TXInstrument11

My advice, get pdf of a typical calc book used for calc 1, and get another one of linear algebra(these pdfs are abundant online and a number of them are meant to be free). Start working through them like...right now up until the point when you have to make your decision. Once you're there evaluate how you've done. 

How far have you gotten into the books? 

Did you manage to work on problem sets every day?

How was your motivation to do this?

Also, I wouldn't recommend spending too much time on a trig prep, for most "early transcendentals" calc books you can do just fine with learning the trig as you go along, when and where you need it. 

Lastly, really evaluate your motivation to do this, you might end up doing not so well in your math courses simply because you aren't as motivated to do all of the required work, on top of the work your doing for your PhD.  

edit: 

by required work I don't just mean w/e homework is assigned (if it's even assigned). I mean that you may or may not have to do additional work, on top of that which is required to make sure you have the concepts down. 

if this is a formal Statistics degree, the calculus that you will learn won't actually be needed for data analysis itself. you'll usually need to understand calculus to understand something about the properties of estimators or how certain probability density functions become something else. when it comes to the application part of things, the calculus is usually done behind the scenes in the computer. but you'll now be able to say "aha! i know where these numbers come from!" 

I guess this can be either a hindrance or an advantage depending on how you work with it.
 
I come from a Math background and jumping into a social science/education/psych background did help me bring in some skills that I know your average student in these programs does not have. Most of the methodology courses that you take in Psych or Ed departments are much more focused on the application of statistics or how to use the methods. Very little attention is devoted to the actual theory or why they work. Whereas this probably serves the needs of your average graduate student, it does leave them at the disadvantage of not knowing how to proceed if they’re dealing with an unusual dataset with complicated dependencies (spoiler alert: those are the types of datasets where the most interesting results are found). A degree in Statistics might not prepare you to become a skilled data analyst in the social sciences but it will give you the necessary background to jump in with new ideas. But then again if you plan on working on research areas where there are standard methodologies in place, then there really isn’t much value in getting an MSc in Statistics aside from fostering your own personal knowledge.
 
 
Will it make you a better researcher? Well, it depends on what you’re researching, right? It made me a good researcher because my research is very technical in nature. But if say you were interested in doing research in... oh I don’t know, standardized tests or scale development then it would benefit you much more to get some sort of degree or specialization in Psychometrics and not formal Statistics (very little to no Psychometrics are covered in a standard Statistics department). If you see yourself working in areas like neuropsychology or neurobiology, maybe a degree in Biostatistics (with emphasis in fMRI imaging which is a VERY hot topic) would serve you better. It seems to me that if your ultimate goal is to be a researcher more than a methodologist, you’d need to tailor your degree to cover the methodologies that are used in your substantive area of content. Or you can always become just a methodologist… I mean… we’re kinda short on those right now
 
Will it make you more employable in the job market? Oh, it most definitely will! But here’s the catch… will it make you more employable in jobs you are interested in? Like, big pharma companies pay well for DNA sequencing analysts… but last time I worked on something like that I wanted to gouge my eyes out of sheer boredom.
 
So all in all I think this is not a bad idea per se as long as you have a good game plan. I mean, you’re still committing a year of your life to something that you’ve already admitted to you’re not super passionate about.

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 feel like I'm talking to a wall. Has anyone bothered to read my subsequent comments or are we all more interested in arguing until the cows come home about something I didn't even mean?

To summarize: I don't think society is equal or that minorities get undue favoritism in the admissions process, I am more concerned about Ivy League incest and nepotism than so-called "reverse racism", and I don't presume that universities "owe" me anything.

If I could go back and edit my original post to clarify my meaning, I would, but can't because the post is too old.

Gosh, it's hard to count. I check my email every time the ping for a new message sounds on my phone. Since I have three email accounts total, two of which are spammed often with a lot of adverts, I'd say around 10 times today. Usually, it is much worse. If I add in gradcafe results searching, my total is more like 15. 
 
