Yiyu Liu

I'm a psychology student without much experience with neuroscience and I just received Duke CNAP interviw invitation. But I don't know the exact interview date as I'm an international student so they said in the email that they'll try to set a few skype interviews for me in January. I found that someone has posted interview invites from MIT, which makes me feel a little freak out. Would you mind sharing what division are you applying to? Cognitive Science or Systems Neuroscience? I'm applying to cognitive science and wish there's still a chance.

I'm applying to development psychology in C & P but I believe their pace should be similar.

Just a quick update. I talked to a PI through skype today at NYU and she said the notifications for campus interview will be sent by X'mas. Different division may have different pace but we can expect it to happen before January lol. Pretty much freak out now. Hope they'll invite me for a formal interview.

I also believe if I'm rejected by all the programs I applied to I'll retake GRE for next cycle as I did so badly on the writing section. But personally I think your math is fine. The psych department at Indiana University posted that they only require the Math and Verbal to be above 50% and I believe IU is already a very competitive program (psychology rank 17 on US news) . I have no idea why but schools never post their cut-off scores for the AWA section, which makes me even more worried.

Maybe you should remind your recommender to check the spam box? The link is sometimes blocked.

I've submitted 10/14 of the applications and my recommenders have submitted letters for 11 schools. Starting to get bored of revising PS and filling the application forms over and over.

I guess it really depends on the program you're applying. Most of the programs I applied to indicated they prefer to accept students whose interests overlap with multiple faculties in the department.

Thanks SunnySet, I guess you're right, the best way would be just email or call the office, as different schools differ on how they will treat multiple GRE scores. I've seen a few schools indicated that they will take the highest from each section and other schools indicated they will take the most recent. There are also a few schools doesn't put these kind of information on their website. BTW, I think you have a really solid GRE score. As long as you are not applying to quant/math psychology you are fine.

Given the information you provided, I would suggest the second unless the school indicated that they will take the highest from each section (then send both). I don't think there is much difference between 72% and 80%. But you really made great improvement on AW the second time.

Thanks Loffire, I see your point. I wish I could submit a writing sample, but most of the DDL is 12.1, which is very close. I only have some unrevised manuscripts. I guess if they are not good enough, then it's best I don't submit it. The only revised work I could provide is a poster. Meanwhile, I've already asked a professor to revise my SOP, write a letter and submit if for all 14 schools. So I don't feel it is good to take his time to revise my writing sample, especially when it is not required. From my experience, professors usually don't expect a Chinese student, or a student whose mother tongue is not English to get 5 AW like native speakers. And it is unreasonable for them to expect so. If you don't have an education in US, then 4.0 will not hurt your chance at all as long as you are not applying to clinical branch. A common sense is that for international student a solid score would be 325+4. But I'm not sure about 3.5, while I know 3.5 is okay for neuroscience, I'm not sure about other branches. That's why I'm so concerned. Also, even the AW score is not my biggest concern. I'm more worried about how they will look at my verbal score (153, rank 59%) for the first time. I'm just afraid they will take an average on my first verbal score and the second.

Hi guys at this moment I feel really freak out and appreciate any thoughts from you. I'm an international student and English is not my mother tongue. I already sent two GREs, as some schools said they'll pay special attention to the highest section when evaluating multiple GRE scores. I have a very weird situation. The first time for GRE I didn't prepare at all so I got 153 V 168Q 4.0AW. Then after half a year I took it again and made a great improvement on verbal, but I only got 3.5 AW given I really had nothing to say about politic issues. I remember the topic was about president. But in my country we are not ecouraged or allowed to talk too much about president. If you say sth. bad about president or relevant policy you'll probably go to jail. I just wasn't able to finish the issue part.So the second time I got 165 V 169Q 3.5AW. Thank god I'm not applying to clinical which is truly demanding on AW. I've noticed that the average AW score for my division usually lies right above 4.0 and Verbal around 158. I know some schools will generally take the most recent score while others tend to combine the highest. I sent multiple GRE scores only because I got 4.0 on my first test. But 153 V (rank 59%) is truly awful. Either taking the most recent or combining the highest will not hurt my chance. But I'm really worried how they will see my Verbal score for the first time. Will they pay special attention to the lowest score? Will they take the average? How will they evaluate my improvement from 153 to 165? Will high Verbal and high quant somewhat compensate for my AW? I'm really worried that my GRE score will cut me off in the first round and my PI even won't have opportunity to see my app. Other information: 810 GRE psych, 28 out of 30 in the Toefl writing section, PS well written ( A prof. and a post doc helped me revise it, both of whom are native. After revising the Prof. said it was good enough ). All the programs I applied to don't require writing samples at all and I haven't got time to revise my manuscript. I submitted a poster as supplementary work for some of the programs. I'm just worried I won't even make the first round because of my GRE.

