Engali

Dr. Louis Tay at Purdue University does research on the relationship between money and subjective well-being. He trained under Dr. Ed Diener at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, who is well-known for his research on this topic.

Yup. It's killing me because they talked about how the Psych GRE should be taken into account more and I did really well on it. Too late, I guess.

From my research, OB programs are much more focused across the board in producing academicians, while I/O programs try (heh) to be balanced in producing people who are both academicians and practitioners. All you have to do is look at OB programs and note that they all generally say they are focused on producing researchers and people who will pursue careers in academia. OB tends to focus more on drilling down in one company and drawing conclusions from doing case studies while I/O programs tend to go for breadth across companies using quasi-experiements. If you google something like "OB vs I/O psychology", you'll find an article where researchers do a meta analysis of articles in both fields and point out this difference. That article is actually pretty informative and you should check it out. The comment ILuvPsych2013 is true only afaik only in academia and only because OB people *tend* to teach in business schools and I/O people *tend* to teach psychology department. The salary differs largely because of funding sources from what I understand. People pay some serious, upfront cash to earn MBAs (many more going for this than doctorates in business) while psychology departments tend to need to fund their students from research grants and such. Having said that, there's nothing stopping people who receive their doctorate in I/O from teaching in business schools. Victor Vroom received his I/O degree from U of Minnesota and teaches in the business school at Yale and I believe Gary Latham got an I/O degree and teaches at the Rotter School of Business at U of Toronto.

As you might know, App State uses a formula that uses your GPA and GRE scores to determine whether you will make it past the first cut. If so, I'm pretty sure your research experience, especially since it is I/O focused, will make a much bigger difference when they're trying to decide between you and someone else. The formula is posted somewhere on their website.

To be an expert in something I truly love.

Sorry, forgot to add that the survey asks people to report wage data and categorize their years of experience *since receiving degree AND discounting any work experience that isn't relevant to their current job*. @jasminegreentea Sorry, didn't answer your question. I hesitate to give you advice on what path to pursue, but you can't go wrong getting as much relevant work experience as possible if you want to go into consulting. Of course this will be challenging in PhD programs unless they support this sort of thing. It's easier in master's program, but that obviously lengthens your timeline. Having been I your situation, I don't honestly know what the best path is; I'm currently figuring that out myself. All I know is that I am (probably foolishly) applying for PhD programs again this year. I just love the field too much not to be a bonafide expert. P.S. Sorry about typos; typing on iPad

@jasminegreentea The prospects for MA/MA level I/O graduates, as one myself, is supposedly good according bls.gov. The issue I'm running into, which certainly isn't specific to our field, is the influx of the experienced unemployed vying for the jobs that normally be a perfect fit. After all, why would a company hire a newly minted master's graduate when they can hire someone with2-5 years of experience for the same pay? This is an issue with the economy and wealth distribution in this country and general (sorry, just saw a documentary) that won't likely go away anytime soon. As far got as making money in consulting as a PhD, I realized something that wasn't obvious at first glance when I first looked at salary data as provided by the APA. As a graduate assistant, I was helping with putting together an SPSS training package and used the APA salary as broken down by specialization, for practice sets for the statistical analyses. It became apparent as I transcribed the data and made up the code sheet that there were a lot of confounding factors that were skewing data. First, salary data for annual wages only included the money at primary place of employment, so for example PhDs with a Clinical specialization were only including what they were making at their university, hospital, or private practices. This left out a good chunk of money they might have, could have, or did, or are making consulting in court cases or with private companies and such. The second issue is more problematic and has to do with licensure laws. If you specialize in Clinical, chances are you weren't practicing anything or for any length of time if you got a master's before getting the PhD; simply, you can't do too much with a master's in general or clinical psychology. So, people who did find themselves in this position either quickly went into PhD program or didn't at all, in which case the latter population obviously wouldn't be included in PhD wage data. For I/O you *can* do a fair bit with a master's ( at least in a good economy) and many do. I don't have any data for this, but I imagine many more and/or a higher percentage of I/O master's grads work for a period time and then pursue a PhD especially if they are more practice oriented, which basically defines most of the people who pursue a master's in I/O. I would hazard to guess that many people who get a PhD in I/O and go immediately into consulting come from master's programs in the same field after a few years of experience. The confounding variable here for I/O PhD starting salaries then are work experience. It seems that PhDs have a higher starting salary *because* of the degree compared to a master's, but we have no data on how many of those PhDs had years of work experience in HR and/or HR consulting prior to their PhD, either at the BA/BA or MA/MS level. This is exacerbated by the fact that the APA salary survey asks that people report data for their current job and categorize their years of experience based on time since receiving degree and discounting any experience that isn't related. A lot of hard and soft skills could be discounted that are actually the very reasons why the person got hired in the first place just because it isn't apparent to the person surveyed that they are relevant to their current position. Also, people who respecialize are discounting their experience as well. For example, someone who has been in Clinical for twenty years decides to take down their shingle and pursue greener pastures in consulting. They respecialize in I/O and report to APA their starting salary once they get a consulting job. We know that some human capital consulting firms seem just as happy to receive applications from Clinical and counseling phDs as they are I/O. So that starting salary could be inflated by the skills, knowledge, and abilities that respecializer is bringing to the table, and yet it's still reported as a data point in I/O Phd starting salaries. Anyway, there are other issues there, but the APA salary data is misleading--or rather, it's easy for people to mislead themselves into thinking that correlation is causation.

