Inquiry from a worried undergrad

[Jay14]

Hey all!

So I understand that this may an annoying thread, but I am slightly freaking out, and I couldn't really find any of the answers that I needed on any other thread. I was just wondering how competitive my stats would be? Unlike many other GradCafe users, I am not completely focused on getting into the most competitive programs, I am pretty much open to going anywhere! My GPA is a 3.68, I have done my own research, which was grant funded and IRB approved, which has been presented at two conferences thus far, one of which was the meeting of the ESS. I am also going to be a TA next semester, and have and will be presenting at numerous seminars regarding undergrad's involved in research. I am confident that my LOR's will be very strong, as I have close relationships with many professors in my schools department. I have also interned with an organization that works with homeless, at - risk, beaten and raped youth. I have not yet taken the GRE's, but I am no great standardized test taker. My areas of interest are Stratification, Demography, and Social Psychology. I know that this isn't enough information for an exact answer of whether or not I will be admitted anywhere, but I was just wondering how competitive I might be for admittance into a program?

[Darth.Vegan]

You sound pretty darn competitive anywhere. Is there an upward trend in your GPA? That could really help. My cumulative GPA is 3.7+, but that is only because I have a few community college grades from 5 years ago bringing my average down, for the last 3 years I have had a 3.94. While cumulative is important, an upward trend can make all the difference. I would think that with a good gre score you could be competitive in the top 30 and outside of that should do really well.

One caveat, this process is crazy competitive as you pointed out. Sometimes it seems it comes down to luck. Are you open to getting a terminal MA and then applying to PhD programs the next cycle? I am applying to 3 MA programs directly and then Columbia and Chicago automatically consider you for their MA as well. It can be expensive, but there are some funded options if you decide to go that route!

Edited March 20, 2012 by xdarthveganx

[Jay14]

Thanks for the reply! Yes, my GPA has gone up every semester, but I haven't dropped below a 3.5 thus far in college, so it has only gone up minimally. I am totally open to applying to MA programs as well! I am just worried about being admitted after looking on the boards recently and noticing people who are far more qualified than I am getting rejected. So scary! lol

[Darth.Vegan]

I am perfectly comfortable with using an MA program to climb a prestige ladder if I need to. But hopefully we won't have to do that and will just get offers right off the bat!

Also, what are you working on over the summer? I applied for two NSF internships but didn't get either one. It's ok though! I just got invited by a professor in my department into a research project for the summer that should pay me about 4k and end in a co-authored publication! Have you looked into summer research options yet? If not, I would start asking faculty in your department now.

Edited March 20, 2012 by xdarthveganx

[psychgurl]

You sound like a competitive applicant! As much as we'd like to believe the opposite, the GREs do matter. In psych, I think that 1350+ (sorry, don't know the new scoring) is very competitive. I would take that test seriously and apply broadly (10+ programs). I think this maximizes your chances for getting accepted somewhere...as the previous poster mentioned, a lot of this process is luck & fit above and beyond amazing stats and experiences. Good luck!

[Darth.Vegan]

GRE's do matter, but only to a certain extent. I am aiming for 85th+ percentile in both quant and verbal. That should ensure that an application is looked at thoroughly and doesn't raise any red flags.

Wisconsin-Madison suggests that above 75th percentile is "good," but I want a little buffer to protect myself!

Source: http://ssc.wisc.edu/soc/grad/admissions_faq.php#scores

Edited March 20, 2012 by xdarthveganx

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

Start working on your statement of purpose now and go through many, MANY, revisions. I suggest getting multiple professors inputs (I had two I would consult with and each give me valuable and unique ways to revise it). You should also start prepping your written sample too. If you can get a 1200+ on the gre you'll land somewhere (there tends to be cut offs in programs from 1100+ applicants, 1200+, 1300+, 1400+ but if you can get a 1200+ a majority of programs that aren't top 20 will move on to other parts of the application). Also, start looking for fit. You could be the strongest applicant but if you're applying to the wrong schools you're unlikely to get in. So anyways, really polish up your statement and sample as best you can and prep for the gre. Give yourself enough time to take the GRE twice too (maybe take one late summer and another mid fall).

Edited March 20, 2012 by ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid

[psychgurl]

GRE's do matter, but only to a certain extent. I am aiming for 85th+ percentile in both quant and verbal. That should ensure that an application is looked at thoroughly and doesn't raise any red flags.

