<p>For the past three years or so I've been giving a lot of thought to my career plans, and I'm pretty certain now that I want to be an academic, and am particularly interested in doing migration studies from a sociological point of view. I'm looking for a fully funded program - I can't afford anything short of that. So far I've looked at Columbia (dream school I think), Princeton, Yale and Harvard. All the other top-ranked sociology PhDs seem to offer less than full funding. Can anyone suggest other schools to look into? </p>
<p>Also, while I know no one can provide "chances," I'd really appreciate some feedback on my stats and where I should improve.
My stats:
- international student;
- graduating in '09 from Amherst, planning to triple major (sociology, econ, history) and write a thesis in sociology;
- current GPA: 4.0 -- for the first two years, am currently on exchange in the U.K. and have no grades to report;
- worked as a researcher for an NGO in Finland, looking at immigrant integration during the past summer; published a report of my findings, not in a peer-reviewed journal though -- will continue with the project this summer;
- likely to get a letter of recommendation from a heavy-weight in my field;
- did research work for three professors at Amherst (though only one in Sociology);
- fluent in three languages, speaker of several others (figured it helps);
- I have no idea about the GRE, but I got close to perfect scores on the SAT if that's any indication of how I should be able to perform.</p>
<p>A lot of the top state schools do fund most if not all their students. I know Wisconsin, Berkeley and Michigan certainly do fund most incoming students. Whilst none of them guarantee funding it is certainly worth applying to a few of them as you might well get funding from somewhere.
Also whilst Yale is good it isn't exactly in the same league as the other places you have noted. Other schools with similar rankings such as Duke, Cornell and Stanford (I think) all fully fund their grad students</p>
<p>thanks, british_student - given your username, I assume you are talking about international students getting fully funded at the top state schools as well; from looking at the Michigan and Berkeley websites I got the impression that most funding comes in federal loans (for which I'm not eligible) and that there are only a few, very competitive fellowships, much in the way funding is doled out at British unis outside of Oxbridge.</p>
<p>I would include Oxbridge to be honest. From what I can tell its far easier for an american to get funding at british universities than it is for british students (especially humanities and social sciences). Funding is becoming increasingly hard to come by in the UK</p>
<p>haha, thanks for the presumption, but I'm actually a Romanian citizen, so I'm a foreigner in either country. Oh yeah, and sorry for my lack of etiquette in asking for chances - reading a little more about grad school made me realize that most likely no one here can really tell me anything about my odds. I have used this board when I was applying to colleges three years ago, so I was still stuck in "undergrad" mode for a while, I guess :).</p>
<p>EU funding regulations means that EU students are treated the same as British students at undergraduate level. I don't know how that plays out at grad level though</p>
<p>Yeah, you're right, EU students get home student status; too bad home students get nearly squat as well when it comes to Master's programs. In my opinion, outside of Oxbridge everyone is pretty much screwed financially when it comes to going to grad school here. I'm at the LSE and I'm completely appalled.</p>