iamthesith4382

Potentially that could be a great person to ask. Especially if your programs are interested in you having some previous hands on experience!

I have to agree with the above poster. If a professor feels that they cannot write a strong letter of recommendation, then you should find someone else. It is likely the professor feels they do not know you very well as a researcher or as an analytic thinker after just one course. If I were to ask someone in a different field though, I would make sure they are easily connected back to your area of study (e.g., asking a statistics professor for a letter when applying to a research intensive psychology graduate program). Another option is you could reach out to a professor that you struggled in their course and demonstrated resilience (although not quite obtaining the A). Of course, if you have any research experience or internships applicable to your area of study, you could always ask a supervisor to write a letter.

Unfortunately, I do not know much about that specific program. However, I did apply to the UTSA psychology masters program. I found that they took their time in getting back to applicants (found that with all my Masters programs actually). However, if you are really friendly/polite, you can usually email the person in charge of applications for a more specific deadline of when they will get back to you. For example, I was waiting to hear back from Texas State, and I was nervous about it. I emailed and discovered they weren't even looking at applications for another week. I hope you hear back soon! Best of luck

I thought this post would be interesting and helpful to myself and other fellow Masters students. Does anyone have advice on how to make the most out of a Masters experience? What skills do you feel are important to develop to make yourself a better PhD applicant? Any advice is welcome!

Perhaps I should have been more clear in my original post. I don't view myself as the next person to come up with Cohnen's d, but maybe that has more to do with confidence. I've actually done a fair amount of multilevel modeling for repeated measures data. It was the most enjoyable aspect of my research experience. In addition, I would look into apply item-response theory to personality measures and scales. I think people are getting hung up on my comment about not wanting to create my models. It was more of a misunderstanding in how I wrote it. I agree that a strong math background would make me a better applicant. Thankfully, my Master's program is very flexible so I'm pursuing several courses in the statistics graduate program. Also, I am going to do the independent study on R. As for looking into a measurement PhD in Education Psychology. I did investigate that area, but I get hung up on the research interests. I'm not particularly drawn to what they are researching.

I completed an undergraduate honor's thesis that is up for publication, and I am currently working on my master's thesis. Based on everyone's comments it would appear learning R is just a great skill in general. My honor's thesis did some multi-level modeling that was pretty cool, but i'm pretty sure I'll just be using a repeated measures ANOVA in my master's. I'm looking at the effectiveness of coping with stress/anxiety with personality/perfectionism as a moderator.

Here's a bit of my background. Last year I applied to Clinical Psychology programs, but I did not get in (shocker). Instead I ended up going to a Masters program in Psychological Research to further beef up my research experience and cushion a 3.3 undergraduate GPA. In this program I took an advanced statistics course, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think I'm pretty good at it. The professor teaching the course is a Quantitative Psychologist. Honestly I had never even heard of this area of psychology. This is likely to having gone to a tiny undergraduate university. I was really excited when I found out about this field because my favorite areas of psychology have always been methodology and analyses (I thrived in Research Methods). Overall, I am really interested in researching measurement. In the clinical realm, I was primarily interested in the measurement of personality with emphasis on pathology. I have a strong research background at this point, and a lot of experience with SPSS. My major questions for you guys are as follows... 1) Is a Quantitative psychology PhD program a good place for someone particularly interested in measurement of personality and psychological disorders? 2) I do not have a background in calculus. Is this a problem? Will I be out of my league? I do have four semesters of research methods and three semesters of statistics. 3) I am not particularly interested in creating new statistical methods myself. I am more interested in tackling other people's data and looking into multi-level modeling. Is that a problem? 4) Is there anything I need to do to improve my chances for getting into a program? I was thinking about maybe learning R or SAS or both. The quantitative professor at my university offered to do an independent study with me in R. Is this worthwhile?

Here's a bit of my background. Last year I applied to Clinical Psychology programs, but I did not get in. Instead I ended up going to a Masters program in Psychological Research. In this program I took an advanced statistics course, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I think I'm pretty good at it. The professor teaching the course is a Quantitative Psychologist. Honestly I had never even heard of this area of psychology. This is likely to having gone to a tiny undergraduate university. I was really excited when I found out about this field because my favorite areas of psychology have always been methodology and analyses (I thrived in Research Methods). Overall, I am really interested in researching measurement. In the clinical realm I was primarily interested in the measurement of personality with emphasis on pathology. I have a strong research background at this point, and a lot of experience with SPSS. My major questions for you guys are as follows... 1) Is there a place in a Quantitative psychology PhD program form someone particularly interested in measurement of personality? 2) I do not have a background in calculus. Is this a problem? Will I be out of my league? I do have four semesters of research methods and three semesters of statistics. 3) I am not particularly interested in creating new statistical methods myself. Is that a problem? 4) Is there anything I need to do to improve my chances for getting into a program? I was thinking about maybe learning R or SAS or both. Is this worthwhile?