taacc

On top of the suggestions made above my comment, I would clarify that including findings that were not in your original hypotheses is always encouraged, as long as you're clear about what they are. It only becomes a problem to include them if you change your hypotheses to fit to these significant findings you weren't expecting. I would just say that while you did not hypothesize that these correlations would be significant ahead of time (apriori), you found them after doing preliminary correlational analyses/you decided to do them posthoc, and then you can go on to explain what they might mean to your overall results and discussion (to the appropriate extent of their relevance).

Hello everyone, As the title suggests, I received an interview invite from one of top choice schools, after I already accepted an offer the other day for a program that I feel is a good match. And for context, I pretty much *just* accepted the other offer when I got the interview invite email from my top school, so I hadn't even had a chance to let other schools know I'm out of the running. Of course, I stuck with my decision and rejected the interview invite, because it would be unethical not to. But this situation kind of left a weird taste in my mouth, because I wasn't expecting to have a chance with any of the remaining schools I was waiting on, especially given that it's already the end of March. I actually even contacted my top schools asking if they could tell me anything about where they're at with my application, as a way to show courtesy to the institution who extended me an offer. I guess I was hoping not to have to hear from my top schools after accepting elsewhere, and that my assumption that their silence is an implied rejection holds true. Can anyone help shed some light on this sort of situation, or even just tell me about similar experiences? Does it occur often where schools are just starting their interview process this late, and what does it mean? Just hoping to chat about this situation because I'm confused, and have some mixed feelings to process through. On one hand, I think the offer I accepted was great and still love the program there, and feel good about the fact that I did the ethical thing and stuck to my acceptance. On the other, it just kind of stings a little that I didn't know, until it was too late, that my top choice program was even considering me to the point of getting an interview. Thanks!

From what I hear, MAPSS is a great program for interdisciplinary work, and I think a lot of the research in psychology feels more experimental than clinical. This is just from my impression of the program description and website. I would advise you to look at the current research of students there, and where students have gone on after to see if it fits your clinical interests. I was also wondering if you've considered any of the other research oriented masters programs out there, especially those focused in psych. There are a bunch of threads out there on WFU, william and mary, and villanova. I bring this up because those programs will be more likely to give you psych-focused research and courses, especially in the way of preparing for clinical and neuroscience programs. Most importantly, funding is much more scarce at MAPSS than some of these other programs I mentioned (with W&M there is basically guaranteed funding). Getting out of a master's debt free can be especially important if you're looking to do a PhD right after.

Would the PhD be in counselling? I'm not very familiar with the clinical/counselling field, but one thing that keeps coming up is whether you need the PhD to do what you want to do in the future. You allude to the idea that a PhD would be helpful for your future career. Is it a necessity to do the job you want to do? Or is it more of a plus? For many people in applied fields, having a PhD is not necessary to do their job well and succeed financially. While a PhD will teach you many things for the 5 years you trade, those 5 years can also be seen as an opportunity cost in which you are losing potential time/earnings. You'll need to ask yourself, should your end goal be in a highly applied field, whether that opportunity cost is worth the degree. However, if you have any interest in pursuing research as your goal career (especially academically), then the PhD would make much more sense and may even be essential for certain jobs (academically and industry wise). As for personal characteristics, I don't know if I would say there are personal characteristics that you need to have to pursue a PhD. Of course it always helps to be tenacious and hard-working, but these are things you can work on (in my opinion), and you likely already possess anyway if you're in a graduate program right now. As for what you can do now, more than anything, make sure you have first hand exposure to research. Have you had any research experience? Did you enjoy it? It would be extremely difficult to get into, and finish, a PhD if you don't like research. And in which case, I don't think it would make sense to do one anyway. You mention that you're passionate about research, but it's important that you've done it before to know more definitively how you feel. It would be great if it was an independent project too (vs. helping with a project as an RA), as you'll see a more realistic picture of what you might be doing in a PhD. Wanting to do research, needing to learn research as a vital tool for your future goals (e.g. your dream job is to be an industry or academic researcher), or having a set of questions you'd like to answer via research are probably the most important "characteristics" that determine whether or not a PhD is right for you.

Thank you all, this has been really helpful! At the very least, it seems like it's not impossible for schools to reach out on shorter notice than 3 weeks.

I was wondering if anyone has a sense of how much advanced notice a program would give for interview invites. For example, if the interview weekend is on 2/15, would the program typically send out invites around 1/15 (a month before the interview)? I imagine that even last minute invites would at least be 3 weeks before the interview date, simply to give enough notice for the applicant to book flights/make travel plans. Would this assumption be correct, or is it possible for schools to extend invites less than 3 weeks before an interview? It probably doesn't matter what the answer to this is, but I'm curious and would like to have a sense of how likely it is at this point to receive an invite from certain schools on my list haha. Thanks in advance!

