TenaciousBushLeaper

3 faculty from my university recently had a talk about this in a sort of informal course where graduate students, RA's, lab managers, and faculty speak on topics in academia. One of those topics was (about two weeks ago) on graduate school admissions. All 3 of them had the same reasoning for why they ask students about other programs they've applied to. It really came down to "are you going to come here?", that's what they want to know when they ask you this question, this is a type of gauge, they want to weight the odds of you accepting an offer at their program when their program might have to compete with school X

I would honestly like to know how you guys(sorry as I think 2? of you are female) prepare. I only ask because I definitely don't have "natural" talent for mathematics. Coming out of high school I couldn't properly add fractions, (yea, while it was still fresh in my head) and my SAT quantitative score was abysmal, it was around 200. To share what personally worked for me, 1. changing my attitude about mathematics. 2. dedicating an inordinate amount of time to mechanics based practice. 3. (I think this may be the most important) Tackling difficult problems, one which incorporate mechanics but emphasize problem solving (and not giving up right away, thinking through a problem, even if that single problem took me several days). When I took calculus I went through 3 entire five subject notebooks (not because this much work was given but because I needed this much practice just to get an A) while most of my classmates would just need a single subject notebook. Fast forward now to my current discrete math course, I'm out performing most of my classmates which are either applied math majors or computer science majors (and I'm a psychology major) without the need to dedicate that much more time and effort.(Though, it could be argued these applied math majors and CS majors also have a bunch of other math courses, but I would argue my current schedule compares to a typical math major student's schedule) Now I know this may seem to go against what I previously stated, as a time period of 3 months probably doesn't compare to the amount of time I put in to studying math, but this was in regards to mathematics as subject, not a math section on an exam. Anyways, maybe you can also try documenting where you get stuck, and going through those notes to find out where your sticking points are, maybe you'll find interesting patterns?. There are also websites where you can ask a question and receive help almost immediately (yes, free help) What I'm really trying to get across here is, anyone who's having/has had difficulties with the quant section of the GRE can get through it, and do well on it at the same time. & I mean this more in an encouraging way rather than a "you're just not trying" way.

I really hate to be the one to say this but I honestly doubt that anyone who dedicates 2-3 hours each day, for say a 3 month period to studying and prepping for the quantitative section of the GRE will get anything below 70%. Unless of course you truly do have a learning deficiency in mathematics, in which case I have no idea what would be needed to improve your score.

It seems like your friend is gravitating towards the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, a "language dictates thought" way of thinking. You should advise him to read the literature regarding this. In a way, I'm kinda working one level down of you in the whole *language investigation* thing, kinda lol. BTW when you say "how frequency affects phonetic production, what exactly do you mean?

I'm currently and undergrad senior, my advisor pretty much gave me my topic and project (a part of a larger project he's been working on since his dissertation). I don't necessarily *like* it but I don't dislike it at all, either. I see it more as a larger assignment, similar to what you'd get in any course. Aside from that, there are some pretty interesting questions that can be answered by the work I'm doing. I think the fact that I don't enjoy the topic yet, the fact that I think researching it may provide insights to questions which are still unanswered is what allows me to sort of disconnect from it. In the end this allows me to work on it as if I were a fricken drone.

So I have a job interview for Moodys, at my university. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moody%27s_Corporationif anyone is curious. I've never interviewed for a job like this, and I'm wondering if its necessary to wear a suit? Or will a button up shirt, tie, dress pants, and dress shoes be enough? Also it should be noted, I'm a psychology major, but I think they selected me for an interview because of my research experience and stats background since the job title is "Associate Analyst III". Has anyone here interviewed for this place? If so could you give me any tips? Or just tips from anyone in general would be appreciated. Thanks!

Question, if you'd be an "average" candidate at UChicago, are you saying you wouldn't be an "average" graduate student at a place like Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, etc? My university turned down people from Harvard and Princeton to hire a faculty member who received his PhD from UMass, and another who received his PhD from the University of Iowa. What's going to matter most is your productivity and what you contribute to your field. I'd take someone who changed the game at a community college over some who barely added anything to my field at Harvard , any day. Some of these things may often co-occur, that is to say game changers may come from really prestigious universities but the fact that they do doesn't mean that's the reason why the did so well in their research. What you need to worry about most, first is, making sure you're entering into a program/field where you'll obsess over your work. Then making sure you're going somewhere productive to your productivity. Is the lab funded, do you like the PI, do you like the other grad students. THEN all else being equal you may worry about prestige.

