CozyD

Really general advice since this is a really general question: It's possible, but challenging! I got a BA in Creative Writing in 2009 and started a Ph.D. in Social Psych in 2019. Along the way, I got a post-bacc in psychology, found a way to do some work as a research assistant, presented at a bunch of conferences, got a couple academic publications, and got involved in non-profit work related to my field of study. So when I applied to grad school, I could tell a clear story about my interests, show that I was genuinely interested in studying this field, and show that I could succeed in grad school. But it also took me a long time to make such a big change in academic interests work. You definitely don't need to do the exact same combination of things that I did, but doing things like this stuff can help a lot. Overall, you need to be able to tell a clear story about who you are, what you've done up until now, and how that sets up to succeed for the things you want to do in grad school.

A couple general ways to find programs: - Pull up the top programs in the general field, find the faculty directory, start opening and reading profiles. - Read articles related to your interests. Look at who is writing them. Look those people up and see if any are faculty at schools with grad programs. - Go to conferences/events related to your interests and pay attention to who is doing work related to your interests. Talk to them.

I'm sorry, that really sucks! I can't imagine that there's any chance of getting into a new program for Fall 2020. Most applications were due months ago, most decisions were finalized weeks ago, and a lot of schools suddenly have way more funding problems than they did 2 months ago. It's also generally really difficult to transfer credits in Ph.D. programs. Occasionally a program will let you count a course you took somewhere else for their requirement, but in general Ph.D.'s are much less about the number of credits and much more about fulfilling the specific classes that program thinks you should have. I do not have any great suggestions, but maybe: Check your admission offer? (If you got promised more funding when you accepted there may be some recourse in this situation.*) Ask around if there are any other funding opportunities at the school, like maybe another professor with a research assistant position? Ask if there's any way to get a masters degree on your way out? Do some hard thinking about whether you're willing to take out loans to self-fund until you can secure funding again? (This is probably a bad idea!) Think about what you might want to with a year out of school while you re-apply to start somewhere else? [*Just want to note somewhere here for anyone reading this who hasn't started a Ph.D. program yet that you should really think hard about how you are going to fund your Ph.D. all the way to the end of getting the Ph.D. before you decide to start a program. It's usually a bad idea to go to a school if they aren't promising at least 5 years of funding.]

If they can email you from a university email address, that's great. Extra great if you can verify on a public university website or directory who that email goes with. This might be a little much, but you could also try verifying through some kind of university office/admin who they are. I rented a place from across the country and found it reassuring that a person was willing and able to give me a virtual tour of the house by carrying around their laptop.

If you're still waiting to hear back from programs you might prefer, don't accept until April 15th. Send them a polite and clear email saying that you are excited to be accepted but are waiting to hear back from other programs before making a decision. The whole point of the April 15th deadline is that you get to wait until then to make a decision. One reason they probably want to know is so they can offer that spot to someone else if you're not accepting. It helps them if they can offer that spot to someone else before April 15th, after which that person is more likely to have already accepted a spot somewhere else. If for some reason you are waiting to hear back from programs you're probably not interested in anyway, then maybe you should accept the offer you got and withdraw your other applications. That could help all the schools make their decisions about who else to accept. Sometimes you can also piece together that the schools you're waiting on aren't actually going to send out any more acceptances. Like, sometimes people have info they share on these forums. If that's the case, you might go ahead and accept the offer.

This title sounds fine. For unrelated reasons, I'd recommend using a colon over a hyphen: https://www.sciencealert.com/hyphens-break-our-entire-system-of-scientific-ranking-new-analysis-reveals

You should pick grad school based on your career goals., and it's pretty unclear from your post what your career goals are. The one specific goal you mention is wanting to be published in the NY Times. I'd think you may want to focus on gaining journalism experience/education then. You might consider Northwestern's program: https://www.medill.northwestern.edu/journalism/graduate-journalism/index.html

I'm a first-year student in social psych, so I want to acknowledge that you definitely have insight into this from a direction I don't! But the impression I've gotten is that social sciences and humanities may have really different cultures around this question.

