Socially Awkward

Judging by the above posts and my own experiences, I'd say that the confidence interval around the components of an interview is really large. For example, while reading the bios and work of every professor in the field may seem like overkill, it definitely helps. In one of my interviews (with my POI) he would mention names of other faculty at that institution and talk about them briefly. I got the feeling that he expected me to know at least what they were generally working on as he wanted feedback on whether I was also interested in them. The only reason for this that I could come up with is to see if you are generally interested in the program and to gauge who you would be most willing to collaborate with if you did attend that school. Although many schools and our perceptions of how they work tend to rest on one MAIN POI and then maybe collaborate later on, I get the feeling from my interviews that many schools are moving to the two or several adviser way of things. Also, my interviews all stated that we would be talking for about 30 minutes, but so far all have lasted about an hour or more. So, while some interviews are less formal in terms of content, there is definitely the potential for a more vigorous interview. I would say definitely read up on other professor bios, or at least know a few other people you may be interested in collaborating with later on. PS YES! Definitely have a few buffer questions for interviews with faculty you don't know and for those interviews that may go on a bit longer than expected. I've found myself out of questions and wound up asking these really random-ass questions.

Sort of mirroring the previous posts, I'm in social psych and have yet to ever really use qualitative data (if only as a manipulation check). I would follow the comment about doing the research you want to and then having that program of research decide for you if you should be doing qualitative or quantitative data collection/analysis. So, my suggestion then, is to look up a few studies doing the research that interests you and looking at their methods. Also, play close attention to what universities and what programs of psych the authors are in. More than likely, those are the programs you will be applying to in the future. Hope that helps.

The person who posted the Social Psych interview at U of Minnesota, could you please PM me your POI? Thanks!

It is exciting! I'll be doing some networking while there with some prospective graduate programs. Hopefully talking to some of the grad students will give me a better perspective of which program I will fit in better. I won't be doing any of the grad events this time around (I'm an undergrad), but they seem interesting. And good luck on your PhD interview! I hope it goes well.

Does this conference you are going to happen to be SPSP? I don't know of any other conference next week Edit: Never mind. I found one for the International Neuropsychological Society.

I think I've seen things posted about Rochester, but only one for CUNY social psych and nothing for UCONN. Specifically, I think UCONN is still holding out for the time. So maybe don't freak out yet And although I've had several freak out moments, I'm not sure there is a "correct" time to freak out haha Good luck

When I went to SPSP last year I began to wonder how many undergraduates actually go. My perception of age is probably really off, but all the students I saw typically looked like grad students I was sort of wondering, is anyone going to this years SPSP in Austin?

Villanova has a March 1st deadline and DePaul has a May 1st app deadline. Those are the only two I can think of that didn't have a January or sooner deadline. Somewhere in the Fall Application thread there is a list of schools whose deadlines hadn't passed, but that was in January. Still, might be worth a look.

To the person in the Results section applying to Social, Cognitive, Neuro at UT El Paso, can you please PM me your POI? Thank you!

dare2lare, Sorry I missed your post earlier, I don't remember seeing it. I sent you a PM about U of Minnesota.

I interviewed a couple of weeks ago and I thought it went horrible! Well, not because of the program. I was really impressed with the program, however I felt like I had interviewed really poorly. Apparently the interview went really well. I recently received an acceptance, so that was great! Also, I wonder how different a visitation will be considering I was already accepted at a program. No interview or anything, I just received an acceptance and an invite to visit their program. For some reason I thought it would be easier to visit a program that I have been accepted to already, but that is not the case. It definitely feels like I have a lot to live up to now when I visit Time to read 100 articles and come up with 500 studies before the visitation!

Cool, thanks for the reply! I applied to their social program, so maybe (hopefully) I'll hear from them soon, too. Good luck on your interview and I hope you get in!

