Behavioral

The academic job market is a lot less tight in marketing/consumer behavior as it is in, say, Social Psych, so I'd probably venture a guess somewhere in that Top 10 range or so. How you rank departments is another story/issue, but there are definitely some schools that are considered Top 10 by anyone's criteria (Stanford, Mich, etc.)

So those empirical findings suggest that even controlling for a fixed-effect of rank/prestige, if two candidates (one from an elite school, and the other from a non-elite school) both publish a paper in, say, JPSP, the 'elite' candidate gets a differential boost in likelihood of landing a job at a similarly 'elite' school. This process is no different than individual and everyday judgments and decision making: you confirm things that you expect (confirmation bias) and you tend to be reluctant about things you don't expect (anti-confirmation bias). The model also suggests that, given how they operationalized what a "top" school was (Top 30 in rankings), a graduate from a top school with 0 pubs is comparable with someone from a non-top school with somewhere between 1-2 pubs, as characterized by this quote from the paper:

This is a paper on the marketing job market (my field), but I think it still pertains to any field: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27203666/Marketing%20Job%20Market%20Paper.pdf Furthermore, there are plenty of discussions on the CHE boards that are frequented by professors about this issue. Given that time and energy are limited resources in the job offer decision, recruiting committees do use some heuristics in determining how to gauge someone's likelihood of being a good researcher/faculty in the future, so pedigree does creep into the picture as a signal for value (whether or not the correlation between the two is necessarily high): http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,69173.0.html

I've owned 3 MBs and MBPs in the last 6 years, and 2 Thinkpad T410/T420 (now). If you're only looking for utility, then I'd go with: http://outlet.lenovo.com/laptops/thinkpad/t-series/4170xf1.html I don't discourage anyone from going Apple, but you pay a premium.

Uhmm. Maybe your's is different, but in my PhD program, the student handbook isn't a legal contract, but rather just documentation of guidelines and expectations. And this isn't my program, but these are examples of schools explicitly stating that their student handbook isn't a legal document: http://webcache.goog...n&ct=clnk&gl=us http://gseis.ucla.ed...handbook_08.pdf http://www.hawaii.edu/sls/sls/?page_id=1182

Punish? If there are no PhD guidelines that any of the faculty are breaking, then you have no grounds to punish them. Since the program is still new and these things are being developed, then you probably have even less grounds.

If it were me -- yup.

Congrats!

Ah. Well if you can hint to your letter writers to reflect your improved abilities, then you should be fine. The graduate Real Analysis (A), along with some important classes (Prob Theory, Stochastic Theory, etc.) should be enough to show that your undergrad grades were a fluke. You might get weeded out in an administrative cutoff before they even look at your file, so do see if you can get one of your letter writers to e-mail a professor at the schools you're applying to so they can pull your application.

Rutgers shouldn't be a problem. What specific classes did you take as an undergrad and what grades did you get in each one? The importance of these grades will be moderated by the fact that you have a Masters, but they're still important as that's what adcomms will use as a first-step in weeding out applicants.

I used to work in wedding photography/album design. My going rates for something like this would be $100/hour and was around (if not a little pricier) than the standard. My guesses are people who specialize in presentations would charge similarly if not more. If you get someone who isn't an expert in this (e.g., an RA) you'll pay less, but the results will likely pale in comparison to one professionally designed.

Getting admission straight from undergrad, I'd argue, is a lot more common for programs that aren't considered 'elite' in the various sub-fields in Psychology. The CVs of graduates from top Social Psych programs are getting almost ridiculous (Stanford, Michigan, Ohio State, etc.) where newly-minted doctorates have near 10 publications/R&Rs because of the research they published/started before even gaining admission to the program. Fair on unfair, it's almost scary what the expectations are to be anywhere near the top of the 'graduating class' on the job market now as compared to just a few years ago, and this effect is just being transferred to the PhD admissions process.

If you really have your sights set on only going to a top program (which is smart if you do eventually want to have an academic job at a research university), then I'd highly recommend to get a Masters or at least take some classes in Math that will at demonstrate to adcomms that you can handle the rigor. That's really the only uncertainty an adcomm will have towards your application--it's just that math abilities are also the most diagnostic/important factor in admissions.

