rvavr

Would the folks who received invitations to interview for Florida State's Social Psych program please DM their POIs? Thank you!

Congratulations!

I can imagine how aggravating that is. Luckily you caught it today, so the person you emailed in the program will see your message before holiday break. Silver lining, I guess? I don't know. Keep your head up, though, and let us know how it turns out! I hope they understand and your letter writer knocks it out of the park to make up for the anxiety s/he caused.

I'm in that exact situation, having heard nothing from any program. It's so nerve racking. I keep thinking, how simultaneously relieving and insulting it might be to get an offer later than these rounds of interview invites I see going out. Of course I would leap at the chance to study in any of the programs to which I've applied, but the proud part of me still would like them to want me as a top choice. I've got a clear chance to grow where humility is concerned. Is the entire point of this application process just to turn us into a mess of feels? Because it's working.

You're absolutely right, I hadn't thought of that angle. It is very peculiar to offer information about the application process after the application's due. I'm very interested to hear what the graduate school officials have to say.

Preach.

I've applied for the (Social) Psychology PhD program at University of Kentucky, and this morning I received an interesting email. It was with regard to a webcast the graduate school is apparently hosting tomorrow, and how to participate. To begin with, here is the text from the email: Hello rvavr, We want to invite you to catch our webcast on College Week Live this Wednesday, December 20th. For your convenience, you can join in at anytime using your exclusive access link: . No registration is required! We will be available to answer questions live regarding our graduate programs, application process, funding opportunities and more from 7:00-9:00 AM and 2:00-4:00 PM EST. We hope to talk with you about your future as a University of Kentucky Wildcat! P.S.: We're social! You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram! Sincerely, Suzanne McGinnis Assistant Director of Admissions and Recruitment The Graduate School University of Kentucky So, this sets off a number of red flags for me that make me suspicious. First of all, isn't that extremely short notice to notify applicants the day before a Q&A session? Second, the text I wrote above is accurate. There really is no link after the colon beside "exclusive access link." Furthermore, all of the links in the email (denoted by the underlined text above) lead to pages on the site "uky.askadmissions.net." When I search this website in google, I get no results with this actual domain name. I don't even get any returns for "askadmissions.net." Speaking of fishy domain names, the third suspicious characteristic of the email is the domain name of the sender. It's addressed from come2uk@uky.edu. Okay, I guess that checks out - same domain name as faculty and staff at University of Kentucky. BUT, it comes from that address via iad01.hobsonsmail.com. That makes me a bit uncomfortable. I'm worried that this may be a malicious email in disguise. It looks awfully official, there are just some weird things about the email that set off alarm bells for me. Does this seem suspicious to anyone else? Has anyone else gotten similar emails from Kentucky (or other schools)? I've already forwarded the email to officials in the UK Graduate School - under the guise of seeking more information about the purported webcast - hoping that they will clear things up for me.

Thank you very much. Yeah, I'm getting the feeling that the process is pretty opaque to us - at least in part - because there's just a ton of ambiguity and variation in how each institution/department/POI does things. Congratulations on the VCU invitation, though. Best of luck when the day comes around! I know two recently-graduated PhDs from there who were very happy with the program.

Thank you for your kind words and advice. I'm really hoping I can avoid doing the master's first, for both the reason you said and for the extra time it will take. I'm married, and I already feel like continuing my education is placing a large burden on my spouse in terms of the delay in other life events it will require. I would be very happy not to have to add any more years to the process! I think I miscommunicated in my original post; I meant to say that I have been working for 2 years as a post-bacc RA. I've enjoyed quite a bit of productivity in part due to the fact that I have 11 bosses! I also have three years of experience from undergrad, but those only yielded good ol' fashioned null results.

Hey, congratulations! Where did you get the interview invite to? Unfortunately, I haven't heard from anywhere yet.

Hi everybody. My nerves have been crazy since hitting submit, so I'm joining the conversation to try and redirect that energy. Program of interest: Experimental Psych (depending on the program, folks I want to work with fall under either social or cognitive). Schools you have looked at: University of Kentucky, Florida State, UC Irvine, and Princeton. Number one worry about applying: My GPA in undergrad was pretty bad. I've been working as a research assistant for two years to try and balance my credentials, and I've got two publications and a slew of conference presentations to show for it. I also did fairly well on the GRE, but I'm afraid it won't be enough. Best of luck to everyone going through this process!