Angua

I've thought about ugrading LinkedIn, too, but it tells you the most recent viewers for free, so I wondered what I would get out of paying? Re: Academia, it doesn't tell me *who* googled me, just that someone googled me and then clicked on my Academia page. Also, if you want your profile to come up higher when your name is googled, you should link to it as often as possible. Cross-link your profiles on LinkedIn, SSRN, Academia, Twitter, etc. It's not a guarantee of better results, and it's not instant, but one of the ways Google decides how to weight search results is by how often other pages link back to them.

Definitely not - think about what a waste of time/resources it would be for a professor to contact folks he wasn't seriously considering. Congrats! I hope it pans out!

Academia.edu will email you when someone clicks through to your site from Google - "Someone just Googled your name!"

Perhaps, but it doesn't change my point: people may have reacted this way (I've actually been thinking about why people would laugh) partly because it seems that removing women from a study whose focus was social discrimination would cause problems. Clearly this is not my area of expertise, and so I approach these questions very differently. In the research I deal with, external social validity is a primary concern - I could never drop all of one gender from a sample. I know that there is often more flexibility in neuro/bio work, and so maybe it would be fine in this case. There's no need to defend your suggestion to me - you asked for thoughts about why people reacted that way, and I was just trying to give you another perspective.

Your advisor and your research will almost certainly be more important than the label on your degree. If this POI is someone you would want to work with, do as he suggests! :-)

+1 for ”But those places are all so far away!” From mom, sister, and grandmother. We're currently in the middle of the country and 2 hours away, looking at places at least 4 hours away -- top choices on the coasts. Fortunately, since we don't want kids, this process has given me a reprieve on baby talk. Now I get, ” well, I know you want to get your career started first...” Um, sure. That's it...

I think some of the reaction may have stemmed from your suggestion in the specific context of this study. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but was the purpose of the study to examine biological correlates of social discrimination? It sounds like that was the purpose, and it also sounds like they specifically balanced men versus women in the study, presumably to allow for gender comparisons? If so, suggesting that they drop the women from the study may be problematic not only for the gender implications that have already been discussed, but also because it would undermine the purpose of the study. If they wanted to compare men and women, dropping the women because would be highly counterproductive. Even if no gender comparison was planned or intended, however, if the subject was perceptions of discrimination, leaving women out of the study altogether poses some rather fundamental validity questions.

Seems quiet over here, so I thought I'd start a thread for news/updates/discussion/stressing/etc. over our business PhD applications. I am an OB/social psych person, so I spend a lot of time in the psych forum (I started a thread for OB over there, too), but I applied to 6 business schools as well. Anyone else out there?

Well, I clearly don't have enough to keep myself from constantly checking my email, so I thought I'd ask if anyone else applied to business PhD programs as well as psych programs? I applied to some Org Behavior / Managment programs alongside my "traditional" social psych programs, and I also applied to Berkeley's JSP program. There isn't any activity over on the business school section of the forums, and since most of my applications went to social psych, I thought I'd see if anyone is in the same boat!

This is almost exactly me. Honestly, if I don't get in, I'm going to do some serious evaluation of my plans. Re-applying may be in my future... but it may not. I guess we'll see! I'm fortunate to have some great professors who are willing to make calls for me, so I am hoping that if I don't get in, I will have a good sense of whether another year here and a few more publications would be enough to get me in or not. Blech. Here's hoping it works out!

I've done a lot of non-grad-school interviews (from both ends), and I want to make two points I think are really important, because I think they probably apply here too: 1) "Wear what makes you comfortable" is good advice, but I would phrase it this way: Wear what makes you feel AWESOME. "Comfortable" could mean your PJs/sweats -- that's not what we mean. Wear something that makes you feel like the smartest, best to work with, most awesome bad-A** on the block. It shouldn't be totally casual -- you want to convey that you're taking the interview seriously -- but it shouldn't be something you are uncomfortable in. 2) The best interviews, without a doubt, are interviews where both parties treat it kind of like a speed date. The goal isn't just to get an offer, or to get the candidate to accept an offer. The goal is to find out whether a working relationship between you would be productive, pleasant, and mutually beneficial. You should try to tone down anything that could be majorly off-putting in a first meeting, the same way you wouldn't tell your speed date that, say, you cry when you're drunk. But you do want to let them know the real you -- pretending to be something you aren't will only waste time, and could hurt you by: (a) making you seem fake -- believe me, it's easier than you think to tell when someone is pretending to be interested; or (b ) winding you up in a program that's not what you really want.

Mine also still says incomplete (as of yesterday afternoon), though all of my materials seem to have been received. Good to know I'm not the only one! Tolman's Rat - I had to contact them with a question back in November, and I also got the auto-response, followed a few days later by an actual answer. So they may get back to you.

My instinct would be that if you know in advance who is interviewing you (presumably a POI), you shoud answer this question with something that fits into their lab. That would show that you (a) Know what they are already doing, (b ) Have prepared for the interview, and © Will fit in well. In fact, I actually think being prepared with some ideas about how you could riff on what they already doing to fit it into your interests is a really good idea -- it may give you more to talk about when the interview turns to your research plans, even if they don't ask for a "proposal." Now, if you can't fit any projects that interest you into what they are already sort of doing, I wouldn't try to shoe-horn it in. It's important for you to also get information about how your interests fit in. So I'd suggest proposing something that interests you -- just see if anything that interests you would be a natural extension of a current project (this may give you some good ideas for your proposal anyway). edited to remove autosmiley...

Yes, my impression is that a lot of the programs I applied to will be doing interviews. Many say so explicitly, but I've gotten the impression talking to others that most of them will at least want an informal chat first.

I also filled out that part of the application (I'm Latina), and I also got that email. I shrugged it off as a form thing, but hopefully you're right and it's a good sign!