PsychApplicantFall2019

@Psych1234 I think that reaching out now would be totally fine. I was actually talking to a grad student at Harvard who had already submitted his app and then realized there was someone else doing cool work who he hadn’t put on the application. He emailed them and now he is at Harvard working with them! Reach out and talk to as many people as you can.

@ResilientDreams Although she didn't tell me a score, I think it was dismal, not just unimpressive. She said that the quant and writing were fine, but it was the verbal. She is not a native English speaker, and from her description, I think she kind of refused to learn the useless English words tested in the verbal section. I would also like to caveat that she was in no way a typical applicant, so I would take her particular experience with a grain of salt.

@higaisha I know a current graduate student at Harvard and my postdoc advisor did her PhD there. This is for cognitive psychology, not clinical, but from my understanding, it may be the same. Anyway, the individual has to agree to take you on, but I think they have very little sway when the admissions committee actually sits down to decide. The postdoc was telling me that applicants are ranked by the committee and then based on the number of slots there is available, the ranking determines who will be admitted. The postdoc did not have a good GRE and was actually applying to a lab where she was an RA, but the PI did not know whether she would be admitted or not. And, it wasn't that he wouldn't tell her. He actually did not know what the committee would decide. I don't know how much the process has changed, and I also do not know whether it is the same process for clinical.

I think that generally @brainwrangler is right with a few exceptions. Harvard does not have departmental interviews, so unless an individual PI wants to fly you out, they only do Skype interviews. Also, as others have mentioned, if it is difficult to fly you out because you are international, then it will just be Skype. But, I think at this point in the cycle, it is likely a preliminary interview.

One of the schools that I am applying to has a unique model in which you are required to work with two different professors. I had previously talked to a PI I am interested in, and when I followed up to tell her I had submitted, she explained the model of the department to me and encouraged me to talk to this other PI. I just finished that Skype. There were some lulls in the conversation, but I do think that it eventually got to the point where we were both excited about what we were talking about. So overall, I think the meeting went well. I know that for this program they won't send out formal interview invites until late January to early February. Something about this meeting destroyed my confidence, and I just kept cycling through my application deficiencies.

I finally did! That was a relief. I hope that everything works out!

I am still waiting for one of my letter writers to upload some of their letters, but I am honestly more stressed now than I was while I was working on the applications. I feel so restless.

@Oluwachristabel I think that submitting a first-author manuscript is the best option. I don't have one that is complete, so I have decided to submit a four page paper that I wrote for a conference which was requested instead of an abstract. I talked to someone who is grad school, and she said that she sent her NSF GRFP project proposal. I would submit something for a course as a last alternative.

Similar to @psychtobeme I thought that it would be nice to let them know that I had decided to apply there after talking to them. For a few of the PIs, it has been a couple months since we have spoken, so I wanted to reach back out and remind them to expect my application. I think for a lot of places it won't make a difference when they get to see my application. For instance, one of the PIs I emailed explicitly told me that a committee will review applications in early January and that the faculty will decide who to invite for an interview in late January to early February.

I have submitted the applications for 8 of my 10 schools. I have also reached out to all the PIs for the submitted applications to tell them that I have submitted. Then I have 2 more grant applications to submit. I am really hoping to be done with everything by Thanksgiving.

I am applying for Cognitive Neuroscience and am only applying to a few real neuroscience departments. One of which is MIT, which asks for the name of the textbook used in every course I have taken. I have no idea how to fill this out. With a tremendous amount of effort, I think that I could figure out the textbook for most of the classes, but I don't think there is any way to find it for every class. Any thoughts?

@Bd2018 I applied to Stanford. @Kylar I am applying to 10. 9 in the US and 1 in Canada.

I just wanted to add a piece of advice that I recently learned from my very intimidating PI. It is a faux pas to mention the name of the journal where your paper is under review because it has not yet been accepted. Essentially you are stealing credibility that has not yet been granted. Long story short, do not mention where your article is under review.

