Rutgers Sociology Program

[nsk]

Hello All:

I only recently decided to apply for a PhD in Sociology (Nov 15)... I am an outsider to sociology with scant knowledge about current program rankings (but know enough about the subject matter to be intensely interested in the field).

Unfortunately, I am constrained by geography and have to apply within the Metro NY/NJ area. I was wondering if anyone could throw some light on the Sociology programs at Rutgers and Yale (as I am trying to decide if I should apply to them). Any information on GC-CUNY would be appreciated (as I know some professors in GC and generally like the school).

I would like to acquire a strong background in three sub-areas - comparative and historical sociology, economic and org. sociology & sociology of Culture - before picking a dissertation topic.

Thanks

[misterpat]

Hello All:

I only recently decided to apply for a PhD in Sociology (Nov 15)... I am an outsider to sociology with scant knowledge about current program rankings (but know enough about the subject matter to be intensely interested in the field).

Unfortunately, I am constrained by geography and have to apply within the Metro NY/NJ area. I have already applied to Columbia, NYU, Princeton and GC-CUNY. I was wondering if anyone could throw some light on the Sociology programs at Rutgers and Yale (as I am trying to decide if I should apply to them). Any information on GC-CUNY and how it compares to the other five programs would be appreciated (as I know some professors in GC and generally like the school). I have no first-hand knowledge about other schools (apart from what I read on their web site). Am I also missing any other programs that I should be applying to (New School)?

I would like to acquire a strong background in three sub-areas - comparative and historical sociology, economic and org. sociology & sociology of Culture - before picking a dissertation topic. I am broadly interested in the impact of technology on society (at various levels).

Thanks

Application Stats:

GRE (Dec 2008): Math 800, Verbal 710

Graduate degree

Good research experience

Good Letters of Reference

First off: New School doesn't fund their students. Don't pay for a sociology degree.

Rutgers is a great program. I've read a lot of books by their faculty (I had a great professor whose PhD is from there, Wayne Brekhus, who assigned me a number of them). Eviatar Zerubavel is great, especially if you're into Sociology of Culture. If you like the work of Erving Goffman, you'll like Zerubavel.

Yale has a few excellent faculty members, most notably Jeffrey Alexander. Most people I've talked to consider it an A- program. It's behind Harvard, Princeton and all those top schools, but it's still a great program. You kind of get to ride the reputation of Yale being one of the best universities in the country despite the fact its ranked 20 or so, I've been told. The two main areas are comparative/historical and culture, so it looks like a good fit for you. Go for it.

I don't know anything about GC-CUNY. Princeton, NYU and Columbia were all excellent choices.

Best of luck, you should fare well in the admissions process. Congrats on your GREs.

[nsk]

Thanks for the information... I will be adding Rutgers to the list of schools. Regards.

[slothy]

I think it's a tough call... you would be selling yourself a bit short with Rutgers given your profile, but on the other hand it's very difficult to be so constrained by geography. You really have to decide if there's a faculty match there and how far from NY is too far... are you thinking of daily commuting, or just close enough to drive home on weekends? If you're searching for other respectably-ranked schools in the region, I know that SUNY Albany is fairly well ranked (25 on US News? - no idea what their deadline is though) that, if my knowledge of Northeast geography is correct, might not be too much further afield than Princeton/Yale. Maybe also Stony Brook on Long Island, although I think their program is pretty obscure.

[misterpat]

Stony Brook has a lot of Gender faculty members, like Michael Kimmel. It doesn't seem they have many faculty members doing economic sociology, though.

[nsk]

Thanks for your help... Just submitted my application to Rutgers. Good Luck to everyone.