Mr. Tea

Calling the administrative staff first is a fantastic idea. If that attempt is unsuccessful, then I would say that in my opinion yes it is definitely worth the risk. My advice would be to assume silence as a neutral response and not take it personally. If the silence is a negative response then the POI is probably going to be a pain in the ass to work with. I don't imagine that many successful academic careers start with a faculty mentor who is a complete jerk and can't try to understand the applicant's reasonable point of view.

I agree that entering all names in your letter could make it seem like you are unfocused, even if it's true. Choose the two or three with whom you would most like to work and briefly mention why your interests fit with their research. You may end up working with all five professors eventually, or you may discover that the professors who you do not mention are a better fit after you get to know them and their current research in greater depth, but you don't need to state that in your statement of purpose. Just try to express that the program as a whole will help you reach your research and career goals.

For any job or school you apply to, the organization or school wants to know your levels of ability and motivation. In the academic statement of purpose you get to demonstrate your ability by discussing how your past experiences have equipped you with skills that will allow you to succeed in graduate school and as a professional psychologist (e.g., research experiences, conference presentations, or whatever else may apply), and you get to demonstrate your motivation by discussing your career goals (e.g., research interests) and why the program is a good fit for you. The academic statement of purpose will be important but drier, which is just fine. In the personal statement you have the option of demonstrating your ability by telling a story about other areas where you have had success in life, but overall I think the most important thing is to demonstrate your motivation by sharing an experience that helped you discover that you want to pursue a career in psychology. I suggest that you tell a story about one general experience (i.e., don't give a comprehensive personal history). Was there something about your military experience that led you to want to pursue a psychology career? Was there something about the differences in local political systems in the places you've lived? Think of the personal statement as personable (note: not sloppy) rather than "fluffy." You're letting the selection committee get to know you as a person and giving them a break from the other parts of the application process. Your military experience and multi-country living experiences sound like great content for any diversity statement. "Diversity" can really refer to anything about your life history that makes you stand out. That part of any application is tough to write, so I recommend searching online to see how others have approached it. I found that was helpful last year when I was applying.

The way I approached this was to use the academic statement of purpose to describe past relevant experience, research interests, and why X's program is a great fit for me, and to use the personal statement to illustrate my motivation to embark on a career in my field. For the latter I told a story about working at a specialty loose leaf tea shop. Get creative. Applying to: Stanford Princeton U Chicago U of Illinois U Virginia U Michigan Northwestern Ohio State WUSTL

Here's another important question: If this POI tells you not to contact, doesn't update info on his site, and gets pissed at you for asking, how much is it worth entering into a 5+ year professional relationship with him? Opinions will diverge, and I know it can be intimidating when you've had zero contact and are excited at the possibility of working with someone whose work you respect, but my opinion is that you should send a quick email saying that you noticed on his site that he was accepting students last year and wanted to check and see if he is also accepting students this year as well (this serves a second function as a non-critical way to remind him to update the site).

3.45 GPA is fine if your GREs are good. I don't know about clinical/counseling programs but research experience and dissemination (conference posters, publications if possible) are helpful in other programs.

Sometimes "recruitment weekends" are informal interview weekends. For one school I received a call from a prof telling me that I was accepted prior to their recruitment weekend. For another, there were over a dozen of us invited to a "recruitment weekend" and the school ended up giving offers to four prospective students. For another, I had a visitation weekend (couldn't make official recruitment) but it seemed more like they intended to give me an offer before I arrived (I withdrew my application before this happened because I heard back from my top choice). Pre-acceptance interviews are becoming more common because there is generally less funding available and a large pool of talented applicants, but they aren't universal. As a general note, and to put it bluntly, don't be arrogant and don't be an asshole. Everyone or almost everyone who is invited to an interview weekend is highly qualified. My strong impression is that an important part of the interview process is to find out which of the qualified people are assholes who no one wants to work with for 5+ years.

Stanford had a $125 application fee last year. They were the most expensive by $35.

Are the conferences in April for psych-related research? If so and if you have an accepted presentation then mention it on your CV as "to be presented at the XXth annual conference for XYZ psych organization"

I would say that you have to know almost no stats when you start your PhD. Your first year you will take a stats course that will get you up to speed. If you have a hard time with math/stats then this will probably be your hardest course, but that is true of many bright and motivated graduate students.

I did not take it. I'm not sure if anyone else in my cohort took it. My general impression is that it may help if you come from a non-psych background (to show whether you are familiar with the field), but otherwise you should not bother.

I'll add my support for what a number of other people are saying - if you have non-PhD experiences that can help solidify your long-term desires, do that instead of applying. If you are changing your mind frequently about what you want to do, then as another responder said, that may be a good sign that you should not go for PhD programs at this point in time. People are generally supportive of it when you take time to figure out exactly what you want to do.

