sociallypsyched

I'm in my first year at a social psych program with a well-known advisor. I was rejected from everywhere 3 years ago (mediocre GRE, fairly good GRE scores, mediocre letters of rec), got into one of the funded masters, and worked my ass off/made connections with people there. I applied to 10 social psych programs last year and got invitations to interview at 3. I don't know if I would have gotten into the other two because I withdrew myself from the running when I got in my first choice. So an MA worked for me. But I wouldn't go into (serious) debt over it.

Florida has had major budget cuts to psychology in the last few years and only has three professors that accept students into the social PhD program. Another reasons some POIs don't accept regularly is the lack of jobs available for recent graduates...I know my advisor has the funding to take a new student every year if he wanted to (not from the department but from grants) but won't because he doesn't want to contribute to the "too many PhDs, not enough jobs" problem.

Also, this may or may not be obvious to people but send a thank you email. I know some people send snail mail thank yous but in some cases people are making decisions quite quickly after interview weekend concludes. I would suggest sending a short email on Monday. I might say one or two specific things (for instance, with my advisor I brought up a specific effect we had both attempted to replicate) and otherwise just say how much you enjoyed learning about the program. I would also send a thank you to any other faculty members you talked to and the grad students who gave you a tour or hosted you.

Don't let this freak you out, but you are always being interviewed. I am lucky enough to have gotten into a program where everyone gets along very well but there is a reason for that: our personalities were evaluated just as much as our academic credentials during interview weekend. I know one person who got rejected after an interview weekend for being too candid with grad students during a welcome party (I think he was talking about using mdma or something). So be casual with the grad students and don't bore them with your interests (it's fine to talk about them some but don't ram them down their throat) but don't get too comfortable. Don't complain about your undergrad school, advisor, etc too much, either.