Thanks! I lot of these questions are more curiosity than info I think I need for some specific goal.

I got my BA in Creative Writing and Literary Studies 10 years ago. Now I am in a Social Psychology Ph.D. program studying sexuality. I'm still really interested in literature, particularly in how contemporary social/psychological ideas about sex/relationships are expressed in new fiction. I've recently been thinking about trying to do some writing along these lines and realized that I am really confused about how publishing works in the literature field. I've tried doing searches, but I can't get results that are specific to literature, everything's just general results about publishing in grad school with references to "literature review." But I'd love links to resources if you have any. (I have a decent sense of how publishing works in social psych and sexuality: - I know the big social psych and sexuality journals. - I know some people get a couple publications before grad school. - I know being competitive on the academic job market means having a few publications by the time you finish the Ph.D. - I know that being a first or sole author is good, and it's important to have a couple of these, but that it's also really common for a paper to be a collaboration of 2 to 5+ people. - I know the emphasis is peer-reviewed articles. Book chapters are good but not the main thing. Having a book is great but not at all expected. - I know that presentations are good too, but not as important as publications. - I know most often a social psych article is presenting new quantitative/qualitative data, or sometimes synthesizing data from lots of previous work.) I can't figure out how any of this stuff works in Literature. - It seems like a lot of literature people aren't really publishing much at all during their Ph.D. programs? - It seems like almost everything is sole authored? - It seems conferences are a bigger thing? And maybe the culture is more that you read a finished piece of writing rather than talk from slides? - Maybe books are a bigger deal? - What's the whole deal with academic Book Reviews? Are these considered a worthwhile thing to spend time on? Are these supposed to function like short critical pieces? - What's even the basic expectations for the kind of contributions a paper is supposed to make to the field to be worth being published? - What are new grad students in Literature departments told about how to think of and approach publishing? - What kind of publications does one want to have in Literature before going on the job market? Thanks for any info you can share! And if you're curious about any more details of how this works in social psych or sexuality, I'm happy to field questions in the other direction!

I'd skip it. I don't include submitted work on my CV at all. I only add things once they've been accepted. People have lots of different feelings about this, but my personal sense is that putting in prep/submitted stuff feels like a stretch and doesn't represent a meaningful accomplishment. The mark of achievement is peer reviewers saying the article should be published. Also, if I was going to send an updated CV, I would just send it. I wouldn't waste their time with a call/email first. I'd just send it with a short/direct/polite note, along the lines of "If it's possible to add my updated CV to my file, I'd appreciate it."

I would skip it.

If it's your second choice and this is what you need to do to have a spot there, it sounds like you should pay the deposit. But it sucks that there is a deposit that is that high and due that soon. You might want to just try asking if they can give you until March.

You should obviously double-check that all your stuff is in. But also yes, at least some programs will contact you if something is missing after you submit. I think this may play out better if you submit before the deadline.

I don't know that much about creative writing MFA's specifically, but this absolutely does not sound normal and does sound like a probably very positive indication.

I feel like they may judge you on this and I also wonder if they might be right? Like, I genuinely wonder if you'd actually be a good fit for all these places if you're not thinking more about fit at these places. (I also like obviously don't know! I don't know you or anything about these programs!)

The vague sense I've settled on after listening/reading a dozen different people do a very good job not actually answering this question is that if you graduate with a social sciences Ph.D. and have something like 5-8 publications that would be pretty solid for going after academic jobs. (The "average" is probably lower. And the "average" social science Ph.D. graduate never gets a TT job.) Also, obviously it depends on the quality of the publications too! Are you the first author on anything? Sole author on anything? Are they published in the big journals in your field? Do your publications suggest a coherent body of work?

