<p>As I am looking at Grad schools, I have noticed a lot of them want research experience. I come from a very small school with only 5 professors in the sociology department. Of those 5 2 started this semester and one of the older faculty members is leaving. My question is am I completely doomed in attempting to get into grad schools since I have no research opportunity. I have strong recommendations and my GRE scores are 154-v 154-q and 5.0-w. My GPA overall is a 3.1 and a 3.5 in sociology. Should I try to take an extra semester of undergrad to try to find research experience, or what way can I make up for this lack of research experience?</p>
<p>Write research papers. Does your department require a senior thesis or capstone project? Or independent study for credit? If not, talk to faculty members and demonstrate your interest in conducting research. I’m sure you could get one (ideally one who researches an area of interest to you) to mentor/oversee you taking up a research project.</p>
<p>Unfortunately I graduate in December. They don’t require a thesis or capstone either =/ I will have one very small scale research project opportunity where I will get to teach a freshman class about Illness behaviors which is good in that I want to go for medical sociology, but is it at least going to be enough to allow them to see that I can and am willing to put in the work?</p>
<p>In my field, they expect you to do research and there is little chance of getting into grad school without it. I haven’t heard of this being true in sociology - most undergrads don’t have research experience prior to graduate school. I think research is just a beneficial factor, not something that would keep you out of grad school. But I do encourage you to try to get involved. </p>
<p>I have had trouble finding research on my campus as well. Not because there isn’t any, but because all the spots are taken. I am currently doing an independent study that is advised by a professor on campus. I get credit for it and I am using it to produce a research project that I am submitting for presentation at two symposia. My project is just a literature review, but if you have an interested professor, they may be able to help you design something with live subjects if you want (though you do need special training for this). </p>
<p>You could easily do something similar. Think about what you’re interested in, articles you’ve read, something you would want to spend extra time on etc. and use it to develop a project. My topic is relatively basic and is taking me two semesters to complete - but you could choose a topic that takes even less time to research on your own. Even if you aren’t getting credit, just doing your own research project and trying to present it at a symposium or trying to submit it for publishing will be appreciated by a graduate committee. If you think you need to take an extra semester to accomplish this, then by all means, do it. </p>
<p>Also, if you have any chance to do any teaching, that will look great to grad schools.</p>
<p>Actually, most successful PhD students in sociology (and all of the social sciences, to different extents) do indeed have research experience before graduate school, and lack of it will keep you out. I’m in a related field and I have lots of sociology PhD student friends, and they all had research experience before graduate school. I think the expectations may be a bit lower than the sciences, but you’re still expected to have some.</p>
<p>Not only do professors want to know that you have the skills necessary to assist them, they also want to be assured that you know what you’re signing up for. And you should, too. Why do you want to get a PhD without having any research experience? You don’t even know if you like what you’ll be doing for the next 5-7 years. You need to get that kind of experience before you commit to it, at the very least to know whether or not you like it.</p>
<p>One way that people do this is they take “off” a year or two to get more research experience.</p>
<p>Juillet - ah, ok. I guess I got the wrong impression then. What sort of research would sociology majors typically be expected to do?</p>
<p>It depends on their field of sociology. Some sociology students aspire to do more quantitative work with large national datasets or by collecting their own data, so they would be expected to work with quantitative sociologists in their research groups - perhaps helping to collect data, helping to do data analyses, working on a small undergrad-sized independent research project, literature reviews, running participants, helping to set up measures online, that sort of thing.</p>
<p>Some sociologists are more qualitative in nature, and they can assist professors by going into the field and/or doing interviews as well as traditional tasks like literature reviews and helping with transcribing and coding interviews.</p>
<p>A small number of sociology students are interested in more theoretical sociological work (i.e., little to no data). They still need to attach themselves to a mentor, but their work may be predicated more on archival research or library research tasks.</p>
<p>And any sociology hopeful could help author a paper or present work at a conference, either student, regional, or national.</p>
<p>If there aren’t any sociology professors within the department doing research, or research of interest, a sociology hopeful could explore related departments - anthropology, political science, perhaps economics if they are quantitative, or social psychology. Or, if OP goes to a college in a city with other nearby colleges or universities, he or she could attempt to contact professors at other institutions and see if they need an RA (if they have reliable transportation to that other institution, of course). I went to a SLAC in a college city and many of my friends did research projects at one of the three large research universities within my city.</p>
<p>If I were to do something through the rest of the semester, would that be helpful at all? Also last semester I wrote a 20 page paper about eating disorders and child abuse correlations. It was for a mix of Sociology of Food and Socialization of Youth. Could that be used?</p>
<p>Yes, of course it would be helpful. Whether or not it will make you for competitive sociology programs depends on the kinds of applicant they normally get. I do know that sociology PhD students tend to have less research experience on average than science PhD students, so 1 year may be closer to the average and one semester may be enough if you have an otherwise outstanding application and a clear interest in an area of research and a research career.</p>
<p>While research experience that you gain in classes is always welcomed and helpful for graduate admissions, it typically doesn’t “count” as the kind of research experience that you need for grad programs. You can certainly talk about it in your statement of purpose, but not list it on your CV as extra research experience.</p>
<p>One way that a lot of students get research experience after college is to work as a lab manager or research coordinator for a few years (usually 2 or 3) after college. You would apply either in your second or third year of doing that. Not only do you get more experience, you also get recommendations from a wide range of people. Sociology professors are less likely to have lab managers than science and psychology professors, but there are some sociologists who do use lab managers or full-time research assistants. Or you can do this in another related field, like a school of public health or a school of education.</p>
<p>Another option is to find a full-time job at an organization hiring research assistants or associates - these tend to be at nonprofits and think tanks, especially nonprofits/think tanks dedicated to social and educational issues. They tend to prefer students with some outside-class research experience but sometimes they hire people without that if you have strong skills.</p>
<p>A third option is to get a non-related job to pay your bills and then volunteer as a research assistant in the evenings and on the weekends in a nearby university lab.</p>