I think you have been selectively exposed to PhD horror stories, but your concerns don't strike me as representative of the typical grad school experience. First, when you are determining which route you should take, you need to think about your long-term career goals. What do you want to wake up every morning and do for the rest of your life? Graduate school is a means to an end, not the end itself. If you think that you can succeed as a professional in the field after grad school, then you can succeed in grad school. Managing your time in grad school is a challenge because your work is more ambiguous than it is as an undergraduate and there is always something that you could be doing. Some people choose to lock themselves away from everyone else and work 24/7. Many others have a happy and successful career as a graduate student working hard and playing hard. Read The Anticreativity Letters by Richard Nisbett for an idea about how not to do grad school (it dispels some myths about what grad school is supposed to be like) here http://www-personal.umich.edu/~nisbett/anticreat.pdf. With regard to the comment about going into clinical practice rather than academia following PhD - let me reframe this issue. I am under the impression that many people who go into applied psychology fields have little interest in research, which is a shame - not because everyone should go into academia, but because in order to effectively apply psychology, you need to understand research methods. You need to understand how to make sure that the methods of treatment that you are using or trying to create are effective. I am unfamiliar with how PsyD programs operate, so I won't knock them; however, you will learn research methods in a PhD program. Furthermore, if you ever want to work at a university then there are options to do that while maintaining a private clinical practice (many of the professors in my Master's program did that). In summary, getting a PhD in psychology is stressful - so are many other things in life that you have to work hard for (e.g., engineering programs, to play off of the first responder). For most things worth pursuing in life, you can adopt the sports motto "No pain, no gain." You just have to decide if the thing that you want to work hard for is a career as a psychologist. Then you can decide which means (PhD program, PsyD program) will best equip you to achieve your goals for that career.

This really depends on your long term goals. I have to say that I am very skeptical that completing an online Master's in psychology is valuable unless they provide research or applied experience somehow.

Illinois State University, where I went for my Master's program, has a number of funded Master's programs. They provide you with a full tuition waiver, however, you still have to pay general fees and for health insurance (the latter is pretty cheap, but it's an expense). You generally receive a TA position that requires 10 hours of work per week and gives you a stipend of $400/month. It's not a lot, so I took out loans as well (or you could try to get two GA positions or a part time job elsewhere).

1) I would not even draw attention to the B. If you have good recommendation letters, a decent overall GPA, and decent GRE scores, no one is going to care about it. 2) I don't really have an answer to this question right now. If I think of something then I'll let you know. 3) A Master's program will do for you what you make of it. I completed a dual-sequence Master's program in social and quantitative psychology and I gained a great deal of extra research experience, experience giving oral and poster conference presentations, and a strong background in statistics. And I got into University of Michigan's social psych PhD program, about which I'm thrilled. If you treat a Master's program like undergraduate studies plus one research project then it may not help as much as if you treat a Master's program like an opportunity to gain lots of research experience. 4) Grad school is a means to an end, not the end itself. The question you need to ask is whether or not you're cut out for a career doing what you want to do after grad school (e.g., academia, if that's your goal). Then you can ask if you can do what it takes to get there (go to grad school). Ask yourself what skills and motivation people in your eventual career need to have. If you have or believe that you can gain that skill and motivation, then you can handle grad school. 5) You probably need to know nothing or almost nothing about statistics when you enter grad school. Your intro stats course will review the majority of what you covered in undergrad. That being said, as a quant guy, I think it's a great idea to take more stats if you are interested in a research career. Even if you cover the material again in grad school, the review is helpful and will make taking the grad courses a bit easier. 6) Awards/distinctions probably help a little, but I doubt that they're terribly important if you demonstrate elsewhere that you are willing and able to succeed as a student and researcher. 7) I went to undergrad for three years at one school, transferred to go to a Catholic seminary for a year, left the seminary, was out of school for a year and half, transferred back to my original undergrad institution to finish, and then completed a Master's program before applying to PhD programs. I received offers of admissions from three decent programs. For your applications you will have the opportunity to write a Statement of Purpose. In this statement, provided that there is space (the word limit varies greatly between schools), you will have the opportunity to demonstrate why you want to go to grad school and communicate that you know what you want. I think it's great that you took the time to seriously consider what you want to do and would be surprised if anyone looked at that negatively. There are many applicants to graduate programs who did not take a straightforward route to get there (i.e., four year bachelor's straight out of high school without a break and immediate application to PhD programs). You will not be alone among your fellow applicants. 8) Busy, but not killer if you don't overcommit. I can't speak to the PhD program, but from my experience in the Master's program, you have more going on at a time than undergrad. The time that you would have spent in clubs, organizations, or just taking down time in undergrad is occupied with classwork, research, and teaching. That being said, I think people tend to exaggerate the workload. You have enough time to stay connected and social with people on a regular basis, as long as you don't become a workaholic or only make friends with workaholics. My schedule was a bit tighter because I commuted an hour to get to my Master's program, but generally I would arrive early in the day, go to class, eat lunch, more class, teach, run research, and spend most of the evening doing homework or reading research articles and writing. Three or four nights a week I would go grab drinks with people in the evening, and generally I would find people to work with as well. I saved grading for weekends. Weekends were also busy with homework, reading/writing for research, and grading, but I was always able to go out on Friday or Saturday nights. Maybe it's different in the PhD program, but I'm under the impression that people who don't have time to go out in grad school made too many commitments or have a hard time stepping away from work. I think the biggest difference between undergrad and grad school is that you will always have something to do. You don't come to a point where your work for the week is finished, because you have other projects with approaching deadlines or with unclear deadlines. But as long as you stay organized, you pretty much always finish your work on time without eliminating your social life. If you have any more questions feel free to respond here or send me a message.