Like you alluded to earlier, the expectations for admissions are completely different for the two fields. Psychology (both Experimental and Clinical) has been getting more and more saturated by prospective graduate applicants, and its created this upward pressure of research experience needed to gain admission somewhere. I got accepted into a top Psych-related PhD (CMU SDS/Psychology) with only a year out of school (and working as a consultant, not a research assistant/lab manager), but that was definitely not the norm among the people I met at the interview. The norm to get into a decent program is now 2-3+ years of post-bacc full-time research experience and/or a Masters with a fair amount of research competence reflected by your letters. As an undergrad, I presented a relatively large amount of different papers/posters and had a couple of R&Rs in three pretty different fields (social psychology, game theory, and behavioral medicine/epidemiology), and my letters were glowing because of it, which served as a strong enough signal to avoid having to get extra research experience. I have colleagues now, though, in my school's Psychology department who came in in their late 20s because they had to build up their CVs just to get looked at by top schools--when I ask professors who got their PhDs a decade ago, they are still in shock over the sharp increase in expectations during the relatively short time-span. Point is, you chose to get into Psychology. Your fiancé chose to go into Education. Both are completely different fields and the profiles needed to appeal to top schools are completely different for both. If you got into Psychology because it's a passion of your's, you wouldn't be happy doing Education, even if at a better school. You're getting training for your career and your future--not anyone else's. There's always going to be disparities around you, so it's best to just focus on yourself and be happy with what's in front of you and not what falls into the lap of anyone else. Ultimately, you're in charge of your future, and even though academia isn't as much of a meritocracy as many of us hoped for, there is still ample opportunity to 'move up' between stages in your career, so work on doing that rather than ruminating over counterfactuals that can no longer be changed.

I don't think you'd be a contender at schools in the Top 15/20, to be honest. It's great that you have such a high GPA given your classes, but none of them really speak to the quantitative rigor of, say, MCWG Microeconomics, which will be of the 'easier' textbooks/material you'll find at top programs (Micro theory-heavy schools like MIT will start off with MCWG, Varian, and Kreps), which demand high familiarity with analysis/proof-based math backgrounds. But that's just speculation. You're a potential Fulbright scholar, which may change up the expectations, but the typical admit at Econ PhD programs at the Ivys (only looking at the Ivys that are actually known for Economics) and other top schools, your current course load really wouldn't impress any adcomm.

You do realize that pharma-scientists are only a tiny sub-sample of the biosci field, right? There's always a need for basic science research before it can be translated to applied settings. Without Social Psychology, there is no Clinical Psychology (as we know it today); there is no Marketing or Consumer Behavior (again, as we know it today). Even tracing it back further, without cognitive psychology, there is no social psychology, and so on.

As lewin00 alluded to, you can just send a cordial reply saying you've been gracious of the school's reaching out, but that you have no questions now. Just let them know that you may come up with questions in the future and ask if they'd be open to answering them then.

I read the Chicago Tribune this morning. I hate the Chicago Tribune, but I read it to avoid having to get started on writing a methods section for a paper I'm collaborating on. Worst 45 minutes spent in a long time.

As a straight dude, I am not against tackily-worn leggings if they're anything like the example from your post. And this is coming from a sharp dresser, too.

At least in economics, psychology, and marketing, there's no max on how many times you can present a paper/poster at different conferences. You should be able to submit to all the conferences simultaneously and should be able to present at all given unanimous acceptance.

Why do you sound so aggressive and combative? Anyway, you can -- in a way. I always asked how many people were being interviewed for how many spots whenever I visited a school. I did have a crutch of already having been accepted to one of my top choices before even flying out and visiting anywhere, though, so I did have an extra bout of confidence.

What do you mean by realistically doable? Plenty of people have made the transition as in some disciplines (biosci, psychology, business academia, etc.) it's almost required to have full-time work/lab experience in order to gain admission to top programs.

Got into? I just got news from a friend who has a fly-out interview invite from Berkeley March 15.

http://chronicle.com/forums/index.php/topic,69173.0.html To the extent that you believe that the regular posters who claim are professors are telling the truth (yeah that's a confusing clause), then there is reason to believe that it is not solely the quality of the graduate, but also the signal the program serves during hiring/recruiting. One of the assistant professors in my program (a top school in marketing) was hired with 0 publications in 2008, but the professor came from another top university. Had he/she come from a mid-ranked or low-ranked university, they probably wouldn't have even gotten their CV looked at. But I agree on the other points--small programs that are productive are usually overlooked by USNEWS and other rankings. When you're looking at sub-specialties, like I/O Psych, for example, schools like Bowling Green State U pop up as top programs that wouldn't otherwise in any other ranking. Reading top journals in your topic of interest is an easy way to see who's publishing where, and should give you some clue as to the general productivity of a department if they're all publishing in the same A-level journals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toastmasters_International Really (really) look into that.