juilletmercredi

I personally am not in the humanities so I am answering from a similar perspective as the science PhDs above, but with my admittedly limited experience I do not think it is as easy to switch between humanities fields as it is to do so between science fields. Number one, I think it's harder to do interdisciplinary work because many humanities papers/monographs are single-author, so it's not like you commonly collaborate with other people who can teach you the ropes. Number two, though, is that those fields are so glutted that you'd be competing with people who are much better prepared than you. With fewer than 1 in 5 English lit PhDs getting jobs in the field, I can't see an English literature department very seriously considering a candidate with a PhD in history. Even if that person had done like extensive scholarship on the history of literature or something, historiography is different from literary criticism - and the person in question wouldn't be able to teach even the basic survey classes in literature (like composition or British literature or whatnot). Some universities require a certain amount of graduate credits in a specific field before you can teach in that field, usually 18. I'd ask about this on the CHE fora and see what they say, but I think that you're correct in concluding that if you wanted to teach literature in an English department you would need a PhD in a literature field (English literature, or perhaps comparative literature or rhetoric & composition). I think classics might be a little different since that field is interdisciplinary. My point is, personally I think you are right in that if you don't want to teach college-level history and you know for sure that you want to be in a literature department, you should probably try to transfer - or at the very least see if you can find anyone in an English department at the kind of school at which you;d like to be that has a history PhD. I do agree with the advice to speak frankly with your advisor. Did she actually forget to write you a recommendation to a different program, or is she trying to sabotage you? Of course, you can't ask her that directly, but you can ask how she feels about your work and whether she thinks you are ready to embark upon a dissertation. Through her answers, you can sort of divine how she feels about you moving on and whether she's deliberately trying to keep you from going somewhere else. I would also have a serious talk with her about whether she's prepared to write you recommendations for the job market, and perhaps even ask her to complete them ahead of time and file them with Interfolio or university career services, since she has a habit of forgetting things. I agree also that it will be very difficult to transfer if you don't have your advisor's blessing and recommendation. Your new department will wonder the worst - did you have a blow-out with your advisor? Are you awful and lazy? You can remedy that by getting strong recommendations from other professors in your department, preferably at least one who can delicately explain why you can't get one from your advisor but assure the new department that you are bright and motivated and will be an amazing doctoral student. The other thing - are you mentally prepared to start over at a new university? Four years of a PhD in history won't mean anything to a literature department, and will mean very little to a classics department. You'll likely have to begin from square 1.

Do you have an intersecting area of interest that you might want to pursue in the future? Your main area may be sociology and/of law, but there might be a 'minor' area of a secondary area that you also want to do research in. Do you have a dissertation topic? If so, is there a tangential area that it could be helpful to investigate for the purposes of the dissertation? Methods is always a good thing to do an exam in. It is beneficial for teaching (they always want someone who can teach research methods and/or statistics) but is also great for your dissertation. Don't do a comp in a "sexy" area if you don't like it. So maybe there are lots of policy-specialty sociology hires in your field, but if policy doesn't come easier to you and ethnography sounds like more fun - is it really worth it to take the comp in that area that you sound like you really don't want to teach or do research in anyway? Also, personally when I chose my comp areas I tried to avoid anything I would have to take an additional class for. The readings take enough time and work. I think how much your comps bear upon your job readiness really depends on your field and how your comps are structured. So the way I'd answer this is 1. Yes. 2. Yes. That foundation is essential, and you'll be surprised how much more deeply you absorb literature and new ideas if you explore the fundamentals really well in a comp. One of my oral comp areas was a fundamental one in my field and it changed the way I looked at the subfield. 3. I don't think it is. They wouldn't even know unless you told them, and unless you did something really cutting-edge or different for your comps, they probably won't care very much. It's not really about how you acquired the knowledge - just what you know. Will taking this comp help you be able to teach an undergrad-level sociological policy class? If yes, then it may be worth it; if no, then...I can't imagine it would matter. I take a pragmatic approach, but I also don't think you should get yourself really into a 'marketable' field if you don't like it. 4. All of my comps (and classes, and dissertation work) were based on my personal/professional interests. Personally I refused to be goaded into things I didn't want to do because of...whatever people thought. My advisor tried to get me to add a qualitative component to my dissertation, and while I like qual methods I was adamantly against doing it for my dissertation, so I said no and didn't do it. 5. Pick something you're going to pass on the first try. Also, you may want to pick something that you can publish on. How great would it be to be able to publish a conceptual paper from your comps research?

