TXInstrument11

I used this. Scored around the 80th percentile as well. However, I also read a general psych textbook and thought it helped more. Princeton Review's practice test greatly overestimated my percentile- placing me at 99%, and I thought it focused way too much on psychodynamic theories. Other prep courses were pretty much o the money, though they were M&V.

Right or wrong, the Replication Movement is causing a lot of academics to tank in popularity. Just because they're right doesn't make it any less political. Edit: I am part of the Replication Movement so I largely support the mission of people like Gelman, and his confrontational approach is probably what's needed to create change (Cohen, Meehl, & others have been talking about this for ages to no avail, after all), but this is still politics - just between scientists.

I'm currently in a PhD program, and I was forwarded a blog post that I would have found useful as an applicant. It's by a prominent "replication guru", Andrew Gelman. I am not here to take sides in the replication debate, merely to pass along information that may help you more fully appreciate importance of politics in academia. Gelman's condemnation of a professor's former students is demonstrative. http://andrewgelman.com/2016/09/21/what-has-happened-down-here-is-the-winds-have-changed/ While reading this, some troubling rumors I heard about a few departments I applied to suddenly made a lot more sense, as did offhand negative comments I hear routinely from professors in this department. For better or for worse, the popularity of your adviser matters a lot - and arguably more than ever in the current climate. At my undergrad institution, a practical "no-name" with few power player professors, I only heard whispers of these things from a few select people. If I had better understood the intensity and commonness of these academic cat fights, I might have taken better care in choosing departments to apply to, and I think now that I might have had a better chance of acceptance if I had gone that route by dodging departments that appear to be falling apart at the seams. For more examples, check out the feud between Uri Simonsohn and a fellow "replication guru", Greg Francis to see how ugly the mudslinging can get.

Hm. Yes, I forgot about that. I suppose my job would have to be cash then so it would fly under the radar - babysitting, lawn mowing, private tutoring?

If I can't manage to secure an outside fellowship, my budget is going to be extremely tight. I was considering picking up a campus job for the spring or summer. Does anyone have experience doing something like this?

WrellieHm. Good tip! Thank you. I will have to look into him. My first year stats courses don't have him, but perhaps I will have classes with him later. I am not I/O though.

What are your GRE scores? It may be more cost effective to improve those if they are especially low. EDIT: nevermind, sorry for not reading down to the bottom of your post to see that you plan on retaking the GRE. I still maintain though that this is an important consideration before you start throwing money down on application fees. Your GRE x GPA combination matter much more than they should in this hyper-competitive environment. Good grades can't cushion the GRE as well as they could in the past. Is there a professor who sits on admissions at your school who would be willing to talk to you about this? I don't personally know much about how clinical works, though social/personality also has very low admit rates. It may be better to opt for a terminal master's. I considered it too before I was lucky enough to get my acceptance. While it seems like a huge risk financially to put down thousands for the master's, that may be what is necessary. It doesn't make anyone a failure to go that route either. Many of my POIs, even the young ones, had to get the terminal master's degree. Would PsyD be an option for you?

Wow, it looks like I'm pretty alone in getting a class ring. This is awkward.....

I'm not usually one for pomp and circumstance and all that ritualistic tradition crap, but I caved and bought a class ring. I'm the first one in my family to finish college and I won't be able to walk in the ceremony because I'm moving for grad school, so I need some kind of memento. As long as it doesn't seem in bad taste to other people, I may opt for a class ring for grad too. It's not really about showing off the reputation of the school to me (and my undergrad doesn't have much at that), but more about pride in where I came from and connecting with other graduates from my school. I didn't bother with high school though and have absolutely no plans to buy a ring. I went ahead and threw that in there too just to see the relative popularity of HS vs college rings. Though I can't imagine why a high schooler would be on here so early, I kept the options the same. Maybe there are a few serious go-getters out there who will be able to use them.

