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babyology

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    developmental psych

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  1. Hi! I'm moving to Oregon as well. I'll be starting a phd program in developmental psychology. It sounds to me like a good way to get a nice place near enough to campus and still have it be really affordable is to share a house with a couple people. A quick glance through craigslist turns up some lovely 3BR or 4BR places for only about $300 a person. Anyone interested? Send me a message.
  2. babyology

    Eugene, OR

    Hi all, I'll be moving to Eugene at the end of this summer to start my phd program (developmental psych) in the fall. I've been reading up a bit on housing, and it sounds like one can get a really lovely space for very cheap by sharing a house with a couple other people. I was hoping maybe someone here might be interested; I'd much rather room with another grad student than find random people on craigslist and end up with a bunch of crazy undergrads. I don't have any particular properties in mind yet (I think it might be a bit too early still), but if you're looking for something along these lines, let me know and we can message back and forth a bit to see if we want to look for somewhere together.
  3. Me too! I'll see you both there tomorrow then
  4. I'm going too! Who's your POI, if you don't mind me asking? Mine is Dare Baldwin.
  5. I applied to U of washington, U of Oregon, U of Chicago and Harvard, all in Dev Psych. Any one heard from any of these schools yet?
  6. My list is 3 schools. I know that's crazy. And I'll be kicking myself in April if I don't get into any of them, but those were the only three programs I really fell in love with. And the last several months of my life have been incredibly hectic and it's only going to get worse between now and January, so instead of sending out 9 terrible applications, I'm trying to do 3 awesome ones. Hopefully it will work out.
  7. Hi friends, So one of the schools I'm planning to apply to (for phd program in developmental psych) requires a writing sample. None of the other schools I researched did, so I'm sort of hoping this is pretty uncommon, and that the adcom doesn't weight it every heavily. Specifically, I'm hoping that if I send an uninspired paper I wrote for a sociology class 3 years ago that has nothing to do with the research I'm proposing do to in grad school, that it won't get my application immediately thrown away. I didn't do a senior thesis and I have no published papers, so I can't send that. I've been out of school for 2 years, so the sociology paper in question is embarrassingly the best I can do, I'm afraid, short of sitting down and writing a brand new paper, which is not what they're looking for. They specifically ask that the paper be something that was submitted, either for a grade or for publication. Any advice?
  8. Thanks for the tip! I did look at Brown a bit (there are definitely some cool researchers there!), but I heard the department is kind of a nightmare right now. They just merged the psych and linguistics depts (as you mentioned in your post), and apparently there's a fair amount of infighting as a result. I think the two departments used to be one thing a while ago and ended up splitting off because of some pretty serious differences of opinion, and now they're reluctantly back together again... Who knows though? Maybe it would be a really good time to be a grad student there. Being in a department that was sort of in flux might mean more opportunities and flexibility. That would probably be the type of thing that would be really difficult to determine until you actually get a chance to visit the campus for interviews. I haven't crossed it off my list.
  9. Thanks for your response! It was really very helpful. Prof Akhtar looks awesome - thanks for recommending her! And so does Amanda Woodward! I feel like I heard her give a talk at a conference last year, but I can't quite remember. I'll have to go back and look at my notes. My interests have been shifting a bit too, as I keep reading about more and more research as I'm preparing to apply. My background is in language (BS in Linguistics, I work in a language acquisition lab), and I'm getting more and more excited about finding a way to pursue that further as well. I'm afraid I'm still a bit scattered. I really need to get this stuff ironed out soon, if I'm applying for next fall! I've also been looking at a couple people at Stanford: Michael Frank and Carol Dweck might be a pretty cool co-mentor pair. I would love to work with Anne Frenald (I think her research is really interesting), but I've heard from several people that have spent time in her lab that she's a little, um, hard to work with. I'm also considering Linda Smith at Indiana, and maybe some people at Harvard. Not really sure.
  10. I have spoken to the PI at the lab I work at now (she's a pretty big name in language acquisition research), and she said that when she reviews applicants of students applying to work with her, she looks for people that work hard, rather than people who can slack and still look smart anyway. So she said she actually takes a high GRE score combined with only so-so course work/experience as a red flag - she would much rather have someone with an OK GRE score and lots of good experience and high GPA (showing that they worked hard in the their classes). She says that in her experience, those people make much better grad students. So I would say that your application could be a very competitive one, even if you don't break 1400 on the GRE! And emailing profs is a great thing to do too - if they have had a chance to get to know you a bit, I think things like a GRE score matter less. Also, just for the record, I was scoring consistently below 1400 on my practice tests, and often below 1300. I ended up getting a 1550 on the actual test. So don't get too down on yourself.
  11. It's true that letters from professors are better than letters from TAs, and professors in your desired field are better than those outside of it. The real question though, is what are your options? If you need three letters and you simply don't know three polisci professors that could write for you, then it makes sense to look outside of that field or to get one from a TA. And of course a letter from a professor that doesn't actually know you is worth almost nothing, even if they are in the right field, so you want to make sure the people you're asking for letters will actually be able to write you a good one. The best way to figure that out is to ask them! If you have a professor that you took a class from a year or two ago and you're thinking about maybe asking her for a letter of rec but you're not sure if she even remembers you, you should go to her office hours and meet with her in person to talk about it. Make sure to ask her not just if she will write you a letter, but if she feels she can write a STRONG letter for you. If you ask them directly, most profs will find a way to politely decline if they don't feel like they know you well enough. So I would suggest you sit down (with your adviser maybe) and come up with a list of all the people that could potentially write letters of rec for you. Then you can decide who would be the "best" ones, and meet with them to determine whether or not they will be able to write letters for you. If they can't, then you can keep working down your list until you find enough people that can. Good luck!
  12. babyology

