Undergraduate research in the social sciences

JHS
Mon, 06 Jan 2014 01:13:59 +0000

Talk to your teachers. They may not have anything for you directly, but they can point you in the right direction. Sociology is not a large department, and its faculty is very student-friendly for the most part. Get to know them. This will be important not just in getting research jobs, but also in looking at graduate school.


Also, if you haven’t already get on the department’s mailing list for talks by visiting scholars and grad students. If you start going to those, you will soon know a lot about what people are working on and where.


I think a lot of the action is at NORC, not so much with individual professors. Through my kids, I know/know of a number of sociology majors, and the ones who did significant social science research work as undergraduates did it at NORC. A lot of funding flows through NORC, and it provides the infrastructure for lots of professors’ research.
Make certain to do a little sociology of Sociology. Talk to your TAs and other grad students about what they did to get into a top PhD program; read bios of grad students on other universities’ websites. One of the things you may learn is that it is rare (but not impossible) for students to go directly from college to good PhD programs. If your long-term plan is a Sociology PhD, your mid-term plan may be getting a research job and/or doing something “real” in the field you want to study (e.g., if you are interested in Sociology of Education, working as a teacher).
Your senior thesis is a really great opportunity to do original research.