Hello! I am looking for some feedback on my stats and what I can do to improve my chances of getting into a PhD program (well funded). Specifically, I want to pursue sociology. I would be applying in the Fall/Winter of 2015. Any information or advice is welcome.
-Undergrad junior at small liberal arts school, 3.9 GPA
-Sociology and Anthropology double major
-English minor
-I juggle 22 credits each semester (trying to graduate early–I don’t know if this matters)
-Member of faculty committee
-Secretary Treasurer of a literary club
-Long term volunteer experience with a labor union
-Paid internship at a public policy research center
-Research project focused on mental illness in my county
-Scored in 99th percentile on CLA+ test (a relatively new test some colleges use to measure critical thinking and analytically skills)
-Won a leadership award
-Won a writing award
Are you assisting a professor with research? It’s not clear - the paid internship sounds more like a summer research kind of thing; the research project focused on mental illness could either be an independent study or an assistantship. Which one is it? And what was the duration of the project? If your combined research experience is only a couple of months you might want to take on another independent project, do a senior thesis, and/or get an assistantship with a professor to get some more experience.
Your volunteer experience and your secretary position won’t matter. The CLA test results won’t either. The faculty committee could play a very small role depending on what kind of committee it is. Really, the most important things are your grades, test scores, letters of recommendation, and your research experience, plus your research interests and fit with the department and how you frame those in your personal statement.
Study for the GRE. Get a good book and take many practice tests. Princeton Review GRE book worked for me. Learn the “most tested” words you don’t know. I hate standardized tests but this is just pragmatic. You need a great score for most programs and depts. Good luck!
Unless, of course, you wish to go abroad for graduate study… but, even so, research experience (and the recs from it), the personal statement and the grades are the key ingredients.
If you’re interested in sociological research outside the US, make sure you have the proper foreign language background. Odds are you won’t have much time in graduate school to get up to speed in the relevant language(s). You can possibly snag FLAS funding if you’re willing to study a LCTL.
I strongly recommend taking at least a couple of statistics classes if you haven’t yet.
What is it that you want out of sociology? If you already have some favorite works in the scholarly literature, then by all means check out where do the authors work.
@juillet: No, I am not assisting a professor with their research. My school is quite small, and the only departments with professors active in research at the moment are psychology and the natural sciences. So, that doesn’t look very promising. The internship is summer research, and lasted about 3 1/2 months. The project related to mental illness is an independent study, and will last, in total, one semester. I will be doing a senior thesis, but I have no idea what the focus of that will be.
My suggestion is to emphasize your statistical training. You didn’t mention this in your original post. Even if you plan on being a qualitative rather than quantitative researcher, social science researchers are using software packages to analyze qualitative data in a quantitative fashion.
My other suggestion is to find a sociology masters program where you can crank up the stats training and learn to make use of large data sets that are commonly used in sociology. You would likely have to pay for this masters, but then you could decide if you wanted to pursue the PhD and then hopefully get into a program with funding.
If you are near a large university this summer or next year, you could find training programs that help you learn how to analyze large data sets. Look for demography programs that are trying to help people learn to use their data.
@CheddarcheeseMN: I have already taken 2 statistics classes (intro and a more advanced one). In the fall, I will be taking 2 research methods courses, which does involve some stats.
With that in mind, if I do find a research position/internship, will obtaining the masters first still be necessary?
If there are psychology professors doing research that is interesting to you, and relevant to sociology, you might want to consider assisting one of those professors with their research. You’ll get valuable experience. 3.5 months isn’t enough to be really competitive; some people competing with you will have a master’s and post-college experience and even those coming out of undergrad should have like 1-2 years.