Placement

The department takes pride in its high completion rate and extraordinary success in placing students in academic positions. Chicago's broad-ranging student body has meant that just as the department hires from a wide variety of departments so also do its students take positions in an extremely wide variety of departments. About three-quarters of Chicago graduates take academic jobs, including recent positions at (among others) Berkeley, Boston, Cincinnati, Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, MIT, Northwestern, Notre Dame, Pennsylvania, Reed, Stanford, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Albany, Texas, Vanderbilt, and Wisconsin. Students have also gone to fellowship programs or accepted postdoctoral fellowships at (among others) Berkeley, Emory, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, and Princeton, as well as to numerous academic positions overseas and governmental positions both at home and abroad.

In addition to these placements in university settings, an increasing number of students are interested in full-time research careers or in positions in business, non-profit organizations and government agencies. In this connection the graduate program is designed to prepare students for a full range of professional careers in sociology, including teaching and research in colleges and universities; research in voluntary associations, government, and business; and employment in administrative posts and social planning positions.

To provide a more detailed picture, there follows a list of department graduates by year since 1996. Please click on the year to view each graduate's dissertation title, first post-PhD placement, and current placement where known. The list gives a general picture of the career trajectories of Chicago graduates.

Placements by PhD year