kksho

That's a great chart! If only a more contemporary version existed...things are surely to have changed in 10 years

In balancing out my goal fields in social and developmental as a Junior, I was wondering what the balance of competetiveness is, in terms of Ph.D. programs and academia job, for different subfields. In high paticular, I'm curious about social, developmental, and cognitive psychology. Does anyone know if one field is easier/harder to get an academia job in the future, in terms of competetiveness? Is one field known to be significantly harder or easier? Or are basically merely the same in level? If anyone has any personal experience with academia job searches, that would be great. I'm also wondering about Ph.D. programs competetiveness within different fields (for example, Clinical is notoriously more competetive than all other subfields). P.S. Also, I know it's not good to look at competetiveness as a deciding factor to follow your research passion and career, but I just wanted a realistic scope in mental preparation.

S.A. and bathingintheneon, thank you! Those were such good replies! Thank you both for taking your time to answer me. I'm beginning to get the scope that Personal Statements are very important. I feel like getting accepted to graduate school is largely epitomized in the connection you make with the POI and your research interest in joint with the professor. Of course, everything else on your CV is important as well. If anyone else has any words on this topic, I would be very happy to hear more!

I also had one more question in mind. 4. Say you had a research area of interest in, persay, the social communication in infants. And you emailed a professor at a prospected graduate school saying, "I have an interest in this certain field of developmental psych". However, you've had no actual research in the topic area yourself. Does it make sense to say this, or not? Do they require you to be interested in something you've done? Does it make sense to say you're interested in a certain topic, when you haven't engrossed in research in it?

Hi there. I was wondering if anyone had some advice. I'm currently a Junior possibly looking to apply to Developmental Psychology Ph.D. programs in the future. I'm currently ia research assistant Cognitive Developmental lab, focusing on the cognitive psychology of infants, toddlers, preschoolers, etc.). However, though I do regular routine lab work, and help the graduate students in their collection of data, the lab itself doesn't give me enough opportunities to expand on my own research, publish along with the graduate students, etc. So this Spring, I've been accepted to a Social psychology laboratory. I have a prospective promise to have the professor help me in forming an Honors Thesis in the lab, the topic most likely being on one of the Social Psychology experiments in his lab. In addition, I'm close with one of the grad students and it is likely I'll be able to work with a social psychology project with her, with a possible chance of being able to work with her and get my name published in her research, which doesn't hurt at all. So I'm assuming that I'm going to get some good actual Social Psychology research out of this lab by the end of the Spring 1. However, I'm just wondering on what the scope is on Developmental psychology programs. Do they smile upon the fact that you have research experience in social and cognitive psychology? Or is it just still not as important as having research in the exact subfield of Developmental psychology? I'm really interested in the social and cognitive aspects of children and adolescents. But I'm just wondering just how competitive Developmental Psycholog programs are, and whether other competitors will just chew me over by having more experience in exactly developmental psych research? 2. Also, how much does it help if your Honors Thesis is in the field you are applying to? Is it a crucial necessity? Is it a bit off-place if your thesis is not in the subfield you are applying to? 3. Lastly, I was wondering if anyone out there who has been accepted to developmental or social psych Ph.D. programs could kindly send me a sample of their resume? So I could just gain realistic outlooks for myself. Thank you so much! I appreciate any help you can give!