These two spammy accounts annoy the hell out of me for this reason. The only thing that makes up for it is the email header, "Harry Potter and the Meth" whenever ff.net sends me an alert for HP and the Methods of Rationality. At least then, I can get a chuckle instead of rolling my eyes at yet another Coldstone ice cream deal [those folks don't take "no" for an answer]. 

Awww. I'm not that bad. You'll get through this soon enough! 
 

 
 
 
Yeah. No. Who the fuck am I kidding? We're all hopeless addicts until the end of this application season.
 
"relapsed", LOL. Yep, I'm right there with you!

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 feel like I'm talking to a wall. Has anyone bothered to read my subsequent comments or are we all more interested in arguing until the cows come home about something I didn't even mean?

To summarize: I don't think society is equal or that minorities get undue favoritism in the admissions process, I am more concerned about Ivy League incest and nepotism than so-called "reverse racism", and I don't presume that universities "owe" me anything.

If I could go back and edit my original post to clarify my meaning, I would, but can't because the post is too old.

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.

You may not have, but others have since joined the conversation, and they certainly did. Ain't all about you.

Maybe, maybe not. You've certainly missed the point. I have nothing else to add.

You're strongly conflating correlation and causation. The fact that average stats are high does not imply that they're weeding based on the stats. Rather, it implies that a number of the successful applicants had high stats.
 
This is the main reason I'm arguing that schools posting stats from their accepted students on the website can be bad for applying students- it makes them think they need those stats to get accepted, when the chances are it was the rest of their materials that got them accepted, and they also had high grades and scores.
 
You also say you don't mean to be condescending, but in your first paragraph, you assume that my experience as a current grad student isn't valid (accuratE) based off of a grad student you happen to know who didn't apply broadly and isn't familiar with other schools. As you say, she openly admits it.
 
I'm more comfortable speaking broadly than she is, likely due to a broader range of experience. On the flip side, I'd argue that you seem to be speaking quite broadly with no experience past having applied to schools.I don't really feel I need to convince you of my experience, however. You're the one that keeps calling my opinion into question based on assumptions about my background and experience.
 
Most people in academia have a very small "N". The average professor has been at 2-4 schools over their entire career. That said, you'd be amazed at how similar things are across disciplines and across schools within disciplines.

Maybe unusual - but my main goals would be automation and transparency - making the selection more fair, speeding the process up, and saving uncompetitive applicants time & money. 
 
Integrate some kind of survey-esque/Qualtrics-like software that can quickly and neatly divide applicants based on the most relevant stats, such as GPA, GRE, and years of research experience [if most schools have this, they really have no excuse for their slowness]. If sub 3.5 GPAs don't cut the mustard and/or the university has strict GRE score requirements, auto-email all applicants fitting those criteria w/in a week of their submission with a short message explaining just why they were rejected so that they don't reapply next year.  (related to the above) Have such spoken and "unspoken" stats published on the admissions website. (related to the above) Release stats for the previous five years of admits.  If interviews are required, reject all applicants who are not invited to interview IMMEDIATELY. List whether or not faculty are seeking students on their webpages, preferably 2 month in advance of the application deadline. Indicate in instructions whether students should contact faculty or not; make it clear when individual faculty are responsible for accepting students [uT-Austin is, admittedly, very explicit on this front]. If I were a faculty member, have guidelines for exactly what I would want for a prospective to email me (CV + 1 page research statement, etc.) (related to above) Maintain a separate lab email for this purpose Expunge identifying information like name, race, gender, and undergrad/master's university from adcomm's first read-through materials. Add back in uni information and names only after top 5-10% are chosen based on CVs and SOPs. Publish this exact process as well as any other relevant procedures on the website.

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. 

Maybe unusual - but my main goals would be automation and transparency - making the selection more fair, speeding the process up, and saving uncompetitive applicants time & money. 
 
