dancedementia

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

Sorry I can't respond to everyone directly - there's a lot of good discussion going on here. To clarify some of my points:
1. I don't think it's terrible to have interests outside of academia. But when we're in the middle of our group interview and you're blatantly tossing out unrelated hobbies (in an attempt to do what?) in front of a panel of conservative academics.... it's not exactly the "best foot forward" approach. I'm personally not offended by any of the items I offered as examples (and actually partake in some form of all of them), but there is a proper time to mention "out there" items, and the group interview - where you're being asked about your career goals and your research interests - is not the time or the place. A person who feels the need to "stand out" as a sparkly unique snowflake comes off as trying too hard.
2. I personally get irritated at try-hards and most professors do as well. There is a line between trying hard and being excited about being there. One of the candidates ambushed one of the professors on her way out the door - when she had just announced that she had a meeting to go to - and tried to engage her in a long conversation about a fairly trivial point that could have been asked to anyone else in the room who DIDN"T need to leave (something along the lines of, "Can I substitute X class for Y class" - girl, calm down, you haven't even been accepted!)  Yes, I get you're trying to make a connection and show interest, but disrespecting someone else's time is not the way to go. In my other example (sorry I was typing on my phone and not being clear), there was a LINE of people to talk to us, and this individual straight up cut three people in line to gush in my face. Sorry, no. Expressing glee over being from the same state does not trump common human politeness.
I guess tl;dr - don't be an ass and respect the people you're interviewing with. I've been on both sides of the table and it's *always* the candidates who are respectful that get the most points.
Another thing to think about is that yes, we're choosing candidates based on their personality, but we're also choosing candidates that we think can represent the program well, not make fools of themselves at conferences, and treat other members of the academic community with professionalism and respect. Anything that is contrary to that -- such as gushing about your love of cats for 15 minutes -- is kind of a red flag.... Like, I'm not going to judge you for liking cats, but if you can't control yourself and be professional for a single interview day, how are we going to trust you to behave professionally at a conference or something?!
This sentiment was the one I was trying to get across, sorry I didn't communicate very well
EDIT: As a final point, I just wanted to mention this: evaluating candidates sucks, it really does. There are a lot of you, and most of the time y'all all look great on paper. I used to do recruiting for a Wall Street firm, and whew, trying to sift through literally THOUSANDS of applicants is terrifying. At some point, you need to start cutting using *anything* possible. The first rounds of cuts are usually GPA/GRE/easy stuff, but once that's done and you have 300 great candidates, you start cutting based on gut feelings, first impressions, and perceptions of who acted disrespectfully or not. Most of the time, it really isn't personal, but when you have a ton of candidates you need to be selective in ways that aren't always fair. Personally, I would love to admit a cosplaying, anime-loving nerd into my program (mainly because I need a friend to attend PAX and Anime Boston with)... but for the 70-year-old conservative professor emeritus who thinks that kind of thing is bizarre and childish? Not so much :/ 
 

Sorry I can't respond to everyone directly - there's a lot of good discussion going on here. To clarify some of my points:
1. I don't think it's terrible to have interests outside of academia. But when we're in the middle of our group interview and you're blatantly tossing out unrelated hobbies (in an attempt to do what?) in front of a panel of conservative academics.... it's not exactly the "best foot forward" approach. I'm personally not offended by any of the items I offered as examples (and actually partake in some form of all of them), but there is a proper time to mention "out there" items, and the group interview - where you're being asked about your career goals and your research interests - is not the time or the place. A person who feels the need to "stand out" as a sparkly unique snowflake comes off as trying too hard.
2. I personally get irritated at try-hards and most professors do as well. There is a line between trying hard and being excited about being there. One of the candidates ambushed one of the professors on her way out the door - when she had just announced that she had a meeting to go to - and tried to engage her in a long conversation about a fairly trivial point that could have been asked to anyone else in the room who DIDN"T need to leave (something along the lines of, "Can I substitute X class for Y class" - girl, calm down, you haven't even been accepted!)  Yes, I get you're trying to make a connection and show interest, but disrespecting someone else's time is not the way to go. In my other example (sorry I was typing on my phone and not being clear), there was a LINE of people to talk to us, and this individual straight up cut three people in line to gush in my face. Sorry, no. Expressing glee over being from the same state does not trump common human politeness.
I guess tl;dr - don't be an ass and respect the people you're interviewing with. I've been on both sides of the table and it's *always* the candidates who are respectful that get the most points.
Another thing to think about is that yes, we're choosing candidates based on their personality, but we're also choosing candidates that we think can represent the program well, not make fools of themselves at conferences, and treat other members of the academic community with professionalism and respect. Anything that is contrary to that -- such as gushing about your love of cats for 15 minutes -- is kind of a red flag.... Like, I'm not going to judge you for liking cats, but if you can't control yourself and be professional for a single interview day, how are we going to trust you to behave professionally at a conference or something?!
This sentiment was the one I was trying to get across, sorry I didn't communicate very well
EDIT: As a final point, I just wanted to mention this: evaluating candidates sucks, it really does. There are a lot of you, and most of the time y'all all look great on paper. I used to do recruiting for a Wall Street firm, and whew, trying to sift through literally THOUSANDS of applicants is terrifying. At some point, you need to start cutting using *anything* possible. The first rounds of cuts are usually GPA/GRE/easy stuff, but once that's done and you have 300 great candidates, you start cutting based on gut feelings, first impressions, and perceptions of who acted disrespectfully or not. Most of the time, it really isn't personal, but when you have a ton of candidates you need to be selective in ways that aren't always fair. Personally, I would love to admit a cosplaying, anime-loving nerd into my program (mainly because I need a friend to attend PAX and Anime Boston with)... but for the 70-year-old conservative professor emeritus who thinks that kind of thing is bizarre and childish? Not so much :/ 
 

