C is for Caps Locks

Congrats! Now you're in the awesome place of being able to take a breather/enjoy the moment! You're going to grad school!

The struggle is real, but I'd fly across the world for an interview it in a heartbeat (although RIP wallet indeed).

That's a good point I think, while having geographic limitations is completely understandable, when applying to something as competitive as clinical psychology it's probably best to aim for a high number of applications (even when you look like a great applicant).

There are some really good labs/researchers that kind of combine evolutionary psychology and social psychology (University of Pennsylvania is definitely high up there and it's why I applied there). But what topics are you particularly interested in studying?

Ah, I see. I guess sort of what I figured was: If you apply to a social/personality POI, they're the ones who ultimately have to express interest in you, if you then also talk about working with one of the clinical POIs, then they (the social/personality POI) might facilitate a meeting or talk to said person about your research interests. For example (and apologies if it's a bad example), I talked to one researcher who does work that's mostly neuroscience, she however asked me if there's anyone else in the psych department at the uni that I'd like to meet when I interview there (essentially she phrased it as "is there anyone more social psych(y) that you'd also like to work with or talk to"). I think all of us need a lengthy vacation to recover after this cycle, I know that my mental state throughout the application process has wavered between great extremes.

Many departments I applied to seemed to have pretty different deadlines and interview dates depend on the focus, so if you applied to the social/personality to me at least it seems likely the dates won't coincide with the clinical people. Basically, I would assume whatever your primary "sub-field" is, dictates what dates to pay attention to (for example if you applied to a social/personality POI but also talked about working with some clinical people, I'd assume you'd still fall under social/personality in regards to when they'd be looking at your stuff).

Yep, that's what it seems to be so far for social psych. I've had one or two professors do pre-interview Skype interviews in which case he had six people before the Skype interview, and he invited 2 to visit (although he did say he has in the past not offered either of his in person interviews a place, but that sounded less common).

Thanks and sure, PM sent.

At least based on the interviews I have, the norm for social psychology seems to be that they cover travel costs up to a certain amount (for me it's ranged from $300-500, with one listing exceptions above that as possible if you email them if you can't get a cheaper ticket), some offered to put me up in hotels, while most offered to let me stay with a current graduate student. If they aren't willing to help you cover costs, I think they'll understand if you can't afford to travel cross country to visit.

Sure, sent it in a PM.

Thanks! As to contacting POI, I didn't actually contact most of my POIs (I emailed two people before sending applications in). In general, the advice I got from the professors I work with was that not contacting my POIs beforehand was unlikely to hurt my applications (my advisers cited people being busy, especially more famous researchers), and in general they seemed to feel that if a person didn't list if they were taking on grad students this cycle a quick "Are you accepting grad students?" email was the best option. On the flip-side some graduate students I talked to advised me that emailing people is usually a good idea, however, ultimately I decided to just focus on good personal statements/other application stuff. However, I did email a couple of faculty members that specifically requested that they be emailed if you were applying to them. One of those professors contacted me back and we've been corresponding via email for a couple of weeks (we also had a really nice Skype chat about research). Counting it out, I'm fairly certain I only emailed 2/15 professors and I've only corresponded with one of them (the other one didn't reply, but as @soccerplaya said professors especially at big universities are pretty much buried in applications and stuff to do, so they might just not have time to reply). *High Fives* I'm happy to see that this great forum has brought me to other potential UM people. ----- Sidenote: Forgot to mention in my first post, long time lurker (thanks to admins, mods, and past posters for all the great stuff found here), just wanted to post after the relief of getting some interviews and being accepted at a university.

I'm currently wrapping up my undergrad and a week or two ago I heard from the grapevine that at least some of the professors here hadn't even started looking at applications yet (I'm guessing they'll start when classes start on the 17th of January), so it might be a little bit longer until they start emailing people (although I can't make any guarantees). ------------- As to my own applications: Interviews (in-person*), all upcoming, with the universities comping my travel costs: University of Pennsylvania University of Texas at Austin University of Toronto University of California Irvine New York University *A couple of universities also seemed to do "pre-interview" interviews via Skype, but so far most of them have just called me to invite me to their interview/open house dates). I went kind of crazy with the number of schools I applied to (15), but there's so many great programs/researchers and I really want to keep doing research. For the remaining schools, I'm just waiting to see if I'll hear from any more (I figure more options never hurts). I also didn't have to interview but I was accepted to the PhD Social Psychology program (with a focus on social rather than personality type of work) at the University of Michigan with the PI I was most interested in working with, so that made my week/month/year.