Thanks for the perspective and feedback! I was hoping you or another quant person might chime in on this. I have heard of poor analysis (and sometimes outright fraud) in data going unnoticed for years in psych until someone with a more technical background takes a look. Case in point - http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-of-happiness-debunked-nick-brown I hear things like this and I think, "Well, damn, what if I was duped by that? If somebody more qualified than me said the math on an unfamiliar technique was good, would I ask questions? Would I even know what to ask?" It's scenarios like this that make me worried about taking the average stats courses offered in psych and just sticking with that. The idea even that I could do everything ethically right, analyze the data to the best of my ability, and still royally screw up scares me. Sure, mistakes happen, but this was a bad one that was far from obvious ---- only because other psychologists did not have the technical skill to spot the BS. Ultimately though, I think you all are right - I need to have a long conversation with my adviser and maybe some other people in my field on this before I leap.

I can minor in it. I didn't know about this kind of degree being viable for statisticians. Thanks Another grad student in the program said something similar. I initially considered taking stats through the math department because it looked like I was stuck with the bad apple for one of our first stats classes in the department, but managed to slip in when someone dropped the alternate professor's class. And yeah, you're probably right. I have contacted my adviser, but they have been busy. Yes, I think that would probably be the best course of action for seeing if I'm still capable of it. I was thinking about working in some hours per day/week to work entirely on math in order to do this and have researched a few free resources to learn calc. I suppose I am worried about being able to understand calc well enough to apply to data analysis. I wasn't sure if I could self-teach some of these things later on. It does sound as if the broad education from the math department might make it harder though. I suppose it depends on how well they tailor it to education and psychology students. The head of the program is actually from education, but it's technically under the stats department.

Rereading my post, I did come off as cocky and should have phrased some of what I said differently. I was basing it off of the people I know in STEM majors that I knew in HS. They always think they're hot shit and I know I understood the math better and got better grades in high school than they did. I would be very surprised if they suddenly became math prodigies come uni.

I aced precalculus/trig and qualified for calc. I just didn't take it because I was going to a humanities major at the time and didn't think it was worth the effort. Most people do not take calc in high school. You need advanced placement or dual enrollment for it and that's not 50+% of the school population, so I'm not sure what you're talking about. An MS in stats gets me something tangible that sets me apart from other people, either as a researcher or on the job market. Also, this stats master's is designed for PhD students. I'm not signing up for it on top of my requirements. Instead, I would be subbing in additional stats classes to cover the typical psych MS and the "minor" requirements, which I was going to put into stats anyway.

I've simply emailed folks (whoever the article lists as contact or 1st author) and haven't had to provide much information at all. Between my honors thesis and my UG research lab, I've done this about 4-5 times. Just use your edu address and the tell them about your topic. Maybe it's different for the dissertation though?

So, I'm thinking about grabbing up a master's through the stats department at my school instead of the regular psych MS built into my PhD. My thinking is, it will be good for me as a researcher because I will have more methods at my disposal, allowing for more varied experimental design and greater independence (less need for data analysis help from other faculty). It also may also give me a competitive hiring edge later on. BUT the rub is that I have practically zero advanced math right now, necessitating a slow crawl through several calculus classes taught by grad students. If I magically secured an override now, it would take me Fall & Spring for Calc I and II, and then an additional Summer & Fall for Calc III and the other prereqs. That means 4 semesters for only the damn prereqs! Realistically, I would bone up on my trig now and then take Calc I in the Spring, so 5 additional semesters before even starting the MS. Math isn't a great love for me, but I do pretty well in it - maybe even better than the average STEM student on aptitude. So, it's doable, just difficult and time-consuming. I am squeamish about adding an extra year and limiting all of my electives to stats, but maybe it's worth it. In the grand scheme of things, one year isn't that much time and if I shouldn't be penalized by my program according to the handbook. NOTE: my tuition is covered and, as far as I know, does not have a year cap.

