[What to say in email to professor]

On 7/19/2018 at 4:29 PM, brainlass said:

(Be sure to drop a line referencing some specific aspect of their work, to demonstrate that you didn't just copy/paste one mass email to a hundred people)

...and don't copy/paste from their website, which is more common than people would think.

[Anyone aced the GRE in one try?]

I only took the GRE once, on the old scoring system. Verbal 97th percentile, quant 80th, writing 6.0. This was before all the online jazz existed.  I studied the princeton and kaplan books for most of a summer, here and there, including doing lots of math practice questions and I took vocab flashcards with me on the bus. I also like to read smart writing--a great way to study that isn't for everybody is to read The New Yorker for a couple years. I scored 810 on the psychology test and that was studying an intro text for 2-3 weeks.

[Attending a conference as a delegate or not worth the money?]

FYI ICAP/CPA is has a strong applied/practitioner focus. So if you're applying to experimental programs it will be less useful in terms of network and seeing good talks. I second @Hk328 about not putting conference attendance where you don't present on your CV. (The reason being, anybody can pay money and attend, this doesn't make it an accomplishment--unlike an accepted poster.)

[schools that are unprofessional]

22 hours ago, FutureResearcher said:

But the deadline for making a decision is April 15. I guess the school should send out the rejections on or before April 15.

I agree the April 15 date is important. Personally, if I hadn't heard from a school by April 10 or so I would assume a rejection if I needed to make other decisions. I did have students this year who got acceptances after April 15, though, because I assume they were waitlisted and someone else declined by the decision deadline.

[schools that are unprofessional]

Catch 22. If schools shoot out rejections too early, then people get upset they weren't considered for a waitlisted spot.

ETA: Second @TakeruK's position. This is neither uncommon nor unprofessional. And in fact, they might require you to login to the portal because of privacy concerns -- email being notoriously unsecure. e.g., my bank doesn't send emails with content, I just get an email saying "you have a message, go login."

[How many research projects at a time is reasonable?]

I'm in psychology too. The answer varies so much by method, area, and program that it's almost impossible to give specific advice. My advisor wanted all his students to run at least six experiments a term -- usually a combination of lab and online experiments using undergraduates. But someone who researches a less common population (children, couples, clinical conditions) or a more complicated method (longitudinal, physiological, dyadic interactions) couldn't keep that up. Your peers and your advisor's expectations are a better benchmark than our best guesses.

Last, consider your program quality and any academic ambitions. I know some programs where a student's dissertation project is almost all they do. Finish dissertation, graduate, languish on the job market. But if you're at a top program with higher standards, or want to be a competitive on the academic market, you'll need to push yourself harder than that.

 

6 hours ago, MarineBluePsy said:

those that do spend more time correcting their mistakes which just adds more time. 

hah, welcome to the world of student trainees. This doesn't end.

 

[Any married grad students here?]

On 3/27/2018 at 8:44 AM, XVIIA said:

I also got very tired of people acting surprised that my husband will be moving with me ("Oh, that's so awesome of him!"). A PhD in my field is a 5 to 6 year commitment, and I don't know many people who voluntarily choose long distance marriages if they can avoid it.

I wasn't there to hear their tone, but a more charitable interpretation is not surprise that he's moving, but appreciation for his commitment to your career. I absolutely know people who chose graduate programs or jobs that were less than they could have achieved because they were limited by location because their spouse wouldn't move (for job or family reasons). So, it is awesome of him.  And he'll probably have to do it again after you graduate. For my spouse, who moved across the country for my grad program, that second move was harder -- she had made a ton of friends over that time and had to leave them, and move again, for my job. In contrast, my grad school friends all moved for jobs so my social circle was dissipating anyway.

[Any married grad students here?]

On 3/23/2018 at 2:41 AM, lambda said:

I'm also married, and a bit nervous about this as I have regularly gotten snides comments about the fact I am married. I am also 3 years older than my cohort, and I am hoping people do not treat me as if I am less "serious" than the non-married PhD students.

Not arguing that this a general trend or typical, but in my experience at my graduate program, the married or long-term-coupled were more serious than the single grad students. They prioritized separation between work and home life because they wanted to guard their home time with their partner. As a consequence, they tended to have better time management, i.e., worked at work instead of goofing off. It also helps a lot with the bills. The real challenge is when you graduate and have to balance dual career/social/family commitments, because academia often means being willing to move anywhere a job is.

 

 

[Psychology Masters - NYU]

8 hours ago, Kodel said:

How easy is it to get an RA/TA before you join the NYU Masters? and if you end up becoming one do you get a full tuition waiver directly? Thank you

My offer, way back in the day, was very clear that the NYU MA came with zero tuition waiver or funding (and, from what I hear around here, virtually zero guaranteed access to research faculty). So expect to be on the hook for about $25k/year. I would bet almost anything that any RA positions do not come with a funding waiver. (Which is a bit of a misnomer, because waiver means that tuition is paid from some other pool of money such as a research grant--nothing is actually free.)

