TXInstrument11

A guy who visited my school giving grad admissions tips actually advised us to give schools these "updates".

This happened to me. I basically toiled over the "I Have a Dream" of prospective student email speeches for a few days and, before I hit 'send', decided to quickly re-read my POI's school profile once more. It had been updated since I visited earlier that week to read, "Dr. X is not accepting students for fall, 2015".

Are you going to bring this up in your SOP? If not, the committee may not even really notice enough to care. From what I understand, transcripts are not really pored over.

Actually, it could help me get where I want. No other programs looking at bio factors in violent tendencies has given me a positive response. Also, I do not have any debt right now.

So, basically, I was just rejected from UPenn's criminology PhD program, but accepted to their master's. Am I crazy for considering it with possible PhD offers coming? I think I have a good shot at some of the other schools I applied to for the PhD, but not at those programs with which I have the strongest research fit. This obviously very much depends on whether those other options come through and how expensive UPenns's program is, but I am strongly considering their offer already. A terminal master's in criminology seems more valuable on its own and more flexible career-wise than one in psych, but I am pretty sure I wold still want to go the academic route via a PhD, so the flexibility offered doesn't seem to benefit me much at the present time. My main concerns are debt and pigeonholing myself into a criminal justice career (i.e. negatively impacting future psych PhD chances). Working with my POI at UPenn could be game-changing, but I don't even know if I will get the chance to even see him as a master's student. Would it just be impossibly stupid of me to ditch funded PhD offers for this chance? I actually expected a complete rejection from UPenn, so this is actually kind of good news, LOL. I just don't know what to make of it. EDITED to emphasize terminal. I do not have one ounce of interest in pursuing clinical or counseling psychology.

Wow, that's intense. I'm sorry, but I have no advice to offer you on how to go about fixing this, especially if you've already gone about trying to automate the process through programming. Do your advisors/thesis members have any advice on this? Do any of your sources have similar designs? I've emailed professors before about how to go about scoring and interpreting surveys we've both used. Maybe someone else has created a decent method to cut down on the work required here. Since you're an undergrad, they may take pity. Alternately, they may actually be interested in your results! A professor I just emailed for access to his survey scoring materials expressed that he would be interested in learning the results of my experiment and gladly handed over the information I needed.

Gah, that is the worst - people who only see grad school as a way to avoid the job market. I assume they haven't seen the applications fees we've had to pay or even heard of the GRE.

EDIT: bug's life Sorry, responded to old page.

I thought about adding a pic or GIF of Benedict Cumberbatch to my post, but it appears your beat me to the punch, LOL.

Oh God. Interpreting the tone of POIs is the worst. At the end of it, you either feel like that they LOVE you, HATE you with the passion of a thousand suns, or that you are suffering from chronic social incompetence and can't properly interpret basic social interactions or read simply emails. I've kept my emails to POIs very short and to-the-point because profs at my school overwhelmingly prefer those kinds of emails, and this has had some very mixed results. One of my POIs responds likewise, but uses exclamation points, "thank you"s, and smileys, so I always feel encouraged when I receive communications from him. The other one I've contacted, however, keeps her emails even more ridiculously terse with absolutely zero cues as to what she's thinking. She may simply be keeping with the unofficial email format I started and is probably efficient and/or lazy, but I can't help assuming she hates me or is an Ice Queen. Either way, it's truly doing a number on my nerves. If she calls and ends up being really sugary sweet, I'm either calling bullshit that I've been trolled, suspecting she's a manipulative psychopath, or passing out from the shock. This isn't overanalysis. This is WWII, I'm Alan Turing, and her emails are the German Enigma Code.

