EdNeuroGrl

I have no idea what their opinion on applicants reapplying

*shrug* my first round of applications (2012) I didn't get notifications for a few of them until April/May. When I applied in 2013 UNM didn't send me my rejection letter until August. I actually appreciate so many of them going to email and online applications. :-)

Docdecisionsohio I got the exact same message :-/ Not very helpful

I am seriously considering doing a crowd-funding thing and seeing if I can get anything from my extended friends and family... :-/

I didn't see this on the first couple of pages of posts... hope it is not a repeat. I need advice for financing a move, deposit on an apartment, and all that. My credit cards are maxed (and since I am not employed enough to justify a loan) I can't get a loan. I am living on student loans now-- it will BARELY cover my base summer expenses where I am at now, so getting and extra bump for a move to the other side of the US is not an option. My parents aren't in a position to put forward more than a couple hundred. I'm looking at needing a deposit for an apartment between 1k to 2k, then moving my stuff is probably going to be another 500 or so... Any advice? Thanks

Harsh, but you know now. That is something. The waiting is taking its tole on me... With me being in the Ed Neuro program and not having any idea what timeline they are following *shrug*

For UNM, I'm pretty sure I saw some interviewees walking around the department this morning. I was in class at the time, but it is a fishbowl (glass on 3 of 4 walls) and I was a bunch (like 4) of mid 20's faces in fancy suits being toured around the department *shrug* I dunno if that helps or not.

Depending on where you live 21K may not get you very far.... I'm in a low cost of living state and 21K barely pays cost of living and you better hope you don't have any medical, transportation, or housing emergencies... :-/ I think you decision on how each will get you go your goal should have more to do with fit in the program and the type of work you would be doing in that program. If those are equal and university prestige is equal... then I'd go where it will be easiest for me... in your case that may be staying in Canada... but I doubt the offers are exactly equal in all other respects useful to the career.

aaaaaaand I lost it... started laughing in the middle of the library... thanks ;-)

Anyone have any new updates? I am still waiting to hear SOMETHING from Vanderbilt and Western Ontario. The interview at Georgetown went great and I am feeling pretty good about my prospects. I've been told that since I applied to a new-ish program at Vanderbilt, there isn't any established time line other than they have to get approval from 3 departments before anything can happen... so... yeah For Western, it looks like invites went out to the clinical psych group but nothing to the developmental group *shrug* I don't know what is happening there and I don't know anyone else here that applied to the program so I don't have any good way to get a feel for what is happening. How is everyone else doing out there?

I have had a ton of success on twitter. My twitter account is 95% professional, and 5% business casual. I was so successful that around last November, one of the big names in the field created a Twitter list of Math-Cognition researchers and asked the other big names to identify others on twitter who should be included on the list. Well, I got named (by a potential future PI) and I am on the list now. I also have a blog that I don't post on as much as I would like to, but the application process has my perspective all weird and my mind is on the process and it is hard to be objective and approachable in writing about it... So... I'll be able to write in it more once I get something official. I also have a LinkedIn presence, and a ResearchGate presence. I am less fond of LinkedIn than ResearchGate. RG is really wonderful for finding papers and researchers and staying up with their research and presentations. Anyway, I have had a TON of researchers in my field follow me on RG. I know a lot of people shy away from the social media presence, BUT I am going to advocate a bit for it. Perhaps you should feel out your field first... for example in my field the list of academics posting on twitter has 54 members (https://twitter.com/tuebang/lists/mathcognitionresearchers) and this is still a pretty small field. I follow 160-ish researchers on ResearchGate and have taught it a few key topics and it now updates me whenever something new is published that is relevant to me. It also gives me the opportunity to see presentations and conference talks that may not be so easy to locate in any other modality. For example, RG just told me that one of my favorite researchers just uploaded a full-text version of a publication I've been wanting to read (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280059917_Rethinking_the_Implications_of_Numerical_Ratio_Effects_for_Understanding_the_Development_of_Representational_Precision_and_Numerical_Processing_Across_Formats). Anyway, something to consider, I have found all of the above useful for me to gain information and also useful for me to get some name/face recognition out there into the research community that I am trying to get into. :-)

Just got my rejection for the DAPS program

Thanks for letting me know about this. I have been wondering. I have one interview coming up in a little less than 2 weeks, and there seems to be some precedent for NOT doing interviews at all in a couple of the programs I've applied to ... so I'm getting a little concerned. I'm gonna be honest all things being equal I am far more likely to take a spot where they've bothered to keep me in the loop and do interviews and phone calls... My schools are pretty half-and-half as far as this strategy is concerned. *shrug* I guess we will see. I'm glad to know that I haven't entirely missed the Vanderbilt boat.

Just at the risk of being that annoying student... Have you considered that they (perhaps not all) have a very real need to do this? I certainly get that boundaries are a thing that everyone needs to learn, BUT I have seen a group of students (who are not engaged and just trying to pass the minutes in class) get really annoyed at one student who is really engaging in the material. There is a difference between being annoying and being counter productive to the learning environment. My request is that you guys consider that not everyone thinks and interacts and understands the same things you do, and you might make progress on altering the behavior with a little compassion and direct friendly feedback. I mean do you know how infuriating and soul killing it is to have to pretend that you don't care about a thing just because the rest of your class doesn't care about it? Even as a fellow graduate student, is it not possible to talk with one of these people and explain your perspective? From my experience with "these types" often they aren't receiving social cues like you or I would, they act like that, in part, because no one is giving them feedback in a language they understand. *shrug* I get it, but I also get that people can be cruel when the environment is competitive. Can the OP not schedule a private meeting with the advisor or go to office hours, and explain that you are having problems in some space because a student is being disruptive, but you don't know if you should let it go or say something? Ask for explicit advice... from the prof... about the situation... If the prof thinks it isn't something that needs to be handled they can tell you to forget it, if not maybe they're relatively unaware that this student's behavior is a problem. Coming from a position of being a teacher, it can be really great to have a student like that who is really really engaged in the material, especially if you love the material too, and especially if the rest of the class sits around with dead expressions on their faces the whole time. Just some things to consider, I could be completely off base about the situation, I admit. I do however know what it is like to be on both sides of this problem AND the teacher handling this sort of dynamic.

