Piagetsky

Hello, I am a permanent resident, thus I am allowed to apply for an award. I doesn't matter where I did my undergrad studies, but my status at the country (you need to be a citizen or perm. resident).   Also, I think there is an award for international students (I recall something from the presentation they did). Please refer to: http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/Students-Etudiants/PG-CS/VanierCGS-VanierBESC_eng.asp  
 
Oh that is nice to know! Anyways, I will call them on Monday to make sure. It doesn't make any sense to let you apply to different schools and make you choose one before hand.
 
Thanks!!!!!!
 

Frankly, yes, I do think that you are wasting your time and money applying this year.  If you had one or the other, there might be a glimmer of hope.  But you don't have any background prerequisite coursework in psychology, nor do you have research experience.  Think about how graduate professors are going to see it: They're going to wonder how you can be sure that you want to commit the next 5-6 years of your life, let alone the rest of your career, to studying cognitive psychology without taking a single class in it or working in the field.  They know that you don't have the knowledge necessary to succeed in graduate-level psychology classes, which build upon undergrad knowledge.  And you won't be a useful assistant to them in the lab; they would have to train you from ground zero, like an undergrad, which they are very likely unwilling to do when they are paying you a stipend.
 
You need the coursework and you need the experience.  Having not even taken a single class in psychology, you may not even be competitive for psychology programs.  But there are a couple of things you can do to try to increase your competitiveness - although how long they will take depends on how much time and money you have to devote to the endeavor.
 
-I think the best bet for you would be to try to get into a psychology master's program.  Normally I don't recommend them, because they are expensive and usually don't shave off any time towards the PhD, plus they usually aren't the type of experience that can boost admissions chances.  Your case is one of the exceptions, though.  There you can get three things you need: prerequisite coursework in psychology; research experience working alongside professors in the field; and letters of recommendation from those professors.  The best would be if you could find a specific MA in cognitive psychology.  I suspect that one does not exist (or that there are few of them), so an MA in general psychology or experimental psychology is the next best thing - as long as the department has cognitive psychologists in it.  Finding one that has research interests similar to yours is ideal, but not necessary.  You just need to get SOME experience.
 
I would recommend looking at your state's public universities first to see if any of them has an MA in psychology.  Where you go is not very important, as long as it's a well-reputed program (as opposed to an unaccredited school or something online) and as long as research is the primary focus of the program. The majority of MA programs in psychology are designed as stepping stones to PhD programs, though, because otherwise there's little use to the degree.
 
That'll take you 2 years full-time, and after that you should be at least moderately competitive.
 
-If you cannot get into an MA program in psychology (many of them would want to see at least a few classes in psych), you might want to try a post-baccalaureate program in psychology.  I don't know how many schools other than Columbia actually have one.  Columbia has a formal post-bacc in psych designed for people who are changing careers and don't have much of a background in the field.  The difference between an MA and a post-bacc is that in the post-bacc, you'll be taking largely the undergrad classes (as opposed to graduate-level classes in an MA program), although there are several classes that are cross-listed between the undergrad and grad programs at Columbia and other places.  Columbia is actually a stronghold for cognitive psychology.  The caveat, of course, is that this program is extraordinarily expensive, and New York is an extraordinarily expensive place to live, and there is no non repayable aid for this program.  The post-bacc can take 1 or 2 years, but I think most people choose to stay on the 2 years to get more experience and take more classes.  After that you should be decently competitive for PhD programs.
 
You could also go somewhere as a second bachelor's degree student, which honestly wouldn't be that much different from a post-bacc.  You would just need to make sure that you seek out the research experiences.
 
-A third option is to take psychology classes as a non-degree student at a local public university while you work or volunteer in a research lab.  This can take different configurations.  You can try to get a full-time job at a university as a lab manager, and take classes while doing that (this is unlikely given you have no background in psych and no experience).  Or you can get a full-time day job to pay the bills and take classes in psychology while you work, and squeeze in some volunteering at a research lab.  I would say that you will need at least 5 classes in psychology to be minimally competitive: general psychology, research methods, psychological statistics, a basic cognitive psychology class, and at least one other of your choice.  More classes are better, of course.  The average psychology major (who are your competitors) will have taken 10-15 classes in psychology by the time they graduate college.  You can use the handbook of whatever college you attend to guide your choices: if you take more classes, I also recommend sensation and perception and some other classes that are related to your interests (like a class on memory if you are interested in memory).  You also might want to take a class on the brain if your psych department offers it (most, but not all, do).
 
If you were able to take two classes at a time and you only took 6, this process would take you at least 2 years, and that's assuming that you are applying in the fall of the second, at which point you would only have 1 year of classes.
 
