loffire

I believe that a lot of this in influenced by who knows you. So I do hope that your POI knows who you are and your LOR writer has introduced you. That said, in some schools a grad comm culls many of the applicants even before the respective POIs gets to see the application materials. But fingers crossed, you have someone part of the process who views your application packet with favor

Dammit, was hoping you could be my best friend and we could balling on yatches tearing it up hahahahah. Which field are you applying to btw? How'd your gres go? and yeah i'm almost done with my SOP for 1 school. I'll be using that as the base template and tweaking a para or 2 to cater to the faculty/prog of the other schools i intend on applying to. I'm involving my recommendation writers/advisors a lot this time. got a list of about 20odd schools and asked them for advice wrt which schools they think will be a good fit for me/i'll be a good fit for and also gonna send them my SOPs when I'm done. OH, protip I got from one of the faculty I emailed, try summarize write your research interests and the faculty you're interested in working with way early in the SOP (like para 1 or 2) and bold their last names. Cos sometimes the grad committee skims through and misses names in a great wall of text. Oh and if your deadline is nov 15, try to submit all applications by nov 1st. with our non-western name, the committee tends to have trouble matching out applications materials up. this gives you time to resend things if you have to. and feel free to send me your SOP man, glad to have a look. Any other international applicant? Holla at yo bois

I am as well. I dont consciously feel it much, but i'm not getting good sleep. I guess part of it is knowing that from my prev application to now, my profile has not changed much (apart from a manuscript in my cv going from submitted to published and adding another manuscript to submitted). I've thought through the process a lot more this year and started way earlier (last year i started working on applications in november lol). Nonetheless don't let the imposter syndrome get the best of you! You're good enough! like many others have mentioned before, it's a crapshoot process; just gotta keep at it (coming from someone who has applied twice before already hahaha ?)

Im applying from singapore! Are you a nigerian prince? (Is it too soon to make this joke? Hehe) fortunately for me, my degree is from an american university so i dont have to go through some of the processes. Have you emailed your pois (if your field calls for it?) And done with gres, toefl etc? My deadlines are nov 15, dec 1 and jan 15!

Same here. Generally 2-3days average. But i it varied from few hrs to never. Emailing the grad advisor 3weeks later helped remind those who didnt reply. But despite that, still some never replied

#nopressure hahahah

I think you've got quite a bit of research experience and you should upsell it in your sop and cv. Hopefully in your time doing research you were exposed to slightly varied topics, techniques and analyses. I would recommend retaking the GREs IF you have time. Regardless i think you should apply for PhD progs. CUNY and NYU tend to be competitive cos people like the allure of living in new york. you should mentally prepare yourself to apply again, but definitely apply to PhD (and a few master's?) programs you think are of interest this yr

wow you work fast! I'm still waiting to skype my advisors wrt the schools I've short listed hahahahahahah ?

Most of my replies were also "thank you", "please apply", and occasionally "i encourage you to apply"!

Applying from outside the US here! Not sure what wes is but more than glad to have a buddy in this Any others? Misery loves company More the merrier!

looking to see if there are more awesome people like you! hahah I might send you my newer version of my CV and SOP to review for this cycle. How is UVa btw!?

I realize there are sub threads for SOPs/GREs/LORs but none for CV review. I thought I'd start this so we could share CVs with one another to get feedback on how things should be phrased, arranged etc. Any one (perhaps already in grad school) willing to help look at noob CVs? ?

I had the same problem, I emailed the program coordinator/grad advisor and they gave me information or emailed the faculty members themselves probing them to respond!

If you don't mind me saying, clinical programs are super competitive. You might have a better shot examining these topics from a cognitive/social/community psych perspective. There are some schools that I vaguely remember seeing working on topics that overlaps with your interests. It might not be a perfect fit, but there'll be enough overlap to help you achieve your goals. Also I am in my 30s applying for the third time. So good luck to both of us! hahah

So just to update you guys, instead of bugging the faculty members again, I sought out the program coordinators/grad advisors to ask if they knew if the faculty members I was interested in working with were accepting grad students. I immediately got replies from POIs from one school, and the coordinator from another advised me on who were the faculty members who were accepting students and who weren't which was the more important question I needed answering (apart from feedback if they thought I was a good fit for their lab/program). Thanks for the input guys!

