Coach04

YES TO ALL OF THIS! I thought I was 100% certain but now I am completely unsure of which of my top two programs to choose. Having the schools ask where else you have been accepted makes it harder too - as soon as I told each school where else I was accepted I received many long emails and requests for phone calls from differnt faculty where they told me why their school was better. ITS SO HARD TO DECIDE! and I am scared that I will make the wrong choice. I definitely recommend contacting current students though - all the students I have talked to have been really honest and have given me great inside information that will help me in which ever school I choose. I even used info from one student about the TA assignment process to ask about how likely it was that I would get the assignment I wanted (with a popular Prof) and that assignment has been promised to me along with an office in the lab that I want. Are any of you finding that other peoples opinions and advice are making your decision harder and not easier? Finally, I guess we should be lucky that we are in this position to be choosing between programs - I hope that everyone who dreams of attending grad school will get to live that dream

I've worked as an RA for a few professors before and it really isn't that scary. You're right that tasks vary a lot depending on the professor though, but most of the stuff I've ended up doing has not been that hard. Things I have done as an RA are literature reviews, proofreading and commenting on manuscripts, coding/cleaning data, running some analyses, making graphs and tables for papers, looking up references, formatting the reference list of a paper etc. Other people I know (we are all in psychology) have helped with running experiments. Sometimes you do get lucky and the professor lets you have more input on the project and you will get to be a co-author but this varies a lot and often depends on what stage of the project you come in on, (i.e. if you are just doing things to tidy it up at the end then it will be unlikey you will be a co-author but if you are heavily involved from the beginning then you might have a chance in being co-author).

Political Science (political psychology) and social psyc PhD programs - I've applied to 3 and been accepted at 1 and am interviewing at one so far

I'm a New Zealander (MSc in psyc from Victoria Uni in Wellington) applying to PhD programs in the US - if you have been unofficially approved then you should be fine for getting admitted!

They emailed me. The status on the webpage hasn't changed though (still says application is under review). During my interview he alluded to a waitlist of people they had ready to go to if the admits declined so theres still hope

Thanks Yes, interviews are really scary but its good to remember that you must have impressed in order to get an interview and the ones I have had have not been scary at all. I was all prepared to be grilled in my interview and then 5mins in he told me I was accepted so it was a massive relief! (although I think I got lucky as my interview got pushed back and he said that because my interview was later they had already decided haha).

I just had a skype interview with the DGS at Stony Brook and he told me I was accepted! So exciting! He said they admitted fewer people this year than in the previous few years. Will most likely accept the offer Good luck to everyone else on this forum!

No its University of Illinois - Chicago

For anyone that applied to UIC Social - a professor told me official offers will be made mid February (my guess is around 16th feb)