Integrate some kind of survey-esque/Qualtrics-like software that can quickly and neatly divide applicants based on the most relevant stats, such as GPA, GRE, and years of research experience [if most schools have this, they really have no excuse for their slowness]. If sub 3.5 GPAs don't cut the mustard and/or the university has strict GRE score requirements, auto-email all applicants fitting those criteria w/in a week of their submission with a short message explaining just why they were rejected so that they don't reapply next year.  (related to the above) Have such spoken and "unspoken" stats published on the admissions website. (related to the above) Release stats for the previous five years of admits.  If interviews are required, reject all applicants who are not invited to interview IMMEDIATELY. List whether or not faculty are seeking students on their webpages, preferably 2 month in advance of the application deadline. Indicate in instructions whether students should contact faculty or not; make it clear when individual faculty are responsible for accepting students [uT-Austin is, admittedly, very explicit on this front]. If I were a faculty member, have guidelines for exactly what I would want for a prospective to email me (CV + 1 page research statement, etc.) (related to above) Maintain a separate lab email for this purpose Expunge identifying information like name, race, gender, and undergrad/master's university from adcomm's first read-through materials. Add back in uni information and names only after top 5-10% are chosen based on CVs and SOPs. Publish this exact process as well as any other relevant procedures on the website.

I would also charge no more than $15 for the application fee. This is enough money to hit the wallet of a broke college student (especially if applying to 5 - 10 schools) but not enough to devastate them since a lot of the applications will end in rejections.

This!! One of my POIs gave me this great advice: you don't want somebody to look at the title of your dissertation and be able to guess every single member of your committee. You want to be an independent scholar who has their own unique ideas that aren't just followups of your advisor's work.

Also valid, but that speaks to the idea that she must have been very sure that she wanted it at the time. She probably started enrollment prior to second-wave feminism, and it probably was not consistently well-received by people in her life at the time.
 
Hell, it's 2015 and neither my grandparents nor parents understand why I don't want to live at home until I get married. 

You seem to be under some misapprehensions about what is meant by privilege, how it operates, and how the use of criteria such as race in admissions attempts to counteract the disparity created by privilege. Here is a good read to get you started on understanding what is actually at stake: http://qz.com/257474/what-riding-my-bike-has-taught-me-about-white-privilege/
 
You should read that now, and then finish this post.
 
Done? OK.
 
Because of the color of your skin, you may or may not have had access to more resources and opportunities. However, because of the color of your skin, you are much less likely to be stopped by police. When you are stopped by police, you are much less likely to be arrested or ticketed, all because of the color of your skin. Because of the color of your skin, it is easier for you to find an apartment. Because of the color of your skin, it is easier for you to find a job. Because of the color of your skin, you were less likely to be singled out as a "troublemaker" in school. Despite the challenges you have almost certainly faced and overcome in your life through your own intelligence and force of will, you were more likely to succeed because of the color of your skin. That is our reality, and an admissions program should take reality into account when making its decisions.
 
Further readings:
http://gawker.com/my-vassar-college-faculty-id-makes-everything-ok-1664133077
http://documents.latimes.com/investigation-ferguson-police-department/
http://www.redstate.com/2015/03/15/many-conservatives-blowing-it-ferguson-doj-report/

That is easier to say when you have systematically benefited from the privileges of being of a certain gender or race. By which I mean that the literature is very clear that, for example, first generation, low SES, and some minority students are at a disadvantage from their first day of college, which affects things like their GPA, their CV (unpaid internships or volunteer lab work are a financial impossibility for many), their summer opportunities (for example, being expected to come home in the summer to watch younger siblings rather than being able to pursue summer jobs or research assistant positions), and much, much more. As an example, not all institutions have similar research opportunities. Should we privilege those who went to schools that offer abundant research experiences for undergrads (integrating them into the class, requiring them for graduation) over those who do not? Without knowing where they went, that's precisely what would happen. Your (HistoryGypsy and TXInstrument11) idea would eliminate the ability of the admissions committee to consider such factors on the first pass. My guess is that this would actually lead to less diversity in graduate programs, which may very well be the goal of some.