Behavioral

I didn't think it was possible until I started considering a PhD in business instead of the social sciences. My stipend is nearly double what some of my friends make at other departments in the same school.

That's not the essential assumption. There have been plenty of academic papers looking at stereotype threat at the university-level that is elicited due to the mere presence of Affirmative Action: http://www.goalconsulting.org/page8/files/36%20Article%202.pdf (page 6 in particular) Steele, Claude M. (1997). "A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance". American Psychologist 52 (6): 613–629. The goal of AA was, from a normative perspective, probably one that didn't mean any harm, especially to those it was seeking to help. Those whom it didn't help thought it was an unfair advantage; those whom it did help had to take the backlash from those opposing AA while having this new-found doubt about whether or not they were 'good enough' to get their on their own merit. I benefited surely from being an underrepresented minority in my admission to undergrad--my GPA and SAT scores were far lower than any of my peers; because of this, I always felt ashamed to tell people about my background because I didn't want them to look at me as anything less. This also got to my head as I did extremely poorly in school for the first 1.5 years (2.7 GPA). When I stopped thinking about myself and my background as 'different' from my peers is when my performance skyrocketed (averaged a 3.94 GPA from thereon after until I graduated) because I simply refused to think about how I got to where I'm at and took advantage of the opportunity at hand. THAT is the reason why I'm against the blatant employment of AA in colleges. Someone who IS a URM may be able to get into a given school without special treatment during admissions, but if they're aware AA is a policy enforced in the school, they'll always be wondering. And like you said, what happens if a URM from an upper-middle class gets preferential treatment over, say, a Caucasian from a historically poor background? Where's the justice in that? Race isn't the only thing creating the disparity in opportunity in education. Now that we're IN graduate school, why doubt yourself if you belong here? In what is seemingly a race-blind admissions process, it doesn't matter if you struggled prior to undergrad to make ends meet. Your work and discipline during college is what got you in and you should be proud of that. Graduate school might be a foreign idea to you (I know it is to me), but it's the same for a lot of others who may have grown up in well-educated families. Thinking of yourself as disadvantaged will only open up opportunities for self-fulfilling prophecies, in my opinion.

I did 1 in 2009 and 5 in 2010 as an undergrad. One of those posters is now under R&R at a major journal. Besides that, though, I'm not planning on presenting a paper or poster this year as it's my first year in my PhD program and all my research prior to this is not relevant to my current research projects. It seems like the upper-echelon students in Psychology present 3-6+ national conferences/invited presentations per year their last 3-4 years in grad school.

Right-o.

Whether or not it's actually useful is beside the point for this question, but all PhD programs in business schools place preferential weight on Quant compared to Verbal, and a 680 (66%ile) is a huge red flag.

You mean school of "professional" psychology? The way you phrased it, I don't understand what you mean.

I came from an immigrant family; English was my 3rd language; and lived in poverty (actual economic definition) for 13 years. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. Although I do realize my upbringing has had a huge influence over who I am now, I don't think it's really beneficial for any one of us to start thinking about in-group/out-group categories. We're all in academia based on our own merits and accomplishments (seeing as AA is less pronounced in PhD programs than undergrad/professional schools). If social psychology has taught me one thing, it's that thinking about self-relevant stereotypes leads to the phenomenon of stereotype threat, which is like a self-fulfilling prophecy--if the stereotypes are such that you think you'll perform worse, you will.

Heh, I didn't expect a fridge until I started visiting business school PhD offices. I would love a sleeper sofa in my office to take a nap in the middle of the day!

