finally

So my interviews/visits are starting on Friday. Tonight I received an itinerary for the second one, which is in the middle of next week. During a skype interview my POI asked me who else I'd like to meet (outside of the department) when I visit, so I flipped through the faculties of a couple of related departments and gave her a couple of names. REALLY WISH I hadn't. She included individual meetings with both of those and 7 other people including herself. In a single day, 9 individual meetings, lunch and dinner with the department and a brown bag talk to attend. And then home, in a single day. I don't even know half the names, and I certainly don't have time to do more than a cursory review of their work...I have another interview that I have to fly to and from before that. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. This can't be normal.

Not all states allow people who are present simply as a student to become a resident. I forget which school I applied to, I think it was UW-Madison (??) made it clear that this wouldn't be allowed.

I was wondering that too....if there was some kind of policy, they should make that well understood. But some schools went out of that way to ask "are you a resident, will you be a resident by the time..." etc. For UConn I even had to print out a residence affidavit, check the "I am not a resident" box, sign it, scan it and upload it. If you checked the "I am a resident" box you had to list previous addresses or some such. I suspect it has to do with the subsidy they get from the state to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition. If they fund you and waive your tuition, they're waiving a larger chunk for out-of-staters because they can't include you in their attendance numbers as granting them a subsidy of 5 or 10k each year, whatever it is. Whereas if you live in California and apply to UCLA, they can probably waive your tuition but still collect the state subsidy for you.

I'd rather receive a rejection email than be in the group of apps they can't throw away because GRE scores and recs are too good, even though they won't actually consider me cause my GPA is too bad. I was an undergrad slacker. This was years ago, and except for that undergrad GPA I ended up putting together a pretty decent app, and have received interview invitations from several schools including a couple quite good ones that I'm happy with. But probably the two best programs I applied to (only one of which I actually want to attend I think) have sent out their interview invitations already. When I contacted them by email, one responded with "you weren't invited, but you weren't on the early rejection list either if that helps." How nice. Point is, I'd rather be rejected now than wait another month plus to be rejected. Who's with me?

For one interview, my POI isn't going to be present. Because of that I asked him straight out what I should expect. He told me that all of the division faculty (cognitive division of a psych department) interview every candidate of that division 1 on 1 for 20-30 minutes. Besides him there 8 people in the division, so assuming they're all present, I'm to expect 8 separate interviews. The thought is stressing me out.

Stony Brook cog psych (maybe all of psych?) is having a visitation on Monday 2/24.

*One note, take with a grain of salt: You say your potential advisor previously got someone with worse numbers admitted? That could actually be an important indicator for you. How did that person end up doing? If they ended up being a strong student despite being a weak candidate, it will speak well to others about his potential to find and motivate "under-achievers." If that person ended up doing poorly, others may think "well the last time we made an exception for this prof, we regretted the choice, will we regret this one?"

That sounds like an admin type of some kind. I can't imagine why they would be tasked to comment on your below min GPA. If that's the exact wording, it could even be an automated thing - again I don't know why an automated thing would comment on your GPA. But, it doesn't sound like anyone that actually matters wrote that, so I'd trust your advisor. And I suspect the department chair has some sway no matter how uninvolved (s)he may be in decisions. So I would remain confident if I were you. One last question - who signed the email you received? Rhetorical question, for you to consider. If it was a dean or important prof, pay attention and maybe go ask to speak to them, ask them directly what you can do to make up for the shortcoming. If it was, as I suspect, some administrative person, just trust your advisor. I promise you that the UIUC grad college can make exceptions for these things - although that may involve putting you on some kind of probation in your first semester, where if you don't meet the min GPA they set, they boot you.

Including the GRE prep book I bought, and all GRE score reporting, transcripts, application fees: $1196 applying to 9 schools. This does not include gifts to letter writers, which was an additional 50 or so.

What do you mean "my potential advisor does not seem concerned"?? I live in Urbana and went to undergrad and grad school here, and have a pretty good idea of how the grad college works. If the email came from the grad college (as opposed to someone in the department), then I would trust your advisor's words. In that case it would sound like it's automated from someone on the 3rd floor of IUB (that's where the grad offices are). But they can admit people on a probationary basis - if you have serious proponents in NRES, and it sounds like you do, then I would take them at their word. In my experience, with the right departmental support, the Grad College is just a rubber stamp of what they want (as long as you aren't too far away from minimum requirements). If the email came from someone in the department, I'd be questioning your advisor as to why (s)he isn't concerned, because in that case the implication of the email is that your application is no longer being reviewed, it's out of contention. I've dealt more with the grad college than I care to admit or want to divulge - they're a pain, but I believe if you're close they'll take the advice of department over GPA mins.

If you're talking about some arbitrary concept based on people's impressions, I couldn't say. If you're talking about the quality of education you receive, it probably depends on what you're looking to study. My mentor, a well-regarded psycholinguist, thinks it's probably #1 for that. Definitely if you were to list, in no particular order, the top 10 currently active psycholinguists in the states, Mike Tanenhaus and Florian Jaeger would be on lots of people's lists. I couldn't be sure, but I doubt any school has 3 and maybe only 1 or 2 others have 2. So...

Would love to know who's contacting people from Stony Brook cog psych recently. Back in November I had a phone conversation with my PI, was my first such conversation, I thought it went well - haven't communicated much since. Nothing (including my previous conversation) indicates that Stony Brook does formal interviews - but I am wondering who is contacting people...

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So what should I expect from an interview when the POI has written to remind me (10 days after the invitation was first made) that he's on sabbatical and he won't be there "but my grad students will be so you can get the inside scoop on the lab and me as an advisor from them, and you'll meet my colleagues and the other grad students as well"... Until today I was under the impression the invite had come from someone who wasn't my POI...it had come via a specific but nonspecific (if that makes sense: it was directed at me and clearly involved some knowledge of me, but made no mention of my research interests) email from another prof whose work is tangentially related to my interests.... Turns out now it looks like he was just handling the heavy lifting for my POI (who I had forgotten had told me a couple of months ago that he would be on sabbatical this sem) I'm wondering what I should expect from an interview when the POI won't be present. Is he going to just take the word of his grad students on me? Should I assume the interview is more of a formality than at other places, and the decision is essentially made? Anyone have any thoughts on this? In case it affects your thinking, it's Cornell, cognitive psychology PhD.

I asked one of my recommenders this question and he said "go to them all, they won't have an issue scheduling a special visit if you already have a conflict." So I'd say wait til Tuesday early afternoon (that's 2 business days) and then reply yes and if NYU wants you do a conflict.

Good question...I have a couple of those next month. Never been through this process, so...

So let's say you've applied to 10 schools, and received interview offers from X of them. How big does X need to be to be very confident you'll get an offer? I don't have a good sense of how many people get invited per spot or anything. And yes, I know this is highly variable from school to school, but I figured I'd ask if any old hats have an idea.

Apparently some schools use a transcript service which scrambles the PDF in some way when you try to distribute it. At least one of my schools recommended that, if I wasn't sure about my electronic copy, to: Print it out Scan the print Upload the scan instead of uploading the PDF which I got from my school's transcript service.

Northwestern, Feb 7-8 IU Bloomington, Feb. 7-8 WUSTL, Feb 12-14 Western Michigan Feb 14-15 U Chicago 2/15-2/17 Cornell: 2/21-22 University of Washington, Feb 21-22 Rochester: 2/21 Auburn (experimental), Feb 21-22 U Mich, Feb 21-22 Rutgers, Feb 28 UC Merced: 2/28-3/1