lewin

I think emailing a proposal to your POI is a "too much, too soon" situation, like talking about how you really want to get married on a first date. A sentence or two in your email describing the ideas in which you're interested, in broad strokes, is probably fine though. Pitching a study or two in your SoP also seems appropriate.

The actual label they slap on your degree isn't important but graduate school is also about developing connections and learning what it means to be a social psychologist by osmosis. They have no social psychology program whatsoever? I would not attend a program that didn't have a social psychology program even if the POI is awesome. Here's what you're missing: 1. Interactions with social psychology faculty and graduate students. This is where research ideas come from and how you learn implicit professional norms. 2. Attending the social psychology seminars and hearing notable guest speakers. You need to learn how social psychologists discuss ideas and critique research. 3. Taking social psychology courses. Self-explanatory; you want to learn social psychology not a bunch of developmental. And possibly you'll miss.... 4. Attending social psychology conferences. 5. Publishing in social psychology journals. ETA: I would strongly, strongly advise against this.

I definitely considered the vivobook too and agree that a touchscreen is what makes windows 8 worthwhile. Mine doesn't have one and I'm still getting used to it.

I'm a little reluctant to do this myself, but I just wanted to say that it's really generous of you to do so.

Shopbot.ca is a good price aggregator. I also like Canada Computers; their service is pretty bad but prices are usually better than the big box stores. I bought an ASUS Zenbook a few weeks ago--its screen is 13.3" but otherwise meets your criteria. Looks good too.

I think these responses are all great and, in retrospect, I think my OP is a bit curmudgeonly I didn't mean to imply that the advice here is useless, or that posters are completely inexperienced, only that I suppose there was something about a couple of posts lately that rubbed me the wrong way as being too confident. Now here is just my own impression, but I feel like some factors can only count against you and this leads people to think that they don't matter. Like someone could get an 800 psych GRE score and I wouldn't think too much of it, but if somebody got a 500 I would think, "Weren't they paying attention at all during their classes?" I'm forgetting the exact term ("exclusionary mindset" maybe?) but profs are likely, at least initially, looking for reasons to cut rather than reasons to accept. Here, I'm generalizing the process that I use when hiring research assistants.

We have lots of threads asking how much GRE scores/publications/etc matter. I find these threads a bit amusing because most of the people here are fellow applicants and graduate students who, frankly, have very little idea about whether a particular factor matters or not. That is, most people only have their own experience to draw upon, and haven't been near any real admissions decisions where N > 1. It's even more unlikely that we as a group can gauge whether somebody is competitive for top programs versus, e.g., mid-level programs. A recent thread asked whether a low analytic writing score matters and most people said "no". But do we really have any evidence that it doesn't? Or are we motivated to think that whichever aspect of our application is weaker won't hurt us too much? (see Peter Ditto's research on motivated skepticism) I'd like to see a bunch of successful applicants admit to, e.g., having low analytic scores before being able to say with any certainty that a particular factor doesn't matter. I can't supply these anecdotes myself; everybody I know had awesome GRE scores, though maybe they still would have been admitted without them. I'm not sure what my goal is in posting this, except to maybe make us all rethink how much expertise we collectively have about what will sink somebody and what can be overcome. To be clear, I think this forum is great but for some questions (e.g., "evaluate my credentials") it might be more useful to talk to one's professors instead of all of us here.

My impression is that the RA letter will be better because it should be more detailed. Unless the class was a small-group seminar with lots of contact, what is the professor going to write? I've seen those letters and they're basically: "I had X in my class and he/she obtained a mark of X, which is above/below the class average. Although I did not interact with X outside of class, he/she seemed dedicated and bright, and asked insightful questions during lecture." With a class-based letter, that's the best you can hope for.

Note that they don't allow information about non-U.S. schools and don't tell you that until you try and submit the form. You also can't submit information anonymously; the form requires a .edu email address.

You guys need a union. I'm teaching a section of 160 students and it's $8000/semester + benefits.

Here are reasons not to commute: 1. You'll find excuses not to go in and commute less and less. 2. You'll get a reputation for not being around, which might be a bad thing depending on the culture of your department. 3. You'll miss out on spontaneous social opportunities with other grad students. 4. You'll miss out on spontaneous interactions with professors. 5. Commuting is bad for your health. 6. Big city distractions will lower your productivity. My advice is the opposite of the above. Move to your small town during the early years when it's most important to develop a connection with your department. If you hate it, move to the city after 2-3 years when you're doing fewer classes and networking, and more independent writing. (I come from a department that's very communal and values face time in the office. Departmental culture may vary.)

