spunky

i second jenste's opinion. when i moved to Vancouver (Canada) with my husband getting him insurance only required filling out two forms (and the 2nd one was just a signature!) :-)

so my Dept is jumping in the R bandwagon and we'll start ditching SPSS for R. as a quantitative analyst, as much as i welcome the change (i think the methodological literature has spilled enough ink on the ills that have come out from SPSS) now i'm now stuck with teaching people who are not particularly interested in statistics how to program in R, manipulate data, etc. has anyone faced a challenge like this? any (free) resources would be greatly appreciated

i know this may sound a little bit weird, but it's starting to become a pain in the behind for me. about a couple of years ago i started my MA in Psychometrics (Quantitative Psychology) in the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada). i am very fortunate because i come from a family with enough financial resources that my parents are basically footing the bill for tuition, rent, books, going to conferences, everything. the people in my cohort are not as lucky as i am, so i thought the fair thing to do would be to always give them first dibs on any TA, RA or teaching positions. so didn't TA the first semester... nor the semester after that.... nor the semester after that.... nor the semester after that... etc all the way until last May when i graduated. i am starting my PhD in September and i REALLY, REALLY want to teach because my CV is severely lacking in that area (and my dream is to become a university prof one day), but then there are these other grad students who also REALLY REALLY need the money. sometime in april (before the semester ended) i casually commented that i was planning to apply for one of the TA positions in September and the immediate reaction was something along the lines of "but you don't need it, you're getting a free ride!" which i sensed was a joke masking the frustration/fear that if i applied, someone's gonna end up without TAship. i'm really torn right now. on the one hand i feel very guilty, particularly considering in how much student debt some of these people are in. on the other hand, i feel like 2 years of letting other people benefit from this is enough and that i, too, have the right to ask for a position. overall i'm just feeling like crap help please?

i guess you're right and i failed to elaborate a little bit more in that this situation could very well apply everywhere... especially on this economy. and probably the point i was trying to emphasise as well is that, usually, you're not in psychology (or any other social sciences/arts/humanities) for the money, it just doesnt pay that well in general. but if you're willing to go and consider the possibility of being $200K in debt when you're out from gradschool you're gonna need money... a lot of it and fast because the interest is simply gonna.eat.you.alive. i dont think how much worth is there on being a PhD when you cant even pay for decent housing... let alone adding kids to the equation. siding with pretty much everyone else in here: don't do it. look for an alternate program that does pay or try and save some money and re-apply again. as my grandma used to say: just as with drinking... DREAM RESPONSIBLY

might not be the most optimistic answer to your question, but this article helped me understand quite a few things: http://chronicle.com/article/The-Big-Lie-About-the-Life-of/63937/

well, it sort of depends on the institution, i guess. i know some uni's like the idea that if you're accepted into a graduate program in psychology is because you come from a degree in psychology. HOWEVER, with that being said, you'll realize very, very quickly that your background in mathematics/statistics is invaluable and will be much more useful to you than any psychology you've learnt until now. i did the opposite thing that you did (major in statistics with a minor in psychology) and during my interview with my advisor i found funny that he had my transcripts on the desk with all my math courses highlighted while the psych ones where just like there... heh. anyways, jump into R as soon as you can because you're gonna use it and you're gonna use it A LOT...heh..

