letssee

I accepted an offer at Georgia Tech! Very excited to start next fall.

I felt like I had asked most of the questions I had for the faculty during the interview process, so after the offer I focused on talking more to current students. Both of my offers were at programs where I felt like I had good interpersonal connections/research fit to my potential advisor. So although that's obviously extremely important and factored into my decision, I really wanted to consider general culture and the student experience. What jobs have recent graduates taken? Are faculty members supportive of people who are considering going into industry? Last one is obviously only relevant if you're considering industry positions What do you do for fun? Kind of an indirect way of asking about the work-life balance. Plus it's a good way to get ideas of what type of things are fun to do in the area and you might find someone with shared interests/hobbies. How many hours a week do you ACTUALLY spend on your assistantship? Most people will be very upfront about this. In my case I was glad I asked because it reassured me that the program is fairly strict about keeping it contained to 20 hours a week and that TA duties etc. don't take away from research or classes. Is it realistic to live on the stipend? Obviously no one's living in luxury on a PhD stipend, but being able to get a better idea of the financial side of things is important before accepting an offer. You don't want to move to a new city and then realize the COL is higher than you thought it'd be. This is something you could probably also find out online, but it never hurts to get firsthand opinions from someone who's doing it right now. Do people in your cohort ever hang out together outside of work? Again this is personal preference, but I wanted to be in a program where students are actually friends. Granted you should have friends outside grad school as well, but I wouldn't want to spend five years working with people I couldn't hang out with at least occasionally. Honestly, the current students I talked to were all very candid. If you want to know something, ask them! I didn't get the sense that they were trying to hide anything, and I think that that's something you can just kind of pick up on. The general atmosphere at a campus visit is very telling to me. Are these people happy to be spending their day with prospective students? Do they seem genuinely excited about you being a potential new member of the program? Do they seem to get along easily with their advisors (a good hint of how that professor might treat you in a year)? Overall, do you feel like this is somewhere you'd be happy? I think that's probably the question I asked myself at the end of the day. The best advice I got from someone during one of my visits was this: Go somewhere where you like the people. Good colleagues and advisors will get you through times where you don't like the work, but a passion for your subject matter rarely makes up for people that make you miserable. Hope this helps! Best of luck choosing your program, and feel free to PM me if you want to chat more.

If anyone is on the waitlist at Virginia Tech, I declined my offer there (with some sadness, I loved the program) so hopefully you'll get good news soon!

Hahaha, I'm for sure gonna hear that song in my head for the rest of the night. I really wasn't expecting to get more than one acceptance if any, so this was not a situation I had prepared myself for at all.

I'm taking my name off of DePaul's waitlist. Also, I have one more campus visit coming up this weekend and then I'll be deciding between my top two choices. Hopefully that means I'll be able to accept an offer by the end of next week, but it's such a tough decision. I'll definitely post here which offer I'm declining as soon as I decide.

My thought is I probably didn’t get in lmao. No but seriously I’ve seen a couple people get interviews, idk what professors they applied to but at this stage in the season I feel like no news is usually bad news. Anything could happen though I guess.

Not who you replied to but from personal experience, I used my personal statement to express this! I think the important thing is to emphasize the positives rather than focusing on any negatives (not that a B in stat is terrible or anything, but you get my point). For example, my GRE quant was mediocre (62nd percentile). I didn't bring this up in the statement (no need to remind them about it lol), but I went into detail about my experiences applying stats knowledge to the research process. My letter writers also asked me if there was anything specific I'd like them to highlight, so I asked the professor in charge of my lab to discuss my involvement with statistical analysis.

Hi! I definitely think you should apply. Obviously no one can really guess where/whether you’ll get an offer, but I think you have a shot. Some people will probably say your research experience section is smaller than ideal, but I only worked in one lab for 3 semesters and I have 2 offers so far. I think it’s just as important to be able to articulate what you got out of the experience as anything else. Definitely make sure that you’re forming a close relationship with both of your research supervisors, because good rec letters will help you out a lot. Your overall GPA is a little low, but you can offset that with a strong GRE score. Have you taken any stat courses? If so, it helps to emphasize them because quant abilities are important in I/O. Personal opinion on this may differ, but I think it’s ok to briefly mention in a personal statement that you became interested in I/O later in your undergrad career. NOT from a perspective of making excuses for less experience or anything like that, but giving it as context to show how you then immediately dove headfirst into research and learning more about the field.

As others have said, it depends on the program. Anecdotally, Virginia Tech had their interview weekend Feb 8-10 and said they hope to have initial offers out by the end of this month, then secondary offers depend on if they have declines/how long those people (if any) hold onto their offers. I don't have much other experience with post-interview processes, but that seems pretty reasonable to me.

I haven't heard anything from Clemson! Didn't apply to Auburn so not sure there.

Virginia Tech had their visit/interview day this past weekend!

Waitlisted at DePaul for I/O psych. Possibly taking my name off the list, waiting to hear from other schools

What did they say about their acceptance pool? Just stats? (if so would love to know those!)

How did you find out??

I haven't heard anything from Penn State!

Would the UNC Org Science poster on the results page be willing to give any more details on the interview process? Was it a phone/skype interview or was it in person?

For anyone who applied to Georgia Tech- I just got an email saying that my official decision will be available online after 5PM Eastern time tonight. Might be worth it to check your emails!

I am!

Sorry to add to the list of people asking this type of question, but has anyone heard from Georgia Tech's PhD program? Or DePaul?

Do you know how long ago Penn State sent interview invites?

This really helps, thank you! The questions you were asked are fairly similar to what I've been preparing for, so that makes me feel a lot more confident. These are some great questions, thank you! He did mention he'd spend a few minutes talking about the background of the program, so hopefully that'll be a good place to gauge how formal the rest of the interview will be.

Hi everyone! I have a 45 minute phone interview coming up on Friday for an I/O PhD program and I'm looking for some general advice and feedback on my preparation so far. My current list of prep items includes: re-read personal statement to be able to expand on it/refer back to the "why I'm interested in the field" question create elevator pitch about my writing sample (research proposal- it was only a term paper so it wasn't intended to be executed as a full experiment/study, but it represents my topical interests well) go over POI's recent papers/faculty page and get familiar with the general outline of that info look through program website for curriculum and see if I have any questions about that My questions for you lovely people: Am I missing any critical step that helped you prep for a phone interview? How formal have phone interviews been for you? Are they more standard questions about your qualifications/experience, or did it seem more intended to determine personal fit? What types of questions did you ask/wish you had asked/would recommend asking as a current student? Right now I'm planning on asking about summer opportunities (internships, continuing to work on a professor's research, working on independent projects, etc.), and what types of projects might be coming up in this POI's lab soon. I appreciate the time you guys spent to read this! Really, any experiences or insight about what to expect would be super helpful.

I haven’t heard anything! Data from the results page in the past couple years had them giving interview invites 1/13 and 1/19, so based on that I would bet we might hear something by this Friday or early next week! I’m very anxiously awaiting any news, lol.

We have Penn State, George Mason, Colorado State, and Clemson in common, I haven’t heard anything either! I’m not sure if you’ve looked at data from past years, but those should start notifying soon I think (except Clemson obviously lol since their deadline is the 15th). The results section had Penn State notifying about interviews on 1/13 and 1/19 for 2017 and 2016 respectively. Also, based on their websites I think we’ll hear back from George Mason and Colorado State around February 1st!