Yeah, I agree. Same here.

A B- doesn't matter. You're fine. As long as overall your grades are decent, you get a decent scores on the GRE, and you involve yourself in research/other work that is applicable to future studies in psychology then you're fine. Your research and relevant work experiences (and recommendation letters that come from those experiences) matter much more than your grades and GRE score. The latter two will only get your foot in the door, and a B- won't exclude you from consideration at good schools.

Seriously

Thanks for that correction.

Just to clarify, the next time you will be able to apply for Ph.D programs in the US is in the fall for the following year. I see no reason why you should not try to apply at that time. I don't know of any reason why coming from Singapore would put you at a disadvantage. US schools receive plenty of international applicants. It should be no more costly to a program to accept you as a student than it would be for them to accept an out-of-state US student. As long as you have a strong application, you should be fine. I don't think the match between your past research experience and POI's research really matters. It's more important that your research interests match your POI's research interests. Fit is very important after you get past early cutoff factors (e.g., GRE scores) that get you a foot in the door. The research experience that you have should be valuable because it demonstrates ways in which you have prepared yourself for graduate level work. Publications help, but they are not necessary. I doubt that the majority of applicants have any. Those who do are most likely to have one. I won't discount that they can make you a more competitive applicant, but again, they're not necessary. I don't know the answer to your question about Social vs. I/O vs. OB programs. You have the option to apply to all three types of programs. Check and see how the specific programs prepare their students and how that will help you accomplish your future goals. Maybe someone else can offer more help on this question. Stanford and Northwestern are both competitive programs. I recommend applying to 8-12 programs if you are aiming for this tier. Things are really competitive right now. Many schools have about 200 applicants for 4 or fewer spots, so applying to multiple schools will give you a greater chance to receive an offer. Hope that helps.

Hi all, This is not helpful to applicants this year, but for those who will apply again, Illinois State University offers a number of terminal Master's degrees that are funded. I am about to complete my Master's in social and quantitative psychology (I completed two sequences - it's very easy to complete the quant sequence when you're going through the I/O or social sequence). Master's programs are offered in I/O-Social (it's a combined program, but the course requirements are slightly different), Quantitative, Developmental, and Cognitive & Behavior Sciences. There are programs in Clinical/Counseling and School Psychology as well, but I can't recall if they offer terminal Master's degrees (Clinical/Counseling might). Most, if not all, students are offered GA positions that provide a small stipend ($400-550/month for 10 hrs/week, typically $800/month if you have a 20 hr/week appointment). Typically, these are TA positions, though some grad students are research assistants or work in the psychology resource center for their GA positions. The GA position gives you a tuition waiver as well. You still have to pay general fees to the university (these aren't huge, but keep them in mind) and you have to either have health insurance or pay for ISU's student health insurance (I can't recall if it's $125/semester or $125 for the academic year, doesn't include summer though you can pay a bit extra to get summer insurance as well). Feel free to contact me if you have questions about that program. It can prepare you well for a PhD program if you take advantage of the available opportunities (I was admitted to U Michigan's social psych program). - Josh

Just received an email from POI informing me that I was accepted at U Michigan! I plan to decline an offer from UIUC and remove myself from consideration for an offer at Indiana U that I expect to receive, if that helps anyone.

Three possibilities I can think of off hand, all of which may apply: 1) The other programs anticipate that you will get a better offer elsewhere and will not accept if they offer you a position. 2) You spent more time on the application for your top choice and it shows. 3) Your research interests probably fit better with your top choice program than with your other programs.

The point isn't that students receiving multiple offers aren't making difficult decisions and should hurry. The point is that once a decision is made, it is easy to feel a strong sense of urgency about responding to the school you want to attend and less of a sense of urgency about responding to the schools that you do not want to attend.