As there are already clinical, school and social psychology threads on the forum, I think it maybe helpful to start a developmental thread. We could exchange any ideas and thoughts I applied to 14 and have submitted 6, and expect to submit another 4 or 5 this weekend. I applied to Stanford, UC-Berkeley, MIT, Princeton, Indiana Bloomington, Cornell, UVA, Minnesota, Boston U, Duke, Yale, UCSD, NYU and Illinois, all PhD programs. There is really no safe schools for me so I applied to a lot. This is the first time I'm applying and really hope I could get into any of them. Where is everyone applying? Have you and your recommenders submitted?

Thanks! I've submitted another two applications this week. Still 11 to go but I'll make it

I just submitted my first application, but there are still 13 to be done. In addition, I have a senior thesis to defend next week and 15 credits this semester. I'm just too tired at this moment.

Thanks! Your advice is quite helpful!

Hello everyone, a quick question: Some of the UCs require a Personal History-to state the diversity and how you've made through the underrepresented situation. However, I have a very plain life. I lived in my country (though not US) for my whole life, my parents paid for my school and I always get very good education. If there is something to mention, I took a gap year before going to University (as I didn't get into the best University in the country the first time) and I tried to work in the labs of America during the holiday to get better research training. Or maybe striving to be excel among those talented peers has always been stressful. But still, those experience are not surprising. I'm just curious what words should someone like me put in the personal history? Appreciate any thoughts from your guys!

I agree with some previous comments that you are putting something too detailed. People won't really care about it. Say, instead of going into details of what you find, it is probably more helpful to talk about what you learned from this experience, and how this experience could help you specify your interest and succeed in your career. In addition, you are saying something like, after a couple of semesters (2 years?) you went into a lab better suited to your interest. It seems a little weird and you didn't really clarify it. Why you're interested in A but spent 2 years doing B? How did B help you in shaping your interest and skill set? Furthermore, I also agree with previous comment that it is not necessary to devote a paragraph talking about what you learned during the SPSS course. The statistics you mentioned are actually very basic, which won't make you stand out. If you really would like to talk about your statistical analysis ability, a better way is probably reflecting your statistic skills in your research accomplishments. For instance, " With the statistics I learned on XX course, I was able to analyze the data we collected in an appropriate and efficient way. " This should be informative enough. All in All, faculties care most about our competence and motivation in pursuing a PhD degree. To Specify: 1. What did you learn and what kind of skill set could you bring to their program? 2. Why did you choose to do PhD? What do you plan to accomplish while there? What is your ultimate goal after graduation? 3. How your past experience shaped your interest? These questions shouldn't be condensed in one graph, but you want to make sure each of the sentence you are writing is not irrelevant. If you find words does not address any of those questions, go ahead to drop it! English is not my native language so I won't be able to help you reword it, but these more general ideas I learned from faculty and PhD students are helpful anyway, and is exactly what I would like to share with you. I'm also applying this fall as an undergraduate student. Best luck for both of us

Thanks for your feedback! And I quite agree that SOP is especially important. Actually I revised it a couple of times before I sent it to an US professor for a review. And he frankly told me there were so much to critique. Then following his advice I revised it for another couple of times and hopefully he'll find it better. In general, faculties care most about our competence, motivation and our career goal. They are the things that must be reflected in our SOP. As international students, it is also helpful to bug native speakers to revise our language. Best luck for you!