Dundee Stress State Questionnaire? DSSQ

No, it is quite clear in your post that you see yourself as taking the moral and intellectual high ground. You don't see how condescending your entire tirade was because you think you are there.

First, you need to get off your high horse. We actually did discuss the predictive validity of the GRE, including the analysis of a Quant psych student who worked for ETS. Before reading the article you posted, I had simply never seen high predictive validity for the GRE before. However, how did they control for selection bias? Good schools who can demand higher GRE scores typically have superior resources and training for their students. Due to reputation, they also tend to attract the best, most ambitious students. Second, you act as if you are immune to bias, which is a blind spot in itself. Let me guess - you did well on the GRE? People who do well on the SAT subsequently put more stock in it and people who do poorly on the SAT do the opposite (what you assume of us) . I highly doubt that you went into researching the GRE's validity as a bastion of purely objective, scientific thought. Your own bias doesn't change the numbers - which look good here-but it does mean you are being a sanctimonious ass.

I know the difference between correlation and causation. I'm not brain dead. GPA and research experience/fit simply do not have seem to have a high enough correlation to justify such a narrow range of successful GPA numbers. That is, if GPA were not an admissions criterion at all and only research experience/fit was considered, I would expect to see a much larger range of GPAs. Also, multiple students on this forum have had experience making it to the interview stage, doing well in that interview, and low GPA/GRE numbers being cited in their ultimate rejection. Sure, their POIs could have been lying to spare their feelings, but why? Also, calling each other's experience into question is going both ways here. You are talking down to me as a senior student and I pointed out that the admissions situation may be different in your discipline. Acceptances rates definitely vary widely in psychology based on subfield - from 48.4% in school psych to 13.7% in social psych. Elevated levels in school psych and I/O (36.3%) vs developmental (23.3%) and social probably have a lot to do with the fact that school and I/O are master's heavy, and master's programs have higher acceptance rates on average. However, quantitative psychology (unreported by APA, so no numbers) is also widely known to have higher acceptance rates because it is a growing field with very few applicants. Social psych, in contrast, is poorly funded and has a glut of applicants. Finally, I applied to criminology programs as well, and they too have a higher acceptance rate than psych does by a pretty decent margin. They also tend to have lower requirements for GPA and GRE because it is an applied field with many applicants coming in with years of work (in this case, law enforcement) experience. Point is - the picture of what admissions looks like is very field-dependent as, I suspect, are norms in how adcomms behave. Furthermore, programs continue to rank GPA and GRE highly in admissions criteria when asked even though professors routinely claim that it means little. Also, you hold that professors even with a small sample size of schools are reliable reporters of admissions criteria, but mine contradict your position. One of my recommenders was very explicit that GPA and GRE are used as blunt weedout criteria in clinical programs. And really, it doesn't even matter if GPA is as important to adcomms as I say it is. It is still a very solid predictor of whether you're going to get into a top program. Even if the link between GPA and research exp/fit is as high as you presume, someone sitting on a <3.0 needs to stop and rethink whether they should apply. Regardless of the reason - biased selection or true aptitude - if 90% of applicants below a certain threshold don't make it at a certain school, that says something about how someone should view their odds of success and the worthwhileness of applying.

