TenaciousBushLeaper
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Posts posted by TenaciousBushLeaper
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Due to multiple large scale projects going on right now for me, and the shear amount of learning (and the application of it) that has to take place within a relatively short amount of time, I'm wondering how do others determine what is considered to be a challenge and what is considered over kill ( maybe over kill is a bit of a loaded word ), so simply maybe "too much" given the circumstances (time, expected outcome) ?
Currently I'm at the point where I see the potential that figuring this out has (the things that I'm faced with) but also wondering what if I never figure it out and I just end up spending x amount of time on it with no results to show?
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Did not review the night before the GRE, in fact I stopped about a week before the GRE. I did however make sure I got the 8+ of sleep I usually need to feel...normal. And I also went for a run about an hour before the exam, not sure if there's anything to that or if just my superstition but running usually puts me in a more focused and "quick" state of mind.
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On 11/30/2015 at 4:13 PM, Heavensmaiden said:
I have heard from clinical faculty that it does not matter where you get your research experience but you have it and that it is quality experience.
I second this, I emailed a professor at Washington University in St. Louis (a few years back), and she replied with something along the lines of "expertise in my specific field is not necessary, what matters is that one has had quality research experience at the point of application".
Of course, implied is "quality research experience in psychology, using tool X" where tool X is also used within the clinical program. But what exactly you do your research on, say you wanted to do fMRI work on depressed populations, then having done fMRI work on more general topics such as vision, emotion, or language for your thesis puts you in a very good position.
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Before fixing the grammar, I'd say maybe try to go into a bit more detail in regards to your research experience. Maybe it's just me but I think you have too much of "why I want to get into program X" and not enough "this is why I would be a good candidate for program X". Those two may seem like the same thing but they aren't. Perhaps someone else could phrase what I've said in a more elegant manner.
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I feel rather lazy right now, and so I won't answer the OP's initial questions but I just want to mention something I've realized. You don't need to be in a program that specifically states it has a quantitative psych tract to do quant work. Don't let titles limit your search! Good luck all.
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Your interest seem a tad bit scatter. Within psychology, it is usually the case that if a lab does animal work, they usually don't do research on humans as well. I imagine this is so because if you're doing animal work, you now need to dedicate an entire lab to it. But now, what are you going to do with your human participants? Can't have them in the same room where you conduct your animal research can you?
Anyways, in regards to cognitive neuroscience (a term you didn't mention but one that I will assume your interest fall within it's scope) if you're interested in speech / language & and how that relates to individuals with ASD, then you're probably going to want to look at labs that do neuro-imaging, that is, EEG, MEG, & fMRI. Usually these labs use one or two of the acronym tool soup i just mentioned, some even use all 3. Those are the main tools currently used for cognitive neuroscience (I should also mention TMS). If these terms seem alien to you, google them.
Within the realm of cognitive neuroscience and studying ASD there are a ton of labs you can potentially look into. I myself am most familiar with cognitive neuroscience and cognitive science in general, and not "behavioral neuroscience" which at least to me seems like a term mostly used when doing animal research. I would suggest using google scholar or something similar to search for papers that peek you interest, read them, look at the universities and people associated with these papers and go from there. Also, look at the bibliography of these papers and repeat the steps above.
EDIT
Just wanted to add, you might want to take this time or spend an additional year beyond what you were initially planning on to get some research experience in a lab that best suits your interest. I do not say this lightly. -
6 hours ago, The_Old_Wise_One said:
Eigen,
I can see that your experiences have given you insight into the process, but it now seems as if you are trying to generalize your experience to the majority of schools. As mentioned before, the subject tests actually predict graduate success/research success better than the general GRE. If only being used for admissions criteria, the subject test would be a better fit! The link above contains the quantitative information. That being said, by the time grants are being written it is likely that most (if not all) students being discussed have good to great general GRE scores, so it makes sense to me that it would not be a huge topic of discussion at that point. However, if the university has enough money to give one more fellowship out to one of a few students in different programs, the general test is perhaps the only metric that can be validly used in deciding who gets the cash
I just dislike seeing people on the forums talking down on the importance of the general GRE. It is a large portion of your application, and it should be treated as such. I don't want people to read that "it's just a cut-off" and then be disappointed that they did not try to achieve a higher score. It comes into play multiple times throughout the application process, not just in the beginning.
