fingers_toes_X

Hi All!

I just came back from my first interview and thought I'd share what the experience was like. Naturally, not all our experiences will be the same but I figured this might be helpful to ease the stress...

There were 17 of us, and the school flew us in and put us up in hotel rooms that were within walking distance to the department building. We were 2 to a room, both roommates of the same sex.

We were encouraged to arrive on Thursday and our interviews were on Friday. I had 8 interviews: about 30 minutes with each member of the faculty who were part of the field I am interested in. Lunch included all the faculty and several current graduate students. I applied to a PhD program and 4 of the grad students - one from each of the last 4 or 5 cohorts gave a short talk about the program and what to expect in each year of it. During lunch we were free to mingle with the faculty and the other graduate students. Then interviews resumed after lunch.

After the interviews were over we had a few hours to relax and then dinner was at a faculty member's home. Again, this included faculty and graduate students. We met more of the grad students and they gave us info on what were cool areas to live in, what life is like academically and socially and things like that. It was very informal but of course, we were still being evaluated.

The next morning we were taken by a graduate student on a tour of the city and given a brief overview of life on and off campus.

Then we had lunch, again with the faculty and graduate students. Then.. the end. We packed and left.

All in all, it was great fun. It was stressful but at the same time loads of fun. I made friends with the other candidates and it did not feel competitive; rather, there was a sense of solidarity and friendship. We knew that at some point we'd probably all meet each other in the future.

If any of them are reading this... Yes, this is the girl with the Cat Hat.

Thumbs UP and Good Luck!

11 PhD programs and I have heard back from 2. most others seem to have already extended interviews as well. I prepared myself for a lot of rejection, but I felt, and had heard I had a pretty strong application.

anyways, for those of you who have heard back from some, I think the best thing is to focus in on potential interviews, and really give it all youve got for those. I know plenty of people who got 1 interview out of 10+ and that one made all the difference in their life.

Take your GRE earlier rather than later.

Be on your letter writers early and LIE about the deadlines. Yes, I said lie. You're going to be the one developing an ulcer when they push it to the last second of the last day... save yourself the headache.

Spend a great deal of time on your statement of purpose, with a particularly shrewd eye on the letters going to your top choice.

It really is all about "fit" and luck. You can only do something about one of those items, and even then you still don't have much control in this whole process.

Save more money for applications than you think you might need.
How you treat the application process can be the first step towards the ridiculous "do or die" mentality that is readily apparent in a lot of grad students. THIS WHOLE PROCESS WILL NOT MAKE OR BREAK YOU!

You're not as smart as you think you are nor are you as smart as everyone told you. Realize this now and you'll be hurting a lot less in October. I'll have to revisit this prediction at a later date.

No one cares that University X hasn't contacted you back yet and that you are freaking out. Once you apply shut up and don't bug your SO, friends and family about all of this.

Expect rejections, and lots of them!

Don't visit this site so much. In hindsight it drove me nuts!!!!!!

So i got offered admission .. but they addressed me as a female

I will give this a whirl

From talking to my professors, there seems to be two main models of assessing potential psych grad students to join their labs. (1) Does this person have direct experience and/or a skill that is useful to the professor's research plan? It is easier to get into a lab dealing with a special population if you already have training with that population. Or if you have a skill that a soon to be graduating student has that needs replacement in the lab. (2) The other method seems to be one of assessing potential via good grades, a good SOP, an impression that this student is curious and driven. This is where you would probably fit in unless your skills from your other major are unique to some extent and are needed by one/some of your POIs.

One prof I talked to is choosing not to take a student this year because there are no applicants that fit the first type. She is new and doesn't want to be working on setting up her lab and training a student from scratch on her special population at the same time. A different prof is very excited about a student who fits the first type, bringing a skill and some experience directly related to a project she is about to get a grant for. But should that student decide to go elsewhere, this prof has a person of the second type that she is less excited about but would probably accept if she can't get the first choice.

My undergrad is in a related social science to my chosen field also. When a POI called to invite me for an interview, he conducted a short phone interview as well. One of his questions was about how I found the transition from the one social science to the other. He could see it being an advantage to have a wider perspective of academia and the literatures than someone who had only studied Psychology. But he wanted to make sure it sounded like I knew what I was talking about as far as Psychology goes. So even having the experience of a different field can be seen as a useful skill! My situation is a bit different because I am getting a masters in Psychology now prior to applying to PhD programs.

This is from the prospective of a department that has individual labs to which students are assigned as they are accepted. The schools I am applying to are this way as well. The admissions formula of the school of the POI mentioned explicitly puts admissions in the hands of the PI with no adcomm in between. I think the power of the prof vs the power of the adcomm is a department by department thing. There are also considerations such as which professors deserve/need new grad students this year, and who has funding available beyond the department TA lines. Some professors may have a lot of sway regardless of whether they are on the adcomm and other may have almost no say.

As people have been pointing out all over the board this whole process is a crap shoot!