I respectfully disagree. While I appreciate advice from current grad students and find it very valuable, the fact that you're a current grad student is not a guarantee that your views on the admissions process are actually accurate. For example, my supervising grad student applied only to my school due to geographical constraints. She openly admits that she can't speak for processes at other schools because she didn't even look at anywhere else besides my university and encouraged me to speak with other graduate students. She has helped our adcomm, so she knows our process pretty well, but that's it. What I'm citing as evidence is the same as what you are citing - anecdotes, experience. I have an extremely high GPA that's just shy of a 4.0 and my GRE scores are reasonably high, so I obviously don't think my stats are a concern. Instead, I think my problem is as you described - fit. I should have done a better job picking schools and writing my SOP differently. That said, websites for many competitive schools I looked at in researching were very clearly using stats to weed people out. If they didn't explicitly state it in their instructions, it was evident when they posted class averages for the preceding years. Funding changes and the advisors that need/can get new students is variable, sure, but stats overall were unnervingly stable from year to year. There are so many students to choose from in psychology, so there is little incentive to make exceptions for a promising student when you can likely find another good fit with better stats. This isn't to say, however, that admissions in other disciplines produce less capable students - I suspect quite the opposite with weed-outs being as blunt and indiscriminate as they often are in psych. A personal experience that has probably given me much angst is another undergrad RA in my lab. We aren't really friends, but I am unnerved about his rejection by all the schools he applied for. He is probably the best student in our lab, perhaps in the whole department, and is overall much more competent than me. Maybe he flubbed his SOP. Maybe. But I don't think it's a coincidence that his stats are below average for admitted students. This also appears to be the case for another RA in our lab. Her GPA is less-than-stellar, as are her GRE scores, I suspect. Even though she completed a competitive summer research program, has years of research experience under her belt, and is a McNair Scholar, she is having significant trouble with admissions. It is enough to make me feel guilty when I talk to them, and I mostly keep my acceptances to myself for this reason.

It wasn't condescending. I was simply stating what I (still) suspect to be the case. Stats appear to be very important in the admissions process for psychology, especially in the social and clinical sub-disciplines. I also allow that I know less about chemistry admissions than you would as a chemistry major and, likewise, think it is reasonable to assume the reverse. Many departments won't admit it and claim to take a "holistic" approach to their selections, but any fair reading of the published stats suggests otherwise. And it's also never *all* about stats. That's not at all what I'm saying. It is just very important, especially for the superficial weed-out that takes place when sorting through 500+ applications in the first round. Schools who admit to using this process, like UT-Austin and Iowa State, do a great service to students by providing this information. It may also be that those two schools care more about stats than most others. Unlikely, but possible. Either way, it is good of them to honestly and accurately describe their selection process.

It is when people list my username and use my terms to pseudo-quote me. By all means, move on from my post. I honestly wish I'd never written the damn thing in the first place.

That may be the case in chemistry, but it is far from true in psychology. Checking stats for admitted students to top schools confirms this. I often see averages of 3.8 and "lows" of 3.5-3.7. Applicant pools are simply too large to have it any other way. There's also the fact that - let's face it - psychology is a much less demanding major. Lower GPAs in the hard sciences are more understandable because the course load is much tougher. Also, your SOP and CV are irrelevant if you're cut based on stats in the first round, and that is extremely common (if not the norm).

I am concerned when who you know or where you're from matter more than your aptitude. #1 is for efficiency. Schools do this anyway;a Qualtrics-like system would just speed it up. I don't understand why 3&4 would be bad. Such information would help applicants understand where they stand in the applicant pool and what the school is generally looking for. Exceptions can and should be made for stats, but I think schools are being dishonest when they would not admit an applicant with stats below a certain threshold 99% of the time and fail to indicate that. Reduced load would also help the email situation.

I understand. I really should have anticipated how item 10 could be interpreted and rewrote it accordingly. I am still not convinced that minorities benefit from having their race listed on their application at the graduate level in psycholoy,but I certainly don't see much evidence that they have a special advantage. In fact, I see mostly the opposite - lily white departments. At the same time, an applicant's struggles with being from a disadvantaged background is an appropriate topic for the SOP and should be taken into consideration. This would come into play, as it probably does now, after the initial round of rejections. However, I do think it's appropriate for applicants from who would otherwise be eliminated by such a system to contact professors beforehand for their support and to explain what happened. It's great advice and I get why people do it in this hyper-competitive environment, but contacting profs like this has always reeked of brown nosing unless someone has something pointed to bring up about their app(as would be the case with someone from a disadvantaged background). [To be sure, I hate the admissions "game", not the Student "players" who are just doing what's necessary]