mb712

That's amazing.

It's funny you mentioned Stapel, I was just thinking of that whole issue this morning when I saw a social psychologist post a photo online of a replicability book from the 70s or 80s, somewhat implying the field of psychology had their act together decades ago and was entitled to judge the current political science situation. Social psychologists are who academically raised me, they're my people, but seriously...I couldn't help but laugh at that cognitive dissonance.

Most of my applications had listed requirements. A quant paper I had written that was about 15 pages + figure/reference pages was appropriate for most.

Although it's probably painfully obvious what current scandal inspired this discussion, my intention isn't to gossip or anything of the sort, just see what you all have to say. A lab mate and I were discussing academic fraud and PI oversight and had a few questions. For students or former students: Do/did you expect significant oversight to your research once you advance(d) to candidacy? Do you think it's necessary for PIs or those in charge to show enough oversight to catch things like data faking, dishonest data manipulation, lying about funding (or anything), etc.? Does this rest solely on students themselves? For Ph.D. holders: If you supervise/advise students, are you close enough to the work to know if something was off? Is it something faculty with graduate students should be looking for/is it a responsibility of faculty to look in the first place? Should it be solely up to the students to maintain integrity and honesty? For anybody: Do you think the field has enough checks and balances to usually catch people who do shady things? Is academic fraud relatively rare and not something to worry about? We also had a lengthy conversation about what open science may mean in regards to fraud, but I think I've asked enough questions for now.

I applied to a psych Ph.D. program at USC this last application cycle and ever since then I see promoted ads on Facebook & Twitter about the MSW program at USC almost daily. This obviously isn't based on anything other than gut reaction, but I have a hard time trusting the legitimacy/strength of a program that has to pay for promoted ads on social media. But hey, I hope I'm wrong.

You're right, I wasn't taking international status into account when I posted a reply.

My suggestion would be to add whatever tasks you've done there to your CV and what you plan to do between applying & the end of your time there in your SOP.

I'm about to start at a UC (which fully funds all students - not sure if that's true for the other 9 campuses) and my understanding is that funding is better right now than it has been for a decade. As TakeruK mentioned, there was some worry recently about cuts, but that's over now and UC regents expressed content with the funding allotted (well, initially, apparently they've now asked for a little more but not much). It seems like on a national level, at least right now, public university/school/research funding is always on the chopping block or at least used as a bargaining piece. It's smart to be thinking about these things as you consider UCs, but any concerns you have about the UCs probably apply to any other public university in the country.

For undergrad? Based on my own experiences, I would also suggest you take some time to look online through faculty pages (both in psych and other somewhat related fields) just to see what they're doing. I had zero classroom or university contact with my undergrad mentor before applying to work in their lab. I saw the opportunity (posted - they held a faculty position in a different department) and basically blindly sent in an application to be an RA. I might be lucky because first of all, it worked, and second of all, I could write a novel on how beneficial the experience was/how much I liked being around my mentor. Regardless, I know several undergrads (all starting grad school next year) who sent out emails to everyone until a faculty member responded with an openness to work with them so it may be relatively common. For graduate school? I wouldn't worry as much about experience as I would research fit and personality fit. Time of mentor experience doesn't necessarily mean they'll be better mentors than assistant professors. (In fact, one could argue that someone fresh out of graduate school understands what it takes to get through graduate school now a lot better than someone who went to graduate school in the 1980s.) I know it's only email, but I could get a pretty good sense about how friendly and open professors were by how they responded to my initial emails asking if they were accepting graduate students next year. Just work on starting dialogues, you'll very quickly figure out what to look for/what works for you.

What kind of forensic programs are you looking into? Would you prefer clinical or forensic? Clinical is a beast of a field to get into even for people with extensive psych backgrounds. Not to discourage, just some honesty. Either way, all of the research experience suggestions above are applicable.

I use the Sunrise app (on both mobile and desktop), and it's awesome. You can import all of your Google calendars (helpful, since things I'm involved in require 5 separate Google calendars from various labs/groups), plus iCal, Facebook, G+, etc. etc. etc. I find it has a much friendlier interface & is easier to use than iCal or just Google calendar itself.

Some faculty at my undergrad institution interact with even undergrads on Twitter, same with a couple POIs (that I found while lurking during the application process). IMO it's fairly easy to tell if they're okay with social media interacting just by how they use their accounts. If they follow 10 people and sporadically post random rants, probably should avoid. If they follow 500 people and post a variety of things daily, probably okay. As someone said above, relationship should probably factor into it though.

I'm not at all nervous, and the fact I'm not at all nervous is making me anxious haha.

