lewin

My friends have been applying for Post Docs and faculty jobs. Not one has even asked for a transcript. For scholarships, on the other hand, grades are very important.

According to this list McGill is #17 in the world and Toronto #23, on par with the likes of Johns Hopkins, Duke, Berkeley, and Northwestern.

For PhD, yes. I only applied to schools that offered full funding because I couldn't afford to go otherwise. There was no shortage of options.

Okay yeah, that's strange. The first email I received used some lines from my MA thesis that was posted online, in the second they cribbed some lines from my school website listing my research interests. In both cases they were just slightly wrong enough that I knew immediately that they didn't really get what I do.

I've received that one too, twice. So have a few other grad students I know. I don't think it's an outright scam, but it's certainly worthless. Actually, telling people that you self-published might be worse than worthless because it reeks of desperation.

I think you're right but in academics it's trivial for the department to make the case to hire a non-Canadian. Our last three hires have been American.

In addition to the qualities that led your supervisor to accept you to graduate school, he can write about the merits of your research proposal. If he has only known you for a short while they can't expect a detailed letter. I haven't heard of any exceptions myself, but the staff at SSHRC would be the people who could tell you for sure. I am inclined to think not; like you said, your situation is not that uncommon so in any case many of the other applicants will be in the same position as you.

No need to apologize What's the difference between "in track" and "direct entry" PhD? I've never heard that term. Maybe we're just labelling the same thing differently? I had meant that many programs may technically admit people as master's students but are essentially combined programs. They state something like: (1) "Ours is a PhD program but sometimes students pick up a Master's along the way" or (2) "Students are admitted into a Master's program, but the expectation is that they will do a PhD too and would not be admitted if they expressed interest in a Master's only." In my mind both of those cases are basically PhD programs. Calgary, McGill, UNB, Ottawa, Concordia, Saskatchewan, SMU, Waterloo, and Windsor seem to hit one of the two points above, in contrast to other places that have more well defined Master's and PhD streams. This is a useful guide if you want more detailed info. I mean, regardless of what they call it you're going to be there for 5-7 years. In my program people, on paper, are admitted as MA students because it works better in terms of which scholarships they can apply for but basically it's a direct-entry PhD program. After some period of time they're just transferred over. Students who said they just wanted to do a terminal MA wouldn't be admitted.

Last year our program admitted 3 Canadians and 3 Americans. All the Americans eventually turned us down in favour of American schools. So maybe there's a hint of a "Ugh, why do we keep bothering?" mentality but realistically being American won't hurt you in psych. In politics, however, what are you studying? Is it something that's country-specific like public policy? If so it might be good to indicate somewhere (e.g., statement of purpose) that you're familiar with how Canadian government works. Some job ads state that their preference is for Canadian citizens but from what I've seen that's essentially meaningless. There are plenty of American academics here already, at least half of my professors. It won't be a problem.

Mmmm... this might vary by subdiscipline. In social psych there are definitely direct entry programs. Clinical too.

If you took a four-year BA (especially with an honours thesis component) you should be fine. Some universities up here in Canada offer a three-year "BA" degree and typically that's not enough to get into graduate school.

Yes you're right, my quote was a bit brusque. In real life my emails to profs are more like this. That's a really good point, that somebody who's a little erratic professionally could be unpredictable later. I think it also depends on who's taking the lead role in a project--like if the grad student is explicitly the lead author he/she has a little more leeway in being directive toward the other authors. But talking to another prof who's more familiar with the advisor and the departmental culture is probably the best course of action.

If that were me, with those revisions on the accepted paper, I would have sent an email saying: "Here is the draft, the submission date is X. If I haven't heard from you by Y I will assume you don't have any changes and submit it on our behalf." If this happens a lot you need to talk to somebody else in the department because otherwise it will hinder your career.

What kind of book? Was it published by a university press or the like?

A lot of places and fellowships won't let you have an external job. My fellowship, for example, allows a max of 10 hours per week of external work, which allows me to TA. The whole point is that they're paying you to attend graduate school, so you should be using that time to research and not at a second job.

Almost certainly yes. Every school I applied to asked for all transcripts from all universities attended. Will they find out if you decided to NOT submit transcripts? Again, almost certainly yes, eventually. Lying on admissions documents is the type of thing that gets you expelled. What will you do when people at the new school ask what you're doing now? Lie to your new colleagues too? Bad idea all around. Take your lumps -- "As you can see from my transcript, that last program was not a good fit... but here's why I am confident that your new program IS a good fit..." You'll probably need to explain why you were wrong last time, but right now.

That's awesome, my undergrad program offered a similar stats class (though less of the theory stuff) but I get the impression that's unusual. Many people only learn multiple regression graduate school, so you'll be well-prepared if you've heard something about it in advance.