Wisconsin-Madison suggests that above 75th percentile is "good," but I want a little buffer to protect myself!

Source: http://ssc.wisc.edu/..._faq.php#scores

I think that if you're above a threshold, they don't care too much about GRE. Keep in mind that 85th percentile + is higher than a 1350. This would be a very good score to have! I think that people who have in the 1200s may be on the low end of the threshold...I think most good programs have absolute cutoffs at 1200, but averages well into the 1300s.

[Darth.Vegan]

I think that if you're above a threshold, they don't care too much about GRE. Keep in mind that 85th percentile + is higher than a 1350. This would be a very good score to have! I think that people who have in the 1200s may be on the low end of the threshold...I think most good programs have absolute cutoffs at 1200, but averages well into the 1300s.

True. Keep in mind though, a poster in the GRE forum missed 9 (2 first section, 7 second section) questions out of 40 on the verbal section and still got 95th percentile on the new test. With only 2 weeks of studying I went from missing half the questions on a given section to missing only 4-5 per section. I am confident that with 2-3 months to study over the summer that I can drop that to 2-3 questions per section. Remember its not so much how many questions you miss, but which questions you miss depending on how they are weighted.

[splitends]

First off, I have to wonder about the validity of the responses you'll get on a thread like this. After all, this forum seems to be mostly populated by prospective students who have just gone through the process or maybe a few grad students. So we're mostly going based off the limited experience we have with our own successes or failures, those of our friends and classmates, and whatever advice we were given along the way. I really think this is a conversation you should have with professors or other people who know you and have been on the other side of the admissions process.

That being said...yeah, you seem like you're perfectly competitive for a PhD program. It's still an inherently competitive process, so you should do everything you can to give yourself an edge. Study hard for the GRE, get in whatever research experience you can between now and application deadlines, get lots of feedback on your SOP, polish up your writing sample, do your research on which schools fit you best, etc. (I've gotten a little annoyed at conversations about "This part of the application is really important!" I've rambled about this at length in other forums, but the fact of the matter is that different professors on different committees in different departments are more or less impressed by different things, which means essentially that everything is important because at the end of the day you don't know who's going to be reading your application. You just have to do your best with what you've got.)

Also, the GRE advice above might be a little dated/inaccurate. The new GRE is out of 170, not 800, so worry more about %ile than raw score (admissions committees are still figuring out what raw scores mean...) And according to the old GRE, a 600 in verbal and a 600 in quant are radically different-- remember that we're taking the same test as math and engineering students, which really distorts the quant numbers (something the new GRE tries to correct for). This is pretty anecdotal, but I get the impression that it's not unusual for SOC applicants to have significantly stronger verbal scores than quant scores (I scored in the 98%ile verbal, 75%ile quant and got into several top schools), though the expectations might change if you emphasize an interest in more quantitative methods. But really, who knows?

As for the SOP advice...I would definitely disagree here. Maybe if you're out of school and working in a field totally unrelated to what you want to do and are sure that nothing will change at all between now and the November/December/January deadlines, then it would make sense for you to start writing a SOP. But if you're still an undergrad/recently graduated, and especially if you're still working on research right now, than I think it's pretty likely that things will change enough between now and then that it would be silly to start writing now. I had a lot of undergrad research experience, but the interests I wrote about in my SOP only really started to crystallize the fall I applied.

Anyway-- go talk to your professors, and good luck!

[Darth.Vegan]

About the SOP. I think this really depends. I have had very solidified research interests for the past 2 years, and I doubt those will change between now and the fall. Will I be gaining more experience between now and then that I will want in my SOP? Sure, but it doesn't hurt to have a draft written now that you can show to professors to get comments. It's honestly not that hard to revise an SOP and add in your most recent experience. The initial structure and design is the most difficult IMO.

Also while I would echo asking professors for advice, I would also say that even young professors tend to have dated advice. Example: One of my most trusted letter writers is completely confident that I will get into a top 20 program, based on my experience, maturity, grades and research focus. She is relatively young, finished her PhD in 2007 from Wisconsin-Madison. When she applied in 2002 the acceptance rate was upwards of 35%, these days it is around 4-8% depending on the program. Things have changed considerably just in the last 10 years. I would take any advice from here with a grain of salt, but I would suggest the same about taking advice from faculty who may not be as familiar with the process today. If you're lucky enough to be at a T30 program already and can get advice from people on AdComms that would be ideal, but most of us are not that lucky.

