firstsight

The only thing I can think of is maybe check up on Troy. They have an excellent program in terms of catering to military particulars, and I do believe that they offer a clinical psy degree (masters). I'm not sure if they offer an online version, but they have satellite campuses seemingly everywhere... it's worth a shot to research, if nothing else.

I'm in driving distance too, thankfully. A flight would DEFINITELY make it prohibitive. No professors for me to carpool with though, unfortunately! It'll just be me and my lonesome, or with the SO if he decides he wants a couple of days off in N'awlins~ At least there are a few "cheaper" hotel options, I guess. I dunno. I'm still torn on it-- I get /why/ I should go and I want to go, in a sense, but I hate it that I'll basically be going alone. Half the fun of conferences is being able to talk about sessions with someone! Augh! Someone be my SPSP buddy! -.-

Anyone planning on going to the SPSP meeting next month? I keep weebling back and forth on it myself, mostly due to finances.. but I know for sure two or three of my POIs will be there. Anyone else's thoughts on going, or the importance of going and potentially networking with POIs in a fairly critical point in time as far as apps go (Jan 17th-19th)?

Haha, just wanted to chip in you are NOT the only one who has noticed this phenomenon. It'd be an interesting subject to research, really -- if, all other things being questionably equal (apps are so freakin' subjective), physical attractiveness becomes a deciding factor. Of course, applications are ranked for interviews in the absence of such information, but.... ahem. I don't know. I consider myself more attractive than average, but not model quality like some of these labs have! So... yeah. I'm with you on this. I'll probably ask something like this in a casual/offhand way... since you don't want to be known as "that one girl who felt intimidated by all the super pretty people". If you figure out a genius way to ask about it, drop me a line!

I spoke with one of my academic mentors about this - she emphasized the "what makes you feel comfortable" part on that. Obviously don't show up in PJs, but she said (as a 'fairly' recent PhD - within the last decade) that if you go to an academic interview already feeling out of sorts, the establishing operation for the interview will be personal discomfort. (She's a behaviorist, if that isn't immediately obvious. ) It makes sense though - if you feel comfortable and at ease you'll be more likely to make the interviewer(s) comfortable and at ease. As someone who has previously been responsible for hiring in a professional sphere, I can tell you that normally the interviewers are just as discomfited by the general awkwardness of the situation as the interviewee. Also, +1 to all of the "shopping" comments above - I think as a general rule it's not to go all "You're my only hope, Obi Wan!" on any potential opportunity. Feeling out your interviewer within the first few minutes is probably a good idea... some people really appreciate humor in these contexts, and others aren't thrilled about it at all. Discriminating non-vocal "tone" can have a huge impact. Plus, this is the next 5-6 years of your life, so they should be on review nearly as much as you are, like stereo said above. As a side note (god I can't shut up), it's a good idea to have some question to pose at the end, even if they are comprehensive at overviews. If you really have no other questions, something personal to the interviewer like-- "What was the reason you personally decided to work for this university; what drew you in?" If it's anything like professional interviews, they /expect/ you to be competent, intelligent and well-spoken... but being thoughtful/insightful can bump you above and beyond others.

Yeah, I think so. It's pretty early still - even for interview calls, from what every single one of my professors and advisors have told me. /Rationally/ I get it that most if not all of the programs I applied to (save maybe UCSD) aren't likely to even look at apps until after Christmas. But the impulse to check every five minutes is totally there! I typically hate winter breaks because they seem so long and I have nothing to do after work/in the gaps where classes would normally be... but man. This one I hate *extra*.

Nope. Anyone else obsessive-compulsive about doing the round of checking all application statuses and then refreshing the results page on here?

Graduate classes will absolutely help - provided you get good grades in them. It gives you the opportunity to present yourself as-- 3.5 undergrad GPA, 4.0/3.9 graduate GPA, for instance. Not to mention the plethora of additional opportunities that graduate classes may give you, as Liz up there mentioned. The whole point is to prove that you can handle the stress and culture of graduate school... so if you can say that you've been introduced to it and have done well, then that's pretty representative and relevant.

