spunky

thank you! that's very kind of you to say it also helps out a lot that it's an English-focused program in an English-speaking country. that usually says a lot of good things about you when it comes to applying to other English-focused programs. well, Chubberubber mentioned it first and it reminded me of a lady from Portugal who posted here a few months ago who was in a somewhat similar situation to yours... she had done both an MA in Portugal AND in the UK, moved to California for some reason (she did not elaborate) and was finding it really tough to find a job because she did not have a licence (and California is one of the toughest states to get licensed at. almost EVERYTHING you do there asks you for some sort of licence or certification). unfortunately for her, she found out the hard way that her MA from the UK was basically worthless in California unless she went through the courses, did the supervised hours, took the exams etc... which apparently is not cheap. and most of the supervised hours/practicum that are needed for the licence usually happens through a university of institution of some sort. so if you're not really *IN* the system, it's hard to get those spaces. honestly, i'll have to leave the Clinical folk to answer your question regarding the MA from the UK and PhD from the U.S. question. because i'm not in clinical (although i work with them all the time and ask them tons of questions) all the people i know started their licensing process as soon as they could, which is during the first 2years of the MA-PhD stream that most Clinical programs in North America follow (i think it's called the Boulder Model or something). Frontal lobes' suggestion of somehow getting your foot in the door within the U.S. by working with someone who may have contacts there would probably be your best bet in terms of getting into graduate school. you really need to find ways to get yourself "in the system" through volunteering, being a research assistant, getting to know profs, etc. i know that's not possible for you right now, but it's just the way things work.

i don't really talk much about it because mine was a very unique and non-generalizable situation. what ultimately got me in was the money i make from my business (i'm a self-employed statistical consultant. i focus on the development of High Frequency Trading algorithms that i sell to financial institutions as a freelancer). once i actually understood the sheer importance of demonstrating funding sources (with it being SO important that even the Psych Dept's website of my uni says that if you get rejected is probably due to a lack of funding) i did some "smart accounting" , moved around all the assets/funds i had available under my name and i wrote a small paragraph in my SOP mentioning that i was self-funded and that i could finance myself throughout graduate school without any help. i included copies of all my bank statements, financial documents, letters from banks in the U.S. and Canada where i have accounts vouching for my credit, tax returns, etc. and my guess is that what the admission committee saw in terms of money was impressive enough to get me an interview. which makes sense from a business perspective: for an int'l student in the University of British Columbia (UBC) tuition for a foreign student is like 3 or 4 times that of a domestic student. so they see the money that would be coming in with no strings attached and they get all excited. but i understand my situation is so unique that it really helps no one to recommend it. it would be like like "yeah... make sure you can demonstrate lotsa $$$ before you apply!". that doesn't really help anyone. i actually know quite a few Americans over in the Dept who got funding directly from their advisors or from some of the well-funded labs we have. i honestly think there's some form of pro-American bias to be honest ... which is a good thing for you! if you mean you will be applying @UBC times are a little bit tough right now though because the provincial gov't is scaling back the money it gives to the university so UBC is in panic mode raising tuition fees, fees for residences, they just approved a 10% increase tuition for int'l students, etc.... but then again you have the American advantage, LOL. however, when it comes to people applying from more...well... let's call them "exotic" places (i'm originally from Mexico, for example) people get a little bit more suspicious about you

i'm sorry to be a "glass-half-empty" kind of person but i'm not sure of how much it would gain you to obtain an MA from the UK unless you have a way to account for the funding situation. keep in mind that you are still going to be competing against domestic students for those coveted funded labs. would it improve your chances? absolutely! you would be exposed to research more, there won't be an empty time gap between your undergrad degree and your PhD application... i really can't see anything bad coming out of it. but i still feel the funding situation needs to be addressed somehow, if possible. and i know this for a fact because after i managed to squeeze myself into graduate school and started asking everybody why i was on the chopping block for rejections, everybody said the same thing: that i was a great candidate, but since i was an international student with limited funding options nobody wanted to even touch my applications. from how you describe your options, it seems like you're already favouring the 2-year part-time option over the 1-year, full-time option, are you not? oh! and Chubberubber made a very, very good point. if you want to practice as a clinician/do therapy in the U.S./Canada an MA is not enough. you need to be licensed. and from what i've heard if you can't manage to get licensed in the state or province where you want to practice while you're still a student there's A LOT of paperwork, costs, exams and things you'll need to deal with. it's a lot easier if you're only focused on research. what about doing both your MA and PhD in the UK? would that be an option

from an (ex-) foreign student to another, do not feel discouraged about this. there is one VERY, VERY big factor that can make you or break you when it comes to applying for programs in the U.S./Canada: funding, funding, funding. resources are limited and every year there are more and more people applying and less and less money to go around for future students. it could well be that you were a stellar candidate but you didn't have any local agency in Greece or gov't grant to pay for your education. domestic/national students are given priority when it comes to things like this and by the time professors have taken their pick of potential students, there usually is either no room (or very few spaces left) for international students. to be honest with you, i would focus on trying to improve my CV by getting grants or scholarships so that you can demonstrate $$$ when you apply again.

