cogneuroforfun

Do you think taking notes on the iPad is going to be anywhere near as comfortable, useful, error-free, etc. as either a pen & paper or a laptop with a real keyboard? I haven't tried an iPad yet, so I'm not sure, but unfortunately I'm pessimistic. If you're thinking about calendar/email/other things, a smartphone is a much cheaper option. As for me personally, I do too much more than just taking notes on my laptop for an iPad to be a replacement. I can't even downgrade to a netbook without losing some vital functionality

That doesn't matter at all. As long as you are in the same general field as you applied to do, they're happy. So if you don't get it, you at least know its something besides that that you can improve for next year!

For East Rock, Craigslist will be your best friend. Anything between Prospect St. and State St., south of Huntington or East Rock Rd. will be convenient as far as the shuttles go, and will also be in a decent neighborhood. The individual houses and buildings in these areas do differ in quality quite a bit, though. For Forestry, anything west of Orange St. and south of Edwards St. or so won't be a very far walk, and there's a lot more to choose from around Whitney/Orange than around Prospect. I would not recommend living in the graduate dorms of your only reason is having more social opportunities. Anywhere in the East Rock area or downtown will be close and convenient to campus and downtown bars and restaurants. I'm not sure how it is with Helen Hadley Hall, but if you live in HGS, you have to get a meal plan, which increases the cost by quite a bit. It still might be a little cheaper to live in HGS than an apartment, but just know that it isn't the most modern or spacious place. Maybe if you plan on going out almost every night, the added convenience will be worth it, but you'll have to make that judgment. If convenience is your biggest concern, some of the downtown apartment buildings might work too, depending where exactly on campus you'll be, but you'll be paying a premium to be there as well.

April 15th is the official day where decisions made by you becoming binding. This only applies to members of the Council of Graduate Schools (I think that's the right body...). Basically, they all agree not to make you make a decision until April 15th, and then after that point you're locked in, to some extent. So, for example, if you're pressured by one school to make a decision in March and accept their offer, but then get admitted to your top-choice school on April 14th, you are legally ok to withdraw from that other offer and take the new one. Obviously it is still frowned upon, though. So schools give you until April 15th to accept or decline their offers, and in most cases, the schools will have all their offers out some amount of time before April 15th. If spots open up, schools can make offers after that date.

Neither one should particularly help or hurt you, unless you do amazingly well or amazingly poorly or if you don't already have a background in the material. Whichever one aligns with your interests better will probably be better, as that will likely be the area in which you'll want to do PhD research. So if you're more interested in close relationships, for example, the MFT may be better, while if you're interested in developmental stuff, the MSW may help slightly more. Either way, no one's going to make a big deal if you got an MFT and decided to do a PhD in some developmental area, or vice versa with the MSW. It is very easy to simply talk about how your interests evolved as you got more experience, etc etc.

This is pretty absurd. Hope you never develop depression or another psychiatric illness that requires you to turn to those pseudoscientific quacks! OP, as other people have said, neuro programs are usually pretty interdepartmental. Can you really not rotate or join an fMRI/psychiatry lab at the second school? It wouldn't be a clinical psych degree, but you would be doing research that hopefully interests you more. If this is possible, I think the only reason you should choose school 1 is if you really don't want to stay in academia, but just want to see patients.

I'm kind of with the first responder. This shouldn't really be a close decision Both are fantastic schools and good programs (I assume, though I'm not familiar with MPH rankings). But you're comparing getting paid to go to Yale vs. paying $120,000 to go to Harvard. Unless the job prospects of graduates from Harvard are much, much better than Yale, you're hurting yourself financially if you go to Harvard. That's kind of contrary to the whole point of getting a professional graduate degree, right?

As most people in the thread have already said, what is most important is going to the strongest program you can and doing the best research you can. If you did undergrad at Stanford and got into a grad program at Stanford that's ranked #1 with research that matches your interests, you would be ridiculous to turn that down. At the same time, you don't want to settle for your undergrad school when deciding on a graduate program just because its convenient and easy. If literally all else is equal and you're deciding between your undergrad and another school, take the other school. But in the real world, everything else won't be equal, and concerns about 'academic incest' should be some of the least of your worries. Besides, if you're in any science-related field (including psychology), what is more important is doing your postdoc somewhere different from your PhD!

