TXInstrument11

I definitely agree that you should take cost-of-living into account when comparing offers. Another complicating factor is universities who won't disclose your funding until after you accept.... This is what's happening to me with the UIUC. I only have an estimate based on typical numbers listed in my letter, not my actually offer - which could be higher or lower. This really sucks because I have really liked UIUC otherwise in the process so far. Maybe my POI will be more forthright.

Hm. Very true. Some universities make this very clear, but most don't, in my experience.

Wow. Just wow.

An in the psychology forums that was recently bumped contains a link to an editable datasheet with funding offers complete with dollar amounts listed. Some of the more insane entries - like Stanford at ~$40K - had me a little green around the gills, and it got me wondering what others' preferences on such information were. Even though this doc ended up casting my offers in a less favorable light, I always think more information is better, but what do you guys think? Do you think the idea is too anxiety-provoking to be worth it (like this site in general, perhaps) or that annual funding fluctuations and geographic variations in cost-of-living make the data misleading? To be sure, Palo Alto is a very expensive place to live, so $40K earns less there.

It's both, I think. Palo Alto's cost-of-living is about 233% greater than the national average and about 150% greater than CA's average.

For a very rough ballpark figure, I just calculated the average 12 month stipend (not including health care or travel) to be $21,421. [I did not attempt to calculate descriptions that used 9 month bases unless summer funding was specified and did not discriminate between TA and RA positions.] I also added in a top row for labels, which I froze, and added a new column to the right with the 12 month estimates I used.

Thanks for bumping this thread and adding your stuff. I just added mine. A reminder to folks wishing to stay anonymous - Log out of your accounts first, LOL!

The good thing for me is that the money would be under my complete control, as it is a personal scholarship that you can apply toward experiment materials if you want. My survey is around 30-45 minutes, so do I have to shell out $6/ppt?

This appears to be true, though I can only speak for the social-personality program in particular. Visiting weekend starts on the 20th.

I'm not sure if there's a 100% good way to answer this question because it's highly dependent on the listener. Some folks are very understanding and considerate when it comes to family. In fact, my current lab PI at my undergrad seems to prefer older students with familial obligations, but that is not necessarily true of everyone out there. Is there any way you can emphasize other reasons why you might pick those schools? At the same time, do you want to land in a program that isn't understanding and supportive for 4+ years? For what it's worth, I have only had to answer a direct question about where I applied once out of six back-to-back interviews and the great majority of the other applicants had a lot less geographical diversity in the schools they picked. It is my impression that they navigated their interviews just fine.

These all need to be addressed by the individual school, since there are no hard-fast rules here except that they must honor what is offered in writing. By all means, call the admissions counselors or ask your POIs if they are receptive. They should be used to answering these questions. If that's too intimidating, try friendly grad students. If you've gotten this far, they do like you, and remember - the school has to anticipate competing against other funding offers. Don't remind them of this, but it is in their best interest to make this clear if they are a legit program.

I just straight up asked my POI, which is what I would recommend you do. If that's a no-go, try their current grad students. Both told me that there basically was no dress code since I had already been admitted and offered funding, but the department I applied to seems unusually young and laid-back. If they still haven't given you word on financing, you might want to edge dressy to be on the safe side, but asking folks at the school is really the best bet. I don't think it's an unusual question for them.

I just logged into Alabama's application portal to see if my status had changed - only to immediately receive an email notification in the corner of my screen with the name of my faculty POI and the subject heading, "Grad Visit Day". To this, I had a mini-heart attack even though I was confused because their interview week had passed.... ....with good reason because it was just an identically-named TA from my class responding to an email I sent them about traveling to another interview. The heart attack-inducing subject heading was my own.

Which division for Alabama? If Experimental, which track?

I'm with everyone else here. I haven't really heard this advice before. However, I have to admit that I am kind of peeved about not being accepted by my other choices and would probably turn them down if I were wait-listed and then given an offer. Social psych is uber competitive and it's not like I'm the perfect applicant (far from it), but part of me would stubbornly refuse to play ball. If it were clear - after watching the results page fill up with other prospects - that I was basically "bottom of the barrel" for them and I got a crap funding offer, I would politely tell the school to go f*** itself. That approach is not practical or recommended, but it might be emotionally satisfying.

This is PRO TIP folks. I got a ping from academia.edu a single minute before a prospective prof from the same location emailed me. Highly recommended.

Ah, but what about when it's clear that there is no research overlap? My premise is much the same as the OP's, except that the faculty member in question explicitly mentioned research outside my area. With two other faculty members of his department in mind, I wrote in my SOP that my goal is to marry cognitive and bio approaches in studying aggression. I made it very, very clear that my focus is aggression - not bio or cognition in general. However, after no word from either POI [come to find out, one of them left the uni shortly after my app], a professor who studies sleep, cognition, and aging emailed me an interview request. I'm definitely flattered, especially since I'm not exactly drowning in offers from other schools, but this really seems out of my area. He said to check his lab page and see if I found his work interesting. So far, I see very little overlap. Part of me wants to give it a fair shake, so to speak, but I worry we will probably both be wasting each other's time, especially since I just got a funded offer from Illinois.

"Where the heck is this person from? Not Harvard, not Princeton, not Columbia, not Cornell.....yet they mark American, so I'm prerplexed. Really, Bob, that's actually one of the fifty states? Well, you learn something new every day, I guess. Did we already accept our token non-Ivy? Yes? Well, crap. Reject this no-name then."

Well, unfortunately, I think you may need to reapply. That's what I would do if in your shoes. It doesn't sound like a pure-research degree is really your speed. If it was a terminal master's we were talking about, I'd say go for it, but this is the next 4-6 years of your life. It's going to be hard motivating yourself through that if the degree isn't going to prepare you for the job you want. For what it's worth, I've seen clinical psychologists transition into a pure research career, but not the other way around, so you can always focus more on research later on in your career if you plan it right.

So are you interested in treating any patients and/or designing new therapies?

What are your research interests? Where do you want to eventually work (in academia as a researcher, as a clinician, in industry, etc.)? Since you were okay switching to experimental, I'm assuming you want to be a researcher, no? I think we need more information to see where you're coming from. However, regardless of how appropriate it may or may not be, clinical is typically much, much more difficult to get into than experimental - so you may not even make the cut if you could somehow switch. I don't see how any program would let you switch midway-through either.

:-( Damn, poor angeladl is taking a hit. Hopefully others don't hop on the fake bandwagon.

I heard back from UPenn. I was rejected for the PhD and offered the Master's. About a week or two later, people posted in the CJ forum that they had been accepted to the PhD program. Check the results thread there.

Here, have an implied upvote because I'm still out of them. Idk why someone downvoted you. I think that someone may be a bit sensitive about having completed a worthless degree...

I think Australia might be on that list. Are the ones who only let you in if you have a specific job lined up though?