@pgt2018 I don't have it on my CV because my aim was to keep it as concise as possible. Two people who were applying last year for Cog Neuro (and got into very good programs) had it on their CVs. Something along the lines of "Applied for NSF GRFP Oct., 2018 decisions to be announced in April, 2019" The SOP doesn't seem to be the place to mention it unless it is very related to work you are currently doing. For instance, "I am investigating how X is represented in the brain. I presented these finds at X conference and submitted an NSF GRFP on a closely related topic." On whether it would help you: I don't know maybe, but do you really think that having applied to the NSF will make a difference between getting an interview or not? Highly doubtful. You could even just mention it in an interview. Long story short, I don't think it matters what you decide.

@pgt2018 I didn’t mention it. Some apps explicitly ask. You could also indicate on your CV that you’ve applied.

@gottagetthedata If it were me, I would just send the most recent score to all the schools. Others have said it before, but I think that as long as you have an alright GRE, it is not worth giving it any extra thought.

I like all of the recommendations for @Clinapp2017 but I wanted to add a couple of additional things. I think that at times, you may be too detailed about things that the reader may not care about. For instance "two-way between subjects ANOVA" is too specific. If you were doing a more complicated analysis method like principle component analysis or something, maybe that is something that you would want to show off in your SOP. Make sure that the details you are sharing matter. Further, the phrase "statistically significant" needs to be dropped from your vocabulary. Here is what I mean by that. If you make the claim "changing X feature about the stimulus causes a Y increase in reaction time," for example, that necessarily means that the results were significant. If the results were not, you could not make that claim. Thus, you can just say "I found blah blah blah."

I had chatted with a prospective faculty at a conference that I attended in September. We have been back in touch, and he has stated that he wants me to send him a project proposal. I am not at all ready for this. Definitely panicking.

@ResilientDreams What is the blog called? I am interested in following it.

From the people I have contacted, there has been a bit of variance between about a day to a week. I have had people not respond.

@hahowell I do not consider myself qualified to make an assessment on whether you would be competitive for PhD programs. However, I would like to suggest that if you think that you might not be competitive after talking to professors and the like, that you not do a masters. You are right that it is unnecessary, but beyond unnecessary it is very expensive. There are a lot of paid, bachelors-level research opportunities available in which you could make some money and gain invaluable experience all without having to do a masters. For example, you can look for lab manager postings, and the National Institutes of Health has a lot of research opportunities for people preparing for graduate school. You could even seek out these opportunities while you are applying for PhD programs and only take the offer if you were to not get accepted into a program.

I wanted to second this sentiment. Being well connected in the field goes a long way. This is something that prospective graduate students have some control over. Something else that goes a long way and may not seem entirely fair is a strong letter of recommendation from a "famous" faculty within the discipline. Perhaps, it is a bit of academic nepotsim, but that seems to be the reality. From my experience --albeit not entirely comprehensive--this is more likely to ensure admissions to a top program than a mid-tier first-author publication.

In years past, there has been a thread for Cognitive Neuroscience particularly. I have found some things about Cog Neuro to be a little confusing. Mainly because the discipline is not quite traditional psychology and also not quite Neuroscience. I am applying to mostly Psychology programs with a few exceptions. For example, MIT doesn't have a psychology department, so people doing Cog Neuro are in more of a traditionally organized neuroscience department with rotations and the like. Johns Hopkins has Cog Neuro faculty in both the Psychology Department and the Cognitive Science Department, which also has a mix of people doing linguistics and philosophy of mind. I thought that some camaraderie around this application cycle would be nice. Where is everyone else at? Where are you applying? What are your worries and concerns?

@FM2 I think everyone worries about not having enough publications, presentations, etc. I have even posted about it here, but I have tried to keep my insecurities at bay because the only way we will make it through is convincing ourselves that we are good enough to get accepted. Overall, you seem to have a great application, and I don't think that faculty will judge you more harshly because of an international degree. I have worked with many people who did their undergrad outside of the US. However, I am not sure of your immigration status, but some programs do have a limited number of slots for international students for funding reasons. For instance, one of my research supervisors was international when she was applying to graduate school and ended up turning down a top acceptance because they were unable to offer her assured funding throughout the program. She did end up going to another great program, so it isn't hopeless. It is just something to keep in mind and to ask questions about when you are interviewing. Good luck!

@EileanDonan I think that it likely will not make a difference at all in how your transcripts are viewed if you have a strong academic history. If you decide to change, use all of that extra time to be productive in your research. Best of luck!