Well then, fair enough lol. That's quite a bit of studying. I don't know what kind of session structure you had, but I recommend (if you decide to retake it) breaking it down into 30 min. sessions followed by 5 min. breaks so you let the material settle in. You will retain more because you tend to remember the beginning and end of study sessions more than what was learned in the middle. I would also seriously consider doing less pr day, but doing it everyday. When you're building up a skillset (e.g. doing calcs at high speed or speed reading) a little bit everyday is a lot better than a lot on a less frequent basis. My personal regimen was over 2.5 months, 2-3 hours on weekdays, and 3-4 hours on weekend days. Have you pinpointed what it is that is tripping you up on practice tests? Are you not remebering the material or how to do it? Is it an issue with knowing what to do, but not doing it fast enough? Is the time pressure getting to you? A systematic evaulation of the obstacles to your desired performance could be very useful.

Please be more specific about what you mean by HOURS for WEEKS. For all I know, that could be as little as 2 hours over 2 weeks. That just isn't going to cut it if that's the case. I honestly think peole on this board are simply underestimating the sheer amount of preparation that is required for most people to perform well on the GRE.

I will repeat what the other poster said: you will need above 1200 minimum to be seriously considered for a PhD program. Do not underestimate the depth of competition. Programs may not have an official cutoff for GREs and they may look at the overall application, but many applicants will have comparable or better applications plus much better GRE scores. In my subfield, a lot of programs saw as many as twice the average numberof applications this past cycle. I have a master's with a 3.957 GPA, 1450 (V:720, Q:730, W: 5.0) GRE, 760 Psych GRE score. I applied to 12 PhD programs this past cycle and squeaked by with an acceptance off a waitlist at a total of one school. Again, this is not the time to be idealistic. Do whatever it takes, within ethical considerations, to get your GRE score above 1200 at least. Do whatever it takes to get more research experience.

So clearly, from the variety of experiences of people are recounting, your mileage may vary. I majored in psychology in my undergrad, but I had finished 6 years before my psych gre test date. It helped a lot to go over the textbook and review things I haven't read about in over half a decade. I also agree that the physiology stuff was the hardest, which was made apparent to me during my study sessions prior to the test. Know your afferent from your efferent nerves. The Gleitman book I mentioned earlier, IIRC, had a nice mnemonic device to remember this and other pieces of info.

Having done some pretty in-depth research on this myself, I would say that what the oth posters have said is optimistic at best and misleading at worst. The average program will allow you to waive about 9 credit hours or roughly one semester of courses, assuming that the courses are comparable in quality and subject matter. North Carolina State U will allow you to waive up to 18 credit hours or roughly one year assuming your master's included an *empirical research thesis*. If your master's did not have such a requirement (emphasis on requirement, complete with the traditional thesis approval process), which is highly likely if you're doing a terminal master's, then they may still waive the 18 credit hours at their discretion, and probably contingent on you doing an empirical research thesis there or elsewhere. It is true that manyprograms will accept a thesis done elsewhere. It is also the case that it seems many strongly prefer that you have done one in your master's program as a requirement for the degree. Having said that, you probably won't actually shave off any significant amount time overall because many programs have program requirements (e.g. breadth requirements) that will make you take the same amount of time overall. You'll probably just be able to take more advanced courses. Finally, what is most likely going to hold you back from finishing early aren't courses, but inefficiency with your dissertation which may be a function of procrastination, job opportunities that crop up as an ABD, or being overwhelmed with the process. Having done research in a master's program will help the most with the last issue by giving you an opportnity to practice. You might also want to question your intentions for finishing early. If you wish to go into academia (ten to one says you're looking to get into consulting, though) then finishing early is a bad idea anyway. You'll want time to do as much research and publish as many articles as possible before you start firing your CV off to potential employers to increase your chances of landing at a prestigious school. If I'm right about you wanting to get into consulting and wanting to start off at a much higher starting salary as a PhD holder compared to someone with a master's, I'd suggest you consider what confounding variables may be influencing APA salary data for those in the I/O specialization.

