Survey of Potential Grad Schools

With the all too quick conclusion of his time At Cambridge media and culture scholar Zachary McCune is revisiting the idea of learning yet more in a formal academic circumstance. Considering this is what he's been doing in an unbroken line back to kindergarten (age 7) can you really blame the guy?

Objectives & Criteria
Further academic study requires a substantial commitment: TIME. This is because there is only one degree that is worth pursuing is the PhD. And because I am fairly sure no school will accept my M. Phil in place of the general M.A. work (2 years in the US), I will probably need to study for about five - six years. Ouch.

But that's just the ground rules. Let's talk about what a good program will have and what the studying circumstances will involve.

Questions

 * 1) Culture Studies, Communications Programs or Sociology with Culture Focus?
 * 2) Which potential faculty would be best as advisors?
 * 3) Beyond the programs, what others pro/cons do campuses, locations, other departmenters and research centers offer ?
 * 4) How many other students are there ?
 * 5) What is the funding like (stipends, access to grants, opportunities to teach and get paid) ?
 * 6) What would my life look like (live on/off campus? be near a city? athletic facilities? art culture scene?)
 * 7) What do people do afterward (look at placements)?

Yale

 * Yale Sociology
 * Also has a cool "Center for Cultural Sociology"
 * And this great document on the importance of Cultural Sociology (fascinating defense vs. culture studies)


 * GREAT FACULTY
 * Ron Eyerman
 * Jeffrey Alexander

NYU

 * Media, Culture, & Communications
 * Bonus access to cool people at ITP
 * Location in NYC
 * $23,000 stipend a little rough to live with in NYC


 * GREAT FACULTY
 * Arjun Appadurai
 * Alex Galloway
 * Stephen Duncombe
 * Helen Nissenbaum

Berkeley

 * Social and Cultural Studies
 * Part of the Education School

UCLA

 * Cinema & Media Studies

USC

 * PhD. in Communications at Annenberg
 * Henry Jenkins + students like Leavitt

Penn

 * Communication PhD at Annenberg
 * Culture & Communication focus