veggiez

Hi guys! After spending so much money on application fees, sending GRE scores, and booking flights to interviews my bank account is pretty pathetic. I wish I could spend my summer relaxing, but I know that I need to make money somehow. What is everyone else planning on doing this summer? I have seen some lab internships and summer camp jobs that seek Psychology graduates, but the thought of writing more essays, asking for more LORs, and competing against more students for summer positions is incredibly stressful, and I am just not sure I can handle more of that right now. Does anyone have suggestions about jobs that pay more than minimum wage, but will not completely ruin my last summer before grad school (assuming that is where I will end up this fall)? I love working with kids, but I don't have my 90-hour certification or whatever, so teaching opportunities are kind of out the window. I have been considering nannying because I know that would be a relaxing job (I've done it before), and I would absolutely love to be an au pair in France (because I want to brush up on my French and bilingualism is my main research interest). I looked this up on google and I am afraid that all the websites to match you with a family are scams. Anyone know of a decent agency for this that someone you know has actually used? I know it is a little early to be so panicky about this summer, but last summer I applied to 13 summer research programs and got into none, so I had to search frantically in May for something. I ended up working for Americorps, which was fine and a really life-changing opportunity, but I want something a little more laid-back this summer. Thanks for any suggestions you have!

fairy tale

How do you see that? I can't see anything except that I completed the application.

I would definitely list my research advisor as a co-author. I have done independent research with a grant and everything as well, but I just feel like the people who are involved usually get credit as well. Even if some of my peers in my advisor's lab helped me with data collection, I would probably include them as well. You of course would be listed first, since you were the PI and you are writing the paper, but I am sure your advisor played enough of a role that he deserves to be included.

Whoever got an acceptance letter today from University of Michigan's developmental psych program, can you PM me your POI?

I am interested in this too. I applied there but haven't heard anything

I didn't go to an Ivy League school, but personally I think I got more out of my AP psych class than most people did out of Intro to psych in college. I tutor intro now and have yet to see anything in that class that wasn't taught to me in AP psych. They should do some validity tests between AP psych and the intro courses before discrediting the effort that students put into studying for the AP test.

I had always been told that emailing professors was important to save time and money if they aren't accepting students, but I am not sure it really did me any good. I read some articles by my POIs at each of the 11 schools to which I applied and made intelligent comments, even connecting their work to my own research projects. Some responded with a somewhat generic email about looking forward to seeing my application and thinking our research interests fit well together, while others didn't respond at all. One important thing I discovered was that American applicants have trouble getting funding at Canadian universities, so that at least gives me an explanation if I don't get into a Canadian school. From what I have seen so far, my attempts to reach out to POIs are nowhere near as effective as those of my undergrad research mentor; she spoke to several researchers at Psychonomics in November, and surprisingly, those are the only ones who contacted me for interviews. So that would be my biggest piece of advice: if your undergrad professors can make connections for you, they will be much more effective than an email from you as an applicant.

I had a skype interview with one school that mentioned that they would be contacting people about an interview weekend starting January 31, but never explicitly invited me. Then the next day, I received a formal invitation for an interview on February 1, but with a note that not attending because of financial issues or problems with missing school would not affect my chances of being accepted. In my situation, both schools were about equal ranking, but I had already skyped with the professor at the first, and had never been able to speak with the professor at the second. I waited a few days, and my dad gave me the same advice: to tell the second school that I was very interested in attending, but needed to make sure I could work it out in my schedule, and to tell them that I would let them know in the next 2 or 3 days. I think this is a very appropriate way to handle it, but I decided to just accept the second school's offer without even sending them an email to buy me some time, and still haven't heard back from the first school. Although it worries me that I was never invited to the interview weekend mentioned during my skype interview, at least I didn't have to choose between two schools. From what I have seen online, it seems like everyone has interviews these first few weekends, so the schools must expect that other offers might come up, in fact at another school, my POI told me they really try to get their invites out before other schools so that students don't have other interviews already scheduled. That being said, schools may suspect that if you make it seem as though you are waiting for some outside factor before agreeing to attend, that you might not put them at the top of your list.

I am applying to mostly developmental programs, with a few cognitive programs. So far, I've only really heard back from the cognitive programs. Yesterday I received two emails inviting me to interview weekends i February: one from Pitt (cognitive) and one from LSU (cognitive/developmental program). I also had a Skype interview at Penn state (again, for a cognitive program) last week, but haven't received a formal invitation to the interview weekend, although the faculty member with whom I interviewed did tell me that was the next step. I hope everyone else is getting good news, considering I have seen that a lot of interview weekend invitations have gone out this week.