[Reaching out to rejected programs]

When I teach, after every test I get emails saying, "Can we meet to go over my test and figure out how I can do better next time?" Three-quarters of the time they don't want advice for improvement on the next test, they want to grub for more marks on the last test. Don't be like them. i.e., as others have said, any email shouldn't have any whiff of argument with the decision.

[Emotional Support Animals in Graduate Housing?]

On 4/18/2018 at 9:24 AM, Bodhicaryavatara said:

@lewin Interesting, I thought there was ample, peer-reviewed evidence supporting the idea that animals like cats and dogs can reduce depression, trauma and anxiety in people?

According to the researcher interviewed in the article I linked, who had just published a large scale systematic review, this is not the case. Washington Post coverage of the same. The US Veterans Administration concluded something similar.

 

[Might be a dumb question-- are the horror stories about multiple failed app cycles true? Is there more to it?]

On 3/2/2018 at 8:56 AM, Sherrinford said:

However, and I think this is where clinical psych is quite different from most other PhD programs, you can be an amazing applicant and still not get in. It's a bit of a crapshoot sometimes and luck is definitely a factor. Someone can apply with the same credentials to the same program 1 year, not get in, apply the next year and get in. There are issues related to funding, whether the PI is taking students, whether the PI is colleagues with a certain applicant's LOR writers etc. 

This discussion has moved on but I just wanted to say that all the things you've listed are true of experimental psychology PhD programs too.

[[Psych Students] IRB Approval]

7 hours ago, orange turtle said:

Actually, not all studies require review. I can't tell you the specific details now, though.

Interesting you should mention Canada has more restrictive guidelines, though. I had felt / thought it was the opposite!

Could be a function of our respective fields and I should have qualified that's my experience in social psych. My understanding from colleagues is that in the USA, lots of the minimal risk studies are exempt. Here, even minimal risk has delegated review (e.g., two reviewers) -- at least, across the three institutions where I've been. TBC I don't think this is a bad thing. I hadn't heard of the NIH requirement - that sounds institution-specific because I've never read that in the TCPS, but who knows.

[Emotional Support Animals in Graduate Housing?]

2 hours ago, TakeruK said:

While working on the grad student government and helping students gain access to ESAs and pets in student housing

In one (Canadian) province I lived in, there is actually a no no-pets clause (i.e. any rental properties must allow tenants to have pets with only few exceptions). I think student housing often falls under the same rules are state laws for renters, so the state may have some jurisdiction over the schools in this sense. My school was in CA and there are no restrictions on landlords forbidding pets in housing there.

This is on topic but not addressing the OP's question.

First, I'm curious about your advocacy because the research evidence for the benefits of emotional support animals is lacking. Much like learning styles, people think they're helpful but it's hard to objectively say that they are (and thus justify intruding on others' rights such as landlords' property rights or the rights of people with allergies). I don't have a problem if landlords want to allow ESAs of their own free will, but get uncomfortable when they're forced to based on dubious evidence. (I feel similarly when children are exempted from mandatory public school vaccinations based on b.s. pseudoscientific objections.)

Second, I'll quibble slightly with "rental properties must allow tenants to have pets" if you're referring to Ontario. The legislation technically says that no pets clauses are null and void, but a landlord would be perfectly free to deny the application of a potential tenant on the basis of them having a pet. I think it's a recipe for having people lie about their pets until after they have a signed lease, but that's how it's set up. And in any case, it's moot because on campus student housing is exempt from the Residential Tenancies Act in ON.

 

 

[[Psych Students] IRB Approval]

3 hours ago, orange turtle said:

In fact, to be able to recruit in schools (or even talk to the schools) in Canada, you would need approval from the school boards and they have their own IRB/REBs.

Ahh, good catch. I thought that school boards would want an IRB approval, but didn't consider that they would want approval from a local or their own IRB.

Because of the language comment I also assumed that when OP said "international" they didn't mean Canada. Canada has more restrictive ethics guidelines for psychological research than the USA does (e.g., no such thing as exempt from review), so that might be another reason why local approval might be required - if their guidelines are substantively different than the USA guidelines. (As you know I'm sure, but for the OP.)

[question about academic offence]

On 4/5/2018 at 10:48 AM, punkwich said:

Pretty sure this was posted last year and the answer, as then, was no

I thought this question rang a bell and your memory is better than mine. Maybe if this is a recurring and long-term worry, OP should talk to someone about it...

[question about academic offence]

You have higher odds of getting hit by a meteorite. Believe me, even if that passage was terribly obvious plagiarism, professors barely have time to read papers for the first time to correct them, much to less go back and read old papers.

[E-mail Security]

I'm not an IT expert but getting entirely new devices seems like overkill unless you're getting tracked by the NSA.   I imagine a factory wipe of your computer would work just fine. I second juilletmercredi's recommendation of a password manager. I like KeePass personally.

[[Psych Students] IRB Approval]

Why don't you ask your IRB? They should have a staff contact.

Personally I wouldn't think approval from a local IRB is required unless you're actually working with that institution in some capacity, or if your local participants (e.g., the school admins) want it.  I'm trying to picture here... someone comes to my university and wants our IRB to review a project because they're recruiting people in our city, but they're otherwise not involving our university at all? Seems strange.