As far as state residency goes, I think most places just have a box to check that says, 'I'm only here for education: Yes or No.' Check no and whatever your reason for moving, you'll be fine It would be great to be a resident, get a year's worth of salary, and pay much less in tuition. That will delay the start of your PhD for a year, but it is probably a good idea, financially.

I interviewed last year, but didn't end up attending. I thought it was a very cool place, with lots of good faculty in close proximity. The current students all seemed friendly with each other and with the interviewees. The only negatives (for me) were that the medical school is a little ways away and having to commute from Brooklyn didn't seem that great. Living within walking distance from NYU wasn't really feasible financially (for the type of apartment I would like), and the subway, while fairly quick and easy, is just a small added expense and hassle that I could see myself getting annoyed with. Besides those small nitpicks that would come up with any school in NYC, I thought the program, school, faculty, and students were all great.

There are more other grad students than there are undergraduates. I'm not single, so I can't comment personally. Every time I've been to the grad student pub, there have been tons of people there. There are lots of events for grad students, so you'll meet people that way. Take a look at the graduate school's events calendar for some ideas, but there are other events going on too.

Wow, that's intense. I think even the individual placement information is pretty shady, that they should instead have done "Of graduates in the last 15 years, X are postdocs, X are professors, etc," not the information for each individual with their name! But listing the incoming students' stats by name is just unbelievable.

They're not going to put you on the spot in front of a class or group of people. If you're already admitted, they're trying to sell the school to you. They're going to want to show you the best view of the program they can. The most of a group meeting you'll have is probably meeting with 2-4 of the ad com or senior faculty at once, but they'll just be telling you about the program and answering any questions you have (you should have a couple ready). If you sit in on a class, it would be weird if you did speak up; you're there to see how a typical course goes, not to have some earth-shattering contribution.

Until your friend graduates and finds a job, its impossible to tell whether this was a good decision or not. If taking on more debt for the degree means significantly better career prospects and earning potential, then taking on more debt makes more sense financially. Hopefully she looked at placement stats and salaries for those programs and did some number crunching! But the posters here are likely choosing between programs with full tuition waivers and are comparing stipend at one place vs. bigger stipend/fellowship at another, so its more about standard of living while in school as opposed to how much debt when they graduate. Money is money, but the psychological effects of going deeper into debt are probably worse than having to live a bit more frugally.

You haven't answered any of those three areas that peterrr brings up, so it is tough to say. For me, I would figure Princeton has better quality of life, maybe even or slightly better placement, and (for me) better research fit, so that would be easy I think you need to look at the three factors, in the order of importance that peterrr listed them, and compare the two.

Honestly, I would go with WashU. If you were more set on your interests, I would say pick Northwestern for sure. But if you are more flexible, then all the reasons you listed in favor of WashU would push me to accept the author there.

I applied last year, and the professor at UCLA I would have worked with got poached by UT-Austin in September. Whether that was due to budget issues or simply because he was an in-demand professor, I'm not sure. I can add a bit about Yale. The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences is looking at admitting 10-15% fewer students overall this year (although some departments have stayed level, while others normal admissions numbers have been cut in half). It might not describe much in the way of actual changes, but here's a Yale Daily News article talking about how admission criteria might change a little: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2010/02/23/grad-school-cuts-change-admissions/ The gist of it is they're looking to be more holistic so they can make sure they graduate as many matriculated students as possible and cut down on the number of people who drop out of PhD programs after the first couple years. I'm in a fairly well-off department at the medical school, and we're not really seeing many substantial changes. Perks are being trimmed a little, but (so far) things like food for seminars have not been cut. Edit: Oh, in addition, I think undergraduate tuition is supposed to go up by almost 5% next year. That's a pretty stiff increase, but I think if anything graduate student stipends and benefits will be pretty insulated from the economic troubles in part because undergrads pick up the bill.

I don't think it is worth sacrificing your happiness and better fit for a little bit of money and prestige. You will have many chances to apply for an NSF and NRSA when you're in a program, and both of those I think would carry much more prestige and value than a university fellowship. If you were choosing between two places that you loved, but the one you loved a little less gave you the fellowship, that would probably be worth considering. Otherwise, it is better to go where you like more.