not really. they just took their TESOL certification and off they went to teach English. two applied to the JET program to go to Japan and another one is in Korea. apparently if you know how to budget you can end up making some decent money when you head back home.

this is actually quite true. even though quite a few labs had seen their funding situation reduced at our uni, the sheer amount of applications this year was ridiculous. if other competitive programs are like ours, it would make sense to me why people who applied to traditionally popular programs (social/clinical) haven't heard an answer yet. i know a few profs that are still going through the applications they got. i think it makes sense, though. psychology keeps on being one of the top most popular majors (i think it's always either the top #2 or #3 every year) and all these psych undergrads learn at some point that they will need graduate school to become psychologists. it's all becoming a numbers game now.

i actually know quite a few people who are doing this to pay for their student loans. they usually move to Asia or somewhere where the cost of living is cheaper and save as much as they can while over there.

does Starbuck's barista count? (sadly, i'm not joking). at this point i think you're taking the best path by becoming a speech pathologist. honestly, unless you can transform that psychology degree into something more applied (e.g. social worker, some time of care-giving, etc.) you're pretty much stuck with looking at clerical and other general service jobs. we had a deeper discussion in this thread but it was geared towards graduate school. as you can imagine, your prospects are more dismal with only a bachelor's degree: sorry if i'm not sugar-coating it enough but i think you're still on time to fix things and at least have a decent fighting chance at some type of meaningful job.

in today's economic environment, i would say THAT qualifies as "being rich". not sure if you read the USA Today article that posits the price of the "American Dream" at $130,000/year? (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2014/07/04/american-dream/11122015/) if you're making that much a year, you're close to the top 10% of society in terms of highest incomes.

well, that sounds to me then that you've already made your choice and just need someone to push you over the edge, so i'll do it then: GO, FLY TO MEDICAL SCHOOL! BE FREEEEEEEEE!!!

the other thing i just realized... didn't you say you wanted to get into cognitive/social? so how's the acceptance rate for clinical psych relevant?

now you're making it sound (again) like you actually wanna dump the cognitive psych idea and go into medschool. ultimately, you know your own situation better than anyone else and neither i nor anyone can convince you of anything if you're already making up your mind. i think i've done the best i can to present both sides of the situation from my (limited) perspective so you can have a 2nd opinion of how to proceed.

ok... you're definitely not the *worst* case i've seen (i coach students, particularly undergrads, on how to become financially self-sufficient. especially for people who don't have STEM degrees). the part i feel iffy about med school is not the succeeding at it (you seem more than motivated for it) but the getting in part. med schools are still insanely competitive and if you have to go back for a year, empty your savings account and may not end up getting in, then you're gonna be a lot worse than you started. now, i'm pretty sure you're only willing to consider programs where you'll be fully funded (so at least you can stop the free fall into debt) and cognitive psych actually has some cool extensions to industry stuff (the ones i know the most are in computers) that you could use if a tenure-track position doesn't materialize. ok, this is what *I* would do in your position, given the very limited input i know from your situation. UNLESS i could confidently say i can get into some medschool (and hence gamble with the personal savings) i would probably stick with the cognitive track, only consider seriously positions that give me a free ride and dwell into programming as much as i can. i dunno why but i see a lot of people in cognitive psych actually being very good with computers... both for data analysis or programming in general and take as many consulting/tutoring/will-analyze-your-data-for-money (or do any sort of technical skills) jobs on the side as i could. the one thing that you can have going is that many people within the social sciences in general are not particularly fond of technical knowledge. a lot of profs with juicy grant$ are probably gonna be super happy of having someone with certain level of skill in their labs who can deal with that stuff. if you play your cards right and are always open to the idea of branching out outside of your area, i could see it possible for you to actually start bringing that debt closer and closer to 0. what happens after the debt is up to you... but the more you branch out, the higher the chance you won't be stuck in the limbo of underemployment.

