PsychGirl1

Yeah... only one PhD program I looked at even had housing that was available to get on-campus if we wanted it. Most don't have that, let alone mandatory housing :-D. You never know though- maybe there are a few schools out there that I don't know about!

That's what the interview day is for!

Happened to me a few times. Just get everything there ASAP, it's all you can ask for! Most departments have a bit of a grace period for LORs and the official documents like the GRE scores and transcripts, especially if it goes through a main office before arriving at the department. Don't stress about it! You could also maybe try emailing the department (usually there is a contact or admin email listed), explain the issue, and ask if it's a problem. You could also always attach unofficial copies to the email if you are super anxious about it :-D

^ I would pick the school you care less about and tell them you have a travel conflict with something you already committed to, and ask if you can Skype or come a different day/time. Keep in mind this will likely put you at a bit of a disadvantage, but it's been done successfully before :-D. You can also try to figure out if either school has multiple interview days, and see if you can switch to the other (some do one, some do 2-4 interview "sessions" or days).

This is a foreign concept to me! In the summer, we take classes, do research, and do practicums :-). Maybe try getting a job as a tutor? Either independently (aka post on CL, etc.) or with a company- tutoring companies tend to be very flexible, so you could even make an arrangement to work there every summer. Since you also already have your master's, you could see if you could teach a class at a local community college over the summer, which would also look great on your CV.

Definitely agree about this being the purpose- but it's a little late in the game to be sending those types of emails, and completely pointless if your applications are already completed and in...

Based on my own experience, I very highly doubt the student didn't get any interview invitations because he didn't email faculty members and introduce himself. I COULD see this happening if he didn't email professors to check if they were taking students, and therefore wasted a large percentage of his applications on professors who weren't taking students. Either way, I'm assuming your applications are finished and in. If that's the case, there is no reason for you to contact faculty at this point, and I doubt it would make any difference if you contacted them now. At this point, faculty members are more interested in your fit, SOP, GPA, and GRE scores than whether or not you send them an email. You spent a buttload of money applying to their school, and hopefully made your interest in the POI clear in your application, so they have no reason to question your seriousness. Also, some faculty members hate those emails, and I can imagine sending one at this time of year would annoy them even more since it doesn't serve the "are you taking students" purpose.

^ 3-8 was pretty spot on from what I experienced last year.

whattttt. while some may charge, the majority of reputable journals do NOT make you pay for accepted papers, unless you are choosing to publish it open access. sometimes they charge you for optional things like color figures... but that's about it.

Some schools do it by entire department, some do it by program. It really depends on the size of the school and how many applicants they get to each! Some do an interview day for the whole department, some do it by program. If you're curious, you could look at the results search from both this year and last year. Congrats!

I went on 5 interviews last year, and I'd say the majority asked me the type of questions above. (Or at least, a random handful of them). One or two of my interviews was more relaxing, but I think it's important to have answers to all of these in your back pocket. But yes, you might prepare them and not get to use them, depending on the luck of the draw :-D

Too many thoughts, and a very long post, so here are my initial reactions: 1) If you feel like you aren't getting along well with people on your project, I would invite them all over for drinks one night, like a wine and cheese night. Get to know them on a personal level, otherwise the feeling of being excluded will continue to make the situation worse. And for the person who is freezing you out- intentionally or not- invite them to happy hour and get a few drinks in them and talk it out. Communication is important, and while a new lab situation is intimidating, you might find that some people feel the same way, OR people are acting like that because of other things going on that you're not aware of (unrelated to you). 2) Send temporary adviser a strongly worded, direct email telling them you need to meet next week. 3) When you're confused about coding or whatever, send the whole team an email, CC your temp adviser, and be like, Hi all- just wanted to clarify a coding question. Person XYZ told me to do this, person ABC told me to do this. (give a few examples). Can we all meet to for a training session to make sure we are all coding things identically and correctly? (Adapt for your exact situation).

