songofgallifrey
-
Posts
66 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by songofgallifrey
-
-
Thanks for starting this @cindyboop!
I applied to University of Maryland (NACS), Penn State (Psychology), UC San Diego (Psychology), Johns Hopkins (Cognitive Science), McGill (Psychology), NYU (Psychology), and University of Michigan (Psychology). I'm interested in the neural and cognitive bases of language processing, particularly in bilingual speakers, and bilingual language control.
I've been contacted by my POIs at UCSD and Penn State for Skype interviews. I had my Penn State one today with my #1 POI and I think it went well! Next step for both will be to get an invite to the official on-campus interview weekends, so fingers crossed!
-
@cindyboop yes don't worry! as @Timemachines said, it looks like most of the ones on the results page are preliminary Skype interviews. When I had mine with UC San Diego, the prof told me that the admissions committee is asking faculty to conduct these before inviting people out to the interview weekend, since each prof is only able to send those invites to a couple of people. I hope that helps!
-
I submitted my last application today, so I figured I should pop on to this thread and say hello!
This is my second time applying for PhD programs. Last round, I was going for social policy programs, in hopes that I could connect my current policy work to my research interests in language, particularly bilingualism and code-switching. My undergraduate degree is in psychology and linguistics, so I was setting myself up for failure there. After getting into only one program, and without funding, I've done a lot of soul searching, and decided that it's ok that my post-graduate career doesn't connect with the research career I hope to launch by pursuing a PhD.
I've applied to University of Maryland, Penn State, UC San Diego, Johns Hopkins, McGill, NYU, and University of Michigan. I applied to Maryland's Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program, and Johns Hopkins' Cognitive Science program, but the others are all Psychology programs. I'm interested in the neural and cognitive bases of language processing, particularly in bilingual speakers, and bilingual language control.
Good luck to everyone!
-
19 hours ago, sociologicals said:
Has anybody contacted Princeton? I feel like they would have contacted all admits by now, but they are also really delayed at sending out denials and there was only once acceptance posted on the results page.
I'm still waiting on Princeton's JDP Sociology/Social Policy as well. Last year, it looks like most people were notified about both Sociology generally and the JDP on 2/15, so they're late this year. Sigh.
19 hours ago, nbc21 said:Same thing with Harvard; anybody have any ideas? We've only had one confirmed acceptance there.
I posted the Harvard JDP rejection on Friday; I was notified by email, but I'm not sure how indicative the JDP decision-making/notification process is of the Sociology department generally.
-
I applied to the joint Sociology + Social Policy programs at both Harvard and Princeton and I am losing my mind waiting to hear back. I just want to know so I can move on.
- mcpphu and high_hopes
-
2
-
-
@Beals it sucks not to hear anything, but keep your head up!
i do have one acceptance, but they don't guarantee funding and i can't attend an unfunded program. i'll hear about funding in march, but i bet it won't be full funding at any rate. i recently found out i didn't get a university-wide fellowship that would've given me full funding and a stipend, so i'm feeling bummed about that.
-
28 minutes ago, Beals said:
Personally, I am regretting only applying to 5 programs. Why didn't I hedge my bets more!?!?
agh i have been thinking the same thing! it seemed like a good number at the time, but now i'm doubting myself.
-
21 minutes ago, soci said:
I decided not to contact anyone at Princeton because their website was pretty intimidating about how professors are really busy at this time of year (in regards to visiting ahead of time). I also had contacted a professor at Northwestern and felt a little snubbed- she basically just redirected me to the department website and her personal website to get more information about her research. It deterred me from emailing anyone at Princeton because I didn't want to annoy anyone (as the professor at Northwestern seemed annoyed that I emailed her).
i reached out to one of my poi's at princeton before submitting and was sent a pretty generic "we get too many emails to reply individually but here's a list of the stuff i'm currently working on" in return. after having a similar experience with a poi at harvard who just forwarded my email to the department admin, i got intimidated too and stopped trying to touch base with them. my poi at minnesota was very happy to get an email from me, though, so it seems like it depends very much on the school.
i contacted a program admin at princeton about decision timing recently, and she just said all applications were under review and they would send decisions by march 15. so no new information there.
-
@boscojoba I also applied to two linguistics programs (Stanford and Georgetown) and two social policy programs (Harvard and Princeton). I wasn't admitted to Stanford, but that's not super surprising, and I'm still waiting to hear anything from the other three. I reached out to my POI at Minnesota about funding and the weekend event, and she said 1) they're currently working on funding decisions and will have those sometime in March and 2) there's no event weekend for the SLE program, so there may also not be an event for your program.
-
16 hours ago, 2017 said:
the open house is Feb. 24 but last year it seems they accepted people after the open house even.
okay, thank you!
-
hello! which programs were you both accepted to? and how did you hear about the weekend event? i was accepted to the second language education phd but haven't heard anything about funding or a visit. i'm still a bit undecided on where it ranks among my other schools, since i applied to a few different types of programs. what about you?
-
thanks @2017 and @pandalove for the information! i appreciate it. re: georgetown's open house, could you say when that's happening? i imagine they would send out all of their acceptances with enough lead time for candidates to make travel plans.