1) They accommodate married couples. Subsidized housing is available, but there's usually a long wait list. I lived there a year and paid $495/month for my rent, water, and Internet. 2) It's La Jolla. California's already an expensive place to live in, but the COL in La Jolla/SD is relatively more expensive. Cheaper places to live in would be Mira Mesa, Clairmont Mesa, University City, or near Hillcrest Medical Hospital (University Heights, Hillcrest, etc.). 3) Terrible. You do get a sticker for free transportation on select city buses. There are UCSD shuttles that cater to the neighborhoods around campus (especially the UTC area) and the grad housing, so no need to get a car unless you live somewhere not supported by the bus or shuttle system. You can take the 150 bus to downtown, if I remember correctly, otherwise you will need a car or a friend with a car. 4) Near campus? Not much. There are a few bars on campus (Porters Pub, the new sports bar near RIMAC) and a Peet's Coffee near the CVS by campus. Most students venture out a bit and hang out near Convoy (Kearney and Clairmont Mesa), downtown (Gaslamp, Hillcrest, East Village, etc.), the hipster areas (University Heights, Normal Heights, etc.), or near the beaches (La Jolla Cove, Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach, etc.).

It's a bit late, but I grew up in a city close to Claremont (maybe 3 cities over). The area is cheap for the LA area (since you're now in the 909 and outside of the county), but compared to the Midwest, it's still pretty expensive. Regarding safety, it's very safe. The city is really centered around the Claremont Colleges, which you can tell by its downtown being adjacent to campus.

Also, this should go without saying, but practice your social skills. If you're awkward in an interview, it's easy to get distracted from the content actually coming out of your mouth. Practice answering questions with friends, but don't sound rehearsed. If you have good friends who are also research-inclined, tell them to ask followup questions to keep you on your feet. The more you're prepared, the better you'll be -- but DON'T just memorize your responses because you'll just sound like a robot. Treat these interviews like formal conversations. My best interviews were actually ones that transitioned into chit-chat after talking about research. When you're being personable and the faculty like you, it's a much harder package to turn down since being likable also serves as a pretty good signal that you'll get along with the other researchers there.

Some schools only interview people they'll most likely accept barring a terrible interview (like my program); most others it's nowhere near as generous. I applied to a few schools where 8 got invited for 1 position. The majority seemed like there were 4:1 for interviews:acceptance, Whether or not the school factors in expected matriculation rate (i.e., admit 5 knowing only 2-3 will likely accept the offer to enroll) or admit on a sequential basis (like a lot of PhD programs in business, thus creating a very explicit waiting list) depends on the school.

The only jobs I can think of that will integrate both would be consulting, working in think tanks, or working in politics.

To be more explicit, just about every PhD program in marketing has a CB track--some are more theoretical than others (Kellogg, Wharton, Stanford, etc.) and others more practical (those who look at CB through a strategy lens).

Rehearse what you've done (research) over the past x years. Be able to pitch your research interests in 15 seconds ('elevator conversation') or in excrutiating detail. Know who (which PI) you applied under and be able to tactfully say why you want to work with him/her. This will probably be one of the most important questions asked. Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10 years? 15 years? I've been asked this question by several programs. Prepare questions that are tailored to the program in question.

Public Policy / Administration sounds like a better fit for you. You prepare for an Economics PhD by having a pseudo-math major background. It's also not just a barrier to entry -- if you don't have some fundamentals (calculus, ODE/PDE, real analysis, probability/stochastic theory, econometrics, etc.) you'll be at a real disadvantage during the coursework stage of the PhD and will actually be in real danger of failing the classes.

If your undergrad GPA isn't abysmal, then skip the MA if your ultimate goal is a PhD. The component of your profile that will get you into PhD programs is research, and that can be accomplished by working in a lab (and not only is it free, but like most jobs, you might get paid for it, too!). I'd suggest an MA to people who have a red flag for a GPA and need to demonstrate ability to do well in more rigorous courses.

Yeah, for our field, meta-analyses != review papers. The seminal review papers we read typically don't do any analyses and even sometimes do a good job presenting competing theories that need to be reconciled so that other researchers can work on that.