I wouldn't take the test lightly, even if you were someone who majored in psychology. You'll need a good refresher across a large range of topics. I followed the advice a reviewer gave on amazon.com. They were reviewing one of the standard study guides and said it was good as a study guide, but not specific enough to be any good by itself. She recommended grabbing an older edition intro to psych book: http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Seventh-Gleitman-Gross-D-Reisberg/dp/B007ZY6P76/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1336223927&sr=1-5 and working through it section by section. She used one of the standard psych subject test GRE prep books for review. I followed her advice and studied for it over 6 weeks. I basically ended up reading most of the textbook in detail and then used the prep book as she suggested. She scored in the 98th percentile I believe. I was in the 95th percentile.

That logic doesn't really hold. That's like saying since college degrees have become more common, they are not worth pursuing and one should just get a high school diploma. A master's isn't as much of a leg up *compared to what it used to mean*, so you got that right, but the question is whether it's worth pursuing over stopping at a bachelor's. When everyone has one, it becomes the default baseline and not having one puts you at a marked disadvantage. To use the previous example, it makes no sense to say that since everyone has a bachelor's nowadays that it's not worth pursuing. Having one doesn't make stand out positively, but not having one raises some questions. More to the point, you said the majority of those interviewed had their master's. If the number of people who did have a master's in the group interviewed is disproportionately greater than the general applicant pool, then there's strong evidence that the master's is helping in some way because these people were selected for the interview and not at random.

Paiged2, Did Penn State already send out invites for interview weekend?

I got an invite for "Interview Day" from Old Dominion University

Taking a break from my own research proposal to mention that a great way to start figuring out your own research interests is to buy an older edition intro to I/O text book and read through it to see what intrigues you. You can find some top textbooks one edition older than the most recent version for as little as like $2 at amazon. This is probably a better approach than first looking at the research interests of faculty at programs you want to attend and trying to conform to what you find. You'll also notice that faculty research interests tend to be a specific sub-topic of I/O, so having an understanding about the general I (selection, job analysis, performance appraisal/management, psychometrics, training and development, etc.) topics and O (motivation, leadership, OD, diversity/cross-cultural factors, etc.) topics will give you a base of knowledge from which you can evaluate their work. HTH