My other advice is that if your interests overlap with neuroscience and you think that you are going to want to scan people in an fMRI scanner as part of your research - if you even have an inkling that you might want to do that - you should probably get experience in a research lab that actually does fMRI scans and analyzes that data, so you can learn how to do it before you go to grad school.

I'm so close to finishing up with applying I can taste it! I've finished apps for 5 of my 8 schools, and am waiting on one recommender for 4 schools. I'm gonna have to send it by snail mail.. He hates computers and has been having trouble uploading it! It's crazy that this big part of my life is coming to a close... Graduating in one month. Can't believe it. And I also got the best news from my mentor the other day... The study I ran for my honor's thesis ended up finding publishable results... Things in line with what he's published in the Journal of Social and Personality Psychology. It's looking like I'm gonna be a published researcher y'all!  
 
I'm posting here because no one in real life truly understand what this means.. And I know you guys will.

What kind of program are you thinking of applying to? I think if you were interested in a master's degree, there is a good chance of admission so long as you have a well developed focus in your SOP - though bear in mind this would probably be unfunded. If you are not interested in a master's and are aiming for a PhD instead, it is highly unlikely you would gain an admission without *some* kind of research experience. In this case, it would be in your best interests to gain some research experience by volunteering in a lab (potentially get hired after a while if you are good/are lucky), taking some psych classes at your local community/extension school and applying next year. 

Yeah the program is top-notch, which made the great visit that much sweeter. I think I'll be receiving an offer (was told "we'll almost certainly be able to make you an offer as long as your references pan out" -- and I was assured by my recommenders that I have nothing to worry about there).
 
Sort of an interesting chain of events. I was at a conference last month, and the co-authors on a manuscript that I'm first author on are big in the field, one being the organizer of the conference. The other introduced me to a colleague (who is my POI for the program I'm visiting this week), who mentioned that he is beginning collaborations with the POI from the program I visited last week (UWO). When I sent out my "feeler" e-mail back in October to my UWO POI, I was sure to mention this conversation, the work I've done, etc. He asked for a CV and transcript, and then asked me if I'd like to come for a visit, lunch, etc.
 
Basically, when you know/work with the right people, and have already been conducting research directly relevant to your grad interests, the process gets much easier :-)

Consider Canada? Many universities in smaller cities (100-300k) and there's much less crime than the United States. I don't know cognitive programs though, sorry. 

I think you will have a hard time finding strangers who will volunteer an hour (or 60-90 minutes, as the ICL says).
 
Here's an unsolicited tip from a guy who does a lot of online research: Keep it under 15 minutes. Internet people have short attention spans.

^^ Translated: "This sounds fishy, I will take the time to look up their application requirements myself."  
 
love it.

For the clinical program, I found this:
 
STATEMENT OF RESEARCH INTERESTS:  Please append a maximum of one page single-spaced, in which you describe your research interests  and how they relate to the potential thesis supervisors you have listed.

Speaking from a Canadian perspective....You can apply to a Clinical Psych PhD program with an MA in another area of psychology (such as an experimental program), but you will need to take clinical master's courses as part of your program to catch up on the missing coursework and your schedule will be very different from most people in your cohort. So yes, it is possible. However, this path is typically more difficult to embark on. If you apply to MA Clinical programs, many schools will take somewhere between 5-10 students (most closer to the lower end of this range). Nearly all MA students will stay on at the same school to complete their PhDs (it's expected that students will stay on to complete their psych PhDs in Canada, in fact - not the same in the US, though, which requires you to apply to schools all over again for the PhD and it's a very competitive process).
 
On occasion, some students do as you have suggested and apply to Clinical PhD programs with a non-clinical MA. Something to keep in mind is that at the PhD level, most programs accept a very limited number of new students: typically one outstanding applicant into the PhD program. Whereas if you had applied at the masters level, at least 5 students would be admitted to the program so your odds would be much greater.
 
(It is my understanding that in Canada, students of psychology do an MA followed by a PhD, and as long as you are in good standing in the MA program then it's highly likely that you will be allowed to continue on to the PhD program, same supervisor, lab, etc. In the US, students are typically accepted into a PhD program after the bachelors which includes a masters and PhD all included in the same program. If a student doesn't have a strong application for whatever reason, some will do a (often unfunded, but not always) masters and apply again to a PhD only program which is typically funded. So when US posters advise you or others to apply to PhD programs and not a Masters when you only have a Bachelors, as far as I know, I believe this cannot be done in Canada, and such advice is based on the American education system).

In Canada it depends on whether your pay is classified as salary (e.g., as a teaching assistant) or fellowship funding (e.g., like a scholarship). The former is taxed, the latter not. Looks like you're in the U.S. but posting for others' information.