Well, dropping half of the entire sample doesn't seem like too wise of a choice, especially as you are limiting yourself to a gender. Don't get me started on how women are consistently underrepresented in medical studies and how men are the norm. That said, I probably would have laughed, just because-- well, from my opinion, a confound like that is an issue that you deal with on replication; say that it is a limitation and recommend that follow-up be conducted while controlling for where women are in their menstrual cycle. People forget that men also have monthly hormonal cycles (likely because they don't bleed for a week) - so saying "only one gender has wide variances in hormones over the course of X amount of time" is likely a falsehood. I'm not an expert in all that, so don't quote me or anything - but just my first glance at it. Now, then. There IS a large issue of gender differences in psychology, and since more and more women are populating psychology, it is probably an element of politics that you want to be aware of. There are many feminists about - and as a sidebar, some feminists (like myself) would eat that little girl that you mention for breakfast. Sensitive topic my arse - it's a physiological function, not some sort of mystic female-only cult knowledge with appropriate restrictions. People like that will likely never make it in a predatory academic environment - or maybe I've just been around evolutionary psychologists too long. Anyhow, /tangent. That said, I highly recommend being aware of the fact that some feminists are sensitive to any inferred gender discrimination within psychology - or more specifically, a man seeming to suggest that somehow women are less than appropriate human subjects due to whatever reasons. It's a difficult subject to really give any depth to in a short period of time, other than to recommend to be cognizant that there may be people sensitive to (gender/socioeconomic class/race/sexual orientation) issues - and most of the time, those will be in a minority or classically oppressed category, responding negatively to someone in the majority. I'm rambling. But I think y'get my point.

I have some mixed feelings on this one. As someone said above - the thought of it is just sigh inducing. My fiance has been jonesing to move out of the area that we're in now, which means if we move and it isn't school-directed... I'll probably end up in an area with no university connections/not knowing anyone there. Luckily, I have career experience in a decent paying field, though it's not anything I want to do for the rest of my life. That said? If I don't get in anywhere, I'll apply again next year with masters backup, and that will be make or break. I'm not sure if I could handle a three years of heartbreak!

I'm personally getting WAY tired of the, "You have great grades! Why are you worried? You're definitely going to get in!" line. Or along that general line of thought- that somehow I'm being dumb for being worried. I'm allowed to be worried, dangit! Conversely, I'm less offended and more amused by people who outright question my sanity for applying to grad schools. Probably because I agree with them - this is a totally insane process!

So, I've finished all of my applications now except for one with a January deadline, and throughout this whole thing I've felt pretty comfortable, all things considered. But this statement makes me feel ready to hyperventilate RIGHT NOW, for some random reason! I don't know if mid/late January feels too soon or too far away, but it sure feels STRESSFUL!

Underwent a similar dilemma myself; went with sending in both scores. It's a risk for them to see a low score (mine was worse -- 147 equiv from the old scale [it was a 580]), but since several programs said they would take the higher of the two (156 for me), I went for sending both. 680V/580Q (95%/31%) and 160V/156Q (83%/68%). Mine increased in quant substantially; yours increased in verbal substantially. Anything showing a significance increase SHOULD, I would imagine, be a Good Thing. Best of luck!

The more I think about the entire situation, the more I find myself throwing up my hands. I think my background is pretty similar to yours -- I had to retake the GRE, since my "old" scores ported my quant in from around the 50th percentile down to the 31st percentile (!!) -- but otherwise: 3.77 GPA, 4.0 psych, 3.9 last two years, couple years research experience, undergrad thesis, interdisciplinary background. THAT said, I think that so much of the process is subjective and so many things could go wrong... the question of "fit", if one of your letter-writers gives you a lukewarm credential, yadda yadda yadda -- the inverse is also possible. My personal philosophy is spray and pray on this one: I'm only applying to seven schools, which is less than half of some other people on the forums, but in that I've got a big range: a couple of top ten schools, a few mid-ranked, and one school one that's not too well known at all, but it appears to be an awesome fit to what I want to study. I think that it's going to be hellaciously competitive this year. But having served as a student representative of a university scholarship committee, I can tell you that these decisions are NOT always logical. I know that in that situation, I advocated for a person who didn't have superlatives in testing, GPA or letters of recommendation - but a person who made a really compelling reason in their personal statement. (She ended up getting one of the scholarships, by the way.) So I think that if I can give you ANY advice whatsoever, it would be to hone the crap out of your SOP, to make it absolutely transparent that you know what you're doing, what you want to do, and why you are the best person for the spot. Best of luck.

I like this type of mentality for the close - I ended up going with something similar. I think ending on a "this could and should be a mutually beneficial proposition" is the right tone -- at least for what I've got. As far as length -- I had about 1200 at first, and I've tightened the language down to around 800, total statement, with about 150~ word half-paragraph that could be optional as I know a LOR will be addressing it as well.