[ThisSlumgullionIsSoVapid]

Just a quick comment on the SOP. You mainly need to be focusing on what you think is important to convey to a grad committee. Sure, your research interests might change in the next few months but I'm sure you have a pretty good idea considering you've done some research already. The important part is to present yourself in a relatively succinct way; you need to brainstorm what is important for you to include, the structure of it, and how you're going to be tailoring it. I wouldn't say sit down and churn out the entire statement right now but what I'm saying is you need to know what you're basically going to be saying about your history, about your academic experiences, why you want to go to grad school, why you want to go to that school, etc. When I wrote mine I was convinced it was pretty strong through all of my revisions but I left the last paragraph open ended because that was going to be my "why this school..." paragraph. In retrospect, I should have spent a little more time really nailing that last paragraph but I skimped on some applications on clearly delineating how and why I'm fit for their program. Lesson learned on that front but I am ending up at the place I really did have the best fit by far.

Oh, and in the mean time, try and meet a few of these professors face to face. If you have any conferences coming up start seeing if anyone you want to work with is presenting at any of them and then attend their session and introduce yourself.

[Jay14]

Thank you all SO much for all of the feedback! It really is greatly appreciated! And xdarthveganx, I unfortunately go to a smaller state school, which is not heavily focused on research! I am actually the first student from my college to ever even persue a graduate degree in Oneonta, that the faculty can remember! So, my research opportunities are a bit slimmer lol

[Jay14]

Also, excuse my ignorance, but when should I start contacting professors? And how exactly should I adress it? State that I have the same interest and ask what I can do to further qualify myself? Again, I'm sorry, I just have no idea! haha

[Darth.Vegan]

Also, excuse my ignorance, but when should I start contacting professors? And how exactly should I adress it? State that I have the same interest and ask what I can do to further qualify myself? Again, I'm sorry, I just have no idea! haha

I am going to wait until mid-late april once all the decisions for this years cohort have come in.

[Karlito]

This is too early I would say. Why don't you wait until the application season kicks off in mid/late September?

[Darth.Vegan]

This is too early I would say. Why don't you wait until the application season kicks off in mid/late September?

I am basing this off of advice from faculty. That way when I go to conferences in the summer I can connect the names with faces for POI's. Also, I am not suggesting sending only one email, I intend to keep regular contact with faculty that seem so inclined. It's all about building relationships. I plan to submit my apps late October and early November, I don't think I can build any kind of even superficial relationship in one to two months.

[Karlito]

Yes if you go to conference in the summer it makes sense. However, we have seen many applicants here building relationships with potential supervisors (some even saying things like "I am looking forward to seeing you in the fall") fail in the end. I just suggest not to put too much weight on such relationships in the admission process, although it sure can help. And I also suggest to all Fall 2013 applicants not to spend too much time on this forum, it just makes things more stressful. Good luck!

[dizzid]

I don't think there's any foolproof way to go about this application process. Many of us who were accepted to PhD programs for the Fall took different routes and still came out successful.

I imagine that having a "high" GPA corresponds with a decent GRE score which will be supported by your writing sample and LORs and further evidenced in the SOP. While many of us complained about "weaknesses" in our applications, in hindsight I'm not sure we actually had any. When compared with our counterparts who did NOT apply for these programs, their stats do not compare to ours. I'm not saying we were all perfect but I am saying that by the time we got to this process, most of us were at least competitive and for those who did not get accepted ANYWHERE the problem probably wasn't their stats as much as their match and or ranking issues.

My advice to you would be to start EARLY because you will run out of time in this process.

I took the GRE on Dec 8 2011, approximately 4 days before Finals...my life was a nightmare and I had no chance to retake it which just added to the stress of trying to get a "good" score.

My apps went in the day they were due because I was broke from not working due to GRE and Finals...

I started my SOP in October and tweaked it until the day I submitted my apps.

Editing and re-editing my writing sample pretty much induced paranoia until it was submitted.

In hindsight, I should have moved my entire timeline up at least 2 months. That's my advice to you. Give yourself the time to allow everything to fall into place.