It's not clear to me whether you are in the UK or other parts of Europe or the U.S., but if you are in the U.S., trying to finish your PhD in two years is unrealistic. A PhD isn't just about going in with a specific project and then completing that project; if that's all he wanted, he could've hired a research technician or lab assistant to do that. A PhD is about learning how to be a scholar in your field, and there are a variety of other tasks that you have to complete besides just the dissertation research project in order to learn how to be a scholar. Usually a prior MS doesn't actually shave off that much time - maybe a year at most, even in fields in which the master's is necessary - so it's not unheard of for someone with an MS to still take 5 years to finish the PhD. It's very common for advisors to think you need to add more or flesh out an idea more so that you can finish - even if you are already at the dissertation phase. My own advisor asked me to add another dimension to my dissertation, and while I was initially unhappy with the suggestion I'm ultimately glad I did it, as it's another paper I can get out of my dissertation. I believed this until I was in my fourth year myself, that graduate school was just a way station on the way to a postdoc and an academic career. It's not, and your advisor is right - it's far healthier to treat graduate school as a discrete period of life rather than treating it like an obstacle to be surmounted. You're not wasting your time by developing friendships and taking care of your social and mental health; you're also not "putting your life on hold" by doing a graduate degree. You are living. This IS your life. It's not on hold, it's happening. I actually don't think this is true. I think an advisor's job is to push a student to achieve what he/she believes the student is capable of, or to help shape a student's thinking about his/her research field and career. But your advisor isn't really there to serve your needs in the truest sense of that phrase. Yes, they are there to assist you - but not in the sense that you tell them what you are going to do and then they help you do exactly that and nothing else. In fact, you enter a PhD program to learn from your advisor, so they would be remiss if they didn't push you to do more than you originally thought you would do/are capable of doing. I also don't think telling the adviser that you want to finish in 12-18 months and look for postdocs is necessarily going to do anything. If he's a good advisor and you put forward a timeline he thinks is unrealistic, hopefully he'll tell you so and tell you why - but that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be like "OK, let's scale it back so you can finish exactly when you want." I agree with fuzzylogician's take and think you should think about the questions they asked - do you have a dissertation committee, and have they approved your proposal? What do they think about the additional work? If you went on a job talk right now, are the questions your advisor wants you to explore legitimate questions that someone on a job talk would ask you about (and potentially be disappointed that you didn't study when you had time to)? And yes - is your CV ready to go, or could you use the additional time to improve it and get a better postdoc?

If it's not funded, don't do it. There are too many funded community psychology PhD programs, and community psychologists don't typically make enough money to repay the six-figure debt you'll incur trying to finish the PhD. Also, besides the funding, no opportunities to do research is a HUGE red flag. You have to do research outside of your dissertation if you ever want to get a job - whether it's as tenure-track faculty or as a community researcher in nonprofits, government, NGOs, etc. A PhD degree is about research; that's the lifeblood of the field. And presumably if you get a PhD you're doing one because you want a career in research. You need the experience during the PhD in order to get those kinds of jobs.

It won't hurt you, but I'm not a huge fan. It seemed like you decided to take the time off so that you could recuperate emotionally and mentally and prepare yourself for the undertaking of a PhD, as well as just really use most of your time to improve your application. If you are taking too many graduate classes in the interim time, that might hamper those efforts. If you do a PhD, you will have plenty of time for classes - probably 2-3 years' worth. Now, it won't hurt you - and could help you. If you do well in a class and impress a professor who has a say in admissions, they could go to bat for you when the time comes. But I get the sense that you feel like the only way you can stay academically stimulated and connected is if you take classes, and that just isn't so. Attach yourself to a library - you can pay $30 a month to retain library privileges at Columbia - and set aside some time each week to read articles in your field. Draw conceptual models or write what you would love to investigate during your PhD and your career. Read books (both scholarly and popular) about anthropology. Join a listserv, a mailing list, a discussion group. If you are still in the city, which it sounds like, visit lectures at Columbia and CUNY Grad Center that are open to the public. There are lots of ways to stay academically engaged without taking a class. If you do take one, consider auditing it or taking it for R credit rather than a graded class.