I think you are already really ahead so if you feel mentally exhuasted it doesn't matter you take a few hours off to get refreshed, like watching a movie or grab some delicious food somewhere. It's only a month from my first DDL and I still haven't started to fill in the forms. But I don't feel seriously bad as I know people who haven't got their school list yet. While it is not good to procristinate, taking time to get refreshed is not a waste of time at all. As for the PS, I usually write a general description of my research experience (it may be adapted a little according to different programs though) and in the end list a few PIs that you would like to work with. To my understanding, it's necessary to describe what the PI's interests are and how they relate with yours (probably longer and more comprehensive compared to what you wrote in the email), and maybe why you like the general environment of this program. So a easy start could be read a few papers of each PI and then try to summarize their work and describe the overlap in a few sentences. Then when you really feel motivated to write the PS you could bring these clips together. Hope this helps

I guess it really depend on the PI. In fact most of the PIs I contacted doesn't mind my undergraduate status but one implied that she prefer post-bac experience. I also have a friend applying to social psych who said that she has a PI require post-bac experience. In China's labs we don't have a position called "lab manager" or "lab coordinator" (yeah it's very different) thus I have no idea how important it is to have experience being a lab manager. But it is a good sign that at least most of the PIs we connected doesn't really mind our undergraduate status. The professors I worked with do suggested me really consider those private schools (usually more funding) and international-friendly schools. That's why in UC systems I only applied to UCSD(usually more international-friendly) and UCB (which I really would like to have a try).

