TXInstrument11

It sounds like you haven't already been accepted, right? If so, I think it'd be okay to edge a bit towards formal.Try emailing a grad student or two to ask. They are probably used to answering questions about the program anyway and you would be able to get the perspective of an admitted student. You could even ask your POI. One of mine answered with the info quickly. I also emailed a student from my UG lab who had been admitted to one of my schools for info on this very thing. She then forwarded me to one of her friends in the department as well, so now I'm pretty confident of what the dress code is. As a fellow female applicant, I feel your pain. Asking older male faculty about this is awkward and often fruitless.

The general wisdom seems to be that the GREs are used as a preliminary weedout criteria, but I have heard of some folks making it to interview and then being rejected specifically because their low scores precluded funding. It seemed to me like those situations occurred where the student had contacted their POIs ahead of time and, despite vouching for them, the POI was unable to persuade their colleagues on the committee. I would recommend you check out the psych forums. One guy who posted there who interned with ETS and has some interesting information on how universities view GRE scores.

I can do self-deprecating and I can probably do funny if my nerves don't rattle me too much, so that's a shot. Her emails are pretty damn terse and nondescript so I have no clue if she's easygoing, but this angle may be my best option. There's is the off-chance that I may ramble and end up telling a few off-color jokes, but it's a risk I took with a previous interview to my advantage. Besides, if my sense of humor is actively irritating to her, we probably won't get a long too well anyway.

I'm pretty sure I just found a solid factual error on my SOP. A single hyphenated word is the culprit.....perhaps in as many as four school applications.

I was reviewing a few articles of a POI in prep for an interview when I realized that I made a rather large factual error on my SOP and now I'm debating whether or not I should bring this up. I made the mistake during editing when I cut down a paragraph about two genes to discuss only one. The POI has written quite a bit about these two genes and would know enough to easily notice this mistake. They haven't mentioned it to me, but I know they've seen my application - not sure about SOP though. I'm worried that, if they don't notice it now, that they may later and think I don't know what the hell I'm talking about, so should I mention it? I can clumsily try to shove it in our conversation instead of bringing it up out of the blue, but I need to plan ahead of time either way. Insult to injury is that this same paragraph appeared in my SOP to another school I was rejected from.... *facepalms with the power of a Falcon Punch*

Update for UIUC: The POI who emailed me confirmed that they would be my advisor - excellent for me, as they were my top choice. This may mean that other faculty are still sending their invites out, so good luck!

Yeah, I thought it wouldn't be worth it to send the score if it didn't hit past 90%, so that is why I only sent it twice. I do wonder if it may have helped a bit though since I come from a no-name uni.

Damn. I wonder if it would have helped if I added that to more of my apps. I only sent it two schools, one that required it and one accidentally (used the wrong code). Illinois, the only school to accept me so far, was the accidental one. Is 85% good?

Wow, that's crazy - 80%! Damn. I thought the BS programs put about it being an important indicator of your stats ability was fishy. Since you worked at ETS, do you know enough to compare the GRE with the SAT? I actually heard the SAT > GRE math and vice versa for verbal. [the crazy GRE vocab being the main reason] If it's true, we should just use our SAT scores and be done with it. Surely if we're talking about true quant aptitude tested by basic math, this shouldn't swing too much between high school and college. Of course, since I did really well on the SAT, I'm biased - but I'd sure appreciate a comparison either way.

Psych - social 1. Research interest 2. Having worked w/ & loving advisor (not actually applicable to me, but would be something I'd consider 2nd if so) 3. School program ranking 4. Professor status 5. Urban vs. rural (prefer at least developed suburban) 6. School overall ranking 7. Cost of Living 8. Weather/Distance from home -- literally everything is colder than where I live now, so no point in separating these two. Either way, I don't care. The only caveat with 8 is that I am only referring to US schools. I would maybe consider other English-speaking countries, but anything else is out of the question right now.

Do they admit students without funding? If not, I would read this as saying that liking a student enough to admit and deciding to fund them is rolled into one decision. It's not clear whether the interviews are used on students they are unsure about or interested in funding though. Since today's the 4th, that sucks tremendously. I definitely agree. This is a confusing email.

Well, since I just got accepted to Illinois, Penn's offer is now kind of DOA. I like Penn, but funding > no funding and my presumed faculty advisor at Illinois has research interests that mesh well with mine.

Well, to me, it depends on how certain you are of staying in your sub-field. Can you work with professors at school B (rank 10 in field) for your PhD and then work back into your subfield later? It may be hard, but if you have the requisite techniques and knowledge down to make the switch, it's doable. I am kind of in the same spot myself. Another POI just reached out to me at one of my schools and I think I have a decent chance of being admitted. Her research interests are basically identical to mine, though understandably a bit more specialized. However, she's basically it if I go there and the program isn't ranked very highly. Illinois, on the other hand, has a pretty strong psych department overall and a number of faculty I could see myself working with if push came to shove. I'm drawing up a list of pointed questions to ask POI # 1 in a skype interview to see if we share the same philosophy about the field, something I've increasingly found to be very contentious. If I'm admitted, I want to make sure the apparent overlap is legit because I'm liable to just throw all the caution I've displayed here and jump immediately at the chance, logic and flexibility be damned. Though I feel pretty strongly about some of my secondary research interests and could make it work, the stuff she's researching was on my mind for years before I even went to college. A part of me actually wants to be rejected outright, so I don't make hasty decisions.

What rankings are you using? Also, # of potential advisers is a determining factor for me. Those are all highly ranked, especially considering the high number of social programs out there, so you're probably good with any of these. I'm sorry because that's no very helpful, but it doesn't look like you're comparing Podunk U to Harvard where rank would really matter.