I took no chem, two intro bio courses, and had physics transfer credits from high school, so I don't think the stated requirements apply to every applicant. What's more important is if your skills and experience match the lab/program, not the department or umbrella program's requirements. I did take every cognitive and neuro psychology class I could (biopsychology, memory, sensation & perception, cognitive psych, developmental cognitive neuro, etc.), a graduate psychology statistics course, a graduate seminar on analyzing neural data (spike trains), and had experience with Matlab and fMRI data. So I did plenty else besides straight up bio, chem, and physics. Just to anticipate what might be your next question, I had no publications, did a behavioral honors thesis in a neuroimaging lab, and had around 2.5 years of relevant research experience total. You can definitely get into a neuroscience program as a psychology major in undergrad, it just might not be the best fit for your interests and goals. In our neuroscience program, we have 3 out of ~40 students in neuroimaging labs, and overall maybe 10-12 students doing cognitive/systems/computational stuff (the rest doing developmental, molecular, cellular, or behavioral). So as I said before, you've got to think about the people who will be your peers and mentors in these programs and whether psych or neuro would be a better route for you. If you just want to do neuroimaging, a cognitive psychology program would be perfectly good, and would set you up with a lot of people also doing neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience. If you might want to do some electrophysiology, a neuroscience program (with rotations) would give you the opportunity to try it out.

I'm not sure what your question is. Neuroimaging labs will have mostly psychology students, but probably a few neuroscience students as well. I was a psychology undergrad, applied to psychology and neuroscience programs, and ended up in a neuroscience program. However, I would have been doing the exact same research if I was in a psychology program, too. Applying to cognitive tracks is the same as applying to clinical tracks, but will likely be less competitive but have fewer openings. The only advice I have to offer is that neuroscience programs will have many more non-cognitive people (molecular, cellular, behavioral), but also tend to be better funded (higher stipends, fewer teaching responsibilities). If you're interested in clinical psych too, it is probably best to be in a psychology department so you can interact with them. I was the opposite (more interested in cellular/molecular neuro than clinical/social psych), so I was attracted to neuroscience programs.

I think it just goes to show that it isn't that important of a question, and they were obviously excited about you and your qualifications Congrats, by the way!

Just be honest. When I was asked, I was honest about what schools and what faculty I was interested in. It doesn't hurt you at all for prospective advisors to know you are interested in their peers and competitors. If you weren't, they would think you're probably not that serious of an applicant. Edit: Oh, and as johndiligent said, saying "I applied all over the northeast" is about the worst you could do. You're telling the program that you applied there because it is in a convenient location, not because you thought they were a good fit for you. Probably the best answer you could give is saying who you applied to work with, as it implies you care about strong advisors and research fit over school prestige.

While I'm sure there is plenty of high level political crap here, I doubt it has much to do with funding. Everyone here is funded through NIH, NSF, and smaller institutes/funding bodies, so faculty are not competing with each other for the university's funds. And because they're at a top school and are already pretty well-respected researchers, most labs don't really have to scrounge for grants too much. It's more like submitting grants is a necessary hassle you go through every so often, not that the next grant they put in absolutely has to get funded or the lab will be out of money.

The thing is, its not really like a job interview. A huge component of the interview is finding out if the program/school is a good fit for you. This includes whether they have daycare or family accommodations or whatever concerns you. No one is going to count having a family against you. Look at it this way: probably the majority of faculty and a good chunk of grad students at any program already have a spouse and kids. None of them are going to think you can't raise a family where they already are, so none of them are going to count you out because you have a family. If you have some question about family life, ask a professor/interviewer/DGS and they'll either answer it or get you in touch with another student/faculty that has the same situation.

I'm at Yale INP. -someone in specific program/dept and school who had data destroyed: No -malicious intent or really negative vibes from other students: No, not at all. Everyone helps each other out, especially in classes. -lack of support from mentors or "sink or swim" program attitudes: Not that I've experienced. Some mentors are more "warm" than others, but I haven't heard anyone complain about a lack of support from their mentor. -demanding unreasonable hours, say while a student is still in classes: It depends what you think is unreasonable. Some people put in 10 hour days in the lab + classes, others can do 6 or 8 hours. It depends on the field you're in and the techniques you use. -working weekends: Some people/labs do, some don't. This more depends on the experiments you're doing. Do you have some technique that you have to do for 14 days straight, everyday? Obviously you'll be going in for some time during the weekend. In general, though, it seems like it is a minority of people in the program that go in on weekends.