ok... i would have hoped for someone else to weigh in in this post and share his or her experience with us... but since i seem to be the *ONLY* one who's actually in the field of quantiative psychology/psychometrics AND contributing to this post, i think there are a few things to dispel. first things first. if anyone out there considers that working in the industry as opposed to the academia is somehow less desirable or just "not as good" or... what was the term? oh, yes, not as "r-o-m-a-n-t-i-c" for whatever reason, you are only showing a horrible lack of understanding of how this area of psychology works and you're gonna bang your head against several walls before you realise that. just as with any other job, there are places in the industry (yes, i said it) that are FAR superior than any university setting and there are ones that, for lack of a better term, just plain SUCK!. example of a good one and a bad one that i experienced first hand as an intern: the (REALLY) good one: pearson (as in perason publishing). now, i know pearson manages a lot of internships and from the guys and gals i met there, some loved it and some hated it but one thing i can tell everyone was that working for their Pearson Assessment and Information Research group was a real pleasure. first of all it was a (surprisingly good) paid intership. you get to join one or several research groups that happen to be working on problems that both match your interests and those of the company. in my case, i'm working very hard to become an expert in hierarchical linear models so they paired me with people who were into item response theory but lacked the knowledge and expertise of someone who can handle multilevel data. we got to do a lot of fun research and, once we were done with part of our weekly projects, we got to present them to one another in small auditoriums to other geeky people like myself (statisticians, computer scientists, educational measurement specialists, researchers of all sorts, etc.) all throughout the summer. i learned much more doing that than the usual data-analysis i'm sometimes stuck with as an RA at the uni. the (REALLY) bad one: mcgraw-hill. their CTB intership was really crappy. i did absolutely nothing, worked with people who knew even less than myself and, all in all, i think the only good thing i got from there was how to develop the zen attitude to sruvive 8hrs in an office desk without doing anything. now, i am not at the post-doc level myself to be able to say that i've worked in a university setting before, but one of the people who graduated from my program and went to work to UF with the hopes of somehow getting into a job that would get him tenure ended up coming back to canada because, as soon as he arrived, he became the go-to stats person for everyone else, so the prof who got him to go and work with him there at UF could do his research while my poor friend was the stats ho' for everyone else in the psych dept. so, all in all, things can go good or go bad depending on where you end up. i think that probably the best place to work if you're in this area is ETS (Education Testing Service, the people who mind the GREs, remember?) the paycheck's awesome, the felxibility of what you can do is amazing, you have access to EVERYTHING for your research and get to then teach it back to the other people who then get to teach you what they've been working on... and all of this minus the grading!! H-O-W-E-V-E-R... there is one, VERY, VERY important thing where i really believe Leona Aiken (who's, by the way, a leading figure in the field) got it wrong there on that link that PsychYe added on his/her post... and it's specifically this quote: "By no means is a math major necessary," Aiken says. Areas within quantitative psychology vary in the amount of mathematics that is necessary, and students may boost their math skills in graduate school." people, that is the biggest piece of BS i have ever read in a while. there are two main areas in the field of quantiative psychology where you can work on...the "soft quant psych" where you become an expert in assessment, using psychometric instruments, assembling batteries of tests, etc and the "hard quant psych"where you work on the hard core mathematical and statistical analysis of data and tackle problems in psychometrics. people, regardless of whether you go in the industry or academia THE JOBS ARE ONLY ON THE HARD SIDE OF QUANTIATIVE PSYCHOLOGY... what they want is statisticians and mathematicians who happen to have an interest in the social sciences, and i know that because i did my B.Sc. in Statistics and i know for a fact that people who go into statistics usually have no desire to do anything in the social sciences. however, things like item response theory or latent variable modelling require a solid understanding of mathematical statistics to get them to work right, so there is a horrible lack of talent which psychology is desperately trying to a solution to by trying to move more people into the hard quantitative psychology. you need to feel comfortable around linear algebra, you need to know a lot of programming (particularly FORTRAN, R, S+ or SAS. SPSS just wont do the trick anymore), you need to understand very well how calculus and multiple integrals work. if you prefer to be on the soft quant psych area be my guest, but keep in mind that those pearly gates of job openings and promises of employability will not materliaze as if you are a hard-core quantiative analyst. yeah... and i think that's enough for today's rant.

