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sing something

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  1. Thanks everyone for your responses! I figured I would post on here now that I actually have a back-up plan. After considering all of the advice I have received from my mentors, family, and people on this site and talking over ideas with my boyfriend, we have decided on the following, if I don't get accepted this year: We will move back to our home town and find an apartment. We will both register as substitute teachers. The city we are from has a major shortage of substitute teachers and both of my parents are teachers in the area, so we should be able to get steady work (outside of food service) this way. I will contact local universities and colleges to inquire about volunteer research opportunities. There is one lab in particular that would be ideal to volunteer in, as it fits very well with my research interests (there is no lab like this at my undergrad, so staying here would not help me). I also plan to audit some chemistry and bio classes to improve my hard science knowledge. In this time I should also publish my senior thesis, giving me my first authorship on a published empirical research paper. I will reapply next year, this time to many more schools, and will revise my SOP to be more program specific, as well as more specific in regards to my research interests and ideas. And of course, I will read, read, and read some more in my field to increase my knowledge base. I feel prepared to enter into a phd program in my field and I couldnt be more excited to hear back from the schools I applied to, but I also know I have a lot to learn. I am so at peace with this back-up plan, I might cut down my application status/email checking to just once a day, haha. Good luck everyone!
  2. If you receive an impromptu call, graciously thank the caller for reaching out to you, briefly express your eagerness to speak with them further, and ask if you can schedule a better time to talk. This way you can be sure to accept the call in a quiet place where there will be no interruptions and you can prepare any talking points. This is what my adviser said.
  3. I wouldn't worry about it too much. If it was going to preclude them from admitting you they wouldn't have a place for you to explain and your situation is the most innocent of all potential situations. I would provide one concise, but truthful sentence in which you explain. Accept responsibility and don't make an excuse, just tell the truth. Then spend a couple more sentences expressing how you have improved, what you learned from the experience, and what you have been able to achieve academically since.
  4. I think your research experience sounds about average. I certainly wouldn't worry that it would hurt you. I am interested in affective neuroscience as well - emotion regulation and fMRI - and I have a somewhat comparable background. I've been working in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at my school since Dec 2011. This is definitely a relevant lab/area to be working in, but the specific studies I worked on had nothing to do with my interests. I was/am in charge of running participants in three EEG studies. I helped out with the development of one of these studies, but only in stimuli selection and preparation, not in terms of methods design. I have no authorships from this lab. I started working in another lab in the summer of 2012. It is a family assessment lab and has nothing to do with my research interests, but I was able to get a first authorship on a poster and am currently working on an independent research project in this lab, for which I will have an authorship, but probably not until mid-late 2013. I designed an independent study course in affective neuroscience, but it is a readings based course not a research based course. I did complete a critical literature review on my exact topic of interest, however, and submitted this as my writing sample.
  5. What is your ultimate goal? By that I mean, are you getting your masters as a stepping stone to your phd? What kind of career do you hope to enter? I ask because you will have much better chances applying to course-heavy masters programs that don't emphasize research. Attending a program like that won't put you in any better position to get into a phd program in two years, though.
  6. My roommate plans on applying to the Middlebury Russian program after she graduates. Kudos to you for being prepared both for psych PhD programs and the Middlebury program. I can't imagine combining all the work I put in and all the work she puts in to be prepared for both! That's really cool though. I imagine I would go the same route as many of you. I will apply to a few masters programs if i don't hear about interviews by the end of january, but I couldn't go if it wasn't fully funded, and I know those are rare. My adviser said there is no need to get a masters unless your gpa is very weak, but it seems to me like it would be a good way to get research and teaching experience. If that doesn't work, I suppose I would apply to work in labs (paid or volunteer), but I don't think I can get much more out of the labs I work in now. I just dread the idea of working in a restaurant or something for the next two years. Ive been working jobs like this pretty close to full-time since I was 16 and I am just so excited to be done. It just feels like there should be something (paid) I could do with my degree that would also better prepare me for graduate school. I hope this doesn't just sound like whining. The idea of it just makes me want to let out the most gigantic sigh.
  7. Could you apply to your top 9 and have find a different letter writer for your bottom three schools?
  8. I have submitted all of my applications to competitive PhD programs, and as someone who can't help but obsessively plan for the future, I've been thinking a lot about my back-up plan. If you didn't get accepted, would you definitely reapply next year/in the future? What would you do to improve upon your application? How would you fill your time/pay the bills in the mean time? Or would you pursue something other than grad school entirely?
  9. The UW app actually isn't due until Dec. 15. When I emailed Li she said she was considering accepting a student, so we'll see..thanks for the info though.
  10. I have multiple POIs at most of the schools, but the faculty you mentioned are among them. I was originally interestd in UW-Madison for Davidson, but ran into the same thing you did. I was ready to cross it off my list when I discovered Wen Li and her lab.
  11. It sounds like we are applying to a lot of the same programs. I am interested in the neural bases of emotion regulation, so I have applied to both social and cog-neuroscience areas, depending on the school. Good luck everyone!
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