Starting all over again - rejected from 6 last year

[suerte]

here we go again, another year.

i chose not to apply to law school. (okay, i am applying to two low-ranking law schools for backup if my expensive Ph.D. pursuits fail to cash in for me...again. granted this is sociology i am applying for, so i use the word "cash" lightly. still would rather study it, love it, and be jobless than a lawyer who trades her youth for billable hours...but that is another post).

strategy:

- GET BETTER GRE SCORES (how is the new GRE test format, I wonder? i read that the math may be harder...shucks)

- SEND LETTERS OF INTEREST BY 8/15 with CV on fancy paper (~35)

- BUILD WEBSITE (already have domain name and hosting; site is up and running, just needs me to dump my lifeʻs work in sociology into it and arrange it with a semblance of order. lest possible faculty mentors shudder and click away...)

- Contact letter writers by 8/15...preliminarily. Send them draft SOP by 9/1.

- Send out transcripts by 9/1 (expensive!!). Some schools want 2 official ones from each school, others only accept scans.

- Call secretaries re: fee waivers, application deadlines, when review begins, and fellowship forms by 8/10

- Revise papers I want to submit for sample (question: NSF proposal or something else? honors thesis from 4 years ago?)

- Print out and line-edit last years personal history statement

- Re-write SOP's (use what I already wrote about wanting to work with faculty; revamp intro and conclusion using little blurbs I have written in my notebook about my passion for the discipline).

- And decide how to narrow down my proposed field of study? So difficult....

schools applying for: (or, the 'God hates cowards listʻ)

Northwestern, UNC-Chapel Hill, U Penn, Penn State, University of Chicago, Wisconsin, Berkeley, Stanford, Princeton (pending availability of fee waivers for some. like my uncle, bless his soul, told me last year, ʻGod hates cowardsʻ)

about me:

- BA in Sociology at a school with a top 3-ranking Soc. Ph.D. program in 2007 w/ High Honors & departmental award

- MA in Anthropology at a low-ranking school where I wrote a great NSF proposal and further developed my Ph.D. goals (and learned cool words like ideographic and nomothetical, and a semblance of understanding to accurately use them when portraying my intellectual biography to others. I can also describe my cool Ph.D. goals in 10 words or less to mere non-academic mortals!)

- 2 co-authored publications, but not in sociology

- Undergrad GPA: 3.78 (3.86 only including the last 3 years; higher for soc-only courses; two A+'s, one in a soc. theory and one in a soc. methods course).

- Grad GPA: 3.76

- GPA at community college I attended full-time for 2 years while concurrently enrolled in high school: 3.84

- 7 years Research Assistant experience, relevant to my Ph.D. goals

- 3 strong letter writers/mentors (people I appreciated working for whom I learned a lot from)

- I composed a well-written personal history statement last year

- I also wrote a statement of purpose that does explicate why i want to work with specific faculty members, for last year.

- Speak 4 languages

weaknesses from last year's application

- GRE of 1230 (or 1240) (terrible! i get soooo much higher on the practice tests; I just get nervous without a watch on my wrist to look at)

- did not contact faculty i wanted to work wit until january or early february (shameful repercussions of being an over-worked procrastinator)

- need to have more clearly defined Ph.D. goals

Here's to not wasting my money entirely again this year!!

[SocHope]

I don't know that not contacting faculty would necessarily hurt your chances. I've gotten some pretty mixed feedback on that. Some people do, some people don't, but it doesn't seem like it counts for a whole lot in the admissions process. I guess there is the odd story here or there of a person really going to bat for a candidate, but I don't think that's very common.

I'll be doing my first round of PhD applications this fall! I vacillate between fairly confident to miserable self-doubt, so it'll be fun to go through a whole fall and winter riding THAT roller coaster!

Good luck!

[wishingstar]

hi!

wow that's a great list of goals you got there! i know what you mean by the GRE score. mine was around that range too...i'm pretty nervous about it (i just got my scores back yesterday) and probably will retake it. *sigh* Good luck with everything!

[avee]

I don't understand why you were rejected the following year. I know people with worse GRE scores and no research experience (besides their master's thesis) who got into programs fully funded. You must not be telling us something... so spill it.

[smaturin]

I'm surprised that you weren't accepted last year, but raising your GRE score and contacting faculty in advance (who may not have or want anything to do with the selection committee) may not be enough to put you over the hill if there was something in your file that turned people off a year ago. Your list of schools is really, really ambitious, and while there's much to be said for attending a school whose name will impress, there are also many excellent professors doing excellent work at some of the schools that fall just below the tier you're shooting for. Why not apply to some of those schools also, if being a sociologist is what you truly want to do?

Edited September 4, 2011 by smaturin