Applicant 1746

While I agree that it's important to appear focused, I don't think it's necessary to make sure your applications perfectly "match up" if you have multiple interests or if some of your interests are more flexible depending on whether other criteria are met. For example, I applied to some programs that were more practice-oriented and others that were (much) more research-oriented -- but that's because they all dealt with a particular question/topic I want to work on, and so long as I get to work on that question, the exact balance of research vs. practice isn't too important to me. (Of course it's a different situation if you're *much* more committed to research than to practice, or vice versa, but for those of us who are more in the middle, I think it's fine to apply to a range of programs.) As far as raising eyebrows -- in general, you'll want to be thoughtful about how you're presenting yourself/your fit to individual programs. While of course you shouldn't lie at any point in the application process, I do think it's okay to selectively offer information to potential programs/advisers. If you have two main but different interests (say, depression and eating disorders), you may want to mention that you applied to x, y, and z depression-focused labs while on an interview for a depression lab, but not mention the eating disorder-focused labs you also applied to. As no one is going to interrogate you and demand that you disclose every single program you applied to, this is perfectly fine. In fact, I had faculty members tell me that it's more than okay to ask letter-writers to tailor their letters to different programs to emphasize your interest/fit for that particular kind of program. So long as you're genuinely interested in all the programs you're applying to, I wouldn't box yourself into one topic/area or one type of program. Besides, you may not even know which fit would be the best for you until you're going on interviews and learning more about the kinds of programs first-hand! (There's only so much you can learn about a program by reading about it before you actually meet and talk with the people in such programs -- I was surprised by how much interviews clarified my priorities for me!) TL;DR: Learn as much as you can about the programs you're applying to and only apply to programs you're genuinely interested in, but if you have multiple interests and/or flexible priorities, don't box yourself into any one thing.

I've had professors recommend these books to students, too: http://www.amazon.com/They-Say-Academic-Writing-Edition/dp/0393935841/ref=pd_bxgy_14_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1GS5VK8XY9Z8ZJF22XNW http://www.amazon.com/The-Elements-Style-Fourth-Edition/dp/020530902X/ref=pd_sim_14_3?ie=UTF8&dpID=51q3tYpGjnL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR101%2C160_&refRID=1GS5VK8XY9Z8ZJF22XNW

Would folks who got offers from the Counseling Psych Ph.D programs at Columbia Teacher's College and/or University of Maryland mind PMing me? Appreciate it!!

Another reason a POI might not respond to an e-mail is because they/their department is currently caught up in bureaucratic red tape, and they're not able or allowed to give out any information just yet. After my department's post-interview faculty meeting, I asked a faculty member which prospective(s) of his -- who I met at the interview -- would be getting an offer. He said that even though the department had decided on candidates to extend offers to and had forwarded their departmental recommendations on to the graduate college, they technically weren't allowed to say who would get offers because the graduate college hadn't officially approved all the dept recommendations (even though the graduate college pretty much never blocks the dept's recommendations). He also said that faculty often don't respond to e-mails from their prospectives at this point, because even a post-interview "thank you" e-mail usually has the subtext of asking for information about decisions. Since the faculty don't feel that they're in the position to give out this information, or even to hint at it, they often don't reply to e-mails until everything goes through administratively and they can go about directly extending offers. As hard as it is, I think we just have to wait it out. Otherwise we'll drive ourselves crazy coming up with plausible explanations when any number of things we can't imagine may be going on behind the scenes. Hang in there!

What exactly appeals to you about the R1 label? Is it prestige/name recognition? The level of research productivity (assuming you want to go into research)? There may be other, more useful metrics for the specific things you value/are looking for. For example, if you're using R1 status as a proxy for research productivity, you may want to consider instead the recent publication output of your adviser at the private university (and whether students are often co-authors on his/her papers) vs. the recent publication output of the adviser at the R1. If the adviser at the private U is just as productive and supportive of grad students' publishing as the adviser at the R1, that may matter more than the label of "R1" alone.

Seconding what Applicant38 said -- it sounds like you could get the knowledge and information you need just from reading independently. Cialdini is a good person to read, as are books by folks like Dan Ariely, Richard Thaler, and Danny Kahneman. The behavioral economics and I/O literatures would be good to familiarize yourself with generally.