If you take an average of 2-3 graduates per year (over 31 years) and look at the placement data over the past 7 years (23 placements since 2004), then I'd make a pretty confident inference that upon graduation, you'll have a professorship lined up. Even the 'worst' school (ITufts in this case) is a relatively strong placement given Tufts' research in the other social sciences and undergraduate strength. Even if there's been an increase in the number of students graduating in recent years than compared to the inception of the program, knowing that when you complete your degree you won't just have a job essentially lined up for you, but that it's a top job (100% placement to R1 universities since 2004), then that's the main selling point right there. Just looking at the last 4 graduates in 2010 and 2011, they're all assistant professors at R1s: http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/faculty/chiang.asp http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/alexander.frankel/vita/cv.pdf http://www.econ2.jhu.edu/people/Jeziorski/cv.pdf http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/byenmez/papers/Yenmez_Bumin_CV.pdf I'd do a search for all of them, but I'm guessing all those placements are directly after their PhD. But I digress. Economics is much like business PhD where most graduates from credible programs forego the PostDoc and head straight to professorships. I know at my PhD program, 0 graduates in the past 9 years at least have taken a post-doc (maybe longer, but I only have data from the last 9 years) and that all graduates who went onto the academic job market got placed somewhere, though the distribution of placements is nowhere near as homogeneously strong as Stanford's EA&P program.

A review paper that has an argument? All the highly-cited review papers I read in my discipline are usually pretty neutral and just report some of the major converging theories and findings [typically those from well-respected journals only] without trying to report anything novel. Including all relevant papers in a review just seems unnecessary especially when there are a lot of small-impact papers in a domain that may or may not have been carried out well, either in the methodology or analysis used.

I don't know if you were being specific to just Chemistry or to all fields, but the one program related to my field is as close to perfect as one could imagine in terms of % placed and the prestige of those respective programs: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/phd/fields/econ/placements.html

Total number of Colleges & Universities: 4084 Breakdown: 4 year: 2363 2 year: 1721 No. 257 Higher Education Summary http://www.census.go...statab/educ.pdf From 2002, but still relevant and encapsulates the idea that 100 is still a small proportion of 4-year schools.

I don't think any of us would know that question? I'd e-mail one of the program directors for the answer to that question, though personally I'd guess it doesn't make a big difference.

Here's an example of the pre-application I was talking about: Penn State's Industrial Engineering: http://www.ie.psu.edu/academics/graduate/PreApp/PreApplication.cfm

There's going to be a conflict of interest with your first question. People learn to ignore what they're used to seeing; a competing recruiter with a good tagline is going to try and keep that tagline as secretive as possible, no? Having something like, "PhD Program at University X wants you!", might seem eye-catching the first time until you notice that a lot of schools are using a similar subject title. The second question depends on what type of student you typically attract, what type of student you want to attract, and their current outcomes. A student who wants to be a professor at an R1 post-doctorate is not going to care about teaching opportunities, and someone who is pursuing a PhD to teach isn't going to care so much about research facilities. If you have a segmented application pool with defined interests, then just highlight those aspects that would be most attractive. Some things like generous funding may seem like a good strategy (at least for making people consider your program), but what you will likely see are objectively strong applicants gaining admission to your university without perhaps the best fit. My program, for example, made sure to highlight the collegiate environment and emphasized all the publications being churned out that include graduate students (and many times as first authors in top journals in my field). They also focused on targeting students who were in it only for research by emphasizing that in the prospective student page of our website, and that prior experiences (i.e., teaching, etc.) wouldn't be a negative, but those would be discounted relative to research experiences. Something you can try is offering application fee waivers, or if you guys are masochistic, offer a pre-application (free, of course) to potential applicants so that they can be pre-screened. If you're fairly honest about your evaluations (and these prospectives know) and actually do encourage strong applicants to apply whereas you don't to 'weaker' applicants, then people may opt to pre-apply. If you can then discriminate application fee waivers to those stronger applicants, this may at least decrease their marginal cost enough to throw their application your way. I know University of Rochester did something similar to this (though via professor referrals) where they offered fee waivers to students that professors marked as 'highly competitive'. I ended up getting a waiver, but I didn't use it since it was extra work (writing another personal statement) and not a program/city I'd even attend if it were the only school that accepted me. Some other things to note (especially for the sciences): if you do rotations first year, note it. If your program has a lower attrition rate relative to the field, definitely highlight that. Placement record, if good, note that, too. Also, if you guys tend to place into industry more, that is sometimes more attractive to applicants in the sciences and engineering disciplines, too. Some programs seem to not report non-academic placements, which makes it seem as though the program doesn't have bridges to industry. Anyway, hope at least some of that helps!