MBUPEG22

Hello fellow incoming grad students! I'm moving to Cincinnati in the fall to start my Ph.D. in criminal justice. I'd love to connect with anyone else starting their Ph.D. journey at UC this fall, in any field but especially in criminal justice or other social sciences. Current grad students are welcome to chime in, too. I'd like to know someone when I move far from home for the first time. Reach out if that's you!

@disab Thanks!

Got rejected from UMich Joint PhD but offered the MSW. I have other offers to CJ programs, so I didn't take it. @disab I do not have a decision in the application portal for UChicago. Am I looking in the wrong place?

@beloved_child_of_God I applied to that track, too. I haven’t heard anything, but the program coordinator told me acceptances will come over the phone in the last week of February. Maybe I still have a chance? I hope you find your fit somewhere!

Funded admits to George Mason University and University of Cincinnati! Good luck everyone!

Definitely could be rolling admissions. That would make sense, considering my third recommender waited until the second-to-last day to submit his letter. For any UAlbany folks, I got a personalized email today letting me know I'm second on the waitlist.

Someone in results heard from Temple on Friday 1/28. Any of my fellow applicant here get any emails/call/notices?

I see myself working in research. I'm not dead set on academia vs. industry, but I see more opportunity in governmental or nonprofit work than academia due to the shrinking market. The diverse disciplines I've applied to are the ones that compose violence prevention, and every professor I applied to work with has done interdisciplinary work before. Ends up, the clinical programs were not interested in me, but I have two interviews with developmental programs who highly value interdisciplinary collaboration (of the other eight programs left, only one does interviews). If you look at the violence prevention literature, no one discipline predominates. It is a blend of clinical, developmental, and social psych, public health, criminology, social work, sociology, and a few others. The critical aspect all researchers in violence prevention share is the willingness to work alongside communities, not just in them, to make fundamental, lasting changes. This requires a systemic social justice perspective, which is inherently interdisciplinary. You can't make the big changes from an academic silo- no pure psychological, CJ, or social work intervention is going to affect violence. Sure, I could have chosen a discipline to apply to, but there are so few people whose work is built with those values that I had to expand my horizons. I applied to programs that have that willingness and perspective in doing violence prevention work, regardless of discipline. I hope that makes sense!

Jumping in to say also applied to Temple CJ, and my interests are in juvenile justice and violence prevention. Y'all sound like a really fun group!

Anyone applying to the Joint PhD program at the University of Michigan or the MA/PhD at UChicago? I don't have an MSW, btw. Good luck, everyone!

My interests are interdisciplinary, but I've applied to four criminology PhD programs: University of Albany, George Mason University, University of Cincinnati, and Temple University. Outside criminology, I applied to seven clinical psych (all rejected), two dev psych (interviews to both), two social work (pending), one counseling (pending), and one public health (pending). Has anyone heard anything from any of those programs? GMU told me decisions would be out by early February. I'm getting antsy about Temple and Albany!

Hello everyone! I applied to 17 Ph.D. programs in various disciplines (social work, clinical psych, dev psych, CJ, public health, counseling psych) that all relate to my research interests in violence prevention. Some interview, some don't. I got my first invitation to interview yesterday (Rutgers, dev psych), and I've been putting together a list of potential interview questions. The one I'm having the most trouble answering is this: Why are you pursuing a Ph.D. now? I know why I want to get a Ph.D., and I want to do it now because I feel ready, but I feel that I need something more profound than that given my age. Background: I'm a senior in college at a SLAC, three conference presentations with another accepted (ERN for those familiar), independent research project with first-author manuscript in prep, GRE 161Q/166V/5.5AW, GPA 3.992. I started college when I was 15 through a special program that let me skip the last three years of high school, and I'm 18 now, will be 19 when I graduate. The blurb in my opening statement about why now boils down to the field being at a pivotal time moving from intervention development to implementation and participant diversification. My interests lie specifically in implementation science, meaning getting into the field now would put me in the best position to make an impact. I planned to use this in interviews, too. I felt really confident about this explanation until I went to a recruitment weekend at Penn and a person talked to me for an hour about how I was too young for a Ph.D. and needed to become an adult first. That really shook my confidence, especially since I'd already paid application fees, so I couldn't back out. What do y'all think? What else could I say to make it clearer/ more profound that I want to pursue this Ph.D. now? Anything else I should address regarding my age in interviews? Thanks!