A written note of thanks would be best. And as Miss Manners says, buy some real stationery and not a prewritten card. I don't think a bottle of wine would be out of line either if you felt inclined.

And more generally, it's poor form to deliberately use guilt to motivate people into helping you. I'm probably reading into things, but that's the implication I get from this sentence.

I don't think that's an uncommon attitude among professors: They don't want to go through the hassle of recruiting somebody if there's a really good chance that person will go elsewhere. If a prof can only make one or two offers, getting them to the right people (whom you want, but who will also accept) is really important. This can also, in part, explain why sometimes people get into top choices but not their so-called safety schools. I think it slightly weird to tell you this directly, but I wouldn't read too much into it because he probably considered it a compliment. In case it needs to be said, don't repeat that story to your fellow students

No feedback page saying what the study's about? Booooo. Poor form.

Most places pay a flat rate per course, not per hour. You might be able to look it up on their website. If you're doing a fresh prep it probably won't be very much if you actually calculate an hourly rate. I think the consensus is that it's only a decent wage when you're not prepping anymore (i.e., the second, third, fourth times you teach it...).

I just ordered an Asus Zenbook (13.3") myself, regular price is $1100 but it was on sale for $800. My personal bias is for Windows 7 unless you're getting a touchscreen. I think the consensus is that Windows 8 is weird without a touchscreen. I also like Asus because they often have a two year warranty that includes accidental damage.... very unusual nowadays unless you're paying extra for it! They also have better reliability than the cheaper brands like HP and Acer, on par with Apple. I'm going to try it without an external drive; so much of everything is downloaded nowadays. From your description you would probably want an i5 processor and 4-8GB of RAM. I'd also look for computers with an SSD/HD hybrid (if you want more disk space.... I've seen lots of 24GB/500GB combos) or just a 256GB SSD (if you can pay more). That SSD really makes a difference in boot time and battery life, it's probably the best thing you can do to increase your computer's responsiveness. If you're not a gamer then don't worry about the video card.

^^ This. A recent PSPB ranked North American social psychology programs by research impact. The best Canadian schools were: Toronto (#8), Waterloo (16), UBC (22), York (37), and Western (40). Toronto has really bulked up its social neuroscience faculty lately, they're top rate (Wil Cunningham, Michael Inzlicht, Nick Rule, Liz Page-Gould, Jason Plaks). You'd be hard-pressed to find a better group in one place.

Tenure committees usually require 2-5 letters from experts in the field who can comment on one's publications and the quality of the journals. I expect the candidate would get eviscerated, unless there was deliberate deception going on (e.g., one CV to the experts, another CV to the committee).

Yeah, I mean I wouldn't buy a car just for one class Me, I'm trying to figure out whether a one-hour commute by car (which is completely wasted time) is better than 2 hours by train (where at least I can work).

I think you'll find that programs offer funding that's comparable to similar American universities, though it's weird you can't find the information online. For example, my university in psychology offers a minimum of $24k/year in internal funding, from which one pays $7k/year tuition. For that you TA 10 hours per week, the rest is scholarship money. If you have an external award you get more money and a reduced TA load. Something to keep in mind is that the stipend might look slightly higher but you'll probably have to pay tuition which, thankfully, is much less than American tuition because it's heavily subsidized by the government. There are other scholarships from SSHRC and provincial agencies (like the Ontario Graduate Scholarship) but they might be limited to Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

I just took a two-year term job that's also about 60 miles from where I live, so I'll be doing that commute about four times a week. I'm not looking forward to the commute but it allows my partner to keep a job they're happy with so for our relationship I think it's worth the compromise... though I'll probably spend 25% of my salary on commuting. So twice a month? Go for it, assuming it's actually possible without a car.

Sometimes (once you've got a bunch of mentions) I've seen one line like "My research has been mentioned on CNN, NBC, The New York Times..." etc. I've also seen this saved for one's website. Don't mention the Iowa Podunk Times, it needs to be a few places and they need to be notable.

I've griped about that site before and how it's annoying that email address is a required field and they only want American students. They don't mention this anywhere up front and I wasted time filling out the form only to find I couldn't submit it.

Yikes! Yeah sorry, just do the easiest thing acceptable to your committee then. Good luck!