Are you just interested in stats, or are you more interested in developing new methodology? Others have kind of touched on this, but depending on what exactly your GLM course is, it might be taught by a regular (insert subfield) psychologist, not a quantitative psychologist. I've been taught stats by cognitive, social, and clinical professors. Most graduate-level intermediate statistics (e.g., multiple regression, factorial ANOVA) can be taught by anybody who's an active researcher. My advanced stats (e.g., multilevel modelling, statistical equation modelling) professor was a clinical psychologist who had a secondary interest in methodology. I mean, he publishes articles on methods because he's brilliant and innovative, but his original training was not in quantitative psychology. All I'm saying is that you can still teach stats--if that's your interest--while specializing in a more traditional subfield. ETA: What's this GLM course about? If it's ANOVA and regression, I really disagree that it's overlooked generally, even though it may have been overlooked until now at your university. (Sorry.)

I'd point out that, strictly speaking, you can't just make your application sound SSHRC-y, you actually need to conduct research that falls under SSHRC's mandate afterwards--even if it's not exactly the project you proposed. Though it's unlikely, if they find out you did health research instead they can come after their money. Just apply for the council that's most appropriate. (From a SSHRC-funded psychologist who points out that CIHR has three times the budget of SSHRC and it would be nice if health researchers didn't poach the limited funding that we have.)

You're welcome Presumably they would verify and recalculate your GPA manually based on all courses taken, not just use whatever gets put on the application form. This is just my opinion, but the only way I can see switching making a difference is if your current university is one of the reasons you're not doing well (e.g., it's too far from home and you're miserable, or it's too close to home and your family uses up 95% of your time). Then, switching might let you flourish somewhere else and would provide a clear demarcation line: "I struggled at university X because.... but did very well at University Y because..." Also consider all the great professional relationships you've developed. Switching universities might mean losing those, which would be a shame.

First, don't panic It's the start of a new school year, so a good time to make some changes. I think it's time for some serious introspection. Ask yourself why you're not succeeding academically. This is like keener student 101, but at the minimum you should be attending every class, reviewing class notes regularly, studying for each test over time using distributed learning (not cramming), and not procrastinating assignments. Attend office hours if something doesn't make sense. How's your time management? Maybe the RA work is taking up too much of your time? Family responsibilities? I mean, ask yourself these questions--you don't need to tell the forum Also, stop taking language courses Transferring won't help because all schools ask for transcripts from every institution you've attended. People will overlook an occasional oops but forty credit hours suggests a pattern. But it's only second year and not the end of the world; most places will give more weight to your last two years. To pull that off successfully, however, it should be clear that at some point you had an epiphany and were born again, and succeeded brilliantly from that point on. That way you can frame your first year as a lack of motivation or focus that just required a mental adjustment, not a lack of ability. Doing this is easier said than done--it requires you to diagnose the problem (see above), work hard, and improve. Have you taken social psych? You want to encourage a situational attribution for the first 40 credits, not a dispositional one. Research experience is awesome but not if it affects your academics. Good grades has to come first because without those it's significantly harder to get in the door. You can't keep the transcript a secret forever, also because if your relationship with your supervisor is awesome you can use him as damage control. That is, two years from now his reference letter could acknowledge something like "Carly had some trouble adjusting in her first year, but as you can see she got straight A's since then, and she managed to do this while being a research champ in my lab."

As others pointed out, switching things like this seems common so don't feel bad. The only odd part of your story that sticks out is the advisor's involvement: Things may be organized differently at your school but my advisor doesn't have any input/influence into when my GTA's are. It's all done through the administrative staff. If there was a scheduling error like this I wouldn't depend on him to fix it because it's not his area of responsibility. I don't mention this to make you feel bad, only to help others avoid problems like this -- don't depend on your advisor, take the initiative to investigate who actually has the power to make schedule changes (e.g., prof, staff member).

This is the best advice in this thread. Every time somebody asks, "Should I (re)take the GRE?" it devolves into a discussion of the GRE's merits or lack thereof. The fact remains that to get in, you have to buy in to the system. For those who doesn't like the GRE, remember this thread in the future when you're sitting on an admission committee, or making admissions policy for your university. Until then, play the game, take the GRE, and score well, else you're limiting your chances to even get into graduate school. Interviews ALSO have little ability to predict success in graduate school beyond the written record, but despite this many graduate schools--especially in the U.S.--do in-person interviews before decisions. (See research by Robyn Dawes, e.g., the book "House of Cards".) But I don't see anybody here railing against interviews in the same way they rail against the GRE. Let's see some consistency.

For me this thread really illustrates some differences between humanities and the sciences. I would never dream of turning down a collaboration--99% of empirical papers have more than one author, with a somewhat lower proportion in non-empirical work (chapters, reviews, theory, etc.). Nobody would dream of expecting a graduate student to publish something as sole author. (Of course, authorship signifies more than just writing, it may also signify involvement with experimental design, data analysis, etc.)

I don't know about the school as a whole, but Keith Payne is fricking awesome. If you are working with him, stay. (I'm kidding of course, decide for yourself.)