The third person applying for developmental psych PhD in this thread. I'm currently soooo stressed on my application. I just sent the first round of emails to PIs a few days ago. Currently haven't finalized my PS and hasn't even started to fill in the application. I have three professors who agreed to write LOR for me but I haven't asked them yet to start write them. I spent the whole summer and the early September on a very difficult EEG project (had to learn a lot of math, realize a very novel algorithm in code, do statistics, make posters and do presentations) that's why I started so late. It's only a month to the DDL I think I really have to speed up. More about me: I'm an international student, currently a senior undergraduate and apparently this is my first cycle of application (hopefully it's also the last one). I'm interested in the general mechanisms of learning in infancy and childhood (especially social-cognitive) and have a quite quantitative-heavy experience. List (all phd): Stanford, UCB, MIT, Havard, Princeton, IUB, UCSD, Virginia, Cornell, Duke, NYU, BU, Illinois. I know they are all very competitive programs and I didn't initially aim for that. But given my recent interest, I simply don't have more options. For some reason I would like to have a PI who is interested in the mechanisms of learning in infancy and childhood (which means he/she should be in the developmental track) but have extensive experience in programming (infact some of the PIs received their PhD degree in Math/Computer Science). And I really would like the program has rich devices (e.g. eye tracker, EEG cap for both infant and adult, neuroimaging devices). I reviewed tons of schools and found that only the school listed above features both quantitative-heavy PIs and rich devices in the developmental track. Things not so worried about: 1. My GPA and my undergraduate school (I'm in the top 2 University in China, it ranked only 30 on QS though). I have over 3.7 GPA general and near 3.8 major GPA (ranked top 8% in my program). Though it is far from excellent but I assume at least it will not get in the way. 2. My general English Skill, I have 109 TOEFL which is beyond the requirements for international students whose native language is not English. 3. My research experience. I worked in a lab of my home University for two years. I did a honors thesis and another small project there. That lab mainly do behavioral studies. I also spent over 3 months full time in a lab in US helping with all aspects of eye tracking (e.g. idea brainstorming, AOI coding, programming novel tools, general data analyzing) and established a very good relationship with the PI there. The summer in 2018 I worked in another lab in US doing a more independent EEG project (the one I talked above). Literally these experiences are very intense as I had to learn the technique in about a week and then start to program novel methods for data analyzing. I do have research experiences in addition to those listed above. 4. My LOR. I have 1 letter from my home University. Though my professor is not that famous internationally but at least she published a lot of papers in top journals and is the best of the field in China. She knows me very well. The other 2 letters are from US, they are from the professors who have really established their name in the field in top programs. I believe they all should say quite positively about me. 5. My Math and Computer Science skills. In addition to statistics in psychology (e.g. t-test, ANOVA, different kinds of regression) I have a few really advanced math courses. I also took a few CS courses. I usually program my own experimental stimuli and sometimes novel tools for data analyzing. 6. My psych GRE (I ranked 99% on that two years ago) but I don't think it would be useful as I won't apply to clinical programs. Things worried: 1. My GRE. The first time I got 153 V 168 Q and 4.0 AW (I only looked through the OG and didn't really prepare for it). The second time I got 165 V 169 Q but only 3.5 AW. I don't think my writing is seriously bad but the thing is I don't have a taste at all for politic issues. This is a culture thing. I learned that American students really care about politics but this is not the case for Chinese students so I panicked when I saw the issue part and wasn't able to finish it. I have no idea whether my high verbal and the writing score in the TOEFL test (I got 28 out of 30 on writing) could compensate for my low AW. I know people would consider my international status (most Chinese people got 3 , 3.5 or even 2.5 and they still got into programs in US) but 3.5 is not competitive anyway. I got this score a year ago and then I really practiced my writing skill. I wrote a lot of reviews, proposals and manuscripts in English. I don't know how I could reflect my effort in writing though. 2. My international status. Due to the current funding cut, some programs (especially UC systems) are not willing to recruit international students (the psych program in UCLA won't take any international students at all) as they have to pay double the tuition for any international students according to the policy in California. I don't know whether schools other than UC systems are in similar situation. 3. Short of publications and presentations. It's another cultural thing. Chinese students don't have as much opportunities to go to conferences as American students. For instance I wouldn't know SRCD at all if I hadn't worked in the labs of US. I currently only have a 15 min talk given at a developmental conference in China. And I submitted two abstracts to SRCD in August. But the poster session will be next year. I also don't have a publication yet as I don't want to have a work published in low IF journals (IF<2) and I currently don't have the form of work which could be published in child development, plos one or cognition. So currently only a talk and two potential posters. 4. my undergraduate status. Some PIs apparently would like to take students who had a master degree or served as a lab manager. They would like students to have post-bac research experience before applying. I don't like them to judge people on how many years they worked in the field though. I really tried to grasp any opportunity and made the best use of my time. But still, professors may judge me because I have less than 3 years of research experience. Hope everyone end up in where they should be and best luck of this application cycle!

I took this test when I just turned a sophomore and got 810(rank 99%) and I think I could answer your question. I spent approximately 3 weeks for it. But consider I'm an international student and I had some difficulties with English terms, you could crack it in a even less time if English is your first language. First I would suggest cracking the GRE psychology and Kaplan. These two books should be given more concentration. Memorize the summary and carefully go through all questions. Make sure you understand every question on it. If you have additional time, I would suggest going through a introductory book of psychology, a developmental psychology and abnormal/clinical psychology. You don't have to go into details, just go through them will help you a lot. As you know, GRE psych include only multiple choices so you can rely on your implicit memory Good luck and take it easy!

I'm applying to cognitive development and it could be either in the psych department or in the cog department. Is there any differences for writing sample in the fields that you're applying to?

Hi everyone, I just noticed many schools require writing samples but they do not release much specific details about them. I wonder how "serious" those writing samples should be. I haven't got any published papers yet, with only an honors thesis and a few reviews (those were written to meet the course requirement) in English. Also, as my mother language is not English I don't assume I could write as good as native speakers for now. Does anyone have any related experience or suggestions? Thx very much!