    Seattle, WA

    My SO and i just signed a lease for an apt in seattle, and we have a cat. We had kind of a hard time finding a place, actually. We found that most apartments had a no-pet policy (about 60 - 70% I would guess), and most of the ones that did allow cats were a little pricier. Most of the places we looked at wanted an extra $15 or $25 a month for having a cat, and many of them charged a non-refundable "pet fee" of several hundred dollars in addition to the security deposit. We kept looking though, and I'm glad we did. We ended up finding an adorable apt in wallingford that we're very happy with, and there's no pet charge in the rent and only a small, refundable additional security deposit. It seemed that small, independent landlords were generally more understanding about the cat thing; the big apartment buildings had the highest fees on average, I think. As a side note, I was surprised at how quickly the craigslist renting scene moved - we would often call someone who had posted a listing for an apartment the same day, only to find out that the place had already been rented. So my advice would be to wait until you're physically in seattle if possible, and then check craigslist several times a day and follow up on new postings immediately. It's very much a first-come-first-served market and the best apartments get snatched up pretty quickly. Good luck! It's a beautiful city - have fun.
  13. Hi, I'm applying now for phd programs in developmental psychology, and I was just wondering if any of you are in the same boat. I'm trying to put together my short list of schools still, so if any of you have suggestions, I would love to hear them! I'm interested in development of theory of mind, parenting, emotion, and the intersection of those three subjects (ie the effect of parenting styles on theory of mind and emotional development). Honestly though, my interests extend beyond that to most social and cognitive development topics; I just think babies are fascinating! Right now, I'm most interested by some of the west coast schools: uw-seattle (repacholi, sommerville, meltzoff) and uc - berkeley (gopnik, etc) are my favorites at the moment. A couple of the other UC schools look intriguing (Davis, especially), but I've heard there's just no funding to be had in the UC system at the moment, even for top applicants. One of my friends got an offer for psych there last spring and they offered her a stipend of $17k (in Berkeley!!) for the first year with no guaranteed funding after that. She said it seemed like everyone in the department had outside funding.. The only reason berekely is still on my list is because Alison Gopnik seems so awesome. Also, I just took the GRE and did much better than I was thinking I would (790 Quant, 760 Verbal), so I'm feeling a little better about my chances... I'd love hear what you guys think! Thanks.
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