FeelTheBern

Definitely try and ask for advice, send a friendly email to your POI and see if they can give you a few pointers. For example, they may have read your SOP, but thought your research interests were not concentrated enough or did not fit with them to the extent they would have liked. Or maybe, they didn't even see your application because it was eliminated during a screening process due to GRE/GPA. This is important information to know and will help you tremendously during your second cycle. Also, SO MANY people have bad luck their first application cycle, you're not alone, and it doesn't mean that your not "graduate material", so don't give up! To answer the second part of your post, if you would be going into a significant amount of debt to get your Master's, I wouldn't do it, however, if the program is able to fund you by means of a graduate assistantship or scholarship and you are interested in the school and the program, I would say go for it. Especially because you think that your lower than average GPA may be one of the things keeping you out. Aim for a 3.8+ in the Master's program, and that will help your GPA a lot! The GRE, however, is a beast of its own and will require additional studying whether you get your Master's or take a year off. I have heard that it is A LOT easier to study for the GRE when you take a year off, so that could also be a consideration for you. Retaking the GRE is not something that a lot of people are keen on doing, but if you are willing and think it will help you get into a program go for it. Just a side note....My SO got accepted into his top choice program (which is extremely quant. heavy) with a GRE quantitative percentile of 38. He never got questioned about it once during any of his interviews and it also didn't bar the admissions committee from admitting him after his POI recommended him. In the end, how important is the GRE score? I can't really give you a solid answer, but I don't think it's as important as some make it out to be.

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@EdNeuroGrl do you have a vehicle that you could sell? If so, check out the public transportation options within the city or see if it is possible to walk/bike to school, your apartment, etc. If this is an option, SELL THE CAR! My SO received a lot of recommendations from current graduate students both in NYC and Boston, telling him that the money they got from selling their car was just enough for start-up living expenses. If, however, this is not an option for you, have you thought about having a graduation/going away party? Some people might think this sounds stupid or cheesy, but when I graduated from high school, throwing a party for family and friends helped me raise over $3,000 and that was just for high school. (I found that most people are surprisingly generous when it comes to graduation parties.) If possible, maybe ask your parents if they would be willing to host the party. My SO and I are doing both of these things this summer in hopes that we will raise at least $5,000 for the quite pricey move to NYC!

@+thinking keep waiting it out! My SO was in the same boat as you and he just received two acceptances within 24 hours of one another after 2 months of basically nothing. I think news will start rolling in soon for those who have been accepted to PhD programs; official rejections on the other hand are known to not start rolling in until mid to even late-April.

I echo what @Love3 said as well. If you are concerned about fellow students who may be sitting on the wait list, then decline the least attractive offer of the two you have in hand right now. If this in and of itself is difficult, take your time and weigh all of your options. Even though it is extremely kind of you to think about the students who are sitting on the wait list, if you are not ready to make the decision quite yet, don't beat yourself up about it.

The schools that you have been accepted to should give you until April 15 to make a decision. I know that once you receive an offer, it's exciting, and it feels like you need to accept it right away, but you really don't have to/shouldn't feel obligated to. If UofM is truly your top choice, I would 100% wait it out because if you are accepted off the wait list, you are going to be really happy that you didn't accept one of the other offers. Are the two schools you were accepted to giving you ultimatums? Like, "accept before this date, or we will give your slot to another student". They really should be giving you until April 15 in all fairness.

Thank you for pointing this out @blubed! I completely agree, I actually got this idea from the Philosophy subforum where their wait list thread currently has 206 replies and 10,485 views.

That's fine if you feel as though you need to wait, however, there is no need to downvote me @JoePianist for creating a thread that has been received quite well on another subforum. I am not forcing people to share this information if they do not want to.....

I saw this thread started in the Philosophy subforum and I think it is a wonderful idea to give people just a little, tiny bit of hope that they may be the lucky one to be accepted off of the waitlist at a school that they are waiting to hear from. In addition to the name of the school, please also post the area (social, cognitive, clinical, etc.). Thanks guys

I completely agree! Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in life, and dealing with some not so pretty weather for 5 years of your life can sometimes be a necessary evil in order to attend a program that you think will lead to the most success, not to mention your future happiness!