I'm glad you decided to take the year off, OP - I think that's the best decision for you. On the topic of being older, I was 22 when I began my PhD and had just graduated from undergrad 3 months before. I did indeed crash and burn (although I picked myself back up, and just finished Monday). I also felt like the baby of my cohort - the next youngest person was 25, and the oldest of us was 24 when she began. Even in my secondary cohort most people ranged late 20s to early 30s when we started. I was one of the very few - and the only, in my primary cohort - who came straight from undergrad (which led to a really funny rumor in my primary department in my third year that I was a 19-year-old child prodigy, lol!) Even most of the people who started 2-4 years after me were older than me, or the same age as me in my fourth year when they started the program. Given my own experience I am a fierce advocate of taking some time between college and grad school - at least 2 years, but I think even more time is good. Soul searching is a great exercise; making sure that you are emotionally ready for the enterprise of a PhD is important. This is a bleak but still somewhat true portrayal of how a PhD can wreak havoc on your mental health - her takeaway point is that "doing a PhD will break you." I tell my students to please consider taking some time off; if they are really serious - and really need a PhD to do what they want in life - they will come back. Grad school will always be here.

Sociomedical Sciences at Mailman is actually where I got my PhD Quite frankly, funding is limited for master's programs in public health and just one of those master's programs would be expensive, much less two. I really see no reason to get two, especially given that much of the subject matter is overlapping. What you could do while you're in the MS in bioethics is take some classes at Mailman in SMS. I do think that the MPH is more employable than the MS in bioethics, but you're already in the MS program. If you were going to get a second degree in public health, I second the suggestion of an MPH in epidemiology or biostatistics.

I don't consider myself quite a snob, but I don't like bad coffee. E.g., I won't drink Folgers or Maxwell House, but I also don't grind my own beans or use a French press (yet). I have a Keurig at home (a Christmas gift from my cousin) and I use that to make coffee most of the time. I've had to cut down on the coffee, sadly, because I get migraines. Also, every lab/department I've been in has a sink somewhere. One of my labs has it's own kitchen and the other has two pantries on the floor.

I had to file the 1040, but that's because of my fellowship income. If you have a W-2 from your school (as opposed to the weird stipend dump my school chose to do), you can probably file the 1040EZ. When I moved I had to file a part-year GA return and a part-year NYS return. But as someone pointed out, whether you use the EZ, A, or the regular 1040 is a moot point if you use an online tax program like TurboTax or H&R Block. They take you through the questions and file whichever form you need to file, and it's super easy. Besides, the state thing is a state tax form, not the federal - which state you file taxes in has nothing to do with which federal form you use; it has to do with which state form(s) you have to file. Some states, if you live there but declare residency elsewhere, will still make you file taxes there - so you could be in a situation in which you have to file MI, AZ, and federal forms. If you're going to a Michigan public university and you have funding, they'll probably ask you to change your residency to MI so they can pay in-state tuition on you.

Yes, but you have to be purposeful and do certain things. I enjoyed 4 out of the 6 years of my PhD program. I didn't really enjoy all of my coursework. I came to a PhD program straight from undergrad and honestly, I was tired of taking classes. I just wanted to do research, and I was really eager to be an independent researcher. I feel like I learned a lot in most of my classes, and they were necessary, but there are only a few I can remember genuinely enjoying. I actually enjoyed studying for my written qualifying exams. In my program they focused on research methodology and that's one of my specialty areas, so I appreciated having 3 months to just read books and articles about statistics and methods and think deeply about issues in that area. I think it solidified for me how important it was that I incorporate innovative, cutting-edge methods into my work and that I wanted to focus on that for a postdoc (which is what I am doing). My orals...eh. Again, necessary, and I didn't hate them. Honestly, I didn't dig into them as much as I should've, even though I did very well. I actually also really enjoyed writing my dissertation. One thing that helped is I had a dissertation fellowship, so I only had to work 10 hours a week to supplement my income and so I spent nearly all of my time focused on writing. I finished in 9 months (12 months if you count the proposal preparation process) so it wasn't a protracted amount of time. But if the reason you come to graduate school is because you love research/scholarship, having a year or two to just really immerse yourself in a topic you're interested in and explore angles of a question - with the guidance of leaders in your field - that's like a scientist's wet dream, right? I got to read all these interesting books and articles, and sit down and just really formulate opinions about my field. I generated a career's worth of research questions, and I taught myself a challenging new statistical method (which I was complimented about several times in my defense yesterday). Really, I taught myself how to learn, which I think is the most valuable thing you bring from a PhD program. And I had a couple of side projects, which I also enjoyed. I really like analyzing and writing, and that's why I came here. So I could take or leave the coursework, but I enjoyed writing papers with my colleagues. As for social life, you only have as much of this as you plan for. I was miserable in the middle 2 years of my program because I didn't manage my time well (I didn't in the first 2 years, either, but it was less noticeable because less was expected of me then). In years 5 and 6 I learned how to better structure my time and that's why I enjoyed the dissertation phase so much - I gave myself more time to enjoy and do things; I made sure to prioritize hanging out with friends and spending time with my husband; I also made time for me (running, working out, getting massages every now and then, reading books for pleasure, etc.) I probably read more pleasure books in the last 6 months than I did in the entire middle two years of my PhD program, lol. Was it worth it? I think it was...of course, my success in my postdoc and the job market will make that clearer in the next 2-3 years, but at the moment I do think it was worth it, sort of. I wish I had had fewer mental health issues in the middle; I could say "it was worth it" with more confidence if that were the case.