It's hard to say. As the poster above me said, it depends on the kind of program it is, your interests, and your priorities/goals. TAing is pretty standard, and even if you'd prefer to spend that time doing research, getting teaching experience is a good idea if you plan to apply out for faculty jobs after grad school. I have friends in other programs who have research assistantships, and I've heard mixed things about those: some of my friends like spending more time in the lab; others are frustrated that this usually ends up looking like "grunt work" for the PI (entering data, coding, things like that), when they would prefer to be working on their own independent research instead. If the department doesn't offer fellowships/grants, you might want to look to external funding, like NSF (depending on your area/interests/research agenda).

Jon Mohr at U Maryland (Counseling) studies stigma with respect to LGB groups.

I won't be applying as I'm currently an RA and will be starting grad school in the fall (!), but I just wanted to say that I'm a huge fan of Nicole Stephens' work, especially the first generation college student intervention work! You're lucky to be involved in such awesome research!

I'll cast another vote for an RA position, because as others have said, you'll be making money instead of going further into debt (plus, I've had an amazing experience as an RA, and definitely feel it was the best thing I could have done for my applications this cycle). One thing to consider, though, is the kind of RA jobs you'd expect to land and whether they would be in labs that are similar to the labs you would be applying to for grad school. If you can get an RA job in in your POIs' general area, that will help your applications immensely. On the other hand, if you can only land unrelated RA positions, doing a masters where you can choose to do an independent thesis in the area you plan to apply to grad programs in may do more to show your interest in your field of choice. I say this because going on the RA job market was VERY tough -- I must have applied to 100 or so positions (literally), got about 10 interviews, and ultimately 2 offers. The 2 offers I did get weren't in the area I thought I wanted to go into at the time (though this has turned out to be a blessing, because I've fallen in love with this new area and will likely choose a graduate program in it). So, these are some more questions to weigh.

Sorry to hear about the disappointing news! This process is incredibly tough, and honestly, luck/timing plays into it a lot. You could apply out a different year with the exact same applications and have a different outcome -- it's definitely a "right place, right time" kind of thing. Are you just out of undergrad? What have you been doing since then? I would suggest looking into full-time, paid research assistant/lab manager positions, preferably in a social psych lab in an area that interests you. I'm in my second year as a full-time RA in social psych, and I think it helped my applications tremendously this cycle. If you have the time, you may as well study for and retake the GRE. I also had a 60th percentile quant score, and I wish very much that I had put in more effort/time to raise it to at least 70th percentile. That said, the quant score alone probably wouldn't rule you out by an admissions committee. Still: may as well do everything you can to make your applications more competitive, right? I'm happy to talk more by PM if it would be helpful (as I'm also in social psych -- as well as clinical/counseling, btw).

I'd think this kind of experience would only help you! The two fields are related enough to confirm your over-arching interest/commitment. Also, I've heard from more folks than not that getting good research experience, period, is more important than getting research experience in any one specific area (as research skills generalize). I'm in my second year as a full-time lab manager/research assistant in a fantastic psychology department, but one that doesn't have a clinical program (or anything close to it). Even though I haven't been doing clinical research specifically, I've had success getting clinical and counseling interviews this cycle. Hope this helps!

I agree with this on its face, but another question to ask is how flexible/supportive your POI would be in advising projects more in line with your interests than the future directions s/he plans to go in. Would your POI be willing to work with you on projects more closely related to their past line of work? Some POIs are quite flexible and are willing to support their grad students in pursuing their own interests, even if they're somewhat divergent from what they themselves are currently interested in. Others either don't feel comfortable bending outside their immediate area of expertise, or else want/expect their grad students to help further their own current research agenda. These are questions that you can discuss with the POI, as well as their current grad students.

Congrats on the offer! I can't speak much to point #2, but to point #1, I would consider other metrics besides the professor's rank. To assess research productivity, you could take a look at # of publications put out by POI/POI's lab in recent years (and whether grad students are often co-authors on these papers), as well as any recently-received grants. In terms of teaching, talking candidly with current grad students about POI's mentorship would be a good source of info. Good luck!

