iopsych

I think you need to do a little more research. I know some programs actually just award the PhD in Psychology, but they have separate tracks. So for example, one school has 3 programs: I/O Clinical Human Factors All 3 actually get a degree in Psychology, but it has concentration in I/O, Clinical, HF, etc. You are actually in that program it is just easier for the university to only get APA accreds for 1 program. I am finishing up from a program similar to the one I mentioned above and I have already worked for two consulting organizations. The fact that my PhD isn't actually in I/O has never come up.

I would say no, it is not worth it. There are options available, where working in certain areas will take care of your SLs, but I wouldn't want to take the chance. That will financially cripple you. I had to take out 15k in loans throughout my PhD program and I feel like that is a lot. You would be paying about 1-1.5k/month in interest.

I will also be going. Also have a poster.

no it will not. Most programs realize not everyone has the opportunity to get involved in I/O research. You will be fine. Most people I knew didn't have much background in direct I/O research.

congrats! A colleague from my cohort teaches there and she really seems to love it.

That's one of the things I would strongly recommend doing. For example if you have 2 acceptances and are still waiting on more but know you would pick one of your acceptances over the other I would recommend letting that program know you will not be attending. I'm not saying you should do this right away, but by the end of February-early March you should really only be holding 1 acceptance. I've seen people hold 5-6 acceptances until April 15th and then make a decision. That can be a huge pain because then schools have to go to the waitlist and often people that were on the waitlist needed to accept at another school because the offer to their first or second choice which they were on the waitlist for never came. I would just strongly recommend being courteous to others. After all...look at all the people here that are on a waitlist already hoping to get in, or hoping to get into their first choice.

I moved up to PA too, so I am right with you regarding the snow and cold. That's awesome how that worked out with your brother that'll save you a pretty penny. ASU? He didn't follow you to Champaign? I got one second author in on a poster, so I don't really have to present either! I'm always down for some good micro-brew and Cali has some of the finest. Are you planning on trying to do that Wednesday or planning on leaving the conference early one of the days? It looks like Stone is a little bit of a hike but I love me some Ruination. We'll definitely have to catch up. Party again Saturday night? Make it 3 crashes in a row, lol.

going to SIOP this year? It should be a lot of fun!

Stanford is a business program, so it is not really an I/O program. I haven't heard that great of things about Teachers College (Columbia). I rarely see stuff from them at SIOP, which to me means they aren't very active in the field or they are going to other conferences (the latter is not really an issue, but it is also not giving you much exposure to the premier I/O conference) . From what I understand they also don't offer full tuition remission and only a portion of the students get a TA or RA. So even if you do get 70-80% of your tuition waived (meaning you have to pay 2-3k per semester you still have no funding to live and you will be in NYC, where to live cheap would cost 30-40k a year. Any program that can't offer full funding to all students throws up a big red flag in my book. When I was looking at places to go I talked to an I/O professor at my undergrad institution and he told me to shy away from IIT. He told me they often have 15-20 students in each class and just because of #s it ends up being a sort of weed out process because 5 faculty can't successfully advise 20 students (assuming each class kept all 20 and the average student stayed for 5 years). So it ends up being a dogfight to get time with a professor. From their SIOP page it also looks as if they don't offer full funding as well. I don't know much about Seattle Pacific so I can't really comment on them. All of the other schools look good. I would check out GW. When I was applying they were an organizational psych. program with no Industrial classes. They said they were shifting the focus to a balanced I and O program, but I'm not sure if they have done this yet. Something to keep in mind is a PhD is a long difficult process. You don't have time for a job and often because of classes it is difficult to get any form of paid internship until your 3rd-4th year. IMO it is not worth it to go to an unfunded program. If you want to go to an unfunded program get a master's. Even in a fully funded program you often end up with some form of debt (unless you eat Ramen, live with 2-3 roommates and do not spend money on entertainment). I ended up 14k in debt at a fully funded program. That was with 13.5k/year in funding, full tuition remission, and a 12 week summer internship with the Navy where I made 1k/week. I would say it would be easy to rack up 80-100k in debt for a PhD even if half of the tuition was taken care of and no other source of funding was provided. That is a huge chunk of change. For this reason I would make sure they are fully funded programs. I was told the following by several PhDs when applying: If they don't offer you full funding it is for one of 2 reasons: 1.) Either they don't really want you, or 2.) It is not a program you want to go to.