thing is it really depends where you wanna focus on and i think you can get a very good sense of that by reading what i would say are the two most famous or prestigious journals in the field for quantitative methodology for these two areas in the social sciences: the journal of educational measurment and psychometrika. educational measurement has a lot of applied stuff, easy to grasp for even non-technically oriented people. in psychometrika, unless you have a very solid understanding of at the very least 2nd- or 3rd- year college calculus, linear algebra, and probablity &stats i'd say you're gonna miss half of what the authors say... it's the applied VS theoretical perspective.... as i said before, one main differences i have seen while taking courses in both departments is that i dont think quantitative psychology programs necessarily expose you to a lot of psychometrics (item response theory, scale development and equating, principles of computer adaptive testing, etc...) whereas educational measurement programs do not have a lot of the underpinnings of advanced data analysis (hierarchical linear models, random regression trees, etc...) as an example of sorts, my education program has just recently opened a course in multilevel modeling which the psychology dept had been offering for at least 5 years already. i also think it's easier to find non-academic jobs if you follow through educational measurement programs because there's a lot of money that gets invested in education (and, by extension you get a lot of funding) whereas quantiative psychology tends to dwell more on the abstract and advanced techniques of data analysis that may or may not get you results that other people can use afterwards... if you go to an NCME (National Council of Measurment in Education) conference like the one that happened in New Orleans this year (a shout out to anyone who went!!! ) you'll see there's even quite a few people into policy analysis and program development doing some smart "head-hunting" of grads to see if they can work the numbers for them for whatever research results they wanna present before congress... however, the only people i've seen in the annual general meetings of the psychometric society are academics... in any case, conclusion is it really depends what you wanna do in your career. the fact that you're in a quantitative psychology program will not preclude you from learning psychometrics if you want to, or being in an educational measurement program will not stop you from dealing with the subtleties of mathematical statistics (which is my case) ... one thing i do know for sure, however, is that a quant psych program is gonna require from you a considerably stronger background in mathematics/statistics/computer programming than an educational measurement one... and, a word of advice... if you're not familiar with R or SAS, ditch SPSS and start working with those right now (or practice on any other object-oriented programming language), especially for quant psych because SPSS just wont do anymore at the grad level for the more advanced techniques... if you dont mind my asking, have you considered focusing on your advisor or area of research more than the program iteself? what are you research interests? what kind of exposure do you have to quantitative analysis? what kind of questions are you more interested in asking? the truth is that there is simply so much overlap between these two programs that, by the end of the day, you can end up doing one or the other one and be equally as good...

i'm actually studying that right now, and it wholly depends on what you want to do. in my university (UBC in Canada) you can either streamline it to focus only in assessment (taking more courses on program evaluations or the use and interpretation of psychological tests) or you can focus on more quantiative analysis (which is the area i'm focused on). i work both with the education and psychology departments and i think i'm getting the best of both worlds because from the education department i get the applied how-to-use-this-thing approach and the quantitative psychology one gets me the why-i-do-it... but i've basically taken the same courses in both areas with one exception: the education version usually has a heavier focus on psychometrics (if it makes sense to you: classical test theory, item response theory, multilevel scaling, etc.) which i do not find in the quant psych program... in terms of employment opportunities, even if you visit the APA's website you can see that quantitative psychology programs have the highest employability prospects (too many people need us and we dont graduate enough PhDs)... although when it comes down to it, i dont think anyone makes the distinction between whether you come from an education of a psychology program (unless you wanna teach, in which i know for a fact psychology departments prefer to hire psychology graduates)

sure! my GRE scores were: 730- Quant 560- Verbal 4.5- Essay now, to which program did you apply? perhaps we'll end up crossing paths. you could've either gone through the Measurement Evaluation and Research Methodology (MERM) program or the Quantitative Psychology program. who did you choose as your advisor? dr. savalei? dr. biesanz? dr. hakstain? i'm doing a joint thing with dr. savalei (Quant Psych) and dr. zumbo (MERM)... one little thing, though... and especially for Quant Psych. the program is very mathematically-oriented. i did my B.Sc. in Mathematics with a minor in Psych so i didnt have too much trouble there, but i think you'll be expected to have at least some basics of linear algebra, multivariate calculus and some 2nd/3rd -year knowledge of probability and statistical distribution theory. some computer programming abilities (especially in either R, SAS or S help as well. you'll find out very quickly that SPSS is way too limited for the kind of stuff you're gonna work with...).if you dont mind me asking, which 2 stats courses did you take? i'm hoping it was something beyond the methodology courses most people take in the social sciences....

