Going from CC to CSU to a top-notch grad school

<p>Hello</p>

<p>I'm a beginning transfer student at CSU Long Beach (Journalism major and Spanish minor / transferring from Santa Monica College with an AA degree) and my plan post-graduation is to pursue a master's degree in Sociology at a prestigious university.</p>

<p>Assuming that I have a highly competitive GPA and GRE score by the time I graduate CSULB, how likely am I to get into some of the best graduate programs out there in Sociology? My wishlist ranges from Ivy League schools to Berkley, UCLA, UChicago and etc. Generally speaking, what are my chances?</p>

<p>Any tips/advice would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance.</p>

<p>I have a friend who graduated from Santa Clara University with over a 3.7 (don’t know exact gpa) and he applied to 9 top programs in poly sci. He got rejected from ALL of them except UChicago. Grad school can be finicky, but what I’ve generally heard is one should apply to 8+ colleges and usually a student will get into one or two. Not always, of course… but it seems that guessing grad school admissions is a whole different ballgame than undergrad–the programs are much smaller and unlike in undergrad, the colleges ARE looking for specific matches of interests between the current professors and the potential grad students.</p>

<p>The website PHDS dot org is a great resource to start getting the layout of grad school apps/acceptances.</p>