And, what Karlito said

[sciencegirl]

advice: don't spend too much time on this forum.. it gets addicting and is distracting. I finished all my apps first, and then in my ho-hum waiting downtime got more sucked into this. My applications would have suffered if I was too focused here.

I'm in complete agreement with splitends about the complicated nature of the application process.. it appears that most schools have very small admissions committees.. maybe only 5-8 members of the entire faculty, probably just 25% of a department - maybe even less. What the adcom chooses to focus on will be completely different from year to year - so you can only just do your best to make the strongest application. Also, I think that meeting and contacting POI's in many cases is useless, and/or can even contribute to a rejection. This is from personal experience and what I've gathered from meeting other prospective students.. the majority who get into a program never meet or contacted any POI at the school they got into.

[Karlito]

Good one about the time. For me it was so short I submitted 3 apps in a rush (including my absolute no 1 choice) because of finals, and all that. Then the next day I realize I had left typos in my writing sample (which I had also finished the same day). In the end I wasted 300$ and none of these programs accepted me. Still got in somewhere great though, but never underestimate how time consuming that process is. To me, apps + GRE = 1,5 hard course in terms of time

[Soc231160]

This forum has a lot of mixed messages about contacting POI's. In my experience this helped me get into graduate programs. I emailed several professors, introduced myself, said I was interested in their work and why and explained my own work to them, asked them if they would like to talk further about research and the graduate program at their university. Most of the time I got a response. Some reponses were short and essentially said "I would love to work with you if you get accepted but we have no say" but others wanted to talk to me on the phone and meet me in person. Those who I made great connections not only remembered me and were looking out for my application but actually gave me tips on what the ad com was looking for (and how to adjust my personal statement accordingly). I am very much for contacting faculty you want to work with unless it says on the program website not to.

[Soc231160]

This forum has a lot of mixed messages about contacting POI's. In my experience this helped me get into graduate programs. I emailed several professors, introduced myself, said I was interested in their work and why and explained my own work to them, asked them if they would like to talk further about research and the graduate program at their university. Most of the time I got a response. Some reponses were short and essentially said "I would love to work with you if you get accepted but we have no say" but others wanted to talk to me on the phone and meet me in person. Those who I made great connections not only remembered me and were looking out for my application but actually gave me tips on what the ad com was looking for (and how to adjust my personal statement accordingly). I am very much for contacting faculty you want to work with unless it says on the program website not to.

[Chuck]

Take everything said on this forum with a grain of salt. Though most people here dispense advice with good intentions, we're all here ourselves in no small part due to our own cluelesness and insatiable need for answers. The admissions process remains shrouded in mystery, superstition, misinformation, accident, and hearsay. Some of us have received some very good information and advice from reputable sources. But only a few of us have any real knowledge of what it is like to apply, choose, and matriculate as a graduate student. None of us has ever served on an admissions committee.

We're also coming from a wide spectrum of educational, professional, and personal backgrounds. Attempts at advice are made doubly complicated by the fact that our career goals are likely as diverse as our numbers. Gone are the days when all applicants were on a straight shot towards the gold standard of a tenure-track job at an R1. Our career goals are as diverse as our backgrounds and the trajectories we choose. No advice is "one size fits all." Above all, seek help from those who know you best and whose professional opinion you respect.

[sciencegirl]

Yes - I think my point that I was trying to emphasize was that there isn't a right and wrong way. If you want to contact POIs you can, if you don't want to, I don't think you need to. The reasons why the messages here are so mixed, are well, our experiences are incredibly mixed. Research is important (but I didn't have much formal sociology research and got into programs - but others had tons of research and also got in). For one school, I contacted a POI, then we met for an hour, had a wonderful meeting - this senior faculty member put a good word for me into the adcom.. and I still got rejected. Another school, I had something similar where I met with a POI and got in. For other programs I had no contact with anyone, and was either rejected or accepted.

I will give this piece of advice - realize that the process is insanely competitive and that the results are just wildly unpredictable. Just do your best. Spend adequate time and be as thorough and prepared with your app as possible.. but realize that the question "am I a competitive candidate?" is impossible for any one here to answer. That answer will only lie with the 5-10 faculty members at the schools you apply to who review and decide on your application. In the meantime, just be proud of your accomplishments - breathe, and feel lucky enough to have the privilege of considering graduate school as an option in your life - something many in this world don't have.