<p>I am in my senior year now, and I am going to take a year off before grad school. I plan to go to grad school for a PhD in sociology. I got a hold of the ASA grad school book, and have narrowed my choices down to 30. Now I have to narrow down further, and I would love to hear stories of how people did this. After you found colleges who had a focus in the type of work you were interested in, what did you look at next?<br>
Also, I would love some advice about fit versus effectiveness. My family and I are in love with Eugene, OR, and would love to go to live there, but would I be shooting myself in the foot by doing this? In every ranking system I have read, Oregon is not in the top 30, in fact it is at or below 50. Would I be handing myself an unemployment ticket by going there, or am I missing something?</p>
<p>One chooses a PhD program by specific faculty. In other words, think about sociologists who do work in the area of your interest and intended subspecialization, and sociologists whose methodologies of preference you find to be particularly congenial. Do they teach in a doctoral program? If not, where did they receive their PhD? With whom did they study?</p>
<p>When you target these programs, then look at the entire faculty to be sure there are several persons who seem like they would be able to serve on your dissertation committee. Also, speak to your current professors to find out more about these departments and these scholars. Is the department well-regarded in your area? Are your potential advisors good at the job of advising? Do they have a good record of placing their students in faculty positions? </p>
<p>Fit (backed up with full tuition remission and stipend) trumps ranking every time. Frankly, geography should not play a part at all.</p>
<p>Professor X is right. If you are really passionate about getting your doctoral degree in sociology, geography should be one of the last things on your mind. Obviously you don't want to end up anywhere where you would hate it and want to tear your hair out going there -- that's how I eliminated one of my schools -- but you should also be willing to go to a place that sounds okay but not terrible. Of course, it is a bit different if by "family" you mean you are married with children -- you have to consider the environment for your children, too. But if by family you mean your parents and siblings, it is time to leave the nest. Just because Eugene is a great city does not mean the University of Oregon will be a great fit for you.</p>
<p>The most important thing is fit with the program. You should be looking for at least 2-3 professors with whom you'd be interested in working and who could serve as committee members while you are writing your dissertation as well as support and input on your research. Besides the book, check out the schools' websites, which will have the most up-to-date information. If there's a program with only one professor with whom you'd like to work and the others' work look boring, I would be cautious. If that professor leaves, dies, goes on sabbatical during your dissertation, etc., you may be out of luck! We have a first-year this year who spent 3 years in a Ph.D program; his advisor left, and he transferred here and has to start all over.</p>
<p>I did use location to sort of narrow down my choices -- I knocked out places I absolutely did not want to be (Alabama), and I also focused on urban locations because that's what I like and that's what I do research on (urban adolescence). However, I did leave myself open to places I thought I might not like (the West Coast, Ann Arbor, middle-of-nowhere-Pennsylvania) because those schools had terrific programs in my field. In my opinion, if a school is 'eh' in your field or a mediocre fit AND you dislike the location, okay to strike it from your list. If the school is really good in your field and/or is a GREAT fit for you, but you're 'eh' about the location, keep it.</p>
<p>I think the prestige of your grad institution, while not the most important factor, is important. The reputation of the place where you got trained will follow you through your first couple of jobs (from what I hear, anyway) and I've heard that it's difficult to "step up" -- that is, go from a lower-tier program to a higher-tier teaching position. I'm not really sure what kind of positions you're looking to go for, but it is important to go to a school with a solid reputation although it doesn't have to be top 10 or anything like that.</p>
<p>After I considered all of that, I had a pretty small list of schools, I think.</p>
<p>Thank you for the input.
When I say family, I mean husband who is also currently in school and will need to transfer to finish his undergraduate work and then be able to find a job in the town or city we are living as well as three boys who are school aged, the oldest one will be entering high school when we move. So it is different than just me and my needs. That also means that I have to keep cost of living in mind because I am not able to rent a room or simply share a two bedroom with a roommate.
The school that I am going to doesn't have a sociology department, advisers, or really very many sociology faculty on staff, so in some ways I feel like I am swimming in my own pool and trying to figure this out on my own.</p>
<p>Hmm. It's very difficult to swim alone, so to speak.</p>
<p>This is what I did (I was engaged to be married when applying to graduate programs, and planning to take my fiance with me and possibly have children during the program. Not exactly the same situation, but it may help). I started making a list of programs based on which ones were the best fit for me. I scoured a lot of research articles and wrote down the names of researchers who were writing articles I was interested in, then looked up where they taught or where they had gotten their doctoral degrees. One of my fields has an association (Association of Schools of Public Health), so I went to the website and looked at those schools. The other field is a lot broader (social psychology) and I was open to applying to programs like sociology with a social psychology focus and human development and family studies, so I had a lot of ground to cover. I did have the help of my advisors in vetting programs, but I also did a LOT of Internet searching and I looked at ranking guides, too. Not for absolute numbers, but rather where to group my choices (the top 10 schools in any field are going to remain in roughly the top 15-20 for years, so the exact ordering of the schools doesn't matter -- rather, their grouping relative to other groups or tiers is more what counts).</p>
<p>Then, I showed my fiance my list and we discussed location and other stuff. At the time he was planning to be a teacher, so we needed a place with a school district in which he could find a job, and I also didn't want to look anywhere he hated. I looked up the school districts in the area to see how good they were and also what kind of services they had in the area for families. I also looked at what kind of services the school had for students with families. That's very important -- you want to make sure that your department is friendly to married students and students with children. Some are not. The best way to find that out is to talk to current students and see what the institutional culture is like towards that.</p>
<p>I also looked around Craigslist in each of these areas to see how much apartments would cost for me and my husband-to-be to rent. As a general rule, more suburban areas and rural towns have better apartment pricing. Right now, me and my roommate are paying $1850/month for our apartment in upper Manhattan (I ended up in New York City). My brother, on the other hand, and his roommate paid $900/month for a nicer apartment in the suburbs of Atlanta. And my roommate, when she was going to Penn State in State College, PA, paid $499/month for a two-bedroom with her roommate. There is also the option of living in the suburbs of a big city -- if I had gone to Emory, I would've most likely lived in the suburb where I grew up (about a 15 minute drive) rather than lived in the city. And I had the option of living in northern New Jersey Brooklyn, or Queens, which are all less expensive than Manhattan although the commute would be longer.</p>
<p>(Oh, and about the fiance, he ended up joining the Air Force and got stationed in south Jersey at the closest Air Force base to NYC, so I'm happy. Hopefully I can move with him after I finish my coursework!)</p>