I would not say it is more applied. I don't get that vibe at all. If anything I would say it is less applied as most org. psych topics are more theoretical. Motivation, leadership, and org. theory are very theoretical topics. Selection, training, performance appraisals, and job analyses are all very applied topics. Now leadership can be assessed and developed, but that is through utilization of selection, and PAs, and training. I would say that a balanced I and O program would be a better fit for someone wanting to go applied than an S-O program. Plus the I/O community is very small, while Columbia may have a very good repuation among the average populace, among I/Oers it is nothing compared to Michigan State, Bowling Green, USF, Minnesota, Penn State, etc.

From what I can tell the difference is the fact that TC's S-O program seems to focus heavily on the organizational side and less focus is placed on the industrial side. So a strong focus on teams, leadership, motivation, org. theory, and attitudes. With less of a focus on selection, training, performance appraisal, criterion theory, individual differences, job analysis, and individual assessment.

I would agree with this. I would say 1200 is the minimum at a lot of those schools. Even the decent I/O PhD programs expect a 1200. I would say 1200+ is the normal range for funded I/O PhD programs. Grades seem to matter less, because they are not comparable across candidates. But they definitely will not hurt you.

I believe the only class that you will need to take that is not directly related to I/O is advanced social psychology. The people I know who were in the program really liked it and I do know a couple of masters students that made the transition into the PhD program after finishing. The only issue with that is even then only 10 credits transfer so you end up spending an extra 1.5 years in school. The people I know do have lives. I can't speak for admissions standards as I didn't really ask them what their statistics were, but I would assume you would be competitive. Like I said I know a couple of students: 2 moved over into the PhD program after finishing. 2-3 ended up working at the naval air warfare center training systems division (NAWCTSD), 1 got a job at IBM, 1 just interned at Deloitte this past summer and is expecting a job offer and a couple others have local human resources jobs (city, etc.). I only know of 1 person that is having trouble finding a job and that is because the person is not willing to relocate and this person is still employed just working for the university in a research role. Hope this helps.

They do a wide variety of things depending on the area you get involved in. I have been in a survey consulting role where I did a lot of attitude survey analysis and results delivery. Right now I am in a solutions group role where I work on a team to develop innovative solutions and aid in the delivery of these products by dealing with norming, validation, as well as providing a supporting role to the delivery consultants. For example, we have a new product that streamlines assessment centers for middle management. Instead of sending potential managerial candidates to an assessment center for 2-3 days you can have them complete a very similar assessment center with role plays, in-boxes, etc. through an on-line format. This brings assessment centers to new clients that in the past could not have afforded such a great tool. After launching it we are now working on a few issues with it. For instance, we are seeing that some international clients are scoring lower within the assessment center than their north-american counterparts. We are trying to figure out if this is because the raters in the international market are stricter, if there are cultural issues within the assessment that are causing the differences, or if they are real performance differences.

People in each respective area would be more familiar than I am, but I have seen cognitive and social psychologists in two non-academic areas. One area is applied government research and the other area is working for organizations as a consumer psychologist. If you are dead set on not going academic and are not interested in applied research either I would strongly consider other options. I'm sure applied positions that want those backgrounds are out there, but I have not seen many of them.

Calculus can be helpful for more advanced statistics like structural equation modeling and item response theory. But it is not completely necessary. I agree that stats is the only one that is completely necessary.

