Sociology and Graduate School

StrangeLight
Fri, 27 Nov 2009 00:30:41 +0000

the student government, community service, and greek life don’t mean anything for grad school applications. if you like doing it and it doesn’t distract from your work, then stick with it, but know that none of it will go anywhere on your grad school application. it is not a factor, and greek life can be considered a detriment (whether that is fair or not, that’s the reality), so make sure you keep that information to yourself.

doing your degree in three years won’t hurt you at all. i assume most of the community college credits were for lower level courses. so as long as your upper level grades come from OSU, and you have a full schedule of upper level classes, then the transfer credits make no difference.

your GPA is excellent. keep it up.

for sociology, you will need reading knowledge of one or two foreign languages. for most sociology programs, you’ll need french and german, although you can substitute one or both for other languages that are relevant to your research if you happen to have regional interests. many programs will allow you to pick up your second research language while you’re in the grad program, but you want to apply with at least one under your belt. you don’t need to be fluent, but you should be able to understand an academic article written in another language with the aid of a dictionary. if you can do that, you’re good to go. if you can’t, start taking those languages classes ASAP. most people don’t realize they need language prep for grad school and it sinks their applications. make this a priority.

publishing, presenting at conferences, getting fellowships… all of those things look really good on an application, but none of them are necessary to get in. if you’ve got it, great, but most undergraduates don’t publish a thing. you do want some research under your belt, though, which means for sociology, if your school has an honours thesis track, get into it and write a research paper.

foster close relationships with your professors. you’ll need letters of recommendation from three, and the more they know you, the better. they need to attest to your potential as a researcher, so keep in mind that you want three profs (preferably well known in their field and with tenure) to work with you directly. if you can get work as a research assistant for one of your profs, that’ll definitely help you out.

also, consider moving that GRE test date up. if you bomb it (and a lot of people do, nerves happen) you want to leave yourself enough time to retake the test. i’d recommend taking it in august. that way, if your scores are good, you can forget about it and focus your fall semester on preparing your application. and if you mess up, you have enough time to study some more and retake the test before the december deadlines. taking the test in october means you’d have less than a month to retake it, if you can find an open spot (they fill up quickly), and it’s probably just cutting it a little close.