ok, now things are starting to get tricky here. from the way you described the med school option i thought you could somehow ensure your entry in it. of the $700/month, how much goes to capital and how much is interest? what's the interest rate on the $80,000? and which area(s) of Psych did you apply for? i know, North American education sucks sometimes (things are better in Canada but not that much better). however, the pragmatist in me says that this is the situation you're facing and this is what you've got to work with.

this is all i needed to know. if getting a PhD in Psychology means you're gonna get further down in debt without a high-paying job waiting for you at the end to kickstart your future RUN AWAY FROM IT LIKE THE PLAGUE. go to medschool, become a doctor. pay off your debts and begin your life. the PhD will always be there. if you made it to interviews this time, you can do it again. when i was about to start my MA a few years ago, i was worried whether i would be able to handle the workload combined with a business i was starting with a friend of mine from undergrad. i didn't have any debt but i also couldn't even afford a decent couch to sleep in. the career counselor i met with told me that it was probably in my best interest to just kill the business idea, take out a student loan, go to gradschool and figure all out in a few years. i was hesitant about this and decided to pull through both with business AND gradschool. and sure, my academic CV is not as stellar as it could be. i haven't been able to have as many published articles as i would like to... but then again i'm the only person in my lab with no debt, the only person in my lab who has bought his own home and the only person in my lab that can actually go to a nice restaurant and on a nice vacation without having to penny-pinch and beg that X or Y agency will like my funding application. and, heck, this is all coming from a guy who's in one of the very few areas within psychology where the number of offers for tenure-track positions per year actually outnumbers the number of PhD graduates quoting the immortal Brian Kinney from Queer as Folk: There is nothing noble about being poor. and i don't think there are as few things as discouraging as seeing bright young academics barely getting enough money to survive day to day.

will it be enough? to be honest, i don't know. but there is one thing i can tell you for sure: it definitely would not hurt. as someone who lives and dies by data and finds it fun to hang around in webpages like the U.S. Census Bureau or the OCED's Economic Report the one thing i can say is that, setting aside anyone's immediate experience (including mine), times are tough when it comes to getting a job. when i was researching unemployment and underemployment for post-graduate degree holders during the summer (so basically asking the question whether the ROI, Return On Investment, was worthwhile for MA/PhDs) i kept a separate analysis for Psychology because of the weird claims i found on websites like these: http://www.csbsju.edu/psychology/student-resources/doctorate, http://persistentastonishment.blogspot.ca/2011/05/six-graphs-answer-questions-about-phd.html)where the claim about unemployment at the PhD level for Psychology was at 1% or better than for other scientists. the thing is that when you look at the original source of the data, the story is a tad bit more interesting. most people cite the National Science Foundation (NSF, http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctoratework/#tabs-1)survey of doctorate recepients to monitor more or less how PhD's are doing across the board in the U.S. (i wish we had something like that in Canada). now, if you just look at the most recent numbers from 2013 (the pre-eliminary results were just released last Septmeber) it says, just as described, that unemployment for PhDs in Psychology is at 1.4%. but just look at how they define "unemployment" in the very, very tiny footnote of the survey: "Unemployed includes individuals who were not working during the survey reference week but had been seeking work in the prior 4 weeks or who were on layoff from their job" "seeking work in the prior 4 weeks or laid off"? that doesn't tell us anything about the people after the 4-week period or who haven't been able to land a job after their PhD completion. but there is a much more informative (and, at least to me, somewhat alarming) statistic which is the percentage of PhDs in psychology who are employed full-time: 64.47% so, sure, the majority of PhDs are still employed full-time... but that's what? a 14% better chance than the flip of a (fair) coin? ideally, it would be great to have more up-to-date statistics where they break it down by areas of Psychology, because i suspect a lot of the employment numbers could be driven by people in Clinical, Counselling and other Health Services areas whereas people in primarily research-oriented programs (Social, Personality, Cognitive, Neuro/Biopsych, etc.) who would ideally jump into tenure-track positions could be having a tougher time landing a job (but this is a hypothesis of mine. no data to back that up). another thing you can see (but you'll have to look through the data of the previous years) is that the participation of PhDs in the private sector has increased (albeit very slowly) over the years and enrollment in post-docs has sky-rocketed. so the interesting question here is how many people are being driven to pursue a post-doc out of need rather than actual interest. although the demands of the job-market for tenure-track positions (whatever few are left of them) are probably making the post-doc a necessity. the best i was able to do was look through the Center for Workforce Studies for the APA (http://www.apa.org/workforce/index.aspx) that surveys PhDs in Psych per area in terms of employment, type of positions they get, starting salaries, etc. unfortunately, the most up-to-date survey on doctorate employment that they have available is from 2009, although the trends they report mimic the ones from the NSF survey quite a bit. they report 63% full-time employment for Psych PhDs with the caveat that full-time employment numbers have been decreasing since the 1980s. they do present a break-down of employability per-area but i'm not sure how i feel about their numbers. like they say "only 25% of clinical neuropsychology doctorates were employed full time at the time of the study" but only 9 people self-identified themselves as clinical neuropsychologists. you see 100% employment in Sports Psychology, but there was only 1 respondent. i guess we'll have to wait until their next survey results are published to see how much things have changed during these last 4 years. now, if you turn around and look at the skills being required by private industries right now, you can see a lot of published research and news articles that lament the low numbers of college graduates in STEM areas and how technical knowledge is the primary skill employers are looking for. the technical knowledge that most Psychologists develop (to a certain extent) is research design and data analysis. i think it is a worthwhile investment of anyone's time to learn how to do this because you never know what's gonna happen in the future. better be ready for it

