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Yes, coggiedoggie, I got my rejection email from them recently.

I have accepted an offer from Ball State University for the Educational Psychology Ph.D. program!

Thank you!! I'm really excited.

Thank you. Yes, it really doesn't matter. It's just been a mindset I've had for over a year to be a social psychologist. Honestly, I think I would be happy in several different areas, but it seems like my behaviors are more indicative of educational psychologist. Considering I just learned about this a few months ago and applied and got accepted to a program, I'm just trying to let it all sink it. It's a five year commitment, plus an even longer career commitment. This might be a bad analogy, but it's like I just met the love of my life two months ago and I have to decide to get married soon. Either way, I think I'm going for it. When I found the program I was so excited for days because it fit so well with me. That SOP was the easiest one I had to write.

I graduated with a B. S. in Psychology. After looking around for graduate school programs in social/experimental psychology, I applied to some of those because of my research interests. I knew I was not the clinical/counseling. I also looked into research methods and statistics because I loved those courses. Eventually, I found a program with quite a bit of research methods, statistics, and other courses I was interested in such as learning and motivation. Looking back at my undergrad interests without any influence from instructors and their research, I found that I have always been interested in making education better, learning styles, test/math anxiety, social dynamics of the classroom, and finding out exactly how people learn. No one told me about Educational Psychology, but it seems that is exactly what I was interested in. I did find more interests in aesthetics research and would love to be able to apply this as well. I've come up with some ideas about researching aesthetics education (e.g., art and music programs) and how it affects the learning process. I looked into educational psychology and found that there is a course at my school that I never knew existed because it is listed as education rather than psychology. After speaking with an educational psychologist on campus he revealed that his job is primarily psychology--he even counsels! However, he claims it is a "turf" issue. I have had a rough time getting into the social programs I applied to because of interests not fitting and I'm sure other factors, but the educational psychology Ph.D. program to which I applied accepted me with a GA position, tuition waiver, and an extra $3,000 fellowship to boot. This is where I'm leaning at this time even though I haven't heard from a few places because it seems like maybe I should have been going this direction all along, but was not directed this way. My question for all of you is that I heard Ed Psychologists sometimes are not considered "real" psychologists. This whole field is new to me and I'm pretty sure it fits very well with what I want, but it's hard to break away from the plans that I have had for the past two years to go into social/experimental. Do any of you know much about this field? I'd like to teach at a college level, but also want the flexibility of working outside of a university just in case.

I'm ridiculous. It's as bad as checking for final grades at the end of the semester. I'm so bad that I check at times of the night when I know they are not sending emails. Right now, for example, I realize that these committees are not meeting at all hours of the night, but I just checked a few places anyway. I have rationalized my behavior by saying that they could have features like the bank that update at midnight. Even I can't stand me right now. HAHA

Honestly, I think they should know the steps and see it done by hand, maybe a few small calculations, but in the grand scheme of things a person will be using a program for all of that and only analyzing the results. It just seems tedious to me to do a ton of calculating when, in real-life situations, they will not be calculating anything by hand. Knowing how the numbers are arrived at by the program is important. Understanding which type of analysis to do is important. Knowing how to interpret results are important, but doing hand calculations don't seem as important to me.

What are all your thoughts about making students do calculations by hand?

I think this sounds more beneficial than 60% exams. Doing 60% exams which consist of multiple choice and calculation seem to put the focus on grades IMO. We actually could have students present posters at our student research day on campus if we did it that way. SPSS assignments are added to the homework, so they get some experience with it. They have to make up their own data sets and write explanations of the analyses. I would love to hear more about the types of assignments, exams, usage tests, write ups, and the project that was required!

The other 40% is determined by homework (30%) and participation (10%). Now, I didn't design the course, but I wonder if giving the students each a project to start and letting them work on it from the very beginning the entire semester would show how far they had come. They would turn in a portfolio of all of the analyses run on the original data and all of their work leading up to the final submission. This would be a ton of work, but I think it would really benefit students. I would have loved doing that.

I'm a TA for stats and looking into Ed. Psych programs. One thing I have noticed after being on the other side of academics is that students are primarily performance-focused rather than learning-focused. Our system has made students this way considering we must get a certain GPA to be rewarded or we must have a certain GRE score and GPA to get into graduate school. We have to have certain grades to pass the courses, so students tend to focus on that rather than learning. They want extra credit to increase their grades, not their knowledge. I've been reading a book about educational psychology and I'm curious to know what types of ways we can change things to make students more focused on learning rather than grades? Right now, tests in the class I TA for make up 60% of the overall score. 40% are section tests and 20% is the final exam. No wonder students focus on grades on the tests! Anyway, how would you all attempt to change the direction of the focus? What would you do if you designed an intro to stats course (or any course for that matter) to focus on learning rather than grades?

At first I was a little upset by my Q score (155, 60th percentile). However, when I compared it to only psych it was much better and I was happy with that. Why don't schools focus more on that? I mean, my competition is not anyone but other people going into psychology, so why am I being compared to them? It doesn't make sense to me at all.

That top one is the one I was referring to (Applied Statistics Emphasis). Had I known that a Master's in Statistics would require a ton of calculus courses, I would have just taken them in undergrad. I love stats and I finally realized that many people do not feel the same way. I know there is a Master's program through IU Bloomington that fits what I want, but you have to be in a Ph.D. program to get into the Master's as a minor. I don't have experience with SAS and R. I have only used SPSS and I'm comfortable with it. I'm looking up options now for SAS and R. Thanks

Thank you. For that program, it seemed to me that my physical presence was not required. That's really what I want though, to be a better data analyst. I haven't taken the required sequence. I have taken Elementary Algebra, Finite, Pre-calculus, and Introductory Statistics for the Social Sciences. I am decent at math though. I got A+'s in all of those courses, so I'm not afraid of math. I plan to get a Social Psychology Ph.D., but I'd really like to have an extra strong background in statistics to make myself more competitive. That's basically the goal.

I would have to do the online option here because it is in Texas and I can't uproot the family unless I'm going to go for long-term degree. I've looked into Master's in stats closeby, but the issue is that they are all calculus-based programs. This certificate is one of many offered at Texas A&M and it is specifically for non-calculus based stats.