psych face

I'm glad a stashed up enough from the student loans to be able to apply to as many as I did. There's some people out there who have no freaking idea how strapped for cash some of us are sometimes. I think they live in that mythical other world.

OMG, I am laughing so hard because I didn't even think of doing this... evil laughter. Especially given how one of my teachers said they got into their program: walked in and said "I'm going to grad school here, what do I have to do."

I'm actually really bummed about the date, I'm TA-ing for a class that will have a component that week I don't think I can miss.

Is it wierd that I don't want to take a shower because I think I might miss an interview call?

I don't know why that page you linked is crashing my browser. I swear these last browser updates were intentionally designed to not work or something. Google docs has been a pain the last couple weeks for our group work. But, hey Shana.Teacher, it looks like a Social interview posted today.

Ideally... I mean, number one choice would be great, but it would be nice to have options too- I did have one professor say to accept all interviews no matter what - for the sake of seeing the campuses and meeting the professors. Even if you get into your number one, still go. Then they said to accept wherever threw the most money at me. So, that professor seems to agree with what everyone else here said. But I liked their argument for accepting all interviews, even if you get into number one. I mean, you want to build connections (...depending on what your ultimate goal is). I think it would be great to visit all of the schools I applied to, but that just wasn't an option. It would also be cool to meet all my POI's, and sit around BS-ing. Actually, that might be more fun in my mind than in real life. Maybe I'll just imagine it. I've noticed professors can get pretty funny when they are drunk. Sorry, that was all sort of off topic - I think the semester winding down is catching up with me.

I just saw people have started posting interview offers in the results for psych **(woot!)** and good luck to all!

Thanks lewin, that post was useful - Personally, I had not looked into this yet, so it's good to learn about.

4-6 weeks is about how long some of my professors took, or more, so I would get cracking pronto if you really are going for it this round. Do as many as you can, what the hell right?

I would guess that, due to the way grants work in STEM - that is, a large chunk is taken out by the university prior to what ends up going to the researcher/lab/project - I would guess that they also get a reduced courseload. The enormous chunk the university pilfers out of the grant is more than enough to cover the costs of replacing a professor for a few courses. When I found out how much money my university makes off of STEM by siphoning off the top of grants like this, I was totally APPALLED.

Like a lot of people have been saying - funding probably. After that... I put a lot of weight on campus environment because I spend a LOT of time on campus. I want to see how good the other departments are that I might want to interact with a lot, due to side interests. How many visiting speakers, seminars, clubs, campus activities, etc. I go to a lot of these things to keep busy. But... I've already looked into those things at most of the schools I applied to, so I already know it will be a pretty decent environment at any of those schools. I suppose something else that matters is a mentor who is excited about their work AND actually spends a lot of time in the lab. I've met a lot of high-functioning, awesome profs who don't actually hang with their labs very much, and that made being in their lab a lot less fun than some of the other labs seemed - what with their "slightly less profoundly awesome" professor being in the lab and engaged with them all the time. It made me a little jealous, even though their professor was less well-known - because I could tell they were having a more exciting time and probably constantly engaging in conversations about the theory. If I could go back and redo that time, I would have opted for the less well-known prof. who was engaged more with their lab peeps. It gave me a really good opinion of fresh, young professors and the sort of influence/inspiration they can exert on their students. I think that, in the end, their students did more interesting work too, largely as a result of having the professor present and pushing them (or whatever else their presence is doing - it's complicated to guess it all).

One thing I did that worked was to approach someone and say something like "I have a project in mind, X, and I can have the protocol ready and prepared to conduct this project at time Y, will you help me get access to subjects and put through the IRB paperwork?" That seems to work. But you have to be able/willing to work on your own, and need a project. I'm not sure if this helps.

I did this on more than one of my applications, because truthfully we all have multiple interests and some of these schools have awesome people in several of our interests. I made sure my number 1 choice was clear but also mentioned interest in all the others. But!!! -I don't know if that is successful because I haven't done it before. So, I don't know if it is good or bad. If it makes you feel any better, at least this is to tell you that you're not the only one who feels that way.

That's actually good advice for everyone. When people ask me if I'm nervous waiting, I usually tell them 'not really, I have x,y,z backup plans so I don't have to get that worried about it' - of course, that's only something I figured out after a shutout. Having back up plans takes all the stress away. It's also really convenient when former professors offer you jobs. I've been pretty lucky in that regard and have a lot of gratitude for my profs. - regardless, I have back ups for next year, three different backups, to be precise, that's how much I didn't want to worry about things anymore. Stress is lame.

