Generis

Just a head's up to everyone that the NSF just changed their criteria so that, starting fall of 2016, you can only apply for the NSF GRFP ONE TIME. I wish this was trolling, but here it is. http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2016/nsf16051/nsf16051.jsp I'm still in shock.

The reason places like UCLA admit students without a master's degree is that you basically get a master's "along the way." Even if you did have a master's degree before joining, you would start at the same place a student with just a bachelor's would, so it's often redundant. I've also heard some universities won't give you credit from previous graduate work, unless it was done at the same institution. Overall, it's very common is the states.

This thread had me smiling so hard!! What an incredible experience. Good luck to everyone, and congratulations to those of you whose names are already on that list, but don't know it yet Do good work, and make the world better!!

Hi All, I'm going to be getting my PhD in psychology at UCLA! I'm coming from the San Francisco Bay Area, so housing doesn't look that unreasonable (relatively). Does anyone know when housing offers will be made for student housing? I think I read August somewhere, but that seems pretty close to September...

Yes but some fields are more impacted than others, so it would really depend on how popular your field is... Aggregate results only paint so much of the picture.

I have never been a lab manager, but after graduating I managed to get a research analyst position at a research firm (edu) and it has reeaaaallllyy helped me. I got to do literature reviews, data collection, cleaning, analysis, and visualization. I learned different statistical packages, applied my previous knowledge in stat to projects, and got paid for it!! Best of all, I got to publish, both for my job and still volunteering in my old lab During these past few years. My experience had not only helped me get into my top phd program this round, but gave me a lot of skills to bring to the program with me. As one POI from another program said to me, "It's like the rich get richer in graduate school, and with your experience you are already so far beyond a lot of students, you'll get the good work." My point is that this could be a blessing in disguise. I know it was for me, and it's definitely not a waste of your time. Lab manager positions get posted on lab websites, list serves, and even places like indeed.com (more rare). My advice would be to find one where you can be as active as possible, publish, and come out with good letters. Best of luck!

I was drinking beer with graduate students at another interview when I got the call. I didn't even need to answer to know what it meant, so I smiled, slid my phone back into my pocket, gave myself a cheers, and thanked my lucky stars that I wouldn't have to get my Ph.D. in an area that dropped below 50 degrees at night. Amen!!!

The extra funds I received came from my POI's grants, probably to avoid what Timshea is talking about. I guess the takeaway is that it doesn't necessarily hurt to ask.

Urrrggghhhhhh one more month!!!

My experience was positive. I basically said that the first year was going to be financially the most difficult for me, and because this college had more pricey rent than another college that admitted me, and funding was comparable, if there were funds to help balance it out. I made sure to mention that I wouldn't reject the college based on initial funding, but it might make my decision easier. I got more monies: ) don t be after to ask!

My policy has been to just be honest and up front, and let me say it's definitely saved me some trouble. My first acceptance my POI asked were I had interviewed, etc. if I was willing to share, and I pretty much gave them my list, including "I'll be at college X two weekends from now." As fate would have it, during the interview at college X, I ran into that first school POI giving a talk on campus that day. They already knew I'd be there, so it saved me a lot of awkwardness and feeling like I was sneaking around by just being honest.

The state schools in California have psychology masters programs (i.e. CSU San Francisco, CSU San Jose) but the large public universities (i.e. Berkeley, UCLA) don't. Maybe it's a similar pattern across other states?? I can definitely see how googling "masters in psychology" would lead to the for profits... You can always use the grad cafe results to look up psychology masters results to get ideas as well:)

I hate the GRE, and I'm convinced that the experimental section affects your scores due to the mental energy it saps just for their research purposes. (FYI in the "real world" you pay for data collection, not burden your participants with it, ETS). I took it a few times, and if my experimental section was verbal, I did worse. If it was quantitative, i did worse (84% to 64%). To date they have never answered my emails demanding to see the data on the effects of this section off student scores... I believe it should be public knowledge of public universities require it of us But for me, it hasn't felt like my 64% affected me much. I think it's because 1) it's over 50%, 2) I'm a statistics minor, was a stat TA, and use stat for my job, and 3) I have other distractions in my CV like pubs. My general rule was not to ace the GRE, but to do good enough to where they would give the rest of my application a look. Honestly fighting to get into the top 1% wasn't worth the time or energy I could be spending doing research or writing more. But yeah, I emphasize with you all.

I wouldn't do it. For profits are going broke left and right, and the government is begining to crack down. Also when you are competing with the other handfuls of MSW students produced every year, it could be something like online vs. in person education that makes the difference. Plus their course content isn't as regulated, and in this field, it's probably be best to have more of that face to face interaction. A lot of colleges (i.e. the CSUs in California) have online programs that are much cheaper and more highly respected. I'm just not sure if they offer MSWs Good luck to you!

Clinical or other?