I'm not ilikegreen, but having done a public health degree at another SPH I think they meant that each class only met once a week for 2-3 hours instead of meeting 2-3 times a week for 50-75 minutes, the way undergrad classes do. I agree that having 3 classes that are each once a week for 2-3 hours gives you more flexibility to schedule work and research around the classes.

I used to live a few towns over from Camden, and I have some family that lives in that part of South Jersey and Philadelphia that I visit frequently. I'm pretty familiar with the area. South Jersey may be close to NYC and Philadelphia, but it's still pretty suburban - so I wouldn't worry about culture shock too much. The cost of living is a little bit higher, but it's not quite like moving to NYC or even into the heart of Philadelphia (unless you really wanted to live in Philly). So the crime reports about Camden are true - it's really not a good place to live, and I wouldn't move there. My cousin lives about 10-15 minutes from the Walter Rand transportation center in Camden and before I had a car, I would take the train in from NYC to see here; I wouldn't arrive in Camden after 9 or 10 pm, and my cousin always made sure she was sitting on the block right there when I came out. I feel less safe there than I do in NYC. I would imagine that as a student at Rutgers-Camden you're going to be fine during the day - as there will be campus security and lots of other students. Not having spent extended periods of time in Camden at night I don't know what that feels like, but if your program is a traditional MFA most of your classes will be during the day anyway. If you do have a car, there's really no need to move into Philadelphia. You could if you really wanted to live in the city, but I would be careful about choosing which area in Philly - some are better than others, and some aren't a whole lot better than Camden re: crime. I personally don't know the neighborhoods well enough to recommend. Also, Philadelphia's public transit is...not great. Of course, I am comparing it to NYC and in some senses DC's system, but personally I wouldn't want to rely on it to get to school every day. PATCO's pretty okay though! I second the recommendation of Cherry Hill - really nice neighborhood/town and about a 15-20 minute drive to Camden in no traffic. Lots of shopping centers and restaurants (including the Cherry Hill Mall, which I love for some reason, lol). It's a little expensive compared to other areas in South Jersey, though. I also agree with the recommendation of Haddonfield; it's going to be cheaper than Cherry Hill and is the next town over so you can still benefit from the shops and restaurants in CH. A caveat is that the quickest way to get to Camden from Haddonfield is by one or two interstates (depending on where you live - either I-295 to I-76/676 or just taking back roads to I-76/676) that will probably be congested if you travel during rush hour. I-76 in particular leads to the bridge to Philadelphia so you'll run into morning commuters. There's also a PATCO station in Haddonfield that will get you to Camden in 30 minutes. Collingswood is a closer town - really close to Camden, but I don't know a whole lot about it. Other recommendations are Deptford Township and Woodbury - nice areas, cheaper than Cherry Hill, still lots of shops and restaurants, and there are sort of things to do there too (my cousins go out in Deptford sometimes...where, I have no idea). Both 15-20 minutes to Camden, although also on highways (I think that may be somewhat unavoidable). Maple Shade and Pennsauken are both kind of close and to the north/east of Camden, and you can take state roads instead of interstates to get there. Maple Shade is pretty nice; I don't know a whole lot about Pennsauken.

