EdNeuroGrl

This one came from a couple years ago for me (took some time off to work, now doing my master's). I applied in October 2012 for Fall 2013 admissions at the UNM Psychology department. I literally heard nothing from them at all... then in October of 2013 I finally got the rejection letter... I had already moved on and then there was that sitting in the mail. I looked at it like WTF, then as I read it I was like "no sh*t, really?!?!" I think my neighbors though I had lost it at that moment, yelling at my mail.

That hit close to home! Though for me it is next year, but after 2 years rejection and 2 years working full time away from academia and now being back in the saddle doing a Master's *sigh* I am already terrified that everything is going to go belly up this time next year and I'm going to be SOL. I am literally all in at this point so if everything falls apart, I have no clue what I'm going to do. Oh, and, I forgot to mention, I may or may not have MS... been having weird neurological symptoms but waiting on a neurologist consult (Friday)... I know what I want to do and I may very well only have another 20-ish years to be doing before I can't brain properly anymore... *sigh* I am super sick of biding my time as this is a strategy that is becoming very costly, but on the other hand, I love research and there's nothing I'd rather do more... just got to get into a PhD program. *stressstressstress*

Hi all, Congrats to those who have been accepted! I am new to the forum so if there is a better place for me to post this, please let me know. I am looking to apply next year to the Stanford GSE DAPS program and I am needing some sort of way to check my reality-o-meter before getting too emotionally invested. I need real-honest and brutal feedback. I applied to two rounds of PhD programs right out of a Bachelor's degree some research experience acceptable-ish GPA (3.36 - had some early trouble) and good GRE's (Verbal Reasoning: 161 - 87th Percentile, Quantitative Reasoning: 157 - 68th Percentile, Analytical Writing: 5.5 - 89th Percentile) great letters of recommendation, not sure how to objectively assess my personal statement... Got rejected from all with not even a single call or interview or waitlist or anything... Actually one college finally got me the rejection letter in October of the Fall that I applied for (so rude). I took 2 years off and worked to see if that was an acceptable life-choice for me, because man it was pretty awful to have my dreams crushed 2 years in a row. I was out of money and options for academia for the time being... So, I was very good at my job but I just got so bored and seem to desperately need to be engaged in full-time intellectual pursuit for my own good... so I got into a Master's program and I'm rocking it. Anyway, now (applying for Fall 2016 admission) I will be most of the way through a Master's in Educational Psychology with a minor in Statistics. I won't have any pubs at the time of application but I should have at least 3 submitted or in revisions. I will have 1 observational project completed but not sure if the manuscript/results will be publishable without a follow up study to validate the measurement tool, 1 experimental research project run and manuscript being written up (results are promising so far), and another that I will be 2nd author on that I hope will have enough results on to be publishable (the results aren't too promising but may require more data points yet to see a pattern), and I will have 4 to 6 poster presentations by application time too. I have a professor I very much want to work with, his current and previous research aligns almost exactly with what I want to be doing. I have exchanged 3 or 4 emails with him, but I'm having trouble knowing if he's too busy or not really interested or what. He is new (Fall 2014) to Stanford and the DAPS program and has one post-doc and no grad students thus far. I need some really honest feedback about my chances, I figure with some of you being accepted you might let me know how I compare and if there's much I can do to up my chances, or if I need to look for other options. Thank you so much for any help or direction!