Sociology and Graduate School

juillet
Tue, 22 Dec 2009 00:51:55 +0000

It’s not virtually every social science - in fact most humanities require the language proficiencies, but most social science programs do not. I go to Columbia and psychology doesn’t require two language proficiencies, and neither does our sociology department, economics, or political science (you have to have command of two “research tools,” and you can choose proficiency in two languages, or you can choosen formal modeling or quantitative analysis or a bunch of other things instead). The only one here that does require that knowledge is anthropology.

I was also looking at sociology programs when I was in undergrad (I’m a social psychologist) and none of the ones I looked at required language proficiency, especially not in two languages.

OP, the really important thing in graduate admissions is fit. Where are the professors doing research in the fields in which you are interested? (You will need to get more narrow than sociology of culture, for example. What cultures? How culture affects what? What processes? What qualitative methods? Grounded theory? Content analysis? Ethnography? What about adolescents?) Find them by doing your own research and then see where they teach. Those are the universities that will be good fits for you.

Your process won’t be any different from a student who spent four years in school. Get excellent recommendation letters that testify to your maturity and readiness for graduate work; write a strong statement of purpose that explains why you want to undertake graduate study in the specific areas of interest you specify, and get good scores on the GRE.