Hi all, So I thought I'd make this thread. Essentially I'm asking anyone/everyone who is willing, to post the information (title/edition/authors) of your favorite books/references for your respective fields/topics of study. (This can include your favorite methods/stats books) I enjoy the fact that psychology is more or less an all encompassing field & I find a lot of other topics within psychology very interesting(of course some more than others). &.....I NEEDS MOAR NOLEDGE lol. Anyways I guess I'll start: Statistical Inference by George Casella & Roger L. Berger Cognitive Neuroscience by Marie T. Banich & Rebecca J. Compton Awk Programming by Arnold Robbins Introduction to Psycholinguistics: Understanding Language Science by Matthew J. Traxier

Details?

I was going off the assumption that you had already completed a Masters program. Anyhow, you can always apply to joint MD/PhD programs. As according to your most recent response it would seem to fit you best. Although they are generally more competitive. However there are ways to give yourself a better chance. If you are a minority and have not yet started your masters one option could be to NOT pursue a masters and apply to what are called PREP programs funded by the NIH. These are post - bac research education programs. There are some great schools which house these programs and as I've been in told, in person by the director of the program at Yale, they want the individuals they take in from their PREP programs to attend graduate school/med school at Yale. Oh and if you have a masters or have began any type of graduate study you're disqualified from applying. Also, being white doesn't necessarily disqualify you from participation in the PREP program. What they don't want isn't white people, it's majorities in science, so Jewish, some middle eastern/asian populations. And probably a few others. However there are white minorities in science so that counts. website:http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/multimedia/map/prep/

Stats & tech skills will often come hand in hand. There isn't a single sector which is without the need of data analysis. Specifically, someone competent who can extrapolate meaningful information from data. It is my realization that just about all "professions" or "work like" environments need to do one thing (of course, not just this one thing). That is, they need to sell something and data analysis provides the selling points.

Can you wait it out to see whether or not you receive a funded offer towards a PhD? That would be my suggestion and if so, for the case that you did receive such an offer I'd say go with the PhD and not UPenn's masters program. Reasons: debt. Especially if you already have undergraduate debt, but, if you don't I'd still say to consider this heavily.

Well, I was enrolled in six the previous semester (first half of the senior thesis). This semester I am enrolled in 5, each 3 credits (including senior thesis). Could you tell me about your thesis?

The courses at my university are the standard (I assume) 3 - 4 credit courses. I had two 4 credit courses and four 3 credit courses. My advisor's solution was to hire help, in the form of an RA working for 3 credits. In short, the help quit after finishing 1 set (each set contained approx 1500 responses) & failed to send me her completed work. Usually the type of work I'm doing which is, partially, creating a resource for future research, is done on a larger time frame with more than one person working on it. My advisor has told me I've done a significant amount of work & that a write up of the work I've done so far would be sufficient however, there would be no experiment. I'd have simply created a resource & this alone doesn't sit well with me.

My sample size is 200, 200 participants gave up to 5 different definitions for different sets of words, each set containing 60 words, with 25 participants working on a particular set. So 8 sets, 25 participants per set & 60 words per set. At the outset I attempted creating a natural language parser using python, so that my work would be cut by some & succeeded but the results were sub par and unreliable. I can't extrapolate on a portion of the data since each definition is specific to a word and the content of the definition is the valuable information. Also, the platform on which participants provided their response was not any type of proprietary software package/website. The website and the task were individually coded and set up on a server on my university.

Well, if you're taking undergraduate courses to satisfy medical school prerequisites then the medical schools most probably wouldn't care as this is what's necessary. As for the PhD admissions committees, they may see this to mean you're capricious. Although, I will say most individuals who hold a PhD were once in your shoes. Hopefully we can assume intelligence brings with it a slue of other "traits" if you will, which will act as some sort of cushion. All in all this WON'T make or break you. You'll have to keep in mind the many other factors. For example, all the other applicants who's application demonstrate a more "put together" sales pitch to admissions committees. I can think of a situation where it may help you, although this would depend on your GPA for your masters degree. If you have an excellent GPA in your MA then I'd say taking more undergraduate courses may hurt. In my opinion the most likely scenario: this appears neutral. Second most likely: negative impact.