You're making yourself look silly, stop it.
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Honestly no, not at all I'd say. Maybe they can give you a slight, very marginal up on others but I wouldn't put all my eggs in that basket. From my limited perspective, it's goes like this:
is your GPA at a certain cut off point to show you're a good student in class ? If yes great that's something that will be more of less checked off as opposed to something that can be argued for in terms of admissions. For example I doubt professors will say "this student has a 4.0! " for someone with a 4 and weight that any different than for someone with a 3.5.
Next are your GREs at the cutoff point? Read above.
Now we get into the important stuff. How are your LORs? I'd say make sure you can get at least 2 very strong letters. By that I mean, letters from people you've worked for, who know you're a great student and will do their best to improve your chances as far as the LOR goes.
Then, and I think these work together, what's your SOP focused on and what programs are you applying to? Is there one coherent story you're telling, does it make sense? How does it fit together with the research you've already done ? And what type of research have you done ?
Lastly also very important and something we all have to come to terms with, there is A lot of variability, and a lot of things we just don't have control over. Small idiosyncrencies that play a roll in admissions so don't stress over those.
Also so and I'm sure you already know but, make sure your prospective PIs are accepting students.
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Suggestions for places to shop for clothes? (Men's clothes)
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Someone should go run this study.
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MRI image processing software: http://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki/
you can download functional and structural data : https://openfmri.org/next step is to try to find a powerpoint online that walks you through the regular steps. For example, first you register, then skull strip, then motion correction, so on and so forth.
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Hmmm, well considering my situation, I'm willing to give it a shot. As for my own state of mind and feeling safe or not, I've lived in Newark, NJ for several years, and while many people were robbed at gunpoint I was the lucky fellow who was never bothered (though, I like to think I also didn't do stupid things that get people robbed *cough walking around with your new phone like you're in safe suburbia cough* ). This in no way makes me impervious to being robbed, but least I know what to look out for.
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Says Melville Park, though I don't know much (pretty much nothing) about the Boston area in general.
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OH man, now I'm a little excited, I think I may have found a place, the guy even said he can work with me on the security deposit if I don't have enough money, and it's " VERY close to the T red line" going to check the place out tomorrow.
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Will the commute from Dorchester to MIT be a pain?
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I've been in the area house-hunting so I'm fairly aware of the situation. It's very typical to pay either first + security OR last, while a decent amount but not all request all 3 of those. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but considering the rent prices in this area, a little over 1k simply won't work. To rent a room in a house or something, you can expect to pay an average of say $900 (with several hundred dollars +/- of variance depending on number of roommates, utility situation, and so on) and generally a fair bit more for actual apartment buildings.
As a thought experiment let's assume you arrive with $1200 to spend initially on housing. If you work very hard you might be able to wrangle yourself a room at around $700. You'll likely be asked for first month's rent plus either deposit or last month's, therefore $1400 up-front costs. Obviously you can't pay that, and this is about the cheapest possible scenario. As an alternative, there are places that rent "month to month" as they call it which often don't ask for additional fees, but there don't seem to be tons of these offers and I find them a bit sketchy, but you'd be able to afford it.
The housing market here is rough and you can't really expect to get something ideal, you have to scrounge around and take what's decent as quickly as possible. My impression is that it's safest to arrive with something like $3000, $2k would be sufficient if you absolutely insist on not trying for any place requesting all 3 initial fees. In any case you're going to need some supplementary money in all likelihood.
Yea, I might be able to squander a little over 2k (In a desperate panic I am selling a few things), if all goes as planned, maybe about $2300. This is going to be a rough first month...
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Does anyone know if all of the places around the boston area require first month, last month and a security deposit? I have to move there by the end of August and I'll only have a little over a grand...
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My advice, get pdf of a typical calc book used for calc 1, and get another one of linear algebra(these pdfs are abundant online and a number of them are meant to be free). Start working through them like...right now up until the point when you have to make your decision. Once you're there evaluate how you've done.
