lewin

That must be somewhat new too. When I took the general and subject in 2005-06 they always sent all scores. Makes me feel better about my scores To be blunt, that's just not true for clinical psych. I looked up UBC, McGill, Toronto, Victoria, and Waterloo -- all five require GRE scores.

^^ I have a feeling that if average scores get higher schools will just increase their admissions requirements.

Agree with the above but just wanted to point out that many American programs emphasize research, especially PhD programs. Any program that follows the scientist-practitioner style of training (the boulder model) will train you as a researcher first, practitioner second. The UK is "cheaper" because they don't require the GRE? All-in-all the GRE will cost you < $500. That's not a lot of money, certainly not worth eliminating the largest education system in the world over.

Sorry, when you say "sponsor" do you mean "pay for" or just supervise? So you're looking for some independent funding? The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues offers small grants that sound appropriate for your topic but I don't know whether they require one to be a student.

I picked three psychology programs semi-randomly. Two just said "a four year bachelor's degree" without specifying type and one didn't even refer to what undergraduate degree one needed. So I bet you'll be fine but if you're concerned there are always administrators in charge of admissions at each program that you can contact to check. And none said anything about an honours thesis as a formal requirement, though I happen to know that all the grad students in my year did one. I suspect anything that indicates firsthand research experience could substitute (e.g., independent project, RA work). In your statement of interest you need to talk about what kind of research you like and a thesis (or other experience) helps you do that in a more informed way.

I'm not familiar with that compared to a BA/BSc. What's the difference? Most graduate programs would expect that your undergraduate degree: (1) was four years (2) included psych courses (3) had an honours thesis or equivalent. I think if you have those three things you're definitely fine, if you're missing any it has the potential to hurt your application.

Depending on what you mean by "knows me and my passions a lot better" it might be worth replacing that letter with the bio profs, assuming that he/she will get to know you while you're working there. It's more important for a letter to describe what you've done in a concrete, detailed, and positive way then to talk more vaguely about the things you're interested in. Everybody is smart, passionate, etc., so concrete details are important.

If you're considering a PhD do a thesis because programs will be suspicious about why you didn't. The thesis process might also help you decide whether to do a PhD: If an MA thesis is too stressful/unenjoyable then a PhD definitely isn't for you. Everybody dislikes some aspects of writing and research but, at the core, you have to enjoy doing it to have any hope of success in a PhD program.

One rule I have heard is not to exceed your expected income the first year out of University. If loan = first year's income then it's reasonable to pay it off within seven years (a typical period). Resist the temptation to pay it off in ten.

General RA experience is good because you can learn how people in a lab interact and how science generally gets conducted. I echo the above about getting psych experience too if you can. My one concern would be that it's run by a "good friend". You don't say whether the friend is a student, prof, etc. Just make sure the experience can potentially produce a good letter from somebody with nice credentials. The letter is more important than the skills.

I haven't read through most of this thread but the scores are standardized. (I don't know whether they're normally or uniformly distributed.) So 30 means you were better than everybody, 15 means exactly average. So the cutoff probably changes from year to year: They start at the highest score and work their way down until they run out of money.

Those are pretty diverse interests and it's not obvious to me how they relate to engineering. Are you considering a career change? The place to get exposure to many areas of psychology is undergraduate work, not master's level work. Graduate work is the time to specialize. You might do well to take or audit a few undergraduate classes in the areas that interest you at the local university to focus in on something specific.

I want to caution against generalizations that can be extremely field-specific. When I applied to social psychology programs half of the Canadian ones were combined PhD programs. But of the psych subdisciplines, I/O is probably the most likely to split their MA/PhD components because many people get a master's then head for industry jobs. Would you agree, Zencarrot?

With your background, you might also be interested in interdisciplinary cognitive science programs e.g., this one: http://philosophy.uwaterloo.ca/CogSci/index.html

Want a good paying job right after undergrad? Take a bachelor of nursing... RN's make $65k straight out. But seriously, if you're interested in HR then Waterloo also has a human resources management program. I don't know much about it, but it may be worth checking out. I don't recall what area of psych you mentioned, but at Waterloo social and clinical are particularly strong. I also want to add that I have a BA but still took lots of physiological and neuroscience courses.

To clarify something: Psychology is a science that for quirky historical reasons is often situated in the faculty of arts. Some universities practice better labelling and put it in the faculty of science. So think of the two programs as the same degree with an abitrary distinction where one calls it a BA and the other calls it a BSc. The co-op aspect is a significant difference though, so I would decide which to attend based on whether you want to do co-op (and the extra year that it entails). I know exactly which two programs you're referring to because I'm currently in grad school with two people who have the two degrees you listed (but not the co-op stream). They both got into the same graduate program just fine and the content of their undergrad degrees was basically the same.

Are you all serious!? What if you change your mind in the next four years? What if you get married and your spouse gets a job somewhere else? Not to mention that committing to a company for four years gives you such little leverage in negotiating duties, salary, etc. Without knowing more, it sounds like you're signing up for indentured servitude. I would balk at signing a cell phone contract for four years, much less a job contract. In my opinion this is a bad idea.

It completely depends on your school and its rules for handing those out, there's really no way for us to say. At my university, for example, everybody gets a teaching assistantship. But at others they're awarded through some competition.

About emailing current graduate students: Remember that we talk to one another and to the profs. Recently I had someone email me about my program and I gave a prompt and detailed reply. At lunch that day, eating with my fellow students, I found out that this person had simultaneously emailed half a dozen of us and we'd all replied, and now were irritated at all the duplication of effort. tldr: Email one or two grad students per school, not all of them.

The answers to all life's questions

I'm at a Canadian program and recent grads of ours have been offered post docs at Stanford, Duke, Princeton, Yale, and Columbia... and faculty jobs at Stanford, NYU, UMass, and Northwestern. So it can happen. But you don't say where you're applying to in the U.S. (i.e., will a Canadian PhD hurt your chances compared to what?) There's no equivalent to the Ivy league up here, so if you can go to Harvard or whatevs then you should. But if it is choosing between a great Canadian program and podunk state U then I can't imagine it would matter. I don't know anything about cognitive programs or neurocognition specifically so you should check with your advisors about foreign programs and their reputations.

Here's a good general guide: http://www.psychology.uwaterloo.ca/gradprog/preparation/grad_school_in_psych.html To answer your specific question, most undergraduates won't have any journal publications when they apply for graduate school. The most you can hope for is a conference presentation or two, and even that is not mandatory.

Coincidentally I was talking to a prof today who said he hates these emails because he gets the impression that students are trying to circumvent the admissions process. Even if he's in the minority, prospective students would do well to avoid any hints at this in their emails. I pointed out that I personally emailed profs because I wanted to see whether they were taking students and save $100 if I knew there was no chance of admission (i.e., cheap not obsequious) and that if he had a current "I'm taking/not taking students" statement on his website it might cut down on inquiries

Those are pretty extensive questions but this website might give you a start, it's pretty thorough: http://www.socialpsychology.org/

This is an off-topic complaint, but psychology classes are science classes because psychology is a science. But you're forgiven because, for stupid historical reasons, we're usually stuck in the faculty of arts. So the answer is yes, you will usually need to have some knowledge of psychological science--via taking classes or some other demonstrable method like research experience--to get into a PhD program.