement in the philippines, and i'm now working on how gay and lesbian social movements employ collective identity as a strategy outside the united states, particularly in SEA (having Bernstein's argument as my initial assumption). with this said, i ask the same questions raised by dienekes.

i would highly appreciate your thoughts!

[xonglennao]

At Xavier, students in political science pursue answers to the vital questions of equity, justice, and peace in the modern world. Our challenging courses consider the best political and social science literature with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of contemporary domestic and foreign controversies, including those of human rights and democracy, equality and race, poverty and social class, terrorism and war. In this way, students confront the promise and limits of political and social solutions to humanity’s gravest problems.

The department offers intellectually stimulating introductory courses: American government and politics, comparative government, introduction to sociology, and international relations. These courses go beyond the presentation of “nuts and bolts” to explore underlying issues of real significance. Upper level courses are limited in size and scope, allowing students to debate the political and social issues that are of greatest interest to them.

The department has internship programs in Washington, DC and in Cincinnati. Students can apply what they learn in their courses to the political and social structures they experience as interns.

[jacib]

I'm just rechecking this website out of boredom, I applied and got in last year, but let me give you my two cents. Sociology is very flexible when it comes to backgrounds. However, they want to know that you're interested in sociology and not some other field.

I also applied to sociology with divided loyalties--I applied to programs in sociology and religion. My father is a sociology professor and told me that sociology programs don't really want to see you applying to other programs. To the sociology adcomms, applying in other fields is apparently the mark of an "unserious student". That's the word my father usef, and I think that's also the word that a professor at Harvard used when I asked if it would be appropriate to apply to the sociology program and the divinity school. I'm not saying you can't apply to both types of programs, I'm saying don't broadcast it. I would definitely put in your statement of purpose why you're switching fields, what the limits of politic science are. For me, I was running into very specific problems with religion programs so it was easy.

Oh, and I had exactly one sociology course on my undergraduate transcript. So don't worry about that. In fact, I had one sociology, one and a half anthropology courses, and one political science course. I took a lot more religion and history courses. Most schools just want a social science, broadly defined. Then again, I've definitely seen sociology PhD students and professors who had undergraduate engineering degrees, so even that is a strict limit. Your past is much less important than the promise you show for the future, in all honesty.

[myrrh]

1. Would it be possible to get into a good grad school in Sociology with a BA in Political Science and minimal (okay, nearly non-existent) background in Soc?

I am attending a school, which would be said as good by people, and at least one in my cohort majored in PS for undergrad. So don't worry about your background, just let the adcomm know how smart, well-trained and committed you are!

[soc_gradGuy]

I agree with what's been stated above and would just add that you should consider to applying to both types of programs. Political Sociology and Political Science are so similar that it would probably be easy enough to craft similar applications to these types of programs (though, of course citing different literatures). It's not my field but I've taken a couple of Political Soc class in grad school that were cross-listed (faculty taught in both and grad students were from both) but I would say there's a slightly more conservative stance to how Political Science views certain problems (or at least that's the sense I got from their students--great, smart people but a little more conventional in how they framed problems).

I am attending a school, which would be said as good by people, and at least one in my cohort majored in PS for undergrad. So don't worry about your background, just let the adcomm know how smart, well-trained and committed you are!