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

Honestly, just the little things that make you think, "Wow, this guy's a jerk." Some examples I saw the past few interview days where I was helping to interview prospectives...
Continually apologizing for attending a poorly ranked undergrad ("I could have gone to Yale but my parents wanted me to stay closer to home, I really regret that, my state school was pretty terrible, etc.") Makes you sound like you only care about the prestige of the school... Being a suck-up. No one likes a blatant suck-up. Do it tastefully. But shoving your way past three other people just to ask me a totally obvious question, (e.g. "I've been wanting to talk to you all morning since you come from my same home state! So, do you like it here?" Uh, duh I like it here or else I would have left? And being from Texas in no way implies we are anything alike.) This also extends to blatant show-offs.  Treating other candidates disrespectfully when you think the interviewers/profs aren't watching. That's why we have student volunteers and admin assistants hovering around to help out.... they report back to us.... Any sort of bizarre hobby, like.... attending anime conventions every weekend or being part of a burlesque troupe or cold-calling for Bernie Sanders. Not saying any of these things are inherent bad, but you don't want to be singled out as "weird" or uncommitted (unless, of course, you're doing Culture Studies, Dance Studies, or Political Science, respectfully, in which case maybe a brief mention would be fine). You can let that crazy out once you've been in the program for a while, but not on interview day.

Posts like this terrify the crap out of me. I feel like I am so unprepared going into applications next cycle and I'm honestly panicking trying to figure out how to increase my chances. 
I do have a semirelated question though. You mentioned that this was your third time applying - what kind of work were doing in the interim? I know a lot of people say to get a research position but depending on geography, research positions don't necessarily pay the bills (or alternatively, you might not have a good enough background to get a paid position so you have to take on volunteer positions, like I'm doing). What are people's thoughts about working an unrelated full time job and doing research on the side? Does this look shitty or should I really be looking for full-time research positions?!

It's not odd. It's a money grab - masters programs are some of the most profitable programs for colleges since they KNOW people use them as stepping stones to PhDs, as requirements for work, etc. And of course, they aren't fully funded. They assume that because you were interested in them for PhD, surely you would also be interested for a masters. I think there are upsides and downsides to choosing to complete a masters program (I'm in one myself), but it definitely depends on your situation and the college in question. Boston College, for example, actually has a killer masters program; they get lucrative practicum/internship placements every year since they're so well known in the Boston area.

It's not odd. It's a money grab - masters programs are some of the most profitable programs for colleges since they KNOW people use them as stepping stones to PhDs, as requirements for work, etc. And of course, they aren't fully funded. They assume that because you were interested in them for PhD, surely you would also be interested for a masters. I think there are upsides and downsides to choosing to complete a masters program (I'm in one myself), but it definitely depends on your situation and the college in question. Boston College, for example, actually has a killer masters program; they get lucrative practicum/internship placements every year since they're so well known in the Boston area.

1. 70k so far and counting. Sigh.
2. See above. Almost none of my own funding (I pretty much work a part-time job for living expenses and that's it).
3. Debt = 35k. Savings = 0.
4. 50k.... sigh.