it depends. in my opinion, if you gravitate towards something like gov't contracts or the FDA, SAS is the way to go. SAS has pretty much a monopoly in clinical trials and research. but if you're gonna do big data analytics, market research and, in general, more of the "cool/hip" stuff, i'd say R and some database management program. python is also very good to know. i do all my private consulting in R both for students, profs and private clients and haven't had any problems. that's what's paying my bills right now because my funding/stipend is just too low....

i think this cannot be highlighted enough. the emphasis of psychology on data analysis is probably one of the strongest assets that we have over many other social sciences. there is more data to be analyzed out there in the world than people who are capable of doing it and, for better or worse, i think the best/more interesting positions are available for people who've gone beyond the basic SPSS stuff and can handle some programming in R/SAS/STATA and some database management like SQL. within my program, for instance, all graduates who were willing to look for positions outside academia were snatched by companies even before they finished their PhDs (actually, 2 didn't even make it past the university door because the university offered them a job ). a good example i know is a friend of mine who jumped the ladder all the way up to research director straight out of graduate school because of her good technical skills in manipulating and making sense of data. i honestly feel that if more senior undergrads or early-year MA students in the social sciences knew the importance of data analysis in today's world (and the absolute dire situation of the job market both inside and outside academia) then everybody would aim for getting a strong quantitative training. the difference in terms of starting salaries, job opportunities, etc. for those with advanced quantiative training VS little-to-none quantitative training is papable, to say the least.

i believe this is a condition commonly referred to as "being human"

googling people is pretty common here. i've been a member of a few 'google search parties' at the request of admission committees here and there. i'm not sure whether i should feel flattered or not by other people knowing i'm somewhat skilled at finding people on the internet (i guess i'm just sorta creepy). my assumption has always been to never put anything up on the internet that may hurt you down in the future. you would think that's common sense until you start seeing what a lot of people (particularly undergrads) post online. where i feel somewhat ambivalent is when people adhere to certain ideologies or political affiliations, make that public on their social media profiles and, upon finding out, their applications suddenly...well... let's say 'disappear'

this is ridiculously true. the importance of being able to disagree (sometimes vocally) with your 'superiors' in academia is what fosters worthwhile dialogue and creativity. university departments need to be flexible enough to accommodate people with opposing ideas in order to benefit from diversity... and i'm not sure pluralism of ideas is something that the military values (chain of command, etc.) with my advisor one of the things he likes the most about our labs (and encourages it) is to disagree with him and among ourselves so we can debate what we're doing and learn to see things from a different angle. if we added all this 'doctor' and 'calling people by their lastnames' it would just be... i dunno, super weird. and no, i'm no veteran whatsoever. WAY too free-spirited for that ;-)

oh, don't feel bad about it. when i was living in my home country i didn't know how to drive either. i did had to learn how to drive when i moved though

kill it in the GRE. i also came into a Psychology program with a limited background in Psych and the GRE was what opened the doors for me.

i think you're just being paranoid. since i started graduate school we've had 3 expectant mothers (one of whom already had her child) and 2 moms with small children. i dunno how they do it but, to be honest, but i've seen enough of it to know its doable. plus grad students offices can be improvised as temporary daycares!!! (i dunno, maybe i just really like children cuz i think they're fun)

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! save yourself while you still have time!!!