Congratulations on the interview! And I know how you feel about the interview, I had one earlier this week... but I won't get into that. Judging by your sig, is your interview with UConn? Could you please tell me if that is for their psych program, and if so, which program exactly? They have a couple of linguistics programs so I wonder if it's one of those

I'm sure this has been discussed before many times, the pros and cons of the GRE test, and so I'll just add that I do agree with your point. At least in as much that GPA (information of 4+ years) should probably be weighted more heavily than GRE test scores. Of course people with a GPA that is not so good should have the opportunity to explain it, as obviously not everyone has the same experiences in college. In all honesty I don't believe any program using cutoffs, in any criteria, is a good idea. But all of this is arbitrary considering we will probably never have an understanding of how this works and, as of now, have no control over what adcoms do. However, for those of us who hope to one day be in academia, maybe someday we will

This link more or less answers your question. http://www.nuance.com/for-individuals/by-industry/education-solutions/transcribing-interview/index.htm However, keep in mind that there are different ways to transcribe an interview. It really depends on what information you wish to derive from the interview. You won't, for example, be able to capture behavioral cues with this program.

I'm in the same boat as you. I have an excellent GPA and (what I thought were) competitive GRE scores, and I see people getting interviews and acceptances. The unfortunate thing is that I contacted all of my POIs beforehand to see if they would be accepting students and all said, "yes! please apply!" Of course there are various factors to why some, and not others, are chosen, so I completely agree that feedback would really help. If I don't get in anywhere, maybe I'll turn into this weird irrational stalker that visits the universities to which they applied, finds the POIs, and asks them, "remember me?!" To which they reply "no," on account that they've only seen an application I guess what we can learn from the deranged lunatic from the previous paragraph is that although the applications have no actual face, it certainly feels like a slap in the face at times. Disclaimer: I'm on a lot of meds (flu).

I'll never understand our need to take the GRE considering there are people with rejections that have scores at or above 160 in both Quant and Verbal, as well as some rejected with scores at or below 150, and similarly an acceptance with scores below 150. The whole GRE process seems arbitrary if GRE scores aren't even taken into account.

Not really sure about this but you can try two things: Checking the results section for this specific program. Checking the Professional Programs section in the Menu, they have a section specifically for Social Work. They may have more information. I hope this helps. Good luck with the program!

Thank you very much for this! I wish Miss O'Keefe knew more about how many people were getting interviews and what not. Hopefully we both hear back from them soon, eh?! It's such a great program. If you wouldn't mind telling me your POIs or PMing me them?

Out of curiosity, has anyone heard from the University of Kansas' social psychology program? Judging by the results board, they only hold phone interviews in late January and then I see like 6 people wait listed in each of the previous 3 app seasons.

Congrats! I'm sure that is a HUGE weight off your shoulders. I hope the rest of us get to experience this, or something similar!

Thank you all for the great advice! I set up some times I would be available for the phone interview, however they haven't emailed me with a specific time so I'm wondering if they'll just call me randomly at any given time during the time span I gave. That might just be nerves, though I've made sure to make a list of questions I'd like to ask them, as well as answers to some questions they may ask me. Overall, and from what you guys said, it should be a great and pleasurable experience. Thanks again!

I would also really appreciate anyone's input on this! I have a phone interview coming up and I'm wondering what the general flow of the interview is. Any information would be great, thank you.

Wow, thanks for the info. I'm really considering Villanova, as well as another with a deadline of May 1st, so this information is really helpful. I have a couple of years of research experience, so I hope that will help out. It feels weird talking about a masters program this way when I haven't even heard from the social psych programs I applied to. By the way, congrats on your acceptance! Maybe I'll hear back from some PhD programs before the deadlines, too And again, thanks for the advice. I wouldn't have thought that applying to a masters would require me to be specific on POIs.

Well, I heard Villanova had great quant courses that make you more marketable to PhD programs, but I couldn't verify this. On another note, since you got very close to the faculty with your visits (something of which I am now jealous considering this Plan B option), I was wondering if you knew by any chance whether in applying to their Masters programs you had to name POIs? I'm not too familiar with research going on at either institution, so applying to a general masters seems more adequate in my situation.