How far have you gotten into the books?
Did you manage to work on problem sets every day?
How was your motivation to do this?
Also, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time on a trig prep, for most "early transcendentals" calc books you can do just fine with learning the trig as you go along, when and where you need it.
Lastly, really evaluate your motivation to do this, you might end up doing not so well in your math courses simply because you aren't as motivated to do all of the required work, on top of the work your doing for your PhD.
edit:
by required work I don't just mean w/e homework is assigned (if it's even assigned). I mean that you may or may not have to do additional work, on top of that which is required to make sure you have the concepts down. -
I'm not a grad student but this is the schedule of the grad student who works in the same cubicle as I do (in the same research lab).
In the summer: gets here at around 9 am, leaves at 5pm, also works on Saturdays for about 4 to 5 hours.During the semester: The hours are usually longer since she usually has to teach a course, so you're looking at maybe 9am - (7:30-8pm). I'm assuming she does her reading and everything else that isn't data analysis at home since that's pretty much all I see her do here. Also comes in on weekends during the semester.
Now you're thinking, can data analysis take that long? Short answer: Yes!
Also, the following scenario is common:
grad student: hands in results of analysis to advisor
advisor: I like your ideas and what you've done, based on this, why don't you try analysis a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,.....
Disclaimer: this may vary from lab to lab. -
This won't help you now but in the future, if you're using Gmail, they have a feature you can use where you'll have to option to stop a message from being sent, this has to be within 5 minutes of you pressing send.
Edit:it appears I was wrong, the maximum is 30 seconds to undo
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Oh it matters! Pick the one that is closer to your field.
They are both exactly within my field, & they are both doing the work I want to do.
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Yep, that was a big worry for me. It's why I didn't think I would even WANT to apply, at all, to any PREPs. There was nothing psychological related, and if there was, it was neuroscience/neurobiology (so they don't like hearing the word "psychology" even if it's neuropsycholgy).
If you do not mind, what are your research interests?
I advise anyone honestly really wanting to get into grad school for clinical psych/neuropsych/cog psych/developmental psych to apply to UMASS, Hot Metal Bridge (University of Pittsburgh), ...and maybe Yale (I am not sure about Yale, but I see, on the website, that one person who interned there was a psychology person while the rest were biology or biochem & molecular people). These three PREP programs are more likely to accept you (and hopefully others in the future will too).
I think it's a good idea if others can post PREP programs that will let people do research that isn't neatly in the STEM category.
I can only speak for UPenn, as the program director explicitly told me in person that they are just fine with psychology, so long as it isn't clinical psychology.
As for Yale, I would advise Psychology majors to not apply to that PREP program unless they've had the standard science courses (chem, physics, calc, bio), both program directors for the PREP program at Yale have told me they will more likely than not, not consider applicants who don't have these prerequisites (because they admitted a psych major who didn't have the pre reqs and that person did not do well in the program)
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Yea, actually both places would pay enough to live off of.
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At the brand name school I'd be working with a postdoc, with the multiple projects the postdoc is involved it, I'd do things such as write scripts(computer programs) for data analysis and recruit participants, and provide my input on what's going on in regards to those projects.
At the R2 school (it's the same school I graduated from, and have been involved in research there) I'll be working with the PI of the lab to do similar things, write scripts for data analysis, recruit participants, run participants in the experiments, general lab stuff (ordering materials, IRB stuff, etc,), but I'd also pretty much be leading a project that big name researchers were working on in the 1980s - 1990s but stopped working on because the computing power wasn't yet available (and the programs they were running just didn't work). We finally got one of those programs to work and now we also have a large supercomputer cluster to run the models.
On another note, the brand name school would be paying me more.
How do you determine what is "a challenge" and "beyond your capacity"
in The Lobby
Posted · Edited by TenaciousBushLeaper
Thanks all. I actually had a big "eureka" moment (and subsequently rushed home to ssh into the university's computing cluster to work on it lol) regarding the one project that was worrying me, on my train ride home yesterday. I'm relieved I didn't tell my advisor that this might not be something I can figure out.