[Choosing Between a Clinical vs Experimental Program]

Speaking to the job prospects afterwards, my anec-data is that our department is perennially trying to hire a clinical psychologist to teach abnormal psychology courses and supervise the many, many undergrads who are interested in pursuing clinical training. They're hard to attract because the candidates want to continue seeing patients part time, or to train graduate students and we don't have a graduate program. Would we also consider an experimentalist who could teach those same courses? Maybe, but I think a clinical psychologist seeking an academic job would be especially marketable.

[Fall 2018 CANADIAN clinical psychology]

4 hours ago, FacelessMage said:

This is why I wish they had left the Master's CGS decisions at the national level rather than delegating it to the schools. It was much easier before when you could win the award and take it anywhere you want. 

Seconded. The new system shifts the power from the applicant to the institutions. Instead of a feather in the applicant's cap, it's now just one more recruiting tool that universities can use to convince some candidate to come there instead of elsewhere. Frankly, I think it diminishes the prestige of the award. If university A gives you one of their allocated awards, why should that matter to university B? It's a positive signal, of course, but I don't know what criteria they used to judge, and I don't know who the other candidates are. Under the previous system it was prestigious because you knew that a recipient stacked up well in national competition against many other highly qualified applicants. 

[Realistically, how significant or important is the prestige of a doctoral program?]

Reputation matters - of the advisor and program if you're interested in academia, of the institution if you're interested in industry. People here talk about "research fit" or "productivity" and "prestige" as if they're independent dimensions but they're often not. 

Interesting twitter thread relevant to this from about a month ago.

Some quotes: 

- "The fact is that an astonishingly small number of elite universities produce an overwhelming number of America’s professors. One study found: "just a quarter of all universities account for 71-86% of all tenure-track faculty in the U.S. and Canada"

- "The most ‘‘efficient’’ program in the US placed about 1 of 5 admitted students into PhD training positions (essentially research intensive faculty jobs)[though this data does not track positions obtained outside the USA]."

- "There is a lot of variance *between* schools...But no one talks about the variance *within* schools. My guess is that a small number of labs/mentors at the top programs place most of the students. At places I've been this is often obvious to faculty, but not to students. "

[Fall 2018 Psychology Waislist]

23 minutes ago, Psych2018 said:

Or, is this different across programs?

This. 

[Changing career plans. How to tell parents? Advice appreciated]

2 hours ago, Left Skew said:

I would ask them to make a list of pros and cons of both.

This could be useful if it helps OP address their parents' concerns, but personally I would be carefull that this strategy doesn't give the impression that the issue is still up for discussion. (Parents: "But look how many cons there are! And you have cons listed too! So I think we agree this is a bad idea.")   

OP, if you've decided, then tell them your decision. You could also hedge a bit: "I think I like psychology so I'm going to test it out by working for a professor this year, but regardless I definitely know I don't like OT because of x, y, and z."

If we take  your mom's comment about the world having too many psychologists at its surface meaning -- i.e., concern about your job prospects, then point her to this: "Employment of psychologists is projected to grow 14 percent from 2016 to 2026, faster than the average for all occupations. Job prospects should be best for those who have a doctoral degree in an applied specialty."

That said.... you said you're from a small town. I'm from a small town. May I suggest a few other things that might be going on:

(a) Your parents are concerned that if you get a clinical psychology PhD you'll move to a city and they'll never/rarely see you. 

(b) That "the world has enough psychologists" line could be a manifestation of the attitude some people have about 'everything being a disease or an illness nowadays, and giving kids coddling and pills instead of just discipline' and they blame modern psychology for 'slapping a diagnosis' on conduct problems. Do your parents express other types of republican talking points/culture war ideas?

(c) They want that more traditional life of marriage and kids for you. Sometimes there is a stigma against "over" educated women and fear that they won't be able to catch a man if they know too much. (I'm assuming you're a woman because of the references to your friends.)

But those last three are wild speculation. You're in a better position to judge. And regardless, I think it should be presented as a decision, not a discussion, because you're a grownup. To smooth over the relationship, however, it could be worth thinking about what's really going on for them.

 

 

[Might be a dumb question-- are the horror stories about multiple failed app cycles true? Is there more to it?]

25 minutes ago, DippinDot said:

who are working so hard, are well qualified, and are persistent still don't get any acceptances after years and years.

Sometimes it's the things you mention. But it's possible that aspects of your underlying assumption (quoted) are wrong. The people who have applied 3+ times and are still unsuccessful might not have the aptitude for graduate studies--or are consistently aiming higher than their aptitude would allow. Sometimes there are factors that more RA experience just won't fix, like hitting a ceiling on GRE scores, having an undergraduate degree from a middling institution, or unknowingly resubmitting unremarkable reference letters (in content or source). Not everybody is cut out for graduate school (or medical school, or dating a supermodel, etc.).

ETA: I am curious why it's scary that not everybody can get what they want, career wise. I absolutely understand why it might be personally uncomfortable to think that one can't have one's dream, but why in the more general sense that "people" won't be able to do it?