i'm TOTALLY loving it... i was torn between applying for an M.Sc. in Statistics and an M.A. in Quantitative Psychology/Psychometrics and i think i made the right choice... i'm already adding the finishing touches on a paper i am going to present with my advisor in this coming AERA conference (American Education Research Association) in New Orleans on Hierarchical Linear Models for psychoeducational research and it has only been my first semester. can't wait to get published in psychometrikaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

i think it kinda depends a lot on which area you specialise...i have to *TOTALLY* agree with NewEmpiric. my M.A. is in quantitative psychology/psychometrics (there're only 2 other people in my psych dept doing that, so only 3 of us) and the ammount of job offerings i've been getting this semester (even though i haven't even formally finished my MA thesis) has by far exceeded my expectations. i haven't contacted anyone yet but i do have quite a few emails of people offering positions (mostly, just as (s)he said, in the marketing industry looking for someone who can analyse data or people from other uni's looking for "statistical consultants"). now, with that being said, my best friend is about to finish his PhD in Social Psych and he's so terrified of it he's considering doing a post-doc somewhere else just to delay the whole "entering into the labour force" situation... to put it bluntly, i guess there's just a lot of people who get their PhDs in the *soft* areas of psych and the job market just cant absorb them all... my general assessment of the situation from experience/comments here and on other sites is: a)people getting their PhDs in the *soft* areas of psych have a hard time finding meaningful job positions (especially in this economy) b)The M.A. alone *just* won't do.... c)...unless, just as NewEmpiric said, you're a pretty hardcore data analyst and you've taken lots of stats/research methods courses to show it.

ok, my two cents here from someone who just went through the process (and survived! lolz): a) your GPA is just *way* too low for gradschool in psych. you should be looking at somewhere around high 3's/low 4's (your first 2yrs are not gonna help. no admission comittee will pay attention to how you did on your intro-level courses, they only focus on the advanced ones). you need at least 3 letters of recommendation, preferably from someone who knows how good you are when conducting research or a prof from whom you've taken a lot of courses. i never did reserach with my biopsych prof, but i took all of her courses (5 in total) so by the end of my undergrad degree she had a pretty good idea of who i was and whether or not i was graduate school material. c) top 80% percentile is what most programs will ask from you (that's around the 600s for verbal and mid-700s for quantitative) but i'd say to always aim to be one the top 10, like on the charts lol. d) research experience is *key* to get into graduate school. an honours in psych would be ideal... dunno about the age though. so, assuming you did a standard 4-year degree, did you enroll when you were just 13? that *is* impressive all in all you're definitely not in your best shape to apply for graduate school right now, especially if you're going for social psych/personality. those programs are VERY, VERY competitive (unless you choose to go to a crappy uni but that's not the point here, rite?) however, i think you age can work for you here. you've still got toooooooons of time to improve and i'm sure you'll do aweseome once you brush up on a few things here and there. best of lucks!

couldn't agree more with schoolpsych_hopeful. i quickly became friends with the secretary of the psych department in my school after i started my M.A. and upon casually asking her how do they sort out soooo many applications and stuff she told me the usual cutoff is a GPA/GRE scores combo so the admission comittee only gets together to talk about the best of the best candidates. for the rest it is more like a checklist... something like "less than X or Y cutoff-score on the GRE? throw it on the *rejected* pile" do take them again!