This varies by field, and is more common in the sciences and social sciences. I'm in the social sciences, but I've actually heard that in English (and by extension, gender studies) this is done less often, because you don't work in an advisor's lab the way you would in the sciences and social sciences. So in that sense, you often are admitted to the program and then choose a supervisor later, once you are in coursework. Replies by people in the humanities above seem to confirm. (It is also, has someone has pointed out, departmental as well.) For the record though, I didn't actually touch base with any professors before I applied.

I'm not as sure about master's programs - they're a little different, because you aren't there as long and if you are doing scientific research, you have less time to collect data and analyze it. But in general (and specific to PhD programs), I would give opposite advice. You do want to talk about the professor's research, but you want to outline your own ideas as well. Advisors want to take on doctoral students who have their own ideas and are going to become productive, intellectual scholars; the currency of scholarship is ideas. My doctoral program's personal statement asked me to specify a dissertation topic; I was a college senior when I applied, and had no real idea what I wanted to do for my dissertation. Or rather, I did have a nebulous, unformed Idea. I still wrote it and my application was forwarded to a professor (now my advisor) who did similar but not exactly the same work. The reason is because the exercise is designed to see how you think and what you think about, not for you to actually propose a feasible dissertation. Especially if you are considering continuing to a PhD, I would absolutely contact professors who do similar work to yours and ask them if your idea is something they would be interested in and able to collaborate on with you. You never know: the information on the website could've been last updated in 1995, but now they do new and more related stuff; or maybe this professor never really thought about research in that field but is interested in the prospect now that you brought it up; or maybe he's wanted to get into that area but has found himself unable to because he didn't have a grad student/base to move into the area. Or it could just be that the professor's work is similar enough that he's willing to supervise you in that research. But no, you don't want to read the papers of a professor and then try to change/align yourself with their research. Your interests are your interests, and you shouldn't go to work with someone who isn't working on what you want to do - within reason. Now, maybe your MS project is too big to be an MS project and is more appropriate as a dissertation or even a first grant for a new faculty member. Or maybe you decide that it would work, but take too much time and too many resources and you want to hold off until after you graduate. But that's different from saying "I really want to do research on the interface between cancer and mental health, but Professor X at University of Nowhere is doing research on obesity and mental health so I guess I should align myself with him." Are you currently a student at a university or college? If you are, then you can go to your library and search their names. If you aren't, but you've graduated already, then maybe your alumni privileges allow you to use the library or you can pay a small fee to have alumni access to the library.

I think this is interesting advice because I feel like as a scholar, I talk to others about my future ideas for work all the time, and they talk to me about future ideas for work all the time. I mean, it's one thing to say "Future research should include a longitudinal investigation into the relationship between green reed weaving and chronic fatigue", and quite another to tell people exactly how and when you plan to do it. I suppose if you put a general idea out in the aether that you run the risk someone will scoop you - but it's somewhat unavoidable; every paper and presentation we do will have that section. Moreover, the likelihood of someone listening being able to scoop you is small. Usually we say these things about 1) research that we already have in some stage of progression, that we'll probably get to publication in the next 1-2 years - whereas a potential interloper would have to start from scratch and get together a team, a project, grant funding, etc. Even if they already had money, they'd still have to collect the data; or 2) research that's just as pie-in-the-sky for us as it is for them...to which I say it doesn't really matter who does it, because that's exactly the function of the future directions section - to give researchers future directions for research. If a researcher says future work is needed in X and I search and don't find anything in X, I assume that he or no one has done it yet (and thus, this is an area into which I can insert myself). Besides, if the reviewer already suggested it, this is something he could already scoop you on. Technically the idea was his to begin with anyway.

First of all, very few of my graduate classes even had a textbook. We had a textbook for a stats class, but I rarely used it - I actually borrowed it from the library so I didn't have to buy it because I knew I wouldn't use it again (the book was impenetrable and there are a lot better texts on that particular stats subject). I had a textbook for epi, and I did annotate inside of that. But most of my classes used articles and books/book chapters as readings. Those I definitely annotated. But do you absolutely have to annotate within the books? No. You can use post-it notes attached to book pages (which I've done inside of books that weren't textbooks that I wanted to annotate), or you can buy notebooks and write your notes in the notebooks with a note about what page it corresponds to ("p. 2 - wonder about Smith's conception of basketweaving here.")