Building off of what lxwllms said: If you go the sociology master's route, I think you should be prepared to really sell how the experience prepared you for psychology. It's one thing to work and things like that before graduate school, but to get a degree in a different discipline seems like a whole different situation. So I guess my advice is to make sure when you apply for clinical programs that you minimize the fact you knew before starting your sociology degree that you had every intention of switching to psychology anyway. The positive I see from the sociology master's is that you will be able to develop relationships with faculty that can write you better letters. My other suggestion, as someone who didn't have eye-popping stats when applying to programs, is to study your butt off and try to increase your GRE scores. Clinical psychology is one of the most competitive graduate fields out there. Anybody who applies to clinical programs needs everything working in their favor.

My campus has a center for women that deals with gender and sexual harassment (and race, sexual orientation, etc. etc. etc. They're great.) type issues without getting administration involved unless necessary, as well as a group that deals specifically with college-related rape and sexual harassment. Although I haven't been in a similar situation, my first instinct would be to go to people like that and tell them about your concerns. Like your department head and chair, they may not actually end up doing anything but you never know when feedback you receive will be helpful. This last point is why I liked TakeruK's suggestion to go to the counseling center. With how prevalent rape is, especially involving college students, it seems like this might always be somewhat of a concern though, right? Obviously it's a little bit different when there's a well-known accused rapist is in the room but just as always, treating the topic with a little extra sensitivity knowing how likely it is someone in the classroom has been affected by sexual violence might be the only thing you do do other than avoiding the topic completely. I have a hard time advocating for avoiding the subject or even minimizing the conversation because it's an important topic and if there's a specific group that needs to have conversations about gender and gender related violence, college students are definitely that group.

Great suggestion. E-Prime, Matlab and Medialab are the three that first come to mind for me. Knowing Qualtrics and NetStation might come in handy. R would be extremely helpful. I know there is a good R course on Coursera.

Maybe physics? If you're leaning cognitive neuroscience, physics could be important or at least helpful in analyses. I would also suggest taking as many math classes as possible, more specifically statistics and calculus. Also, the above poster is right about psychology being an overly saturated field but I think this is more the case for social and clinical, less so for neuroscience. In a general sense though, academic jobs are not easy to come by these days. Just another thing for you to consider during this process.

I would suggest that on top of making sure you get as much research experience as possible, developing relationships with faculty might be one of the most important things you can be doing. Not only because they'll be your letter writers, but they've also been in your spot. Whether it's intentional or not, they will help you figure out your research interests (e.g. I had a "ugh that looks miserable..." experience when being around the research of a specific professor who was doing what I thought I wanted to do at the time, which ended up being very helpful). I'm not sure if I just got lucky or if this is the norm, but faculty I ended up getting close to were extremely helpful and, more importantly, honest during my entire application cycle. There were some things I hadn't even thought of (like the kind of program at the school I accepted an offer from!!) that were pointed out to me by faculty members when we were just talking about my future plans and narrowing down my application prospects. They were also very open about graduate school and had no reservations about being very honest when laying out pros and cons of both graduate school and academia. I feel more confident now that I have a better idea of what I am getting myself into. I could rant and rave about my letter writers for pages, but I'll just leave it at that. If you would prefer to go to graduate school in California, start looking at research areas and specific research by faculty at schools in CA now. Like somebody said above, research fit is important so make sure that is realistic with somebody at a CA school (and preferably more than one because getting into graduate school is such a weird process that is anything but guaranteed). Good luck, and I hope you'll be joining me as a graduate student in the state of CA in a couple years.

Friendly reminder via @rundavidrun on Twitter.

Like probably a lot of people, I was first interested in clinical psychology when I started undergrad and thought about grad school (plus I've wanted to be a therapist since I was in middle school). I transitioned to political psychology because of an awesome research experience that I kind of just fell into. Nobody had told me I could combine my love for psychology and my political junkie side into a career, so I was ecstatic to figure this out, haha. Once I got involved in research I knew I wanted to make it my career. When I realized I didn't care about the sacrifices I would need to make in order to have it as a career, I knew I had made the right choice. Broadly, metacognition has to be one of, if not the, coolest evolutionary developments ever, IMHO. Why would you NOT want to involve metacognition in every aspect of your life?

I emailed to confirm my signed offer acceptance had been received and the response email closed with "Congratulations, and welcome to UniX!" I think I was grinning like an idiot for at least ten minutes after reading that.

I've reached my quota of positive votes for the day, but I hope you're feeling as happy and relieved as I am now that this whole application process is over!

Thank god. Ha.

It's been a wild and unpredictable year, I've accepted an offer for a political science program. I've hung around here more than the political science forum though and you all have been especially helpful. Thanks for tolerating the political psychology applicant. Happy April 15th to everybody! Congrats to everyone who got in this round, and I look forward to seeing all the acceptances pour in for the rest of you next application cycle!

I've been rooting for you since I joined this forum. Congrats!