I actually asked a school this once: it doesn't matter. They don't forward your stuff to the department until a minimum collection of required things arrives. So order doesn't matter, it's more about time. Get it there as soon as you can.

So I'm a little confused now about the perception that when a person shares information, that they know they aren't supposed to, on a public forum - they somehow feel justified blaming anyone on the face of the earth if it comes back to them. Both Eigen and Informant both seem to think I didn't have the right to have mentioned this now PUBLIC information to anyone (which was already public, seeing as how many people here already knew). More than that, it seems that I am to be freely blamed for sharing this public information, which was shared by someone who implies they never should have shared it in the first place. I wish I could live, walking around, blaming everyone else for everything stupid I did all on my own - breaking rules I was supposed to follow and then saying someone else is responsible. Gosh, just doing things I'm not supposed to be doing, and then saying it was someone else's fault if it came back to bite me in the ass - that would be great. What a conscious-free existence. Which also brings me to a suggestion to anyone applying to Berkeley: that's the sort of person that is apparently screening your graduate applications down to the 100 or so that get to the committee (according to Informant's post - which they will now yell at me for repeating, even though they posted it). So, people who don't think they should be held responsible for their own actions not only get into the program; but they also have power over which applications make it to the professors there. Think about that.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't make up things and attribute them to me as if I did them. Also, I don't appreciate your wording. Moderators should post under fake accounts if they are going to say things like that.

You're really wierd and uninformed about reality if you think this is a private location to say private stuff.

Wow, that is just not something I expected. I hope that was sarcasm. There are sometimes people with odd attitudes that end up around here.

I just spoke with a professor today about the "insider information" posted here, that graduate students do the initial screening of our applications for professors at schools that get a lot of applicants. He seemed really surprised things have become like that, and looked as dissappointed and annoyed at the system as I felt when I read that here. Then we had a conversation about how qualified a graduate student would be to judge another (potential) graduate student's potential, when it is well known to be a dog-eat-dog, arrogant, ego-filled world (academia) - also depends on the department. For example, it would be easy to see how one graduate student may reject another for extremely poor reasons that have nothing to do with merit, especially after reading personal subject matter that might be mentioned in statements. Graduate students also lack the perspective to really understand what it takes to survive the program, since they have yet to do so. I would hope that only a select few graduate students are chosen for this job, carefully screened, themselves. Another thought I have that irks me immensely is that my statement was tailored for my potential superiors, not their minions. There is information contained in there that is either unsuitable for future "co-workers" of mine, or information I would never have included if I knew who exactly was going to be reading it. If I had known ahead of time that I was to be selling myself to graduate students, things would have been tailored very differently. The professor I spoke to about this was one of my letter writers. He was pissed off that he thought he was writing to his colleagues when he wrote his recommendation and in stead, a bunch of "Little Shits" were going to be reading it. Of course, this language is why I love my letter writer. This topic only arose because I saw him this morning and he asked me if I was all stressed out now that all my apps were in and I could freak out waiting. So I told him, "No, I'm just freaking out now because I found out yesterday that GRADUATE STUDENTS are screening my apps." Just thought I'd see if anyone else had any thoughts about this. Of course, if you are currently a graduate student (as am I) and don't see yourself as a "little shit" I understand. But, being a graduate student myself - I do agree that the term is fairly representative.

If the SOP is so important, do you guys even look at the Personal Statement, which is separate at that school? Or is it just something only some people look at, like grades.

Hey Informant! So what is the deal with SOP and Personal Statement, are they only looking at SOP or are they equally important, or what is the deal with having them both - because a lot of schools only want SOP. Thanks in advance, Informant!

I'd tell you what I screwed up too, to make you feel better, but it's too embarrassing. I made a table of which applications I screwed up on so I can see if they ignore it or not in the admit process.

Is this normal? I had no idea we had to get through grad students first. That kind of creeps me out. Knowing grad students and being one myself, I'm not sure I trust those people. (For people who lack a sense of humor, that was supposed to be sort of funny.)

I've got one lagging professor with one lagging rec. I've sent about five reminders - and I know this person doesn't check their email a lot because if it gets too many unread emails in it they just ignore it and do their more important stuff. I'm just going to go and tease them a little. Problem is, with some of these people, they are never somewhere you can find them on campus. They lurk in random meetings, you can't track them down. What you really have to do is look up their course schedule and stalk-attack them outside one of their classrooms.