kalman_gain

It is absolutely not too late to decline, and as you correctly note , ranking is unfortunately important (and the reasoning isn't as simple as "it's a top school"). Don't let anyone say it's too late to do something that might ultimate help in achieving your goal. That doesn't mean I'm saying; yes absolutely take back your response because the school isn't as strong. What I am saying though is this, if you accepted this offer for fear of not starting your PhD this coming fall and thought that you were settling with this choice, then I believe it's best to go back on your decision.

The program is interdisciplinary, most students work across two labs. You're right they are computationally oriented but they do their best to get everyone up to speed, this includes a math bootcamp that's required of incoming grad students to attend in August before the PhD begins. In terms of student happiness, I get the sense that it's what you make of it. If you try to be social and kind, you know like a decent human being you'll have no problem making friends, and having a good friend group will count for a lot in graduate school, especially given that the town is rather small.

cry

To everyone who is worried about GRE scores and whether or not some schools would even consider you as an applicant if you don't have a score above threshold X, please treat yourselves better throughout this time and pay little mind to those who would have you believe that it's either a great GRE score or failure.

Not at all, I remember when friends applied last year, the one that got a skype interview didn't end up getting an invitation to the interview weekend, and the other who didn't get a preliminary interview did. There might be a number of reasons a prof wants to have a prelim interview, for example two completely different reasons: a.) POI who is working ahead of schedule and is really excited about an application b.) POI who thinks the applicant is "on the fence" and wants to get a measure of the applicant before extending a formal interview

check cog neuro profs that look into topics like reading, a bunch research autism

Hope this doesn't offend you but you sound rather entitled. You specifically said "I'd just like to help with what is needed", apparently that's data entry. If you don't want to do that then maybe go back to trying the directed study with this lab, don't give up on it if no one helps you. (To be fair I don't know the context so maybe you've stuck with it for a while before finally giving in). If data entry is what you're stuck with then make it into a learning experience for yourself - qualtrics has an API which can allow you to figure out a way to programmatically perform the data entry. This would be great since then it'd drastically reduce the probability of error during entry, then having come up with your fancy new way to enter data you can show it to others and teach others in the lab, which I'm sure would def up the interest in your membership in the lab. In additional you'd have taught yourself how to program (if you don't already know), and further still - now you have a valuable skill to take into your graduate studies if that's the plan.

You might be able to apply to a program in your area of interest (developmental, cogneuro, what have you) and join the lab of a professor who is listed as "clinical faculty", which would allow you to do research on clinical populations without having to do all of the intensive clinical work. But yeah, I have a friend currently in a clinical program and it's an insane amount of work given that you have to do research on top of the clinical aspect

alas, the word traditional now == sexist

Aha, what an embarrassing typo on my end considering it's your Alma Mater, *UCSD. I'm primarily interested in working with two people there though they are unfortunately in different departments...which is a bit of a head scratch. One is in the psychology department while the other is in the cognitive science department. Thanks a ton for the offer! To answer your question, my post-grad position is paid. I've actually been in two labs over these 3 years(concurrently), I'm happy to answer general questions about post-grad research / pre-gradschool research. You should definitely keep searching! There are definitely more places.

hmm, a first look at my competition *glares*. I kid, of course, best of luck!

Woohoo! applying to psychology phd programs in the fall, at the sake of my sanity, confidence, self worth.... My current list of schools consists of: definitely applying to: USCD, BU, NYU, Princeton, Brown, UC Berkeley maybe applying to: U of Wisconsin, Harvard, MIT As for what information I may provide to programs so that they hopefully deem me worthy(of at least an interview?); 2 years undergraduate research, 3 years post-grad at a university. My technical skills are the bomb, I think, but how would they know that? They wont. *cries*. 3.6 GPA, GRE: 170Q, 164V, and a 5 on the writing score. 1 second author publication (but not at all in a high impact journal), 2 second author publications currently in review at much better journals. 2 poster presentations at conferences. Although TBH, I've always been very border of the line about if I think conference presentations are worth much for graduate school applications. I believe, well I hope I can get strong letters of recommendation, writing my SOP will be a struggle but one worth going through I suppose(I had better suppose).