Hi all, I'm currently in the second semester of my senior honors thesis. To give a very, very brief description of my work, it's on word reading. For the first part of the project, I collected, read, and sorted over 12,000 unique responses from participants in the form of definitions for words. I did most of this over the course of the last semester (Fall 2014) and am just about done, only have 900ish left. Now, I'm a bit burnt out at this point. & I have to get on with the project or else I might not be able to complete it before graduation. (Oh, and I even worked on this just about everyday over winter break). The second part of the project isn't nearly as much work in terms of data collection but I still have to write up the manuscript. I'm wondering if this actually isn't all that much work and I'm just for the lack of a better description, complaining and being lazy? What do you think? Any suggestions on how crank up my motivation ? Also I should mention last semester I enrolled in 20 credit hours. This semester I cut it down to 15 for the sake of my sanity. I'd also like to hear about the type of projects other undergraduates complete.

@spunky Your comments on being able to read math reminded me of something I had read earlier this year In the example the author explained "It follows easily that" = "One can now check that the next statement is true with a certain amount of essentially mechanical, though perhaps laborious, checking. I, the author, could do it, but it would use up a large amount of space and perhaps not accomplish much, since it'd be best for you to go ahead and do the computation to clarify for yourself what's going on here. I promise that no new ideas are involved, though of course you might need to think a little in order to find just the right combination of good ideas to apply." Personally I found it much easier once I was able to get my hands on a book which is used for a math course at my university title "Foundations of modern math". It essentially helps you with all and any "math lingo" as well as teaches methods for proofs and problem solving. And if anyone is curious this book in pdf format was also quite helpful http://www.math.vt.edu/people/day/ProofsBook/IPaMV.pdf

Lol what I was thinking about would fall under the " if this is a stimulus/response kind of thing then it falls within DoE (Design of Experiments)/ANOVA framework" BTW, from the post on the website which you have a link to in your "signature" (is that what it's called?), if we can assume this is what quant research is like, it seems it's just mathematicians who also just so happen to have a keen interest in psychology. which btw I'm totally ok with, my favorite courses are my math ones (I secretly wish I could have double majored in math & psych)

@spunky, wow! Thanks for the great answers. Although I'm graduating this May I won't be applying to grad programs until Fall 2015 for the 2016 season. I've been thinking about what areas I'd like to pursue and I have three choices, cognitive, cog-neuro, and quant. As far as mathematics background, I've taken 3 stats courses a "Basis Statistics" course at a community college, a "Statistics for Behavioral and Cognitive Science" from my current university, and "Probability & Statistics" which is also from my current university. The difference between the two courses from the same university is, one is from the psychology department while the other is from the math department. I've also taken Calc 1 & I am currently taking Discrete Structures (also known as discrete mathematics). (I've also taken college algebra & pre-calc but maybe these wouldn't count). The lab I'm currently doing research in is a cog-neuro lab and we use R so I have some experience with it. I also have experience with unix shell scripting and python. Oddly, one of my favorite parts of my research is running the analysis and trying to find different methods of extracting valuable information from my data. So I'm kinda leaning towards applying for a quant program although I do have some concerns about my mathematics background, I'm not sure I have enough of it. Question: Lets say I wanted to model individuals responses in some type of word association task, could you be able to tell me which area of statistics this would fall under? What do you think of obtaining a masters of science in applied stats as soft of preparation?

It's actually quite interesting once you start to get it. A big part of your research, regardless of what sub specialty in psychology will be statistical analysis. You're also going to have to think about the case where you don't have a PI guiding you and you have to make sure you're applying the right analysis, let alone justify it.

@Chubberubber what you mentioned is part of what quantitative program would have. There's also statistical modeling, mathematical modeling of decision making, neuro-image analysis, and more that I can't name because I don't recall.

Hi all, So I'd like to get everyone's and anyone's opinion on a psychology PhD with a concentration in quantitative psychology. Things I'd like to know: What do you think about this type of PhD program in terms of research, & job prospects in academia? Is anyone here currently in such a program? Has anyone applied? If so, why? What school(s) do you know which have this area of study to choose from? (I really only know of UNC, USC, & UCLA) **Yes, I know all psychology PhD students take quantitative courses, but I'm talking about a specific area of study, just as there's cognitive psychology, social, development, etc.

I'm interested in a few things, although at the moment I study the basic processes involved in word reading. I use behavioral methods as well as fMRI to try and delineate where and how people process different "types" of words and non words in the brain, primarily using a lexical decision paradigm .

I like that user name Schizo-Neuro enthusiast