I think if you get an MPH you should count on funding most of it - but you may still be offered money. I was offered a half-tuition scholarship with stats similar to yours (lower GPA, but higher GRE scores). You don't want to be saddled with ridiculous untenable debt, especially if your goal is to work in public health research and/or as a professor. You can reasonably expect to make probably somewhere between $60-80K when you graduate - decent, but not enough to repay $140K in loans. I agree with the advice to focus on public programs. Hunter College, for example, has an excellent MPH program and it's very cheap even for OOS students. I think the OOS tuition is $10K a year, and if you have family here, then you could live with them and commute. Lehman College also has an MPH program, as does SUNY-Downstate and SUNY - Stony Brook University. I also agree with the advice to try to find a university job and get a degree that way - two of the lab managers in my current lab are pursuing MPH degrees part-time and getting it paid for as an employee benefit. Most PhD program applicants in public health do already have an MPH, but that doesn't mean you have to have one to get a PhD. I am finishing my PhD at Columbia and not only did I not have a prior master's, I started right after I graduated from undergrad. (You actually might be interested in my program; we have an emphasis in international health, you can study public health and sociology there, AND it's in New York.) Still, personally I would advise taking some time "off" from school.

Most PhD programs don't have cut-off scores. If the website doesn't say that they have one, it's likely they don't have one. They will consider your application holistically - and they want the flexibility to consider, say, an otherwise outstanding applicant who has a 152 V/159 Q or something. My department (Columbia) explicitly says that they strongly encourage students to try to get a 310+ (155 per section) on the GRE.

I responded on your other thread in the public health forum and gave you some suggestions of programs to look to (UConn, UCLA, UMiami and CUNY Grad Center, all in psychology - in addition to my own PhD program). I also forgot Penn State's PhD in Biobehavioral Health. I'm in a related area - I do research on LGBT mental health, but I approach it using social psychological techniques/theories/methods instead of cognitive neuroscience. I don't think that there is anyone right now doing what you want to do. There are people who do the neuroscience of psychopathology, and people who study LGBT mental health, but I don't think many people do both. I think what you want to do is go somewhere at which there are strengths in both sides, and then potentially work with two people. (I do that now.) UConn seems particularly ripe for that, for example; there are some leading people in LGBT mental health there, but they also have a robust BNS program with some people who do the neuroscience of psychopathology. I also agree with the above suggestions that you can find someone who studies part but not all of what you study. In this case, I think the method is more important than the content. If you do research with fMRI or some other specialized cog neuro technique, it's essential that you go to a program at which you have access to that kind of resource and that you work with someone who 1) can train you in using and analyzing that kind of data and 2) can negotiate access, since it tends to be expensive. But it's not necessarily essential that they do LGBT psychopathology; that might be a new line of research that you introduce them to. Maybe your early experiments are with heterosexual populations but in the same area, and then for your dissertation you concentrate on what you want to do. In other words, I think it'd be better for you to go to a BNS or CNS program (and work with a behavioral or cognitive or social neuroscientist) and try to branch into the social/health side than it would be for you to go the other way around. The social/health folks, in general, are not going to be able to help you get access to a scanner - or even know what to do with that data.

I'm going to send you a PM because I think you would be perfect for my PhD program - you'd just have to raise your GRE scores (by a lot). I actually don't think that your MS is related enough for DrPH programs - most of the time, DrPH programs want someone who already has an MPH. They say a "related degree," but by that they would mean something like an MA in health education or an MHS from Johns Hopkins. DrPH programs usually have reduced coursework as compared to a PhD, and the reason for that is because they're expecting you to have already taken the basic public health coursework. You'd be mostly filling in electives and such. All of my friends with DrPHs or who are working in DrPH programs right now had an MPH before beginning. To be 100%, given your interests - and especially if your research involves fMRI at all - I think that public health actually probably isn't the best primary field for you. I could see you fitting in more in a department with cognitive psych or neuroscience as your first concentration, but somewhere at which you had the ability to take classes in public health and collaborate with a person who did LGBT health research. Or in a psychology department where you could major in neuroscience or cognition and minor in health or clinical psych. UCLA actually might be a really good department for you - they have behavioral neuroscience, health psych, and clinical psych. Not sure who would be good on the BNS side, but on the clinical side there's Vickie Mays and Rena Repetti, and in health psych there's basically everyone lol. UCLA also has a top-ranked SPH so if you wanted to take classes in public health, you could. Another really great place for you could be UConn. The BNS side has Robert Astur & John Salamone, who both do the neuroscience of psychopathology. The health/clinical/social side has Seth Kalichman, who is HUGE in the field of public health psychology and specifically the health of LGBT populations. They also have Diane Quinn (who studies stigma and mental health, often in LGBT populations) and Blair Johnson (who also does research on stigma and HIV prevention in minority populations). I think that'd be a really good place for you. Other departments you might want to check out are University of Miami (behavioral medicine or behavioral neuroscience) and the CUNY Graduate Center (they have both cognitive/behavioral neuroscience and health psych, and people who do research on LGBT issues as well as the neural bases of psychopathology).

