Graduate Program in Sociology at UC Berkeley
The Berkeley Sociology Graduate Program is the heart of our collective enterprise. We have been able to recruit superlative students year after year thanks to the efforts of the University, the faculty, and our current graduate students. Students who come here find a graduate program that has been carefully designed to offer them a rich and complete sociological education, while simultaneously allowing space and incentives to explore and develop their original ideas.
We have a great many indicators of both our selectivity and our success. In the past five years, we have averaged around 400 applications to our graduate program. We have admitted about 40 students per year (about 10%) and about 20 come each year. The quality of our graduate students is also indicated by their ability to win nationally competitive fellowships. In the past five years, Berkeley graduate students were awarded over one-third of the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowships in Sociology (25 of 71), more than any other program. In addition to NSF, our students support their research with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Javits Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Fulbright Graduate Student Program. They also receive funding for their dissertation research from the National Science Foundation, the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, the Charlotte Newcombe Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, the German Marshall Fund, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
Our graduate students are among the most successfully employed Ph.D..s in American sociology. Between 1992 and 2002, the Berkeley Sociology Department graduated 131 students with Ph.Ds. Twenty-seven (20%) took jobs in the top 25 sociology departments, a higher percentage than any other sociology doctorate program in the country. We also placed students in liberal arts colleges, in positions outside of academe, and in major university tenure-track positions outside of sociology.
Berkeley graduate students go on to publish widely and influence the field. The American Sociological Association has an annual competition for the best dissertation in sociology. In the 17 years that the award has been given, Berkeley graduate students have won over a third of the time (6), far more than any other department. Berkeley graduate students frequently end up publishing their dissertations as books. For example, the students who finished from 2000 through 2004 currently have 15 books published or in press.
In short, the Berkeley graduate program receives the best would-be sociologists and then produces the best practicing sociologists. If you would like more information, you can read our Graduate Study in Sociology Handbook.