What aspects of a Master's program are most important to you? What will be your deciding factor(s) when selecting a program? Whatever idea/thought/question popped into your head, should lead you to important questions to ask during your interview. I see that you already have two acceptances, meaning that you are going to have to choose between at least two different schools. What do you want to know about the program/faculty/facilities/financial support from the university that is going to help you make your decision in the end? It's so important to ask these questions during the interview because, like I said above, it will help tremendously with the decision-making process!

They had their interview weekend this past weekend for short-listed candidates, February 21-22. It was for all areas.

This is really interesting to me...I know that you said that this particularly applies to Ryerson, but do you know if other schools practice this as well? I am really curious to know how the process works after all the professors have selected their first pick. Although, I am sure there are substantial differences from school to school.

I would say that interviews are usually a necessary step towards admissions for most Psychology PhD programs, however, there are definitely exceptions. I think at this point it is probably fair to assume that most schools that hold interviews have extended a majority of their interview invites, however there may be a select few that haven't.

Hey, I was wondering how things have been going for you (you haven't posted lately, but I figured you were crazy busy with interviews). And yes! I have told him about you, so you both will probably meet without knowing! The wait is going to be awful, but I hope that decisions are made fairly quickly to ease the pain. Everyone should definitely post acceptances when they find out so that we can all celebrate together

Great point, for some reason I didn't even think about this! Crossing my fingers for the both of us!

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Thank you for asking @Gvh! He said it went great and he felt as though he could not have done any better than he did. He loved the department, the graduate student who works in his POI's lab, his POI, and all of the professors within Cognition. Boston is also an amazing, beautiful city, so we would both be really excited to live there! There were not any hints of acceptance or possible acceptance, so we are just going to have to wait it out, but I think he should be hearing back pretty soon according to the department! They said that there were approx. 7 slots for this year and there were 32 students at the interview (a bit more than we were expecting), so odds are about 20%, however, only one other girl was applying to his same POI, so possibly 50% for him.... Good luck this weekend! My SO is preparing for two more this weekend that are basically back-to-back, and then after that we can FINALLY sit back and relax and wait to hear (although I am not really sure how relaxing the wait is going to be). haha Please post after your interview this weekend @Gvh, and let us know how it goes!

@Gvh & @vislabgirlx thank you both so much! Sounds like you both have offers coming soon! So exciting I am really excited to see where everyone ends up going!

Yay! You went from 1 to 2 interviews...so awesome! Good luck, are they coming up soon?? First interview for my SO is in three days, and then the following week, two back-to-back interviews! We have decided to presume rejections for the rest, however, technically he has only heard from 4 schools officially. I am thinking that after his interviews, if he is accepted, he should hear within a week (if not unofficially from his POI during the interview weekend). The turnaround acceptance rate seems to be very quick after interview weekend for most schools. What is freaking me out is how soon that is! If he got accepted anywhere, we should know in two weeks max! AHHHH Congrats @vislabgirlx! Something that has been bothering me lately is thinking about how many applicants are going to be invited for the same POI! Since you have experience with previous interviews @vislabgirlx, can you speak to how many people were there for your POI? Also, I know @Gvh has been thru one app cycle, can you speak to this at all?

Maybe this should be placed in the interview section, however, I specifically would like psych people to respond, which is why I posted it here. So with a few interviews just around the corner, I am wondering if anyone can give some pointers about interviewing with professors who you are not interested in working with. I know that every school that my SO is interviewing at has applicants interview with many different faculty members. He has been preparing as much as he can for his interview with his POI, however, how do you really prepare for an interview with random faculty members (grad school head, department chair, etc.) and what questions can he expect? Any help would be much appreciated! Also, anyone who has gone through this process already, I would love to hear what happened/what questions were asked by non-POIs? Thanks

Although my SO has not been accepted yet, he received interview invites to his top three programs with a less than stellar quant. score (32nd). This whole process has the "right place at the right time" or "right program at the right time" vibe about it. These application cycles are brutal, and although I would never encourage someone to give up on their dream, I completely understand where you are coming from. I know that my SO and I were (jokingly, but not really) planning out our Plan B, which included moving to the Netherlands and never looking back, and definitely not going thru another application cycle. Anyways, if this is something you really want, keep trying because it is possible to get in somewhere (or at least get an interview somewhere), with a low quant. score. I wish you the best of luck wherever life takes you