It's not odd. It's a money grab - masters programs are some of the most profitable programs for colleges since they KNOW people use them as stepping stones to PhDs, as requirements for work, etc. And of course, they aren't fully funded. They assume that because you were interested in them for PhD, surely you would also be interested for a masters. I think there are upsides and downsides to choosing to complete a masters program (I'm in one myself), but it definitely depends on your situation and the college in question. Boston College, for example, actually has a killer masters program; they get lucrative practicum/internship placements every year since they're so well known in the Boston area.

There's that old adage.... something about how - in PhD programs at least - it's not the prestige of the institution that matters, but the prestige of the professors you're working under (and can co-author publications with!)

My plan B is the usual - take a year to get more research experience and apply again. I'll also have to hold down a job too, since the debt and the CoL in my city is getting outrageous. The good thing is that I'll have an MA under my belt so I can at least get a decently paying job, whether that's full time research or full time clinical with the other option as part-time.

Hello all,
First off, good luck to everyone out there applying for grad programs in psychology. It may be a lot of work, but it will be worth it when it pays off! 
Now, on to the point. I have been lurking around on GradCafe for some time now, but I just recently created this account in order to make some posts and such. After reading through the numerous postings, I have come to realize that a lot of people ask or comment on the GRE, both general and subject versions. One of the common discussions is that the general GRE is a bad predictor of graduate performance, it only measures one's ability to take the GRE, etc. Everyone is quick to demean the test. While these arguments may be valid, there is one thing that I have not seen mentioned––funding. Graduate programs, particularly clinical psychology Ph.D. programs (I say this because I am most familiar with them), oftentimes fund the entire education (up to 5 years) of those who are admitted to the program. Actually, if you check the admissions data given by most schools for clinical psych Ph.D. programs, it is rare to see data showing that a student's education was not 100% funded. Now, where does the funding come from? Well, it comes from a pool of money that the university keeps aside for funding graduate students (makes sense).
What most people may not know is that funding is: (1) an important factor in students deciding which programs to apply to, and (2) spread out across departments. While many people here likely understand #1, I doubt that many know about #2. This means that whether you are seeking admission and funding within a doctoral physics program or doctoral psychology program, the funding money comes from the same pool. That being said, what goes into deciding how much money is offered to each department? This is where things get interesting! Since most doctoral programs cost about the same (within the same university, of course), admissions committees need to come up with ways in which they can compare students across disciplines (it's starting to come together....). As many of you may know, GPA would be a terrible way to compare people from different fields. Is a 3.8 in undergraduate theoretical mathematics equivalent to a 3.8 in undergraduate psychology? Absolutely not! So, what are our options? Well, here is where the general GRE comes in!
The GRE is a baseline used to compare students across disciplines. It is simple as that. It is one of the only metrics that makes this possible. This is why some scholarships and outside funding options for masters programs require general GRE scores. This is why programs that do not fund their students are less likely to require general GRE scores. This is why the general GRE is an important factor when it comes to selecting doctoral candidates! Graduate programs have to compete with one another for a piece of the funding, thus we are all studying and banging our heads against keyboards trying to get a 320+ (and all the while wandering why this stupid test exists!). 
I hope that what I said above gives the community here a bit more insight into why programs require tests like the GRE. The test was created for the sake of making fair comparisons across disciplines, and regardless of how silly it may initially seem, I hope that people can realize how necessary it is. 
Please post comments below for good discussion! Also, post about any insights you may have that could help others understand the application process in more detail. Thanks for taking the time to read  

Here's the "Mindfulness" list from the latest Insider's Guide:
Illinois School of Professional Psychology Carlow University Catholic University of America Drexel University La Salle University University at Albany/SUNY University at Buffalo/SUNY University of Montana The Positive Psychology list:
Colorado State Fuller Theological Seminary George Fox University Immaculata University Marquette University Marywood University Miami University New York University Pepperdine University Seton Hall University Teacher's College at Columbia University Tennessee State University University of Memphis University of Denver University of Georgia University of Kansas University of Pennsylvania University of Texas at Austin Washington State

But see, the fact that you guys are using phrases like "only had one first author submission" and "lots of [research experience] but limited in pubs/presentation" makes some of us nervous because we don't have anything remotely close to that! I have some research experience, but it's not necessarily in my area of focus. And pubs/presentations are not even a remote possibility by the time I apply. It seems like the baseline requirement is at least 2-3 years of research doing "real" things (i.e. not just data entry like I am) and at least a presentation or pub on the way.
So anxiety inducing, haha!