Darth.Vegan

The first year is really intense. My advice? Just enjoy your summer people!!!!!!

100-300 pages a week? That would be an incredibly light reading week. Many times we're expected to read upwards of 500-600 pages, sometimes more. Working a separate full-time job while in a PhD program is a terrible idea.

The two people generally apply for in their first couple years are Ford and NSF

The hardest one was a potential advisor at the University of Victoria. She had written me detailed emails and was very generous with her time. I just wrote her a very polite email and explained that I really appreciated the time she put in with me but that I had chosen a different program for x,y and z reasons. She was very understanding.

If you stated or hinted in your SOP/application that you're not interested in a job in academia, that could partially explain not getting into PhD programs.

I applied to Victoria, Simon Fraser and Toronto. I got rejected from Toronto but got fully funded offers from Simon Fraser and Victoria. SF's offer was better, they even offered to match UCI and offered me an RA position with Gerardo Otero. I also got funded offers for the MA program in sociology at Oklahoma ($32k), and the MA in environmental justice at University of Michigan (also $32k). It's really not that hard to find funding for MA programs, seems crazy to pay 50k for one.

These are sociologists, unless you are specifically interviewing for an acceptance, casual dress is fine in my opinion. Tattoos and piercings are not a problem.

That's actually a good offer. Many UC's offer only TA based fellowships or 1 possibly 2 quarters for very select applications that don't require TA'ing.

Canadian schools also offer fully funded MA programs, worth looking into. I had a lot of success applying to those but ended up getting a good PhD offer so I declined. I feel like the Chicago and Columbia programs are a debt trap. DASA at UCI is also a very good and much cheaper option that folks should look into.

Just FYI, while pedigree matters somewhat, it isn't as important as some folks make it out to be. Source: Thomas, ScottL. 2000. “Deferred Costs and Economic Returns to College Major, Quality, and Performance.” Research in Higher Education 41(3):281–313.

Key questions: Job placement, whether faculty go out of their way to incorporate students into their work and research funding opportunities. The worst thing is when people get lost in a program.

Yeah, I feel you on those concerns. It's obviously a prestigious program, but some more transparency about funding would be nice. It would basically be impossible for me to attend financially without a high percentage tuition remission and/or stipend to cover living expenses.

Anyone else get an acceptance yesterday? I'm pretty excited although the program is stupid expensive.

Just FYI, I got into a number of programs after what seemed like a period of silence after others got notifications. Be patient y'all. Nothing is a rejection until it's a rejection.