FantasticalDevPsych

Chiming in as one of three new students in my already small department. I actually liked both the small department and that I'm my advisor's only student. I agree with FinallyAccepted and say that the smaller class can possibly be beneficial as it could give access to more resources as well as time with professors. And to expand on the job placement, it is possible that if your department/advisor is good then you have a possibility for more mentorship during your program and for help finding a job. I'm certainly in the it's a good thing camp.

Thank you everyone for the great advice on here for ways to travel! Like you VulpesZerda, I'm also just starting but have already met with my advisor and will officially start next week! I'm in Developmental Psychology so my schedule depends a lot on local school schedules and parent schedules (meaning that I work in my lab like a 9-5 and data collection slows down during parts of the year). Even though I have guaranteed twelve month funding, my advisor actually already told me the ideal time to take vacations and that they travel for two weeks during that same time every year! I'm glad I didn't have to ask as was tentatively planning a two week trip abroad next summer to visit a friend as well as sightsee and now just plan to do so during that ideal time to take a vacation! I'd just say to ask your advisor or senior grad students to see what they do.

Fire storm

I have voted on here and my program includes health insurance along with the stipend! My now advisor is the one who told me the funding package but my program's funding info is on its website!

Seconded! I didn't know until I accepted the offer that all first year students in my program (also social science) have the option of having the department purchasing a computer for us. We get to keep it after we pass quals! The only downside is we don't get to pick the computer (and now this Mac user needs to learn how to use a PC again). There's so much good advice on this thread (thank you everyone) and I'd also suggest the printer (saved me during undergrad so I'm certainly sure it will during grad) and someone to vent to (I wouldn't have an offer without this person supporting me).

Thank you for this! As someone with a British collaborator as well as a British friend (also an academic and likely future collaborator), it's good to see that what I had been doing was confirmed here. In informal correspondence, I use American words and spellings and receive British ones in return. If we use an idiom and the other person is confused we just explain it. My collaborators and I were considering submitting a paper to British and American journals and since I'm used to seeing both spellings from communicating and reading papers I just was going to use whichever spelling was appropriate.

Also not in I/O but I had a similar situation when applying. I had identified specific interests while I was applying so then had to find someone who would hopefully let me study them. To make my list of who to apply to I broke my interests down into subtopics (e.g. what aspect of the literature existing helps inform your ideas). For example I had a list of people that studied children's ability to learn from different media and children's fantasy-reality distinctions while my interests lie in this intersection. I would then do Google Scholar searches to see what had been published and saved papers (since I was also doing lit review for my honors thesis) and authors. I also asked input from my undergrad advisor (a well known tenured prof in my area). If you end up meeting or emailing potential professors then mention that you are interested in projects that examine x specific thing you are interested in and see what they say. For the program I ended up choosing such work had also paid off as I used this strategy to plan seminars and posters to attend at a confrence where I met my advisor (without such meeting I'd be applying again)!

So true! Thank you very much! Conference networking paid off for me big time as I met my advisor who had funding to admit me, liked my thesis work, and is letting me continue with my research interests (and they fit really well with their research interests)! Like you I would have never imagined this process working out like it did!

Accepted my very late offer on May 19th to start my PhD in Experimental Psychology specializing in Cognitive and Developmental Sciences at the University of Louisville!

Thanks everyone! There are some very good suggestions on this tread! It made me think about what I'm going to do as well. I'm planning to do mine when I get my new email from my school and apartment address, then email them a small note of thanks and then mail a card and a small gift (something from the school or something that would please them) from my new address (as I wouldn't have gotten here without them).

Love the quote, and, as a developmental psychologist, I actually do literally explain my work to a six-year old quite often... (Note to self: the quote is maybe something to use in my office or for RA training...) I agree with all of that. I don't like to bring up my academic achievements in conversation because I don't really want to brag about something I work very hard in but because of that just seem to be good at. I think if this was true for some other nonacademic career I'd be like that too but with, some people's views of academic achievement, I'm even more so.

So excited I can finally post on this thread after reading everyone's responses and thinking I'd not be able to do this until next year! Due to a special circumstance I was allowed to apply to a university late, because of this I had been in contact with the grad admin throughout the entire application process. Today I received an email from the grad admin saying the faculty are reviewing your application at this time (which I thought must have really meant right then) and you will hear shortly. Needless to say this made me very anxious. I decided to take a shower since I had just came back from Tae Kwon Do and it would prevent me from refreshing my phone every couple minutes. When I got out I checked my email again and there was an email from the admin with the subject line Acceptance Letter! I wish I would have had some happy dance or something but I am about to meet with my current PI and I'm really looking forward to telling her! Now I can say I got into grad school on Star Wars Day! May the 4th be with you!

Very interesting topic and I’m surprised someone from Psychology hasn’t chimed in on this yet! While I’m not in as much of a technical field as many others here, I’ve encountered this challenge before with the language I use to explain aspects of my field that people know about but just don’t know what it was called in technical language. And I learned recently that sometimes research psychologists are thought of as weird by the community when trying to recruit participants (learned from a POI on interviews) as well as talking to others about that no in fact I don't/won't psychoanalyze you or your child (such a common question, no we are not all clinical!). Haven't gotten the smart comments as I'm an undergrad and not sure if I will... I openly admit I don’t have to worry as much about finding a common topic of discussion as I get a lot of kid stories (or explanations about why they don’t like kids) when I mention what I study. (So yes asking Stay at Home moms about their kids is a very good way to get them talking...) Though I do agree that there is some very good advice about finding another common topic already (such as from Page228)! I agree with GeoDude! on explaing your work. I’m not a grad student yet (undergrad – waiting on my last chance of admission this year) but have worked with specialists (my PI and lab mates) and nonspecialists (parents from many different backgrounds) since I’ve started doing research. At first it was actually much harder for me to talk to parents about what I was doing as I had a little blurb on what we were doing in nonspecialist terms that we used to recruit but I couldn’t figure out what to say when a parent asked something else. When I had my own study and more technical knowledge, I found it easier to further explain what I was doing even to a nontechnical audience (and have to children, parents, and other undergrads). I think my increase in knowledge allowed me to begin to think about my work in different ways and at least for now feel like I’ve arrived upon a way to explain my current work to specialists and nonspecialists. And I like the advice about trying to find some practical implication of whatever you are studying that makes it interesting to others (some application to a well known disease, interesting application of a theorem, etc). I'm currently writing an interdisciplinary lit review thesis (my second UG one) and once got the advice of making sure to try and be able to answer “why should I care?” when this “I” is someone from various backgrounds (another academic in your field, another academic in a closely related field, someone who knows nothing about your topic, etc). I think the best advice for learning how to explain your work to others is just to practice doing so! Oh and my dad is a prof in a very technical field that is not well known to nonspecialists so sometimes when I'm asked about it I just have to explain very generally what the field is, what technique he uses in his work, and a very broad application of his work and they are satisfied. (Long thesis writing procrastination post over)

Free will

Left out

Wanted to upvote this but I've reached my quota! Good luck everyone!

Agree with you there! I also liked that it forced me to really think about what I want to study and the proposed study was great to mention in interviews!

Senior undergrad here! I'm currently wondering if getting pooped on by a bird is good luck for the NSF as it happened on my way home... (Why must a research direction in my lab be on superstition...?) Obviously I've lost all focus to fill out lab manger apps... or analyze data for the (now) international collaboration which came from my undergrad thesis...

Face down