I don't know that I would agree that completing your TFA commitment will increase your chances of getting into a top grad school. In my field, certainly no one would care. But even in a field where it would matter, you already have one year under your belt. And if you are interested in an MBA, I'm pretty sure that a job in business will carry more weight than teaching for another year.

No, because the place I thought was my first choice wasn't. Also, financial aid changes a lot of things.

Renting a U-Haul and a car towing dolly for that distance would cost you $1500 (I just got an estimate on the U-Haul truck). Getting a U-Box moving pod would cost about the same amount (just shy of $1600). Your car might be able to tow a small cargo trailer; I just checked U-Haul and they say that a 2012 Chevy Spark (which is a 2-door hatchback) could haul a 4'x8' cargo trailer ($224) or a 5'x8' cargo trailer ($297). But of course, that depends on what kind of hitch you get. But getting rid of most of your stuff is probably a good idea anyway. I moved to New York with two suitcases (a 22" carry-on and a 26" suitcase). I flew, and that was it. I've moved short distances in a car, though (mostly my boyfriend/now-husband's Honda Civic, so it's a bit bigger). I left a lot of stuff at my parents' house. Like, I had bedroom furniture that I love, but it would've cost me megabucks to get it shipped out to me so I left it there for safekeeping. I wouldn't do a trial pack, as that would require you to pack up all of your stuff ahead of time and try to pack the car. What I recommend is that you decide ahead of time that if you don't have enough room, what are you going to get rid of? BTW, if you plan on furnishing when you get there, what are you moving aside from clothes anyway? It might be cheaper to ship books media mail through USPS if you have at least a full box of those that you want to take with you. For your clothes, you may want to get those compression bags that you can suck the air out of to make room in your car (or Eagle Creek packing compression bags, which you can reuse later on trips but also cost more). I also agree with the trash bag advice - when I moved stuff in my car I put my clothes in trash bags, because you can mold them around your seats. I was also going to suggest the space under the seats as well (especially for duffels) but I see rising_star has got that covered, lol. Anything besides clothes, your computer, a few personal items, and things you plan to mail you might want to just get rid of.

This is what I do, and yes, it does make people more uncomfortable than they made me.

Hmm, this is a good question. Yes, research and literature are both parts of the research process, but they are different parts. It's not inconceivable that some people would prefer some parts of the research process than others. I prefer to do the hands-on research to reading literature, but I think about it a bit more broadly. I don't like running participants or doing recruitment (I'm in the social sciences and I need people for my studies), so it makes me gleeful to think about assigning those tasks to other people who enjoy them. But I don't like endlessly thinking about the theoretical underpinnings of my research, either. I mean, I think theory is VERY important and that every study should be theoretically backed; but my problem comes in when I'm collaborating with others and we spend enormous amounts of time discussing the theory and not very much talking about research methods. I'm definitely a learn-by-doing kind of person - I can learn a lot by reading, but my favorite things to teach my students are things I learned by my own hands. I'm the kind of person who learned to put together Ikea furniture by skipping the instructions and messing up until I grasped the concept, lol. I've also defined myself as a bit of methodologist by my choice of topics in grad school and my postdoc, so there's that, lol. (Interestingly, I do like talking about the theory of different research methods and statistical procedures. LOL.) What I really love is 1) planning - taking the idea from a theory/seed an actual study - so basically, designing the methods of the study; 2) data analysis - I love data analysis! and 3) writing up the results in a paper. In that way, I think I'm pretty well-suited to being a professor. I can outsource the stuff I don't like (which is the step in between #1 and #2 - actually collecting the data) and bring people on board to help me do the stuff I do like, but still having a lot of direction/control over the way that goes. I used to hate reading literature/papers but now I kind of don't mind it. It's not my favorite thing to do, but I've gotten better at scanning it and extracting the important points. I think I just hate the really obscure, jargony way that scientists write.