I don't have a ton of knowledge about this, but my *guess* is that international students applying for RA positions likely wouldn't face as many issues as they do when applying to funded graduate programs, only because (in the case of funding grad school) international students can't apply for a lot of government-funded things, like NSF -- but since faculty hiring full-time RAs are going to pay their RA the same salary no matter who it is, I wouldn't imagine that you'd be at a disadvantage from a funding perspective. (Things like work visas are a different story, but that would be true for all international folks, not just ones applying for academic jobs.) I think the main thing when applying for these jobs is to make it very clear that you would be willing to move to take the position. I myself (though I live in the US) applied for RA jobs all over the country, and some of the faculty I interviewed with seemed concerned about whether I would actually move across the country to take the job if offered (this puzzled me, as I wouldn't have applied if I wouldn't be willing to move for it! But apparently faculty do have this concern). If it's encouraging, I'm in my second year as a lab manager/RA at an Ivy now, and a LOT of our paid research assistants/lab managers/visiting students/post docs are international.

I definitely empathize with the immense-student-debt situation. To give some background, I'm in my second year as a research assistant/lab manager at an Ivy (and though I'm not paying tuition because I'm not a student, the cost of living is pretty absurd here, and I acquired quite a bit of debt from undergrad). One question that might be helpful to ask is whether you've already gained most of what you were going to gain from being affiliated with such a "prestigious" program. One year of research experience is a good amount, and it seems like you've already forged relatively close connections with the "big name" scholars in your department/field. Assuming that these influential folks already know you well enough to be recommenders on your behalf, that might be enough of a take-away from your program. That is, transferring now might save you a lot of money, and even if you wouldn't have the name of this institution on your degree, you would have letters of recommendation from these big name scholars, and that might be more important than having the institution's name on your degree. I'm happy to PM if you'd like to talk more/in more detail. FWIW, I'm also applying to clinical/counseling programs (I applied to one of the schools in your signature and have an interview with them upcoming in the next couple weeks).

Hi, Trey -- welcome! It's definitely understandable to feel overwhelmed about "getting back in the academic game," so to speak. That said, there are lots of pathways into Ph.D programs (if you decide that's the kind of program you'd like to pursue), and quite a lot of people enter graduate school without necessarily having taken a "linear path" to get there. As you said, many programs don't require applicants to have majored in psychology, but many do require applicants to have taken some core psychology classes (typically classes on methods and statistics are the most important here). More important, though -- again, for research-oriented Ph.D programs -- is that applicants have some research experience in one or more psychology labs. You mentioned you don't have an academic background in psychology -- did you by chance gain research experience as an undergrad, perhaps in a different kind of social science lab? To address the (potential) coursework issue, you may want to look into master's programs in experimental psychology. These are (typically) two year programs that should get you all caught up with the relevant coursework, and also give you the opportunity to gain some independent research experience in the form of a master's thesis. Some of these programs are actually fully-funded, too, which is nice. To address the latter point about research experience, volunteering or working in a psych lab would give you an enormous leg up in the application process (as well as give you some really important research skills, and confirm that you're truly interested in psych research!). I'm in my second year as a full-time research assistant/lab manager, and I truly believe it was the best thing I could have done for my graduate applications. If you can afford to do this on a volunteer-basis, you could e-mail faculty at nearby institutions whose research interests overlap with yours and ask if they could use a volunteer, part-time RA. If you'd like to shoot for a full-time, paid position, you could check job listing boards like indeed.com for "psychology research assistant." Hope this helps as a starting point. To speak to your specific question about finding POIs/programs with overlapping research interests, you'll probably want to find scientific psych papers or journals on what you're interested in, and track down the authors on your favorite papers that you find.

I've found that a lot of faculty are prepared with general, structured interview-type questions for you that you wouldn't really need to "prep" extra for (Can you tell me about some of the research you've done, and how that connects to the research trajectory you see for yourself going forward? What are your career goals? What drew you to this program?). Others will treat it more like an information session for you, and will give you the opportunity to ask program-general questions. I've asked about things like department culture in terms of cross-lab collaborations, whether a lot of grad students in the program plan to enter academia and how the program prepares them for it, how people across labs keep up-to-date on each other's work (e.g. one of my programs has a weekly lunch seminar where a grad student gives a talk about their recent work each week), etc. I've also asked these faculty members about their perceptions of current trends and future directions in the department -- this may be more specific to the kinds of programs I'm applying to, but I've asked about whether there seems to be a move towards more applied work among the faculty, for example.