So using the advice found on the forum, I've emails almost all the POIs and got a good number of responses. I plan to email those who didn't reply again but how do I go about it. Do I just resend the e-mail and risk it going to spam, or do I edit the email to remind them they haven't replied? Also, I got a reply where the POI was interested, but she also recommended that I look at a number of others from other schools to see if i'd be happier there. " I'm not trying to get rid of you, but I want you to be placed in the idea environment for you". Which is suuuuuper nice of her but how do I address that especially since the people she recommended are also people I've reached out to already? ????

I think it depends on the methods the labs youre applying to tend to use. If the POI uses a sh*t ton of programming and computational stuff then you might need more. Best would be to email the POI and discuss fit (include your email detailing things you've down with your programing knowledge i.e. program an experiment. I emailed a POI who does social neuroscience with lots of computational stuff and he replied " It's great that you have some programming experience - that's a huge part of my lab." I think as long as you have some knowledge, it's an indicator that you can pick up heavier stuff.

Noice. How'd your skype interview go? was it last fri?

The forum's gone a lil quiet. Thought I'd bump it a little. So I've emailed POIs from all 30 schools from my first cut and most of them replied. Some had very short replies, some much longer. Based on those I've narrowed it down to 9 schools. Might cut it further. Most of them said we can discuss things at a later point (aka, get through the first cut then we'll see). One of the POIs wanted to have a skype call and she was super nice. I highlighted that I was worried that though my verbal and quant scores were pretty good, my awa scores were pretty low (4.0). She looked a little concerned, but mentioned that if my awa score is low, they'd refer to my SOP/Personal statement to see if my writing was truly rubbish. It also helped that we skyped, so she knows I don't have problems putting my thoughts into words. So for those in a similar situation, get your SOP out and bug people to read it to help your chances.

I guess the primary question would be: why do you want to do your PhD? Why not find a job and make money instead? I believe these questions need be answered first. I do think your experience is quite alright. You just need spruce your CV up to highlight your experience more explicitly and prove that your command of english is solid and that you can write well (especially since your AWA was 4.0)

Then it sounds like you have all bases covered! I would suggest contacting them now! that's what I'm doing hahaha. i had a list of about 23 progs that had POIs i was interested in, then culled some based on the interactions with them! Let me know if there's anything else I can help with (eg. CV or something.)

Thank you for accepting my honest feedback ? I say the things I say cos I think your profile is similar to mine. I graduated with a 3.6+ gpa as well. Though most schools state 3.5 as a min, the more competitive schools might very well have a higher unofficial cutoff (aka your application never reaches the POIs). Your GREs then have to be stellar. Some people say 310 is good. I think you might need 160ish for V and Q and probably a 5.0 for AWA. 1 publication is good! really sell your research experiences in your CV. last 2 times I applied I either failed to contact POIs or contacted them without including my CV in the email. This year I included my CV detailing everything I've done and have gotten pretty good replies. You probably also need little more research exposure. Not just running assays but like from scratch to finish, lit review, being involved in designing an experiment, running the experiment and collecting data, analyzing, writing portion of the manuscript. The more "intellectual contribution" to a research project. These are things I believe POIs are looking for. Then again I could be entirely wrong. I've applied twice without success so what do I know hahahahah ? TL;DR, You need to show you've been had intellectual contribution to research projects and when you contact POIs, find people who really do something you think would be a good fit, include your CV and get a discussion started. (doesn't need be exactly same. same theme different mechanism or something to that extent) I think you're off to a good start. So apply to those schools you mentioned (they're grrrrrrreat!) but also look at not so premium schools. like public/state colleges eg. SUNY colleges or like UC merced or something (those are just examples cos I have no idea what exactly your interest is or where they do what you wanna do. Feel free to clarify anything or ask further question. Also please use bowl of salt. kthxbai

I think that's the route to take. To explain how being afraid held you back and show how you've grown out of it and can handle grad school by giving examples.

Compared to last year, this year when I sent out emails I included my CV and did a short write up on my research interest as well as how I thought our interests aligned. I got much better responses. Sometimes I sent an email saying "Although I realize our research interests are not a perfect fit, I believe my research interests tie in with the overarching themes of your lab due to x,y,x." Hope this helps!

Competition should be steep and honestly I think they might be a bit of a reach, but no harm aiming for them. I would recommend looking at less competitive schools as well