-
similarly, can anyone claim the georgetown sociolinguistics acceptances? i've seen a couple on the results page but they're spread out time-wise so i don't know if i should be worried yet that i haven't heard anything.
-
@zihei here's the link: http://www.thegradcafe.com/survey/
there's also a tab at the top of the page just below the grad cafe logo that says "results." if you click on that, it'll send you to that link as well.
-
@2017 congrats! and thank you, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
-
@nts thank you for clarifying! I just saw some people discussing troll posts on a different thread and was worried, but it makes me feel better to hear that they're real
congratulations, that's awesome!
-
It looks like several people were contacted on Saturday to invite them to the Stanford open house! I'm happy that some folks have been hearing from them, but also nervous that this does not bode well for my application.
Edit: Wondering if they're troll posts because "university" is spelled incorrectly in a few of them (?)
-
I doubt that I'll hear anything until end of next week at the earliest based on past posts, but has anyone heard from Princeton or Harvard's joint PhDs in sociology and social policy? I saw a couple of posts about Princeton's demography and social policy program on the results page, but I suppose each concentration has a different timeline.
-
i had an incredibly surreal dream about grad school apps where i had to go on a quest through the woods with one of my LOR writers (who while being extremely gracious in writing me a letter and very helpful throughout the process was also regularly submitting my letters with an hour to go on the deadline) to present my application to the adcomm that was basically having a seance by some river and whose members looked like ringwraiths. post-application stress is no joke fam.
-
@Lukebw whoops, not sure how I flipped your and the OP's comments there. Congrats on the Brown interview! Did you know that there was going to be an interview process for that program? I've been getting questions from friends/family about whether I'll have interviews or not, and I honestly don't know because my program websites don't say either way.
-
@her_black_tights I agree with the other comments about sending updates as necessary without showing your frustration. I had the same problem with one of my LOR writers, where she thought she had submitted the letter but it hadn't gone through. It turns out that she didn't put her title in the right place on the submission form, so the letter wouldn't upload. If you can have her check again and make sure all of the other fields are filled out in addition to the actual letter, maybe she'll catch her mistake. Good luck to you!
-
@TakeruK thank you so much for your detailed answer! This is all really helpful information for me. To your question about school visits, I know that at least one of the schools I applied to has an open house event, and I've been put in touch with a graduate student in the program I've been admitted to already, so I hope to ask her these questions about funding and job prospects.
and thank you @rising_star for your comment. the distinction between departmental and individual professor reputation - and the impact of that distinction on academic vs. non-academic job prospects - makes a lot of sense. The school I've been admitted to so far is in the 10-30 bucket, but one of my LOR writers said that this program should be among my top 3 choices because of the professor I would work with (whose individual reputation elevates that of the department, as you described).
-
I'm hoping you all can provide some guidance on how to evaluate the reputation of a graduate program and how reputation should fit into my decision-making process.
I've applied to 5 PhD programs for the fall 2017 cycle: two are joint programs in social policy and sociology, two are in linguistics (and specifically sociolinguistics), and one is in second language education. I'm interested in linguistic identity and language policy, which is why I've applied to different kinds of programs. I've been admitted to the second language education program already, and am waiting to hear back from the others; however, I'm already thinking about how I'm going to decide among my options, assuming that I get in to one or more of the other programs I applied to.
The most nebulous factor in my decision-making process is reputation, both of the program and the faculty I hope to work with. I've also had mixed results finding information on the amount of funding available for students in each program/department (both in terms of tuition/stipend and research/conferences), admission statistics, and post-graduation placement for PhD students. I've taken a look at sources like U.S. News rankings, but ultimately those rankings aren't specific to the programs I'm interested in and only reflect what I already know about how prestigious Ivy League schools are. I've also tried figuring out how often faculty members are cited, but I haven't found that to be a super fruitful exercise. Otherwise, the only information I have about reputation and everything that entails (resources, job prospects, etc.) is from word of mouth, and I'm not super comfortable making a life-altering decision based on one person saying that x school is good for x topic.
Do you have resources that you've found helpful for thinking about a program's reputation? Is anyone else applying to similar programs and have thoughts on this? Should I really care about reputation, or do you think there's something else that I should pay more attention to? There are some other threads on program reputation that make me think that reputation is something I should be paying attention to, but there were some mixed opinions on that. I appreciate your feedback.
Fall 2018 Psych PhD Interviews (not clinical)
in Psychology Forum
Posted
Thanks @cindyboop! I was really nervous for my interview but it was actually super chill. I had my UCSD on Tuesday actually and it was also not awkward. Basically it was like hey, I see you have this thing in your personal statement, can you tell me more about that? Usually related to my honors thesis and research interests.
Then there was lots of time to ask questions about the program and the POI's lab/mentorship style, so I thought they were both mutually beneficial, and the conversation generally flowed easily. I'm also nervous about the on-campus interview situation, but it may also be good not to have the spotlight 100% on you? I feel like once you've gotten to that point you can be confident that the person likes you, so you can use that to be at least a little less nervous!