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paraent

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Everything posted by paraent

  1. i didn't get any structured questions, but i was definitely asked repeatedly to remind interviewers about my background (i went from door to door)
  2. A recent study I read found that, controlling for everything else, prestige matters about twice as much as gender. Think about how much you think it matters for your career that you're a man rather than a woman, or vice versa. Prestige matters about twice as much as that.
  3. Can't help but uselessly wonder if yield rates are likely to be higher or lower for initial admission offers compared to waitlist admission offers? The former (initial admits are more likely to yield than waitlisted admits) would suggest poorer odds for people on waitlists, because a higher share of deflation in mean yield rate would be from waitlisted people turning down offers. The latter (initial admits less likely to yield than waitlisted admits) would mean the opposite. On the one hand, if someone gets an offer right off the bat, that means the professor considers them an especially good match with their goals for their lab and overall "style" and that probably means the person admitted is more likely to feel the same. On the other hand, an applicant who gets an off-the-bat offer at one spot is more likely to also be getting offers at other locations and so has more room to turn down offers compared to waitlisted applicants. Waitlisters are likely poorer matches with the department in question but are also probably more likely to have fewer other options. Not necessarily very many fewer, though - they were waitlisted rather than rejected, after all. Guess I'll call it even and go do something useful with my time instead of obsessing over my waitlist spot haha
  4. It’s only a little window, but UPenn, a school I’ve been eyeing that generally ranked in the top 5 or 10 in practically every area, reports on their website that it tends to admit 15-20 students a year to fill an entering class of 8-12. The math works out to suggest that yield rates reliably land between 40% (20 offers for 8 spots) and 80% (15 offers for 12 spots), and they're presumably careful not to extend more offers than what they’re sure they can carry. This suggests a substantial role for the waitlist even at the most influential and well-funded programs.
  5. Funding is most important. I can't do grad school if it ain't free. Then research, because that's the whole point. Then advisor, the how to go with the why.
  6. grad programs need to be more open about the extra fellowships they offer, especially the ones for minorities; i should hear before i apply rather than after i get in that i'll get an extra $5k at this school for having background X; stuff like that greatly colors whether I'll think a particular program is financially worth it or not
  7. Congrats, dude! Honestly, I suspect that a rejection for me would be for the best. I match with a less prestigious program and advisor better. At the same time, if Penn gave me an offer I dunno what I’d do, haha.
  8. hate to say it, but my top choice probably wasn't the right pick for me anyway; i've got much better odds of succeeding in this other program that might be less prestigious or less ideal locationwise but matches my research interests and background better
  9. changes to windows 10 over the last few years and programs like MobaXTerm make unix-based operations just as or even more easy to use on a pc compared to a mac
  10. Honestly? Ask the POI / make your intentions known before you volunteer. There's no downside to being straight-up here.
  11. If I had the choice, I'd pick Philly. It's much cheaper to live there and that your stipend there is *higher* relative to the DC one aggravates the difference. Not sure how big a load the contact hours requirement is, though.
  12. I was also interviewed w/ UPenn at the end of February (like the 22nd, actually). I'm reasonably sure offers haven't gone out yet for my program (Psych), and am also sure that they're due within the next couple of days.
  13. Found some data on stipend sizes: http://www.phdstipends.com/results?fbclid=IwAR1nxViF_Ko9a_780FvnTNJh7_FoEXPKqon-wYngEmsLqV6cBzYFNEkCdM4
  14. paraent

    Nashville, TN

    I wanna know what life without a car is like in Nashville. If I came, I'd be turning down some of the most walkable cities in the country and would love to read someone telling me that it's NBD haha. I don't even have a driver's license!
  15. If you were looking to do a research career, I'd recommend searching for a RA/lab manager/etc position in a reputable lab before applying to graduate school, regardless of your specific likelihood of getting into a graduate school this fall. The extra experience would get you into more reputable grad programs with better funding imo. But I have no idea what the priorities/opportunities in clinical psych are. Either way, I'd say your odds of getting into a program this fall are not bad at all.
  16. I have the Microsoft Surface Book (bought the original version refurbished when I started my RA position 2 years ago). I've used a lot of different computers, including macs and more powerful pcs, but besides being light/small, having a beautiful screen, and top tier wireless connectivity, its pen and tablet mode paired with Microsoft OneNote has totally replaced my notebook (and habit of printing pdfs), providing an ideal space for just sitting down and *thinking* (or reading) about stuff, beyond the coding/writing tasks typically done on computers. At least in my niche, either data analysis isn't very intensive at all, or programs that *do* use intensive data analysis (e.g. cognitive neuroscience, which often depends on performing complex analyses on high-dimensional data sets) tend to maintain computing clusters that run all the computations for you faster than any reasonable laptop might. More broadly, computing these days has become much more cloud-based. Activities like reading, organizing, and preparing papers, writing and executing code, and so forth all happen more and more often in your web browser or otherwise remotely instead of on your own system. In this context where it's not so important to vest computing power in your own system, what's important? I'd say that it's a fast and comfortable interface with remote resources. You want a very good and fast internet, a screen that's sizeable and easy on the eyes, a responsive/comfortable keyboard, etc. I also prioritize portability, and have shed a much more powerful but bulkier laptop because a smaller laptop with poorer performance but better ergonomics did a better job. Oftentimes, the experience is actually most seamless with a desktop paired with a good/big monitor or set of monitors and keyboard. In this sense, the laptop just complements that by replacing the desktop when you're on the move. So I prioritize portability even more because of that. One added functionality that I've additionally prized is being able to use my laptop as a notebook for taking notes, thinking through problems, or annotating papers/books! It's critical for science work imo and until I had the system I had now, I had to rely on less seamless alternatives - like paper or separate tablets requiring me to spend more time transferring information, printing/scanning things, or being dissatisfied with tech not really designed for the stuff I was trying to do. That's why I sprung for the surface book instead of a mac or other windows-based laptop. I think that the surface book is an amazing device; it's totally transformed my relationship with technology and ideas in general. The surface pen is the first I've used to actually feel *better* than using an actual pen on paper, and with Microsoft OneNote it's totally replaced my collection of Moleskins. Now that there are a lot of tools to interface Windows with unix/terminal systems (there's the Linux Subsystem for Windows, and more than that, Moba XTerm, which imo is better than any terminal tools I've found for the MacOS), I feel like I can recommend the surface book and devices like it wholeheartedly to anyone who'll listen.
  17. recently heard (on twitter) that david badre, yael niv, ken norman, russel epstein are all newly looking for research help; ill post more names as intel comes in
  18. Agree that wherever you apply, you should email the relevant people, too. At very least you’ll get quicker responses.
  19. imo that's very particular to the poi and your relationship with them
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