phd socio aspirant

[sociopsych]

Hi all, I am thinking of applying to socio phd programs for 2011 though am not very sure how many and which schools to apply as i have quite an unconventional background. I have a bachelors in engineering and masters in management and economics and also a work experience of around 4 years in a financial instituiton before i went for my masters. I have a gre score of 1460 with a 760 quants , 700 verbal and 5 awa split which was taken in 2008. I became interested in sociology while doing my masters thesis in behavorial economics. As i do not have a background in socio and also dodnt have steller grades in my acads (though my masters is from a well known university and i received good grades for my thesis ) i am not sure which range of schools i should target. i am interested in economic sociology and social psychology. Please advice.

thanks

[myrrh]

Hi all, I am thinking of applying to socio phd programs for 2011 though am not very sure how many and which schools to apply as i have quite an unconventional background. I have a bachelors in engineering and masters in management and economics and also a work experience of around 4 years in a financial instituiton before i went for my masters. I have a gre score of 1460 with a 760 quants , 700 verbal and 5 awa split which was taken in 2008. I became interested in sociology while doing my masters thesis in behavorial economics. As i do not have a background in socio and also dodnt have steller grades in my acads (though my masters is from a well known university and i received good grades for my thesis ) i am not sure which range of schools i should target. i am interested in economic sociology and social psychology. Please advice.

thanks

I think your GRE is fair for some top sociology programs. The critical part of your application would be your SoP - why are you coming to do socio? What have you done and how they made you a prepared prospective socio grad student? What are you going to focus on (not only area, you'd best have some probable topic) in the future? Will it related you your prior study in management? If yes, how will you translate your experience about management to sociology work?

Also, you need a writing sample that (most ideally) shows you can think sociologically. I would best contain some "sociological insight".

[hoobers]

You should have a shot at an awesome program if you show that you have done your homework, much as Tomi suggests. You might want to read up some back posts on orgtheory (http://orgtheory.wordpress.com/) to get a bit of an insight on the relationship between econ and soc, which is pretty complicated. Aside from this, it is an enormous asset for an economic sociologist to also understand neoclassical econ and have worked in finance. Some flavors of social psychology on the other hand have a very good relationship with behavioral econ. So, those are two major points in your favor. Beyond that, there are econophilic professors (and departments) to whom your econ background would be a real plus; there are far more who see lots of good aspects to econ but are critical of other aspects(e.g., its lack of methodological pluralism, overreliance on deduction, etc.); finally there are many who are just plain econophobic. You probably don't have a good shot with the latter anyway (unless you want to do some sort of born-again act), but you should know how to pitch your background to the former two categories.If you want a guess as to what camp a prof is in, see whether they have publications in Mathematical Sociology (or to a lesser extent in Social Networks): it would be a pretty good bet that they are at least partial econophiles. My bet it that being slightly critical of econ but also highlighting the benefits of knowing it is the way to go.

By the way, I am not too familiar with British departments, but I think they are far far more econophobic than US ones. You might have luck with Oxford, but other than that I would try for US schools if I were you.

Overall, sociology is an integrative discipline, located at the crossroads of social sciences and humanities--your varied background could make you very successful!

[sociopsych]

Thanks and lot Tomi and Hobbers for the encouraging feedback.The insight on the nature of interdisciplinary work at depts and the approaches taken has been very illuminating. Yes I now plan to do more extensive research on depts and apply as an informed applicant. Many thanks again.

cheers