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cogneuroforfun

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Everything posted by cogneuroforfun

  1. While a little extreme, as you say, it is just an extension of your reasoning. Why shouldn't English PhDs take a crash course in legal writing and then teach the topic to law students? English professors make, what, a third (at best) of what law professors bring home in salary alone? That means you could have (at least) three English professors for each law professor, have each class be a third the size, and have a much better student:faculty ratio (with all the benefits to learning that come along with that). Isn't a vastly reduced class size, with no increase in costs, worth a little less of that irrelevant specialized knowledge? Won't that make our JDs much better legal writers, which is obviously the purpose of a legal writing course?
  2. Why are there not more political science PhDs teaching law school courses? As you've suggested, law school courses and political science courses are interchangeable, and since political science PhDs have spent more time in the field, they are on average going to be more qualified. In fact, since general knowledge is more important than specialized knowledge, political science PhDs should be able to teach all law school courses fairly well. For that matter, why are legal writing courses not taught by English or comp lit PhDs, who certainly are better writers than JDs? After all, an English PhD can easily learn and teach to the standards of the legal field. A good teacher is a good teacher, and English PhDs have, on average, spent ~10 years learning and teaching topics related to writing. Why have law school professors at all? The entire topic could easily be covered by political science, English/comp lit, communications, and maybe a little hard science for patent law. I think we can abolish law schools, open up interdisciplinary programs in legal-ish studies, and award an interdisciplinary PhD in legal-ish studies.
  3. 1) "A good teacher is a good teacher." Nice idea, but no. I don't want an English PhD teaching math, I don't want a math PhD teaching biology, and I don't want a biology PhD teaching English. The background of the instructor matters immensely. If you don't care what the instructor knows, why even have one? You'll learn as much from a book on differential equations as you would learn from the same book + an English PhD instructor. Obviously instructors can learn new material, though, which brings us to... 2) "Expertise is developed by practice in a given area over a number of years." This is completely true. This is exactly why someone who has spent 5+ years in a political science program will be better in general than a 3 year JD with a smattering of relevant classes. The poli sci PhD did not simply take all their classes in poli sci, they also read and researched extensively. If you are trying to say that JD's have as much expertise in political science reading, research, and teaching as political science PhDs, then I don't know what to say to you. Your entire premise is absurd. If political science = law, then yes, JD's can teach political science (although this is even debatable; how does the proportion of JD's who enter academia as law school faculty compare to the proportion of poli sci PhD's who become faculty?). But that is clearly not the case, or there would not be separate political science departments and law schools, and a JD and political science PhD would be equivalent degrees.
  4. Why would someone trained to be a practicing lawyer be qualified to teach political science at a university?
  5. I think that score would be on the low side for places like MIT, Johns Hopkins, and WashU. However, if a low GRE is the only non-excellent part of your application, I wouldn't restrict where you apply. That is a very minor part of your application profile, even though when you're applying it seems so important. You'll probably want to get more specific with your research interests, though (unless you're just being vague here and not in your applications). Does higher order cognition mean memory, attention, decision making, purposeful movements? You at least want to be able to say "I'm interested in memory," even if you can't say what exactly you want to do for your thesis. More generally for this thread, don't be afraid to apply to straight-up neuroscience programs even if you're coming from a psychology background. That was one of the best things I did, and I ended up in a fantastic neuroscience program that I originally wouldn't have thought to apply to since it wasn't associated with a psychology department. If there is a lab that you would love to join that is affiliated with neurobiology or neuroscience rather than psychology, don't be afraid to apply just because of the name of the department.
  6. You say nothing about the type of research you want to do. If you apply somewhere with no one doing research in that subtopic, it doesn't matter what ranking the school is, they won't accept you. At the same time, if you apply only where there are specific labs that mesh very well with your interests, rankings will also not matter too much. Basically, if a PI sees you as a perfect fit in their lab, they can likely help get you accepted, although not all schools/departments work that way. So you're looking at this completely backwards. Apply to the top labs in your area of interest. As to whether you're competitive for them or not, it depends very much on your interests, expertise, research experience, etc., more than your hard numbers. A 2.9 GPA isn't great, but postgrad coursework will certainly help minimize that, so don't focus too much on it.