I heard these are good. I would also add William & Mary (Feb 9th, I think) and Brandeis (rolling until April) to this as well. I was actually going to apply to Brandeis before I got accepted at Illinois.However, you must contact potential advisers ahead of time at Brandeis before you apply. I contacted one and he was already selecting students a week out!

This. That's a great and simple way to explain the importance of rank. Cynical as it may seem, following the money works, even in science.

IMO - Status, though you can put a number on it like # of pubs or % students who graduate, is something you should consider if being objective about which program would best benefit you. Idk, maybe between those, google stalking their former students and seeing how many pubs they co-author with their students would help. I definitely think rank is a relevant factor; they're flawed, yes, but have some basis in reality.

The personality of the adviser matters too, and I'm not just talking about their publishing reputation and relationships with other colleagues. What is their reputation for how they treat their students? Are their former students successful? How many drop out before graduating compared to other faculty you're considering? Prestigious advisers who have little interest in their students beyond pack mules do exist in large enough numbers for this to be a concern. Some may be brilliant, but poor at communicating with and managing their students. Others still can be cruel, manipulative, and potentially career-ruining if you cross them. Most of these personality factors are not even going to be apparent via correspondence or interview. If you can, I think it's extremely wise to contact former students and dig a bit. This is especially true if they are your only good research fit at the university in question. Overall, a productive program with multiple potential advisers > single perfect fit about which many variables are unknown when you accept an admissions offer. Also, I don't know if this is just an anecdote or based on serious empirical study - but I have heard multiple times from different admissions coaches that the single most important factor in the success of a PhD student is the relationship they have with their adviser. And observing some of the grad students at my own university, this does seem to ring very true.

IMO, I would actually assume the opposite, especially if they just want to ask stupid questions about the website design and/or their instructions. Has anyone else had experience with these surveys before?

Call or email admissions coordinators. I have called some offices multiple times over the past few months. It was really quite random whether they were annoyed or helpful. To me, the horror stories about annoying them and affecting your admission decision have been overhyped. If you keep it short, simple, and polite, there is very little chance it can go wrong. Plus, I think the benefit of being prepared in advance is worth it and prefer bad news over uncertainty. Though I had already started developing a few backup plans in case I was rejected, I started pursuing them in earnest only after I was rejected from a few places. Especially if you have a degree (like psych) that has limited value at the bachelor's level, knowledge is power at this point, IMO.

I've emailed 4 POIs, two after the deadline, so I have quite a bit to share on this. Overall, I would (perhaps unhelpfully) say that it depends. I highlighted the main points to help cut my rambling. For the first POI I emailed, I realized only after I applied that app decisions were not made by division committee but by individual lab PIs. [This is not actually the case in all psych departments, though you should always mentions POIs in your statements if you can.] So, I went ahead and emailed her with my CV and a summary of my research interests that was more detailed than my SOP..........and was flat-out rejected within hours. At least it was quick, and she was nice about it. Since she took the time to read my attached docs and gave me a relatively descriptive response, including when interview dates would be sent out, I still benefited. If some of your potential programs have this setup, it may be better late than never if you're just a few days past the deadline. Then, I pretty much hit the panic button and blasted out similar research interest docs to two other POIs about a week before their program deadlines. One still hasn't made a peep after months (I emailed in December) and interviews for the program seem to have all been sent out at this point. Make of that what you will. It was a very highly-ranked program, so I could have blacklisted myself for the hastily-composed email, but it is equally likely I was just weeded out along the usual metrics. The third POI I contacted responded back a day or two later with the world's shortest email (even for a professor!) telling me to go ahead and apply, but little beyond that. Discouraged by the rather subdued enthusiasm and due to a few technical hurdles I've had, I ended up applying after the deadline. Not an hour after submission of all app materials, I was notified on gradcafe that someone had receive an invite to interview, so I turned around and shot another email at this POI asking if they were still looking for students. Unless their prospective students failed to post on here, I am still betting this is the case because they're brand new at the university, so I'm still crossing my fingers. After being accepted to one of my top choices (Illinois), I may risk it again by shooting them another email since I have much less to lose now. For the fourth POI, it was rolling admissions and about a week out from the initial deadline, so I emailed asking if he was looking for more students. He was very nice about it and offered to look for my application as he reviewed them. So, tl;dr - Emails to POIs are very appropriate and helpful in rolling admissions if you're on the fence about applying. More important, you MUST email your POIs if you have zero faculty backups at the university and/or individual faculty make the admissions decisions. That is my take away and would have been my plan of action for next year if I had been rejected everywhere.

I think invites have all been sent out, so we should have heard something by now. Since I haven't called to confirm, I've kept ISU in orange in my sig. Hope this helps -

I received one from a POI. I responded to your PM, coffeeaddict29, but also decided to go ahead and post here as well. I want to emphasize that it was unofficial and that I am still expecting one from the university. I really feel like a class-A jerk since I advised you to speak with the grad coordinator, but I think she may have been referring to official invites and was not up to speed on whether individual faculty had begun contacting students. I also received my email later in the working day, so her information could have simply been outdated at the time of your call. I can confirm the (late) March visiting date for the school, though I have not yet received information in regards to travel plans. I would hang tight until next week or so. There is a lot of time between the visiting day and now, so a lot could happen in the coming weeks. Especially with many hearing back from other departments, it may very well be that a few offers will be rejected outright. I am uncomfortable divulging details about my POIs on the open forum, but will post updates here in regards to UIUC as I hear them. I will also respond to PMs.

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I'm in a similar position. It looks like I'm only going to get into one program and I'm finding that it is very far and away incompatible with my ultimate research interests, but walking away completely if I'm offered funding just seems so foolish.