IOpener

I know a couple faculty at both that are good. The rankings online aren’t representative of programs and not useful at all. It is far more important to have an advisor who is top of their sub-field and is a good human being.

You will be asked more questions during phone interviews. If you get invited to campus, they are serious about you and know that you have the potential to be successful in their program. On-campus interviews are used to get a feeling for the fit between you and your potential advisor. Come prepared with good questions and talking points for each of the professors at that program. I was not prepared for my first on-campus interview. The first thing the potential advisor asked was if I had questions. I had expected him to ask me questions about my experiences or why I deserve to be in their program, and I was completely thrown off. My phone interviews were more about my experiences. @arewedoneyet provides good potential questions for phone interviews. I would recommend showing your specific interest in the professor too. Collaboration is good, but you want to show that you do have a specific interest and that the potential advisor would be a good match for those interests. My experience: I had 4 phone interviews and 4 on-campus interviews during my application cycle.

Penn state, USF, and Michigan State are some of the best in the country, so you may have trouble getting in with low GRE scores. There are a lot of other good programs that may still admit you.

From my experiences, IO psychologists heavily rely on the GRE and use it as a cut score. For example, some schools may take their stack of application and not look at GRE scores under the 75th percentile. GPA and class rank vary widely from university to university, whereas the GRE is the same for everyone. Since you're in a master's program, you may be able to argue for your previous performance as a grad student as more important than your GRE. Depending on the program, they may not look at your application due to the low GRE. Professors only have so much time and cannot look at 100+ applications. I would look at programs and find ones that list their cutoff scores or average GRE scores and find ones closer to yours. I don't know what stats exam you are referring to, but IO psych prefers A's in psych stats courses, or showing interest in stats by taking other stats courses or even grad level stats courses. Your experiences are very helpful. Volunteering isn't as useful to IO psych. IO psych doesn't usually use excel, and advanced stats (e.g. MLM, SEM) will likely use SAS, R, or mplus.

I’m in an IO PhD program, so I have seen both sides of the application process. You would be highly competitive for PhD programs. I didn’t have IO experience before grad school either. A masters in IO gives you more limited career opportunities and some programs make you pay the tuition. I have tuition waivers and a TA stipend for all 12 months. If you want to go academia, you need a PhD. If you want to go applied (and most in my program do), a PhD will let you do more and make you more money.

The current graduate students have been told that the program won't take new students. The Houston program has two new faculty members and the remaining professors took two students last year. New professors don't take students their first year. Houston's situation wasn't clear until this month. When I applied to graduate school, I didn't get replies from several schools and late rejections. The academic market for hiring professors is late Fall/early Spring, which affects incoming graduate students after they've already applied. Faculty and program situations change quite often and usually occur after graduate school applications. These situations are outside of a program or POI's control. In the Fall, programs and POIs may have fully expected to take students, but situations change.

Houston will not be accepting students this year.

GRE scores are very important. I have heard professors say they use them as the primary criteria. Research even shows GRE is highly predictive of graduate school performance (Kuncel et al., 2010). Similarly, IO psychologists are known for their quantitative abilities and graduate schools seek out students displaying mathematical aptitude.

I will be attending Houston!

Thank you! I heard from my POI today that I was accepted, and that the official acceptance letter would follow soon.

I applied to 13 schools, and a lot of people have questions about them. I provide my experiences with each school to answer some of those questions. Colorado State: interview weekend on 3/1-3/3 Auburn: Wait list Houston: interview weekend happened and acceptance letters sent out. UConn: Wait list Georgia: Wait list Old Dominion: interview weekend happened. No wait list/acceptance letters yet. University of Minnesota: Rejection letter sent out Michigan State: Rejection letter sent out BGSU: Wait list Penn State: No response Clemson: No response USF: No response Akron: No response