I have a few free response questions in a survey I am using, though obviously not to as great an extent as you have. Is there possibly any way you can group them by keywords or something? Excel should be able to do this, as could Qualtrics, if you are using that software for your surveys. Also, what is your N? I figure the 12K refers to each individual question/definition, no? If you are in the hundreds for sample size, you could perhaps just cut it off and go straight to data analysis. If you are concerned about the second half of your responses involving some kind of bias, you could run preliminary tests for average response length and keywords to get an idea of how similar the rest of the sample is to your completed group. Then, if they look pretty darn similar, you could have a somewhat decent case for ignoring these other responses. My partially free-response survey is the Ambiguous Intentions Hostility Questionnaire (AIHQ). Thankfully, the free response portions are not necessary to derive an overall score for it. I am likely going to sort and color code with keywords to help cut down on my work load and/or recruit some other undergraduates in the lab to help me sort them. I may also run some analyses on response length and see if that indicates anything strange or interesting.

I was just rejected from the PhD program at UPenn, but was accepted to their master's program. The program director emailed me and said that an official email would follow soon.

I don't know about that. From what I understand, Michigan State doesn't even interview for their social program. For Wyoming, I did a phone interview, though it was followed up by an invite to an on-site one. Someone who applied to Alabama also told me that they were invited for the on-site interview after an email invite from their POI and an official notification from the school, no formal interview involved. Also, FYI - the grad coordinator for Illinois is the nicest I've come by, with a close second for the Baylor coordinator. I think she gave me as much info as she could. I've called her about three times total about different issues and she's been very helpful and understanding each time. She's also been good via email. So, if you have concerns and are a bit nervous about asking, I would go ahead and shoot her an email or make a quick phone call. She might tire as the season goes on, but her pleasant demeanor has been steady all throughout the process for me.

I called a few days back and the grad coordinator said that the Social-Personality committee hadn't met yet. She also said we should hear back by early to mid February.

Haha. This is the best explanation of "luck" in the application process I've seen.

Most of my family is like what you described. Even when I tell them the Ivy-level admissions numbers (i.e. 5%),they go on like every school will fly me over on a private jet and bribe me with gourmet food or something. Then my parents, who thankfully do understand the odds, are upset about me moving far away. I live in another city on my own, but it's still only about an hour's drive. They're from TN and consider everything above the Mason-Dixon Line to be "The Great White North". It's like they expect I'll just crawl into a corner, curl into the foetal position, and die at the first sight of snow.

Damn. The GRE is such a bear. I did extremely well on the SAT and, after retaking the GRE and studying, I was able to get my Verbal percentile nearly identical to my SAT score's. Quantitative was stubborn though - didn't budge at all in the retake and was about 15 percentile points lower than my SAT math. So, my Verbal is astronomically high, but my Quant is just so-so and well below the admitted average to top programs. If I were in your shoes, making it to interview round and everything, I would just hone my GRE score and volunteer at your UG lab for the gap year. "Funded" programs I've looked at still cost upwards of $40K.

trail mix

We can all still be realistic about our chances - especially concerning factors that are not beyond our direct control at this point. While I'm understandably a bit anxious about this potentially not working out, I'm not having fits of despair over it either. I also think we do a disservice to people visiting these forums looking for guidance when we cling to positive thinking in spite of contrary evidence. Hashing out the relative (un)importance of all the factors that go into a grad app is what this forum is about, after all. I don't think less of myself for going to a low-level uni or think I'm dumber and less capable than someone with better GRE scores, but I still recognizing that both factors (school prestige, GREs) can be influential in admissions decisions. Also, anecdotes do not break general rules. They show that good outcomes given X,Y,Z factors can happen, but tell very little about what the average applicant can reasonably expect when the particulars of those XYZ factors are unknown.

This is what I have heard as well, though I am not especially familiar with the exact numbers.

I'm not sure they're implying that US programs are better. It's common (though perhaps incorrect) wisdom that GRE scores matter more in the US. No one is trashing you for going to a Canadian school.

out-bound

"The dumb kid used Arial instead of Times New Roman. Obviously, this ain't gonna work. Reject!" No, but seriously - this is true. I've heard of some folks getting in everywhere they were rejected by in a previous year and others who were good enough for Harvard, but not Podunk U.

That's what I'm wondering too. I haven't cracked open that fat APA book of grad schools to check on Canada's situation before.

The GIF is perfect! I would have upvoted you, but apparently reached the stupid quota.