If I were you: I'd get a job as an RA/RC and take night classes at the grad-school level (ex. check out Harvard Extension or local universities). Get straight As in these classes, get some research publications/presentations, and kick ass on your GRE. Then you still might have to go the MA/MS route (I actually got my MS first and I felt like it was the perfect choice for me) and then the PhD route.

Look at past papers that examined trust and team performance to find measures. Then you can look around for the measure, contact the authors of the measure, etc.

Another one: (Numbers are off cause I had deleted some)- 1. Why is this program a good fit for you? 2. What type of research questions are you interested in? 3. How do your interests align with researchers that you applied to work with? 4. Why is <xyz> research interesting in <population>? 5. Why do you want training in <specific subfield> instead of <xyz> 6. What <specific area> experience do you have? 7. Why do you want a Ph.D. opposed to just M.A.? 8. Why do you want to do a clinical program instead of cognitive neuroscience? 9. What do you like to do in your spare time? 10. Tell me about yourself. 11. Tell me about the paradigm that you used in your Master’s thesis. 12. Why do you want to get into this Program, this School? 13. What clinical experience do you have? 14. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years? 15. What are some of your strengths? Weaknesses? 16. Do you have any questions for me? 17. Think of something to talk about in the “introduce yourself” sections. Something weird? 18. If you're not accepted into graduate school, what are your plans? 19. Why did you choose this career? 20. What do you know about our program? 21. Why did you choose to apply to our program? 22. What other schools are you considering? 23. In what ways have your previous experience prepared you for graduate study in our program? 24. Any questions? 25. What do you believe your greatest challenge will be if you are accepted into this program? 26. In college, what courses did you enjoy the most? The least? Why? 27. Describe any research project you've worked on. What was the purpose of the project and what was your role in the project? 28. How would your professors describe you? 29. How will you be able to make a contribution to this field? 30. What are your hobbies? 31. Explain a situation in which you had a conflict and how you resolved it. What would you do differently? Why? 32. Describe your greatest accomplishment. 33. Tell me about your experience in this field. What was challenging? What was your contribution? 34. What are your career goals? How will this program help you achieve your goals? 35. How do you intend to finance your education? 36. What skills do you bring to the program? How will you help your mentor in his or her research? 37. Are you motivated? Explain and provide examples. 38. Why should we take you and not someone else? 39. What do you plan to specialize in? 43. What can be determined about an applicant at an interview? 44. If you were to name your future lab, what would it be? “If you had a 10 million dollar grant, tell me about the study you’d design”

I will now post random lists that I compiled and other applicants compiled (and sent to me) to prep last year: Long-term career goals? Where do you hope to be in 5/10 years? What made you decide to pursue a graduate degree in Psychology? How interested are you in this program? What training model are you most interested in? Why? Why did you apply to this particular program? Where did you hear about us? Why should we accept you into our program? How would you describe yourself? What are your most important rewards you expect in your graduate training? In your career? What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses? What two or three accomplishments in your life have given you the most satisfaction? How do you work under pressure? How do you handle stress? How likely are you to finish your degree? Do you think you can? How do you feel about taking rigorous courses that are not of much interest to you? What major academic problem have you faced and how did you deal with it? What did you particularly like about your undergraduate education? What did you like least? What could you add to our department? Is there anything additional we should know about you? What other schools have you applied to? Do you have any ambitions to teach? Tell us something interesting about yourself. Give us some examples of your creativity, initiative, maturity, and breadth of interest. Why do you want to be a psychologist? What qualifications do you have that will make you a successful psychologist? Hobbies, outside of Psychology? Someone else's list: 1. Why that specific topic? 3. How do you plan to incorporate <interest>? 4. Your research projects in depth? 5. Favorite research project? 6. Clinical experiences- challenge? What did you like it?- in research setting? 7. What you are hoping to get out of the program? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 15 years? Career goals? Why are you interested in xyz? What would you bring to the program specifically/ why are you special? What are your hobbies outside of psychology? Books? Interests? Favorite and least favorite parts of the research process? Favorite and least favorite parts of masters (if you did) Grasp on current lab's/past lab's projects in general Tell us about yourself as a person What is something we should know about you that is not on your CV? How well do you work under pressure? How well do you handle stress? What are 2-3 accomplishments in your life that have given you the most satisfaction? Strengths? Weaknesses? Time you showed initiative? How do you think? Most generally about the big picture or more about details? Why are you the best candidate? What challenges do you think you will face as a grad student?