I don't think there are any particular certifications that are especially helpful for getting into psych grad programs. You'd probably be better off focusing your time/energy on research experience and presentations/publications. Like, even if you already have some of that stuff, whatever time you might spend on a certification would be better spent trying to get more of that stuff. That said: If you're leaning towards a coding or data heavy field of psych, you might consider some kind of coding or data science certificate. Though I don't know if anyone will really care about it being a "certification" beyond that being a simple way to express that you have some knowledge of the material. If you're interested in doing clinical work, you could get certified as a crisis counselor or domestic/sexual violence advocate. There are lots of programs that do about 40 hours of training and certify you in exchange for you agreeing to then volunteer with them. That volunteer experience is actually probably going to be more helpful for your apps than the certificate. I imagine there might also be some certificates that might be relevant to some specific fields/interests.

I didn't have an MA, so I don't know how that affect things. Some folks get into Ph.D. programs with little or no presentations/publications. Often they have some other strong things going for them. The MA itself is something nice you have. Though someone else in this thread mentioned that they may expect more of other stuff since you have that. I don't really know. Having even just a couple presentations/publications could help a lot, as it shows you're capable of a certain kind of work! It's possible that a program will let you transfer some credits to cover some requirements, but my general sense is that this isn't very common and you should assume the Ph.D. is going to take just as long going in with an MA than going in without one.

I think I might have missed the direct question part of #3 ("Would it be better to help w a psychology study that isn't related to my interests or help w a non-psych study that overlaps w my research interests?") To clarify my position: I'd say go with the non-psych study that overlaps with your interests over the psych study that isn't related.

Definitely try to present and publish more! Try to do something job-wise with the year break that is relevant and interesting. Be able to explain how the year out of school makes you better prepared for the PhD than if you'd gone straight into it. If you can use the time to get a couple presentations/publications on your CV, it's definitely a good idea to wait a year. (That means going after that stuff ASAP so you can get it done in the next year, so it's on your CV when you apply next fall.)

I don't really know, but my sense is: 1. Doing undergrad conferences, conferences at your own school, and small conferences is good! Doing bigger conferences is probably better, assuming they are relevant/quality conferences. Also, ideally you're presenting at conferences where lots of other people are presenting on things you are actually interested in, and getting a chance to hear those talks and meet those people. In general, it might kind of be a wash between 1st author on something small and 2nd/3rd on something bigger. Except that it could be pretty worthwhile to have at least something you're the sole/primary person on, so you can show schools what you're capable of independently. But you should really talk to someone who knows your particular research/field/opportunities to weigh the specific options in front of you. 2. The oral presentation looks better than the poster presentation. 3. It would probably be a little easier to make your pitch for why you want to be in a psych program with more previous work done through the psych department. But what's really going to matter is connecting the research you've done with your research interests with the opportunities available at the programs you want to get into. If the research is actually relevant to your interests, and you'll be able to find clinical psych programs that match those interests, it should be okay to work with people outside your field. (For example, I do sex research. I've previously collaborated with sociologists and social workers. I've presented at interdisciplinary conferences and published in an interdisciplinary journal/book. I got into a psych program. My research interests are pretty specific and consistent, and they match the program I got into. It's possible that sex research is more friendly towards this than other subfields.)

I definitely got better results from the (social) psych programs where I'd emailed a faculty member before applying! I think the main questions to ask are, more or less: - Are you taking graduate students this year? - Do you think I might be a good fit for the program? I got a few possitive answers, and a couple of answers that saved me from applying to schools that would have been a waste of time! (For example, one professor said she was leaving the school that year.)

I really don't know specifics. I'd just recommend[ searching "[STATE] alternative teaching certification." Like, here's stuff that pops up for NY: http://www.nysed.gov/college-university-evaluation/alternative-teacher-preparation-programs http://www.highered.nysed.gov/tcert/certificate/teachalt.html https://www.teachercertificationdegrees.com/certification/new-york-alternative/ Generally, the requirements for career changers with advanced degrees are easier to meet than the general requirements for teacher certification (which is what it looks to me like you're quoting above).

Lots of states have various kinds of "alternative certification" for people who are switching career paths.