People have already mentioned some really useful things to consider. I thought I'd throw my two cents in, having recently just finished applying (mostly): Stats -Honestly, your overall gpa isn't as strong as it could be and this may hurt you in the application process. Mine was actually a bit worse than yours and I opted to do a master's first to show that I could handle graduate level courses and to get research experience. I applied to 11 master's programs and got accepted into 1--almost two, but someone on the waiting list ahead of me accepted and the school retracted their potential offer...kind of hilarious because that person announced they accepted the offer on this very forum and then I found out from the school a day later. With that in mind, you may want to consider including more "good fit" and "safety" schools on your list. Newer programs that haven't gained a lot of recognition or built a reputation yet can be good options for safety schools. You might want to consider applying to master's programs as well, although this is a controversial approach and many question the value and utility of doing so if your heart is set on getting a PhD. I'll let you know how it went for me come early April. -Gain more research experience any way you can. Do you think you could some how get permisson to do a directed study? -You're studying for the GRE a bit early imho. Figure out when you will take the test, register early so you're committed, plan backwards 2-2.5 months before that date to start studying. Devote 2-3 hours per day to studying in 30-40 minute sessions with 5 min breaks in between. On weekend days, bump it up to 3.5-4 hours. Take a practice test when you first start studying to get a baseline, take another at the halfeay point to the test, and take the official ETS practice test two weeks before the test. Note problem areas each time you take a practice test, read the solutions carefully after the tests, and focus on improving those areas. Taper off your studying the last week and do no studying the day before the test. I didn't do any serious studying the first time I took the GREs and by the end I felt like I had done poorly. I opted to not have it scored. I followed the training regimen I just described for my second time around and got a 1450 (V: 720, Q: 730, W: 5.0). -Consider taking the Psych GRE subject test. Not many programs require it, but I think it might help. Some programs strongly recommend it (BGSU) and at least one on your list (CSU) requires it. Questions 1. Go ahead--it shows initiative. The key thing, as with contacting anybody, is to know what you're talking about and show how you can contribute. If you can't explain why you're interested in whatever that person is doing, demonstrate that interest by talking about what you've read and done related to that topic, and suggest how your skills can aid that person, then you may want to reconsider contacting them. This is true for this person and for professors at programs you are going to apply for. 2. This looks good in general. I would start the application process in September just so you can see each school's specific statement of purpose and/or personal statement question(s) early. This part of the application is key and you'll need a LOT of time to write one you're happy with--trust me. Look up the book on this by Donald Asher. If you plan on taking the Psych GRE you should take it before the general GRE because it takes up to six weeks to score and send out. The Psych GRE only has three test dates each year, so check now if you plan on taking it. 3. The best source of information for schools are the program websites themselves. I have researched these obsessively and so should you. You want to figure out research interests of the faculty at each program, you want to dig into course catatlogues and see what course requirements and electives there are, and you want to make sure there is a fit. This implies you know your research interests and what your academic and career aspirations are. That implies you've researched these independently and really understand the possibilities. For example, if you want to go into consulting, pick up The I/O Consultant and read about the potential career paths you can take so you can write intelligently on the subject in your SoP. If you don't like relentlessly checking and digging for information to create a more complete picture, this field may not be for you. As far as the specific programs, as iopsych said Stanford doesn't have an I/O psych program. I believe they have an OB program, which tends to prepare people for teaching and research careers. If you don't know the difference between I/O and OB, I suggest researching it so you can make an informed decision on what field you want to study. GW's program is a bit more balanced than before, but it still leans towards the O side of things. It's actually housed in the Organizational Sciences and Communication department and takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to I/O. They also have a strong emphasis on leadership in their research and curriciulum . Even though it isn't ranked on USNW, it's number one in program satisfaction for I/O PhD programs based on a survey of graduate students. Check the graduate school section of siop.org to read the article that presents the survey results. Note the ratio of applicants who accept an offer to a school to the number who applied. In general, the higher the ratio, the lower the quality. You'll generally note a relationship between this ratio and amount of funding given as well. I would say that you should add more safety schools to your list, but only the ones that offer full funding and only the ones where the faculty research interests and program focus (are they preparing you for academia, industry, both, etc.) match yours. That should narrow the list substantially. 4. I already mentioned some above. I think you should start thinking about contacting professors of interest at the programs you want to attend. Again, check the Asher book on how to go about this--some of what I've said is straight out of that book. I think my two cents have turned into two dollars. Hope that helps.

To clarify, I meant that MTSU and WKU were the best of the ones you mentioned.

Have you gone to SIOP.org and actually looked at graduate program section and the articles about them? http://www.siop.org/tip/backissues/July04/06kraiger.aspx A survey of graduate students found MTSU ranked 12th in the top twenty master's programs in I/O psych. Read the section on the methodology to understand why the results should be taken with a grain of salt. It's still valuable information. From my research, MTSU and WKU are the best bets for preparing you for practice or further graduate training at the doctoral level.

I would recommend studying for 30-40 minutes, resting for 5 minutes. Do that four to six times per day in a row imho...more on weekends. You need to build up the ability to stay focused on the work and simulate the performance conditions you will face when you take the GRE. Do as many practice tests as you can. Do one before you start to get a baseline, one when you're half way to test date, and one a week before if you can. Save the official practice test from ets fori the last practice test you do. Rest the day before and do no studying. Good luck.

Hey Plokim, You're welcome. I also noticed, besides UOfMichigan, NWU; I don't think they have an I/O programs. In any case, I'm interested in a broad range of I/O topics. I'm probably most interested in leadership. Other topics of interest include selection, training and development (especially development), motivation, job attitudes, and occupational stress. I have specific interests within these topics, but they span all these topics.

Btw, are you applying to I/O programs? The schools listed under your avatar look a greatest hits list of the top schools for I/O...

I read on a wesbite about applying to programs that places that have both a statement of purpose and a personal statement are actually looking for two, distinctly different essays. The former should be an explanation of your purpose in attaining a doctorate (I.e., academic and career goals, research interests and experience, etc.) while the latter is an indirect way of asking for information about your personal background. Apparently, a lot of universities in that area (UofMN also requests both) strive to recruit a diverse student body, but can't, by law, directly ask for such information in an essay. They get around this issue by requesting a personal statement that vaguely suggests topics that would lead an applicant to divulge information about their cultural upbringing, race, socioeconomic background, etc. HTH

Hey, I read on the Canadian Society for Industrial Organizational Psychology that UBC offers a PhD in Psychometrics w/ a specialization in I/O Psych, but I couldn't find the program. It seems like the closest program is the Quant Psych program. Do you know if they are related or if I could somehow tailor the Quant program towards a more I/O focus? Also, does your program primarily prepare people for research or does it strike a balance with practice? Thanks for any help you can give me.