stayandsea

I had a pretty ridiculous interview at CUNY Grad Center for doctoral psych. I was applying to three profs, 2 of whom were on different campuses, so that was awkward enough, but the one PI I hadn't met/didn't know well walked over to me and demanded me to "tell him about the interesting lego task." I worked at a lab last summer where we used a lego task so I described it, putting in jokes like the time a kid broke a table during the task because he was so excited and one parent who chewed out her kid for giving inadequate directions. Then he goes, "Oh. You're clearly not the person I wanted to talk to. I was thinking of another applicant." WHAT? I was his only applicant there! Then it got worse...this was during the "fun mingling" lunch stage (in which another lady said I shouldn't go because they had trouble recruiting subjects), the actual interview consisted of me, ushered in and out within half an hour, staring at EIGHT professors. This same guy started his one and only question after everyone else seemed impressed by my research, "So, I have a silly question, it might be kind of tough, but it's really just silly..." IS MY FREAKING FUTURE FUNNY TO YOU? A SILLY INSIGNIFICANT MATTER? And I responded a little defensively. And thus, got waitlisted by my absolute dead-last choice school and accepted to 7 others.

Hey - so consider Dr. Gupta for his cognitive work on categorization (there is a big emphasis on language across disciplines at Iowa, very exciting!) and computational modeling. For the statistics bit, I can personally recommend Fordham, UNC (depends on what you're into though) and UCLA. Good luck!