  7. Much of my ten different personal statements were identical. After all, my research experience didn't change with each new application. However, I did have a section about why each program was a good fit for me, so obviously those parts had to change. The recommendation letters probably went similarly. Most of each letter was identical, but if the letter writer had any specific connections or comments about a specific program, they would add those in. Don't feel bad at all about asking for a lot of letters. Writing 10 letters (or 20 or whatever) is only a tiny bit more work than writing 1, as long as you're not applying to wildly different programs.
  8. I did 10 programs, but none were "safety" really. The lowest ranked was probably top 25 or so. Applying to so many (and having good fortune in getting interviews) meant I had 4 very good programs to choose from when it came time to decide.
  9. Do not plan on transferring PhD programs. It is only very rarely possible (like when your PI moves to a new university). If you want to be at Minnesota, apply there and work at improving your application if you don't get in. However, it is pretty unrealistic to only apply to one program, so you should really open up your options quite a bit more.
  10. The undergrads going to those schools are likely somewhat different than those going to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, etc, in socioeconomic status if nothing else. I think musicforfun was saying they would rather work with more "disadvantaged" students, so working at a private university with >$35,000 tuition alone is not what they preferred. If you were commenting on what I said, I realize I wrote it a little confusingly. This "You definitely have a point in comparing state schools vs. elite schools." was unrelated to the rest of what I said, sorry Excellent programs for any given field can be at a state school or private school. Obviously Berkeley, for example, is better than most private schools in many fields. The "state school vs. private" was just referring to where musicforfun wanted to work after graduate school, not where they should go for graduate school.
  11. You definitely have a point in comparing state schools vs. elite schools. You just need to keep in mind that completing a prestigious program in a prestigious lab will give you a better shot at being able to do the kind of work you want where you want to do it (all else equal). Also, make sure you're looking at how people in your field view programs and PIs, not relying on US News or something. I don't think you are, but I want to make sure you don't think I'm using "prestige" to mean rankings; its all about reputation for excellent research and excellent placement. Do try to find smaller labs, regardless of what schools you're looking at. It is possible to find smaller labs with involved PIs and good funding that also happen to be in prestigious programs and universities!
  12. Don't think that you can "settle" for teaching and light research at a smaller, less well-known school. Getting any TT position is incredibly difficult, no matter what level the school. Going to really prestigious graduate schools and labs will give you a better chance of someday getting one of those rare positions. You also need to realize there are lots of prestigious labs that are smaller, and that many prestigious programs/schools have small and large labs. Knowing you want a more connected, involved PI doesn't mean you should cross off prestigious schools and labs. Those are two different dimensions you need to consider.
  13. It is much more important that you find programs doing what you want to be doing, not what you have done in the past. Fit has to do with your interests, not necessarily your experiences. Ideally, some of the skills and knowledge from your past work will carry over, but that may not always be the case. It is important when you're applying that you sell it as a natural progression in your interests, that you tie together what you did before and what you want to do now in a logical, positive manner (usually). You don't want to say "all my undergrad research is in X, which is boring, so I want to do Y."
  14. I'm guessing they put that in just in case you end up receiving a special fellowship or outside funding or something like that. You'd probably know if that was the case, though, so the chances of a happy surprise might be kind of slim
  15. You certainly don't need tons of math to use these types of analyses in your research. However, to be the one actively developing them, rather than simply applying them, you really need to be a full-on stats PhD person. Statistics develops these techniques (pattern classification, etc.), and psychologists use the techniques to gain a better/deeper understanding of some psychological phenomenon. So saying "I want to do neural decoding" isn't really a research program. Rather, you should be interested in motor planning or memory or visual perception, and you'll use lots of techniques to analyze your experiments: GLMs, decoding, etc. Does that distinction make sense?