Verbal: 162 (93rd), Quant: 155 (60th), Writing: 5.5 (98th) My programs haven't extended offers yet, but I've gotten 6 interviews. As others have said, GRE scores around your schools' averages are good to shoot for, and they probably help a lot in shortlisting you/getting you interviews, but from that point on I think committees start to emphasize fit, research experience, etc. over scores. Do I wish I'd scored higher on quant/do I think doing so might have landed me another interview or 2? Probably. Do I think my eventual admission outcomes would look radically different if I had a higher quant score? Nah, probably not.

I second this. I'm sorry it was such an uncomfortable experience for you! It's really not fun to get caught off-guard like that. However, like others have said, this kind of question is actually fairly common. I highly doubt that anyone would evaluate you too harshly based on the project ideas you have on the spot, but it may be helpful for POIs to learn more about your thinking process, how you might connect your own interests to the broader interests of the POI/lab, etc. I received a tough (but fun!) question from a POI during our phone interview, which he also prefaced by saying it might be tough and require some imagination, and that I could take a minute to think about it before responding. He said: "Imagine it's a decade from now, and you've been in some kind of research position for the last 10 years. Can you describe what your research program has looked like over the last ten years, and can you talk about one potential study that might have fit in there?" It was definitely challenging, but it was also fun for me to think so imaginatively into the future. I'm sure that I didn't give a *great* response, but it allowed me to contextualize some of my biggest interests/values in terms of research for my POI. I did get invited to an on-campus interview after that, so I guess it went well enough! Anyway, if you felt like that POI wouldn't be a good fit for you, of course that's valid -- but I also might take a couple days to process the interview and see if you come to feel differently.

I'm seconding MarineBluePsy. AWishinAndAHopin, I'm so sorry that happened to you! The grad student's behavior (both in your conversation and with other faculty/grads at the party) is absurd, and if it's any indication of the culture in that department/program, you definitely dodged a bullet. And to answer question, no, you absolutely should *not* know exactly what your dissertation will be on at this point. Having a clear set of interests and some concrete ideas for future directions is important, but much of the *point* of grad school is to deepen and expand you interests as you go forward, gain experience, and work with a wider range of people. If all goes well, what your dissertation ultimately ends up looking like will be *quite* different (in wonderful ways!) from what you would currently predict.

I had a similar experience at my counseling psych Ph.D interview this past weekend! The questions were either more job-interview-like ("How do you handle conflict?") or interesting but kind of random ("What do you see as the strengths and weaknesses of your generation?"). I got the sense that they were trying to put together a cohort that would be a good fit personality- and value-wise with the department (maybe they'd already determined that we were strong researchers when they invited us?), but I left wishing that I'd gotten to talk about research more, especially with my POI (who I only got to talk with for about 20 minutes).

It's possible that she's just working out the logistics with the rest of the department about arranging for an alternate date. But in the absolute worst case scenario (i.e. they're not willing to accommodate you), I would take that as a sign that the program/this adviser probably wouldn't be great to work with anyway. Faculty at solid programs know that the people they're inviting are strong applicants who will have other interview offers, and they should want their applicants to be able to maximize their interview opportunities to find the best possible fit. Asking for an alternate day because of a prior commitment is a completely reasonable request and reasonable faculty/programs who are committed to getting to know their candidates should be willing to accommodate you. I think it's really that simple and straightforward. Wishing you the best with this!!

I'm not sure about I/O, but for clinical and counseling (and maybe social/cog?), it seems that each POI phone/Skype interviews a short list of 5, and then invites 2 or 3 for a campus interview (of which 1 is typically selected, unless the POI plans to take more than 1 student that year, in which case they seem to invite double the number of applicants they plan to take).

This is an old thread. Princeton's interview day is Feb 5th this year, but it was January 30th last year.