Hey guys, Is everyone else as tired of working on these suckers as I am? I think my eyes are crossing from all the revisions! So, two things: first, when discussing something like "school psychology" or "social psychology" or "health psychology" within a SOP, should those be capitalized or not? I don't /think/ they qualify as proper nouns... >.> (It's after midnight! My brain isn't working!) Second, does anyone have any tips or tactics on graceful ways to close a SOP? My layout as it stands now is kind of: Paragraph A: What attracted me to the field and introducing research as the end goal Paragraph B: What experiences prepared me for independent research Paragraph C: What I've learned from independent research and how it's shaped me for further independent research Paragraph D: Articulated career goals and how graduate studies at X school will allow me to achieve that, then specific potential research avenues and fit with professors. And now I'm at the end kind of.. mentally flailing, because without something to close it out, it feels kind of ... abrupt. Any thoughts?

What are those scores in the latest percentiles? Percentiles are more important than raw scores, from what I've heard. The big thing is having your application make any first cuts, so they can actually evaluate your package for /fit/. I'd say if you're above fifty percentile you have a greater likelihood of making a first cut than under -- because there *is* a psychological break between 49% and 50%. I had a score sub-fifty and retested to higher than fifty percentile in that. The $250 I spent to register, buy study materials and cart myself to the testing center two hours away is worth the peace of mind walking into the application season!

I agree completely with Joey: I understood the OP's point. "Not good enough" is as subjective as the admissions process itself, after all. If you've been waitlisted, chances are another candidate was vetted "better" than you - if in no other metric, the metric of fit. And we all know how important fit is. Also: from all of my experiences, academia is not friendly to those with thin skin. Nothing in this day and age is, really.

Just to give everyone a follow-up, especially for those who are still considering / will consider similar situations in the future: I registered for the GRE at the beginning of this month, took it today, and got a raw score of 160V/156Q, which is roughly approximate to a 1330 on the old scale; for schools that use "best scores in either section, across tests", I'm now approximately a 1400 candidate. I studied using khanacademy.com and Princeton Review's Cracking the GRE, and I think I could have bumped that quant (68 percentile is still "eh", but TONS better than my last test!) if I had focused more on practice tests. /Timing/ yourself is key: I found myself running out of time on all three of the quant sections I had, mostly because I didn't give myself time restraints in practice. The psychological aspect of a time limit is, well, limiting -- and something to control for. So that's my advice for anyone who is/was in the position that I was/am: thirty days and even halfassed study habits (I finished developing a research prospectus and submitted for IRB, along with working 40~ hours a week and taking 12 hours including thesis and additional self-directed study, not to mention the insanity of homecoming committee concurrent to GRE studying, which kind of hampered my time-- the ideal time investment is probably closer to 2 hours a day for significant improvements) can... not to sound cheesy, but: change your life. Do it. I hated every minute of it, but even if my scaled score is 10-15% lower than my raw score, it's still a significant gain so long as schools vet "best of either". PS: start figuring out functions of lines /now/ if you're unfamiliar. And triangle rules. And arcs. Arcs were totally underrepresented in my prep and over-represented on the test!

Hello all! First-time poster, long-time lurker here. I'm planning on applying into social psychology programs for the upcoming fall, and I'm very torn over one part of my application -- my GRE scores. I was satisfied if not pleased by them last year; 680V (165 estimate, 95%ile [the score I *am* pleased with!]), 580Q (147 estimate, 31%ile [the problem score]), AW5.0/92%ile. As a bit of background: I have supervised teaching experience, I've TA'd, and I'm working on my honors thesis currently. I don't have a tremendous amount of research experience, aside from some applied I/O-ish projects and my thesis, but I'm wrapping up my bachelors at nontrad campus that doesn't offer much as far as research labs go. My undergrad GPA is 3.8 and my last two years are 3.98. So my question is: should I risk it and go with what I have, or retake the GRE? I have an ungodly amount of anxiety on testing about anything with algebra, which is reflected by the only C's on my transcript being algebra classes! Notably, I've aced all statistics or research methods classes I've ever taken! Initially, I was very relieved when I originally got that 580-- it was a little over 50th percentile at that point in time, but it's plummeted down after the new GRE was implemented and those scores started rolling in. So... what do you guys think? Any thoughts would be deeply appreciated.