  16. Oh, I realize that might not be exactly what you meant. Lots of groups are looking at decoding neural activity to understand and control prosthetics. My guess is any neuroimaging lab with "computational" in its description will use decoding techniques But you still need to figure out what topic interests you, unless you have the mathematical expertise and interests to seriously develop techniques.
  17. There is no "mind reading" field. People are using decoding and pattern classifiers to gain more quantitative results from fMRI. The "classic" methods allow you to do contrasts between conditions (how is the BOLD signal different in task A vs. task B vs. control) and see how BOLD responses correlate with behavioral variables (higher activation in region X is correlated with longer reaction time, etc.). Pattern classifiers allow you to get some measure of the information content in the BOLD signal, basically. "Mind reading" is just training an algorithm to say "this pattern means the subject did X, while this pattern means the subject did Y." Statisticians, not psychologists, develop these types of algorithms. Psychologists simply use them to gain a better understanding of whatever field they're already interested in (vision, memory, whatever).
  18. I would also recommend Duke's cognitive neuroscience program. I interviewed and was very close to accepting an offer there. Those distinctions between biology/neuroscience/psychology are good rules of thumb. However, it is important to keep in mind that the lab matters most in many ways. For example, if you want to join a neuroimaging lab that for whatever reason is in a neurobiology department, don't be discouraged if you don't have a background in biology. I would break down that list a little differently and say: If you want to do cellular/molecular neuroscience, you need a background in biology. If you want to do cognitive neuroscience, you need a background in psychology. If you want to do behavioral/systems/some combination of the above, some mix of coursework is required. The department doesn't really matter, except it might be easier administratively to join a specific lab if you apply to a specific department/track.
  19. You haven't mentioned your research interests or experience at all, so no one can tell you what programs would be good for you. What are you interested in studying? What kinds of experience do you have already? Without knowing what you want to study, all anyone can tell you is that the "flashy name" programs will probably have good people doing something you're interested in.
  20. Your age will not be an issue. How much psychology coursework did you take in your undergrad? Its possible that doing an MA or MS in general or clinical psychology would allay any fears adcomms might have about a lack of relevant coursework. If you think you could self-study and do well, taking the psychology GRE would also be something else to look at.
  21. Neither one is particularly strong. You would probably be better served finding a position as a research assistant or technician in a lab somewhere. Spending a year or two there will make you some money (rather than you paying for a masters program) and get you lots of experience in multiple projects. It would also probably benefit you more to be "the RA from lab X at good university" vs. "the masters student at a lab/department that is not known." Are you planning on applying to PhD programs in the future? If you have no background in biology or neuroscience, it might be worthwhile to take an MS to give yourself some foundation, but otherwise there's really no reason.
  22. The conditions in the rest of the department are pretty important. Honestly, two or three labs in your area of interest probably isn't going to be good. Have you looked at the cognitive psych faculty at program 2? Some of them may be doing research that is somewhat relevant. If not, that will be a pretty lonely department to be in, I think. Given the overall strengths of program 1 and your great fit, this really shouldn't be too hard of a decision Keep an open mind if you do get a chance to see program 2 in person, but I think you should be leaning pretty heavily towards program 1.
  23. I'm not sure how much an MA in clinical psych will really help you. Can you become licensed after just an MA? What kind of ceiling is there on your career if you have an MA vs. a PhD? I ask because it may not be worth the time or money to complete an MA. If you want to do a PhD or PsyD anyways, why not take a year of interning or working in a relevant setting and reapply in the fall? That will help you as much or more as an MA (I think), without the expense or extra time (the MA programs are probably at least 2 years, right?). After all, an MA is not at all a prerequisite for admission into a PhD program, so there's no reason to get one if a PhD or PsyD is your end goal. Get that extra year of research or relevant work and reapply!
  24. I had three reviews and no HM. I did better than last year and I have one more year to apply, so I'm hopeful about my chances next year. I got E/VG, F/F, and VG/F; another student in my program who won an award had one VG/F, leading me to believe that the middle reviewer is the one that really sunk me. I do think its a little funny that the exact same application can get E/VG and F/F
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