TXInstrument11

To me, that last part sounds kind of odd. I thought it was relatively common for schools to follow up with their grads. Many simply send out surveys which, while not completely accurate, can give a decent indication of outcomes. Maybe you could contact a few schools you're not interested in just to get an idea of their competition? You could compare how open these other schools are with their info and how they approach conversations with you compared to Northcentral.

I'm sorry to hear that you have not yet gotten any interviews. However, yours is still only one case. It's also going to vary a bit by season, such as who has funding when and who you're competing against. I'm not trying to say that a good school and good connections guarantees acceptance, but it appears to certainly help. Hell, if it were down to two applicants with identical GPAs, equally-notable recommenders, and comparable SOPs, I myself would go with the Ivy-league grad.

I've only had one professor shoot it straight with me on this and she wasn't one of my letter writers, unfortunately. I know my recommenders mean well, but sometimes we all need the unvarnished truth, even if it's very discouraging. I started out knowing that undergrad rep mattered and was subsequently talked out of it. I wish I'd never listened because I would have taken more precautions with shoring up research exp and been more aggressive about contacting faculty. Of course, a notable letter-writer can help you. I'm not disputing that. I wish I were going into the discipline of my current PI because his name alone could open a lot of doors for me. I've seen it happen before with former TAs who would not have had a chance with adcoms otherwise.

Literally less than two weeks from submitting my app to Oregon, I received a letter from them in the mail saying the same thing. I thought correctly that, "Surely, they haven't made decisions yet!", but my stomach still turned all the same when I saw it.

NYU email - "Enroll today @ NYU!". I should have immediately catalogued this as spam, but my poor heart stopped for a second when I saw this in my inbox. I just love receiving emails about completely unrelated programs after chugging a gallon of espresso. My heart rate was........lively, to say the least.

That just sounds cruel. Jesus, I'm not sure if these folks remember how it was for them (even the youngins), though I guess there isn't much more they can say besides, "Congrats, you're waitlisted".

figure eight

Hmmm....This might just be the case. Perhaps this thread will stand the test of time as an informal poll.

I know this often a controversial answer, but the reputation of your alma mater does seem to impact your chances. With the average acceptance rate hovering around 5-10% in social psych, it's not at all surprising to see most labs filled to the brim with Ivy-league grads. Maybe it's just my list of schools, but state uni folks were hard to come by. And I can't bash the apparent practice completely. Ivy and Ivy-esque admissions are so low in comparison to most state universities that our GPAs are incomparable. My undergrad uni has around a 50-50 acceptance rate - and while I did get into better-rated schools, adcoms won't know that by looking at my app. Therefore, a greater number of criteria are needed to assess my capabilities. Unfortunately, I too have no pubs, just posters.

This sounds like bad news to me too, especially if you have to pay for all of the tuition. I would definitely not take the risk without a second opinion from a professional, preferably in your field. Do you have any former professors to which you can address your questions? They can sometimes be a lot more helpful and knowledgeable (even for careers outside theirs) than you would think. If that's a no-go, you could try to contact Northcentral directly to see if they would be willing to give you graduate outcome stats, but you would need to be wary of sales pitches they may have ready.

Thanks for sharing your experience. You sent yours pretty close to the deadline though, right? I sent mine a whole month late - after being reminded of the deadline by one of my POIs. O_o I paid my app fee and all of that and had most of my docs uploaded a week or two after the initial deadline, but then screwed up on my SOP. Apparently, there was some kind of error uploading it. After failing to hear any word back from the school for weeks, I logged in and checked my app....only to find that it wasn't complete!

Okay, so I'm in a pickle and it's my own fault. I submitted an application after the deadline to one of the programs on my list. The website said that applicants are considered until March, but they have already sent out program invites and now I'm understandably antsy. My application has yet to move on from the grad admissions office to the department. Should I go ahead and contact my POIs to see if they would still be interested in my application? I contacted one before about applying - before the deadline, at that - so I'm definitely afraid of annoying them with a second email. However, in case I still do have a chance with them, I would like to remind them that I applied if my app takes forever through the admissions office - so what should I do? This is all especially horrible because I really want to go there, but my late app makes it look as if it's a second choice school for me. If I received a clipped, "Nope, not even going to look at your app" reply, I might just die.

Hm. That's pretty bad news. Thanks for giving me some insight on the app process at ISU though.

LOL, yes to the soul-thinning part. I've worked retail before. Every time a kid knocked a perfectly-folded sweater off of a display table, I could almost feel a small piece of my non-existent soul chip off. I also think I heard somewhere that academic researchers, out of all the professions, drink the most coffee.

clown fish

Wow, I haven't even heard of doing this. Where did you receive this advice? I was just going to thank my recommenders. Hopefully, I haven't been committing a faux pas with POIs!

Matthew Stanford's and Bradley Keele's.

Do you know if admissions decisions have already been made? I am interested in working with Dr. Anderson.

Well, on the results page, a lot of folks have posted, so I assumed I was either waitlisted or rejected. Have you tried emailing your POI? Mine flat out rejected me when I emailed in December. At least it was quick, lol.

War-craft

I applied to Baylor's Psychology Ph.D. intending to go into the behavioral neuroscience track. Most neuro programs were way too cognition/perception oriented for my tastes and many of the social and criminology programs I decided to apply to have elective neuro components. Searching for neuro research matching my interests was hard. Browsing university websites, I typically landed in clinical or dry visual perception stuff by sticking with those keywords, prompting me to stick with social psych most of the time. Slowly, I think, more and more of your classic programs like developmental and social will have more neuro/physio-oriented faculty. At least to me, it seemed like it was often the case that one or two fresh grads were brought in to round out the departments with your rare established neuro researcher as a non-core faculty. Maybe there aren't enough behavioral neuro folks to go around to create distinct departments? Either way, I welcome the integration. After all, most of the infinite variations of 'neuro' are stupidly confusing, especially when they are almost empty buzzwords like I feel to be the case with "neuroeconomics" and "neurolaw".

I'm not sure if I would say "most", but it is extremely common, especially for popular psych programs like clinical and social. However, a lot of people apply to a large number of schools to help offset this. So, even if they got rejected from 10+ schools, they would still be counted as successful (artificially lowering the number of 'complete' rejections, in essence). One of my professors heard that, for clinical psych applicants, the golden # of schools was found to be 13 in one study. Still, it's pretty early yet. A lot of the committees for my schools haven't even formally met by this point (I called and confirmed). I mean, unless you're looking at cut-and-dry required interview dates that have come and gone, like I found with U Oregon, you can't assume this early. Also, did you apply to masters or doctoral programs? I would assume that masters programs would post later since a lot of them are still open, but I could be wrong.

I think, for human factors, that advice on the GRE makes sense. Generally, HF programs have much smaller applicant pools than, say, social psychology. This means they can cut the BS and take more deliberate time with each application instead of having to rely on the raw numbers to sort. This may also be the case for I/O, but I am less familiar with the grad application process for them. In regards to HF at UCF specifically, I'm pretty positive this is true. Most of the graduate students in my lab are actually older and had significant work experience before joining, some with less than stellar GRE scores. So, don't take my word for it, but I would wager that your scores will not hold you back too much there. In fact, one of the most ambitious and successful grad students I know absolutely loathed the GRE.

Wow, that's pretty neat. I think one of my roommates might be considering this path too - in Korea also, actually. This isn't a path I have explored very well. I should ask my roommate about her specific plans.

Is this for everyone in Experimental or just you?