I would say it depends on what kind of master's program you're applying to. There are some MA/MS programs that are still research oriented, in which case it wouldn't hurt to be able to say you specifically want to work on xx projects with xx person. I think this is especially the case if the master's degree is funded in any way. Also, I think people tend to skip the instructions that the program gives for its own application because of how generic it sounds, but the instructions do give you a sense of what they're looking for generally. So I would double-check if the program/application website said anything about including who you want to work with in your statement. Otherwise, for more professional or applied master's degrees, it's probably fine to not talk about specific faculty.

Things have really slowed down on here... hope everyone's doing well

I'm not in clinical psych so my comment may not be very valuable or accurate, but from my understanding of clinical interviews, the idea of anywhere from 5-10 other people being interviewed isn't that uncommon given how competitive clinical is. However, this is a little on the higher end of applicants being interviewed. Additionally, it is worrying that you know this is not the norm for this school/this PI is a special case. Do you happen to know if the POI is admitting more than 1 applicant to their lab this year? Are they maybe early on in their career and more eager to admit multiple students in a cycle? In any case, while it's frustrating, I would try not to take it personally (which I know is easy to say and hard to do). Instead, think about this interview offer along with other offers you may have at the moment and evaluate whether or not it's worth doing. Because you're right that you'll need to compete with 13 others for a spot, so you'll want to think about how much resources/effort/time you want to invest in this opportunity.

Is it just me or does it feel like some schools are doing the process at a later timeline than previous years? Either that or people are using the gradcafe results survey less maybe... There are a few schools (UIUC, Colorado, UW) that I'm surprised I don't see or hear any interview invitations for yet. But given how competitive these schools are (and based on the previous cycles' interview timelines), I wonder if I've just been passed up without knowing... It would be great if applicants could get some more official information about the rough timeline of things so they can feel comfortable weighing decisions about their present offers, or even to get a head start on searching for opportunities to improve their application next cycle. At the same time, I understand it's hard to coordinate on the school's end too...

Ah thanks for the info. Do you know if that means all the interviews have already gone out for UIUC? Also, has anyone heard from University of Washington?

Thank you for the quick and helpful replies, @SocialPsych2018 and @hopefulgrad2019! I'll try not to think about it too much, at least not until January. Also, I never knew it could be PI-specific-- I assumed that the coordination of the interview invites was a departmental thing that everyone in the program does together. I always wondered if there was another reason why people on gradcafe ask for PI initials when they see other posters get contacted besides just being curious, but if timing of invites depends on the PI I can see why they would wanna know. In any case, thanks for the info! I'll try to be better at distracting myself...

Hey everyone, This is my second cycle applying to PhD programs, but I would say that this is my first "serious" cycle because I was better able to tailor research fit into my applications this year. Since I didn't really understand the ins and outs of the PhD application last year, I didn't pay too much attention to the nuances of the application timeline. This year, I've been checking the results section a lot earlier because I was told by a current mentor that I might be expecting emails or phone calls as early as mid-late December. Unfortunately, I have not been contacted yet, but I see some people from the programs I applied to either get a preliminary phone call/skype interview or an actual invite to the program's interview event (i.e. in-person interviews in mid January). I know December is still considered early, but what does it mean if by now you weren't contacted yet, given that these kinds of phone calls/emails have gone out to other applicants? Does it typically mean that things might be bleak? Thanks for your help!

Hello! This is kind of a strange situation and I was hoping to get some other people's opinions about what might be going on. I am applying to PhD a second time this coming fall, and I was hoping to re-use one of previous rec letters. Between the first application cycle and this upcoming cycle, I graduated undergrad and did more research. The letter I'm re-using is from someone who was essentially my undergraduate advisor and has known me for a few years, so I believe this would be a really strong letter to include again. However, I'm having a hard time getting in touch with the aforementioned undergraduate advisor. In the past year, I sent a few emails hoping to catch up and to tie up some loose ends with work that I did during undergrad. They replied to my first email and suggested we catch up sometime, but have since gone silent on my follow up emails (which have spanned over half a year). I have not yet formally asked them to be my letter writer again in emails, but I'm wondering if I should still ask this person to be my letter writer again given the silence. Am I being paranoid/is this professor just busy, or is this a hint that they are no longer enthusiastic about being my letter writer/keeping in touch? I'm pretty stumped because I thought I left undergrad on a high note, and I can't think of anything egregious that I've done that would explain the silence. At this point I'm just praying they'll reply as I don't want to bother them further with my emails (and the later request to be my letter writer again). Additionally, I fear that if they do reply, there's a risk that the letter will be lukewarm as I don't know what caused the silence. Should I politely ask if they still feel comfortable being a letter writer, or stop pursuing this? What would you do? Thanks!