I think a good number of schools are somewhat forgiving with LOR deadlines (not all). Ask her to submit them ASAP, and try emailing/calling the depts individually and explaining the issue.

From my experience- Usually all the applications come in, and then get filtered to the professors. The professors usually give these to an RA or grad student to do a first pass. They usually select a smaller number for the PI to review. The PI then reviews, and submits a prioritized list of people to interview, and a list to reject. Then after the interviews, the PI submits a list of accept, waitlist, or reject. The part that seems to vary school-to-school is the involvement of the admissions committee. For example, at my last school, the admissions committee set standards to designate applications as high/med/low priority, and if PIs wanted to interview people with a lower priority, they had to "appeal" to the committee. I think they might have also done a final review of apps before sending out acceptances, but I'm not sure. At the school I'm at now, I get the sense that the admissions committee might be more involved throughout the process. This might also be a function of # of applicants- my last school got a hugeee number of applicants. This school has a much smaller faculty and much smaller incoming cohort, and accordingly they get less applicants.

Not sure if I understand the question, but the introduction and methods sections should stay the same from your thesis proposal to your defense, as long as you update it with any feedback from your proposal. (Different fields use different terminology, so I may be confused on the question).

I came across this article/video today (http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/11/30/247842138/science-reporter-emily-graslie-reads-her-mail-and-it-s-not-so-nice?ft=1&f=1007) and thought of this thread. I also decided to change my answer :-D. I can think of times in my life when I experienced gender discrimination, but it was always outside of the workplace. I think this was partly due to choosing (or by chance, having) only supportive environments where people valued intelligence over all other traits. I also went to a college with a very good reputation, which I'm sure has helped me minimize this type of experience in the workplace. I can imagine that in certain "cultures"- (I feel like it's probably not field specific, but probably more culture-specific, as in, something you'll find at certain programs or labs based on the people/environment/etc.), this could definitely still be occurring. I feel like sometimes, even as women, we're quick to say you're attributing too much of your feedback to your gender, when we should be more open to this being a possibility and real in certain circumstances.

I haven't noticed this, but I did go to an undergrad with more men than women, and was one of only two women in my department in my first job after college. I actually have found it more difficult to transition to a career area with more women than men (psychology) compared to my past careers/education in male-dominated fields. Sometimes, I think it's a matter of perception more than reality. (Although I'm sure gender discrimination is actually a problem in certain places). But I agree with St Andrews Lynx- I mostly assume everyone thinks I'm an idiot, and not because I'm a female, but because I don't know as much as all my genius peers :-D.

I think I refreshed it every 5 minutes when I went through applications last year :-D.

Also, thanks for the SDN shout-out for my "particularly unhelpful responses".

I'm with lewin on this- all the professors I've worked with have the exact same sentiment. First email is a necessary evil, second is excessive.

Yeah... I was trying to be helpful, no idea why you felt you had to respond that way. My point was that "clinical psychology" is a very large and broad field, that encompasses many different jobs that varies by setting, roles, funding sources, specialties, day-to-day tasks, etc. To ask about the job outlook in Clinical Psychology is a very broad question, and my response would be that certain areas/settings (and also in certain subfields) are expanding, others are looking poorly, and others are a mix depending on what you are willing to sacrifice or how you want to construct your time (for example, I know many people who work part-time in specialty clinics and then part-time in separate but related research settings, and this has seemed to be a very successful approach for those who do not want to go into academia). I was trying to get a sense of what exactly you are looking for so that we could help you out with your question. Especially since other related areas (such as social workers and psychiatrists) increasingly cover various aspects of the world of "clinical psychology" and depending on what you want to do and where, may have better "job outlooks" for the future than a "clinical psychology" degree, yet with a similar/identical job description. Won't be checking this thread again. I'm glad you found your answers.