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caprice

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    2017 Fall

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  1. Not sure if this is the right place to say this but i got accepted into University of Minnesota!! I'm really excited about this. Best of luck to all of you!
  2. I am applying to U of Minnesota and a few other Educational Measurement programs, haven't heard back from any school yet.
  3. Hi guys, I am applying to PhD programs in psychometrics/educational measurement and below is the draft of my SOP. Any comment on its content/structure would be greatly appreciated. Since I am not an English native speaker, I also hope someone could fix my grammar. Thank you so much! I am applying to XXX University for admission to M.S/Ph.D. in Educational Research Methodology (ERM) program. I am interested in studying the development and applications of psychometric methods such as item response theory and diagnostic classification models. I hope to learn and research the statistical methods used to analyze educational assessment data. By improving them, I aspire to improve the efficiency, validity and informativeness of assessments. My long-term career goal is to be a psychometrician in the testing industry. Obtaining a Ph.D. degree is the first step toward realizing my ambition. My undergraduate education in ABC University has given me exposure to various facets of psychology. Within this field, I find the topics in item analysis, such as correction for guessing and the calculation of item discriminability, which I learned in my Psychology Testing course most appealing to me. As part of a course project, my groupmates and I used SPSS to perform reliability and validity analysis as well as exploratory factor analysis on a personality test we created. I was so fascinated when I learned factor analysis could uncover the underlying relationships between the test items without knowing their content. My keen interest in quantitative techniques led to an A- grade in this course. However, the undergraduate curriculum only dabbles in the most basic concepts of classical test theory. I wish to acquire more in-depth knowledge in psychometrics such as item response theory in a graduate setting. To better prepare for the rigorous graduate study, I undertook substantial amount of quantitative and programming coursework. I strengthened my mathematics and statistics knowledge by obtaining a minor in statistics along with choosing linear algebra and calculus as my electives. I familiarized myself with R programming as well from an online course by Johns Hopkins University on coursera.org. I also gained practical programming experiences with general-purpose languages including C++ and Python by taking courses from the engineering department. In a big data analysis course, I wrote an algorithm in Python to cluster handwritten digits. I believe my solid quantitative and programming background will be very helpful in understanding the content covered in a graduate program and getting ready to conduct my own research as soon as possible. In addition to academic preparation, I actively pursued research experience that allows me to utilize my statistics knowledge. After completing my undergraduate study, I started working under the supervision of Dr. XXX from the School of Public Health at the YYY University on projects evaluating medical students’ learning experience. In one of the ongoing projects, we are assessing the effectiveness of using an online learning platform for consolidating students’ knowledge on basic epidemiology and medical statistics. I am in charge of developing the teaching materials in the platform, which helps me brush up my knowledge with basic statistics and research methodology. I also assist in writing the Institutional Review Board proposal, and preparing questionnaires about students’ demographics and study habits. Our next step will be to analyze students’ usage activities of the website, which would be a valuable data analysis experience for me. In another project, we evaluated the use of online assessments as an in-class activity based on course evaluation data, students’ assessment scores, and tutors’ feedback. We presented a poster in ZZZ Conference. I have carefully researched graduate programs available to me and I have found XXX University’s ERM program has exactly what I am looking for in a graduate program. To begin with, it has the most comprehensive course selection in educational measurement. Few other programs offer courses in language testing and computer-based testing, for example. Besides, XXX University has a relatively large number of faculties working in educational measurement. I am interested in Dr. XXX’s and Dr XXX’s work on diagnostic classification models, and Dr. XXX’s work on computerized adaptive testing. Being a graduate student at XXX University will provide me with extensive research experience by participating in their research projects. Lastly, the field projects provided by XXX University’s Office of Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Services will offer me practical experience in designing and analyzing assessments, which is also crucial to the attainment of my career goal as a psychometrician. In short, the ERM program at XXX University is an ideal fit for me. I believe my academic background and experiences to date have prepared me to pursue a demanding graduate program. I look forward to the opportunity to pursue my passion and continue to learn at XXX University.
  4. Hello everyone. I am applying to PhD programs in Quantitative Psychology / Educational Measurement for Fall 2017 cycle. Do you guys think I have a shot? Major: Psychology, Minor: Statistics I also took courses on C++ Programming, Calculus and Linear Algebra. GPA: 3.5 GRE: V 158 (80%), Q 167 (93%), A 4.0 (59%) TOEFL: 104 (I am an international student) Research: - Worked at a few labs in my undergrad but they weren't my research area (they were in clinical psyc, social psyc and marketing) - Completed an honour thesis (it is related to I/O Psychology though) - Currently working as a research assistant on educational evaluation projects Award: Dean's list (one time) Schools I am considering to apply are Notre Dame, Minnesota, U of Kansas, Iowa, UNC-Greensboro, Georgia State, U of Georgia, Maryland. I think the weakness of my application is the lack of statistical research experience...and because of that I can't really be too specific about my research interest when I am writing my statement of purpose (other than writing generically like "item response theory and structural equation modelling look interesting to me blah blah blah..."). Any advice? Thanks for any input in advance!
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