hello there. yes, i am an international student as well. my situation is a little bit different than that of most graduate students (i'm a trustfund brat so i've never applied for funding or worked... but i think i'm pretty kewl and down-to-earth...and a little bit shy and insecure lol) but i think i have a good insight about graduate life from my best friends (both international and canadian). first of all... although you're supposed to somehow "show" that you've been living together for more than a year, that can be toyed with and tweaked around. the form you'll be asked to fill-out will ask you to prove in 1 of 5 ways that you two have been living together for over a year(with option 5 being "other"). what i did was that i got a credit card in my name and made my now husband the secondary cardholder from the first time we both arrived in canada. when my lawyer asked me for proof of our relationship, i pointed out that we had been sharing a credit card for the past year and showed him the statements. there are other 4 ways but i cant remember them now (joint bank accounts, insurance, stuff like that) plus the "other" option so just get creative and it should be fine. now, let's assume the "common-law" thing doesn't pan out. what exactly does he do? you mention a "company" but there's quite a few things that could or could not work on his favour. just as snowballed said, if your husband is into IT, computers, accounting/bookeeping, health industry, stuff like that, he should have nothing to worry about. if he's just like a "manger" in general or into stuff like sales and that then he might have an issue. i've friends who lost their jobs in the recession and have been out of work for more than a year now because there simply aren't enough jobs to go around as they used to. being an american he'll definitely have an advantage on having his credentials validated (people from english-speaking countries have an easier time getting jobs here than equally-qualified people from asia, latin america, etc. i'm not judging it and, if you ask me, it is perfectly understandable but i know there are people out there that signal this out as proof of "racism". something i totally disagree with but that's a whole other issue) *but*, if i were him, i would look at my options in having the company somehow vouch for me. i mean, it's always better to play safe, right? canadians are awesome in every sense of the word. nice, clean, fun, friendly, respectful... it's *very* hard to find anything bad about them. as a non-christian, gay, visible minority (i'm also mexican) i have only been shown respect, appreciation and understanding, treated with fairness and felt welcome everywhere i am. truly, truly remarkable people. adapting to the life in vancouver, however, can be a whole different thing. rent is expensive around the downtown area but if you move to the suburbs you shouldn't have too much of a trouble. rent around ubc i know is also not very cheap because there's a huge demand for it (and a lot of people willing to pay for it) so i'd recommend somewhere close to a skytrain/bus station (i have never driven a car in my life since i moved here. public transport gets me everywhere). i have heard that vancouver people are sometimes kind of cliquey... but since i'm shy and not very social in the first place i might not be the best person to ask about it. the people i know who complain about vancouver worship toronto like there's no tomorrow so perhaps you could also get the viewpoint of a torontonian just to balance what i have just said. oh! and one last thing. you mentioned you something about your husband and the "skilled worker scheme".... do you people plan to eventually immigrate to canada? that's a whole other story then on which i guess i can also provide a little bit of insight because my husband went through it. thanks!

i'm surprised no one has yet responded to your question because it's kind of an important topic for people planning to come to canada to pursue their graduate studies, but i'm happy to help out with whatever i know.... as i'm sure you're aware, your common-law partner/husband/whatever can get a work permit as soon as you're accepted to your graduate program and you get your student permit (his work permit will be sort of tied to your student permit). now, when i applied to graduate school i was living in canada and my now husband was living in mexico (he's mexican) but to qualify as "common-law" we simply went to a lawyer to formalize our relationship by signing a piece of paper we downloaded from citizen and immigration canada's website. yeap, that easy... and all it took for him to get his work permit was that little paper and my student permit. as far as to get a job in canada well... that gets tricky. it depends on what he does, what kind of experience he has, which city you're moving to etc. i'm currently at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and live in downtown Vancouver so i can only tell you about my experience here. full-time, decent-paying jobs are pretty scarce right now with a lot of people competing for them (recession stuff, y'know..), but i know other provinces like Alberta and Ontario are faring a little bit better. what i know most people do here is that they usually have 2 or 3 part-time jobs and once they add up all the paychecks you get enough for rent, groceries, etc... hope it helps!

i couldn't help but respond back to your thread because it looks as if i was reading the story of my life again... interest in statistics, coming from a small undergrad school (in my case in rural british columbia), nobody really knew what this quant field is, etc... my advice is pretty much the same you already got. take LOTS and LOTS of math/stats courses... when i was having my interview before i was formally accepted to my program in psychometrics i couldn't help but notice how my potential advisor had high-lighted all my math/stats courses and stats-in-psych/methodology courses on my transcript (other credits i took like social psych, personality, neuropsych, etc didnt seem to factor too much in his decision). if i may (and you're able to) take a few courses in computer programming. that's definitely gonna take you over the top and will allow you to jump over good, ol' SPSS towards the more-resepcted R or SAS programming environments. i'd dare to say it is a little bit easier to get into programs like quant psych, psychometrics, research methodology, measurement, etc. because there really aren't a lot of applicants interested in them so you should be fine. i got in my program without a specific research topic but i did try to woo-and-wow my current advisor by saying i had interest in such and such areas of applied statistics heh... (mention something about structural equation modelling. i feel smarter just by saying it )