I think it is overly canned. I think you should have it 100% to the point and directed at the person you are thanking. Talk about specific things you did and things that stood out about the interview that will help reinforce what you like about them and what they should like about you. Just my opinion.

I would like to know this as well. I applied to the Educational Neuroscience PhD program which is TECHNICALLY run out of their interdisciplinary neurosciences program but there are faculty in neurosciences, psychology, and education that will be reviewing my application. Also, since I haven't found a single other person on here that has applied to this program... I have no idea what to expect... :-/

First thing is that many many many psych (clinical and research oriented) applicants apply more than once. Don't be discouraged. Use this time between now and next go around to learn, shore up your weaker academic areas, retake the GRE (with LOTS of study time), publish, and get recognized. I applied twice, then being discouraged, took two years off and worked full time. I decided at the end of my first year off that I couldn't stand being away from research. So, since I knew I was not terribly competitive number-wise, I decided to get my Master's degree. I was accepted right away, no problem (not a competitive program). This gave me time to flesh out my research interests, get to know the field better, bring up my GPA (my undergrad GPA was 3.3 and my grad GPA is 4.15), and start making more professional connections. My original GRE scores were unimpressive, and I took a Kaplan GRE course over several weeks and brought them up a lot! After talking to a bunch of people and getting some perspective, I found a few weaknesses I had going in that probably killed my application before. -My SOP was not focused enough on what I wanted to do or accomplish with my career. It was too vague and it spent far too much time telling a story about personal growth. Since I was targeting highly competitive and research focused field, I needed to demonstrate that I had really thought through why I was doing what I was doing and how I was going to do it. I also talked about my disability and I have no idea if that hurt my chances (I suspect that it may have). I didn't this most recent time around. While it is important to why I'm doing what I'm doing, I managed to talk about this without identifying myself as having a disability. -I had clear weaknesses in my quantitative background... or not clear weaknesses, but ambiguities that could cast doubt on whether I could succeed in the stats courses involved in a graduate psychology program. Since I started my Master's program, I have taken every graduate stats course I could get my hands on. The only stats course that is offered in Psychology or Education that I have not taken is multi-level modeling. I have gotten A's and A+'s straight through with no exceptions. -I had research experience in behavioral protocols but none in the neuroscience area explicitly. After a few conversations with people leading labs I was interested in, I realized that the average grad student I was up against had at MINIMUM 2 years experience doing neuroimaging research. I had one person flat out tell me that he was not willing to bring anyone into his lab that could not run neuroimaging analyses independently... That was a little under a year ago, so I joined a neuro lab as soon as I could BUT I was not going to have that kind of competitive profile in the 6 mos I had to apply. :-( If I don't get in anywhere (this is my 4th ap season) this will be why. On the one hand, I can fix this by next go-round, but I don't think, at this point, it will be necessary. -Nobody knew who I was. This sounds a bit soft, but in the last year and a half, I have been developing relationships by sharing ideas and discussing them with the researchers in the field, I've been seeking them out at conferences, following them on twitter, linkedin, and research gate I make sure that they can recognize me and that they have the opportunity to see that I am passionate and committed to what I'm doing. In a few occasions a researcher has been intrigued enough by an idea I had that they've wanted to read over some of my papers I wrote for my master's courses and discuss the ideas and theory behind it. I think this has helped because it is really the only way I can get leverage over the massive number of people who have much better scores, grades, and research backgrounds than I do. I know which parts of me are less shiny and they're mostly on paper (I came from a very nontraditional background for my field, grades not so hot, no exp in the specific research techniques they use, etc), once I can get into a conversation I can show people what I am worth and get them to work with me. I'm not sure how applicable this is to you, but I've found very few resources that really talk about this component *shrug* so I think it is worth putting out there. Of course you NEVER want to be aggressive with the above, if you don't find ways to let them decide to come to you, then this will backfire HARD. Basically, my rules of thumb are to always be genuine, always follow through, and always do it because I want to engage in the idea with whom ever will talk to me (this means grad students, the public, researchers outside of the field, and if I'm lucky, the PI's I want to work with). Do it because you love the work, not because you're trying to market yourself to someone. ____________ All in all though, all of the above is supposed to show that if you really want to do it, don't give up. Every time you apply you will get better. If you keep working on research in the field, going to conferences, people will start associating you with your work, which will be a big draw b/c you can demonstrate how awesome you are, instead of making them take a gamble on how well you will do. You are already way better off than I was when I first applied :-)

I also applied to Stanford. From past years, it is super common for them to send out admissions acceptances without doing any interviews. *shrug* I applied to DAPS and there are literally maybe 3 entries from the past and it looks like they were straight admits, no interviews. I dunno but it seems like something you shouldn't stress about if you don't get interviews.

Hey there Psych88. I am currently at UNM just finishing my masters. I am in Educational Psychology, but have taken a bunch of courses through the Psychology department as well as the Stats department. I know most of the researchers and would be happy to answer any questions you have about UNM and Albuquerque. I'm curious to know who your potential POI is. PM me if you like.