It really depends on the area you go into. A Social/Personality psychology PhD really limits you to academia...maybe govt./applied research. Certain other degrees have more options, especially if one chooses to go applied. I/O, education, counseling, human factors, and clinical tend to have more options than social, cognitive, etc. when it comes to the applied realm. I think it is good to be cautious, just do research and have a good idea of your options.

here is a good resource for brushing up on SAS and SPSS http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/ This is also a really good applied book (and you can get it on library.nu) http://www.amazon.com/Applied-Multivariate-Statistics-Social-Sciences/dp/0805859012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1301357593&sr=8-1

From my POV it seems like there is more value in a diverse skill set especially at the masters level. I am not very familiar with TC's masters program, but from what I know they don't put much emphasis on measurement and selection, which is a valuable asset to have when going applied, especially considering you are not really an "expert" in any particular area after a masters degree. Perhaps if you were getting your PhD and knew you were interested in teams/leadership/job attitudes, etc. the emphasis in I might not be as important, but with just a masters the more diverse your skill set the more valuable you will be to an organization. But again, this is just my opinion.

In our I/O program you have 3 comprehensive exams after the third year. One in organizational psychology, one in Industrial psychology, and the third in research methods. There are 10 questions for each section, answers are graded pass/fail and you must pass 7 in order to pass that section. The difficult part about it is there are sections on the exams that are not covered in classes and no real reading guides are given. For example we did not cover organizational theory or recruitment, yet there were questions on each. The professors reason that in order to be fully competent you need to know these areas, but in order to thoroughly cover each one we would be taking classes for 4-5 years. There are 1-3 people on average that fail one section each year. I studied about 25-30 hours a week for about 3 months to prepare for them, putting in 40-50 hours the last 2-3 weeks. We do not have an oral exam, but from what I know, the schools that do have them actually use the oral exam to defend their responses on the written section.

Fellowships are usually not put up by the department, but instead by the university. From my knowledge essentially they put your name up to the university for one of the fellowships. The university may or may not award it to you based upon several factors, how many people in the program are on the same fellowship (older students) and the competitiveness of students in other programs eligible for the fellowship. However, this may be an instance where the department itself has a fellowship too. Basically, chances are it is out of their control and they are waiting on word from the university regarding whether or not you have received the fellowship.

I think it really depends on what you want to do. If you want to go the academic route the traditional schools (Big ten's + BGSU & USF) are your best bet. They have the big names (SIOP Fellows) along with a tradition. If you want to go applied it matters much less. Making contacts and improving your skillset becomes much more important than the name on your diploma. Now you could argue that people from those schools will have better connections, but it is not that difficult to reach out and get the same connections. You meet them at conferences, through your professors, etc. Chances are even at the second tier schools some if not most of the faculty came from the top schools. All of the faculty at our school are from one of the "Top programs" so, you just have to go through another layer to meet the contacts. However, it appears as far as landing prestigious tenure track positions right out, the name on your diploma speaks a lot more strongly.

SPSS, HLM, LISREL, AMOS, and as some have mentioned SAS. Those are the common one's.

1. Not that I am aware of. Although some are considering at least phone interviews, I know our program is seriously considering this. I was going to say CMU is pretty good about getting back to you. I got my decision from CMU at the very beginning of February. Was the 720 in verbal or quant? Either way that is a good GRE score. The only school I am familiar with on your list is CMU. A recent graduate of BGSU is a visiting professor at our program and he seemed to really enjoy BGSU. He does a lot of work in quantitative methodology and IRT. Very interesting area right now with the debate between dominance models and unfolding models. Good luck, the weeks after you send in your apps are always the toughest.

I'm at UCF finishing up my PhD and I agree with Oviedo, or the Waterford/Avalon area. The apartments off of University are full of undergrads, so if you want to avoid that scene I suggest you look South of Colonial on Alafaya or north Alafaya in Oviedo. I am over in Avalon and think it is perfect, the Apartments are affordable, dog friendly, and nice. Plus you are only a 15 minute drive from campus (6 miles). I have lived over in this area since I moved down here in 2007 and have never really considered moving, but know a lot of people that also live in the Oviedo area and love that too. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.