I think you're better off finding another career. I apologize in advance for being really harsh here, but you've written several things that suggest you might not have the aptitude or background for PhD work, and included a few serious misconceptions about the field. Of course, I don't know you--so disregard if you like--but here are the details.
 
 
 
Are you sure these problems are behind you? You yourself might be convinced that your record doesn't reflect your ability--and maybe that's true, I don't know you--but graduate schools won't take your word for it. They need to see a proven track record. Like, years of stellar work.  Once I hired an RA whose academic record was spotty because he had some chronic illness issues that he assured me were behind him. I gave him a chance and he repeatedly missed work because of illness. Maybe he was really sick--and I was sympathetic--but I still needed the work to get done. Why should I take a chance on someone when there are many other qualified candidates that don't require taking a risk?
 
Also, GPA doesn't just reflect capacity for learning but also whether you have the necessary knowledge to move on to more advanced work. Even if you could have done better if you'd been accommodated/diagnosed at the time, the fact remains that a low GPA suggests you might have missed much of the material that you should have learned and would need to succeed at the graduate level. 
 
 
 
 
In the graduate school context, a "relatively low GPA" means 3.0 instead of 3.9. I think the 2.4 gpa case linked above was a one-in-a-million shot.
 
 
 
Non-academic work doesn't count, don't even mention it in any of your application materials or it will look like you don't know the norms.
 
Also... are you sure your reference letters will be positive? They need to be stellar. I ask this because the record of being let go in other jobs suggests that you might also have had problems (about which you're unaware) in the research jobs. When you ask for reference letters, I would pay close attention for subtle or not-so-subtle cues that they're reluctant to write them. You also graduated a few years ago.... by now their memories of you might be fuzzy and the letters would lack the necessary details that make a good letter.
 
 
 
 
This is just not high enough. Many programs require 80th percentile or higher. Put off writing and study longer. A score in the 50th percentile would just confirm that your GPA accurately reflects your knowledge and abilities, and not in a good way.
 
 
 
 
This one of the misconceptions about the application process that I mentioned above. This is not what a personal statement should be about. It should be about how you developed your research interests, what you've done about them (in a concrete way), and your plans for pursuing that research in the future. I would look for a trusted professor who can read your statement before sending out. 
 
 
 
No. Very few PhDs get their coveted tenure track jobs and if that's not your goal, you're better off taking another path. A new assistant professor might make $60-80k starting but those positions are rare and getting rarer. Nobody goes into academia for the money.
 
 
 
There's no shame in doing something other than grad school. Many times I wish I'd done something different and I regularly ask myself whether it's time to cut out of academia and find something else--and I started in a much better position than you're in now. The field is tough and getting worse so, based on what you've written, I can say with almost complete certainty that you'll be better off choosing something else to do. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but maybe it'll save you a lot of time and anguish in the future.

That's the first step in research.

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend this weekend.  It was fantastic!

What happened to all the entries?  A lot of them are gone or hidden.

Can this be sticky-ed or something so it's always at the top?

This. Could you train to be a dentist or nurse online? No, it just doesn't work that way and any program that purports to give you the same training, in my opinion, is bordering on fraudulent.

I was definitely in the rejected-across-the-board club for 2 years in a row!  And (not to toot my own horn, but facts are facts) I was a great applicant.  Great GPA, GRE scores, research experience, multiple presentations and publication, etc.  I was even told by most of the programs that I was a perfect applicant and would be a great fit.
 
But unfortunately it's much more than a numbers game- as much as people may want to ignore it, there's a huge amount of luck involved.  You have to be applying to the right program at the right time with the right credentials that has the right funding under the right adviser... and if even one of those things fails, you're screwed. 
 
Fortunately, 3rd time was the charm for me.  So don't lose hope, and while it's always important to identify your weaknesses and work to improve them, you also have to remember that sometimes, it's just not you.
 
Good luck, and keep your chin up.

we've got a TROLL in the house, yo!
not a very good one, but still a troll. 

Whoa whoa, NOT okay. Grad school is a game, pure and simple. They define the rules, and we play to win. But do you really think that this has any correlation with what goes on out in the real world? There are great minds that have never gone to grad school and never need to. Charles Darwin never went to grad school and I'm pretty sure he revolutionized the world of modern thought for centuries to come. Albert Einstein never went to grad school and he is considered one of the greatest minds to ever live!
 
 
 
I'm really sorry, and I can understand how painful this must be. But it's not that unusual, and you're definitely not alone. There are plenty of people who have to re-tool and try again next year. But you really want this, and you think this is the right path for you, you'll try again. 

if you get rejected by that many places maybe you are not a very good student and would make a terrible psychologist. Please consider another career.

No you should not. There is no reason to remind them that they rejected you last year. This advice holds for anyone in any field.