mb712

I actually laughed at this. I guess my third reviewer was not the worst third reviewer out there!

E/E, E/E, and... G/VG. Not awarded. I'm highly interdisciplinary and I can easily tell which discipline my third reviewer is from. Naturally I'm letting it consume me and reading way too much into it. Plus I think I'm stuck in a never-ending eyeroll due to the review ending with telling me they actually don't know how my application could be any stronger. Did anybody else have reviewers basically tell you what letter writers said? I felt really uncomfortable reading one of the first two reviewer comments because it gave specifics from each of my letter writers. edit: typo. Tired.

An hour total. I felt the exact same way as you this time last year and I'm currently about to finish my first semester of graduate school. Try not to completely drive yourself crazy over this! (I know, easier said than done.)

(Assuming everything else is decent-outstanding) You can get into Iowa and Nebraska with those scores and GPA, probably CU Boulder too but I'm speaking from more direct knowledge in regards to the other two. People may disagree with me on this but I wouldn't suggest taking it again especially if you don't think you can afford it. I took it twice, the second time being rushed and last minute while panicked about my first scores, and although I raised my quant score a little, my other two scores dropped a little. In the end I just sent my first scores.

A letter for one of my programs was over a week late and the university didn't care. I was told they didn't even "organize the package" until a month+ after the deadline, when faculty got back from winter break.

The Skype convos were good. The first one we talked a lot about their research plans since this person is a relatively new faculty member and the second one we talked research in general. Maybe an hour in total. I'm not going to speculate about why either situation derailed but I would like to think it's a positive sign to receive that kind of communication early on, regardless how it turned out for me. Potential PIs wouldn't waste their time just to humor some random applicant if they didn't think it was worthwhile!

It's possible and not unrealistic. It's also not a good idea if you're planning on going into academia. "Publish or perish" starts in graduate school now and if you shorten your time in graduate school you're likely competing against applicants who have had an extra one or two years to publish.

The first three months were total hell, but I honestly feel pretty good right now. In undergrad this is about the time in the semester when my panic set in so I'm pretty excited about finally feeling decent. Three more weeks and I can say I survived semester one.

I completely agree with this. I did ask a few people explicitly if they were accepting students, but most others I just emailed saying I was applying and wanted to introduce myself/let them know a little more about me. I also told them how my interests fit into their interests, and asked a couple specific questions I had about their work/something else on their website/CV.

I had weekly email exchanges with a POI for almost three months then got rejected. Also emailed a few times and had two Skype convos with another, also rejected. On the other hand, I got basically a "yep, please apply" and nothing else from two of the schools I was accepted at. Application season was a rollercoaster ride for me haha

I heard from my January 15th deadline school by February 1st, and my February 1st deadline school by Valentine's Day. I didn't hear from December 1-15th deadline schools until the end of February. But, n=1 (and 75% of my applications were to psychology programs, 25% to political science). I have no idea if this is typical or not.

Survived the first week, now I'm worried about getting my ass kicked in one of my seminars this semester. I have been trying to settle into a new city half way across the country while doing orientation and starting the semester which I thought would be manageable... I probably should have moved a little earlier than I did, but I also didn't want to give up the last two weeks with friends and family. My cohort seems cool which is great since it's a small cohort. I'm nervous but optimistic, hopefully I can say the same in another couple months!

I think a majority of people who start psychology Ph.D. programs just have a bachelor's degree of some sort (as opposed to having a MA/MS as well). It's perfectly legitimate. UCLA is a top institution with a great psychology department, a Ph.D. from UCLA will do you well anywhere.

I'm not exactly seasoned, I start my Ph.D. program this month, but have an idea of what I want to focus my research on so here's my advice: 1) Listen to the people above. 2) Build off of an existing theory and don't try to pull something out of thin air. The research I've started is "original" (it's not a novel idea [is anything?] but it's something that hasn't been published on) and the way I arrived at the topic was combining a theory from a different subfield with a way to respond to cynicism about my subfield from a graduate student in my field. Bizarre, but true. It snowballed into some hypotheses, a research proposal, and now some interesting results that I think I can build off of for my graduate career. Soak in what people are you are talking about, in and out of the classroom. You never know when somebody will say something that gives you an epiphany moment.

Some advice I was given was to make sure you phrase the research fit part of your email as your interests fitting into theirs, not their interests fitting into yours. It sounds trivial but you are essentially trying to prove why you're a good fit in their world, not how they're a good fit into your world.