svh

that's way awkward...

I'm having similar concerns with east coast places...

I agree. Don't be a jerk. And don't act competitive. From what I've heard, grad schools and grad students want people that they can work cooperatively with. I heard some programs specifically weed out people who seem like they might be competitive in nature at these visits.

I got a 4.5 on my analytical, and I don't think it's affected me negatively. This seems to be the sense when I spoke with other prospectives at interviews, as well.

We should hear from these guys this coming week.

How would you go about doing that without coming off badly? The thing I keep thinking about is that when you are actually attending in the Fall, they may already have a bad impression of you...

Can you continue participating in his lab? A better letter will come out of working with someone on research. It seems like I/O is also applicable to cognition. I suppose it depends on what aspect of cognition you're interested in.

Hello all, this is the OP. Thank you all for the input. I'm just writing to update. The school that asked me about other places I've been accepted and got interviews has just waitlisted me. I don't know why I was waitlisted. But like I said, they asked me about the other schools, and at the time, I had been accepted into OSU. OSU is really close to this school and is a far better program (ranked #2 in social psych), so I wonder if that had any impact... I can't say for sure though, and I may have been waitlisted for a number of reasons. Thoughts?

You negotiated the stipend with them?

Are you serious? How's that possible?

The best ones I found were at 4 or 5. I did also apply to some that only had 1, because I thought it would be good to cast the net as wide as possible. So, my top choices have 4 or 5...

I used two lists when trying to figure this out. I wanted to be very thorough, as well. I went through the US News and World report social psych rankings and looked for faculty. Then I went through their general psych list going down. Then after a certain point, I went to the website that steropticons posted and started at the bottom, doing the same thing. I made an excel spreadsheet and listed the school, faculty, and copied/pasted their research interests. I put asterisks next to the faculty that I thought were really interesting. Then, I narrowed it down based on asterisks and the sheer amount of profs that did interesting work at each university. The thing is, you don't want to go to a school where you're only interested in working with one faculty member (unless you really think that his/her works is perfect for you, but it's still risky if they end up not being a good advisor). I found myself at 11 schools this way.

I think it totally depends on the program. I was just at a social psych "interview" weekend, but the impression I got was that it was more of a recruitment than an interview weekend. I've only been to one so far, so I don't know this can be generalized.

I'll be out there at that exact same time for social psychology.

Then I guess it's too bad for us about columbia, huh?

You know that they don't interview? I met someone at a recent interview who currently works as a lab manager at Booth, and he said they haven't even started looking at apps...

And along those lines, I met someone at the UVa interview who had interviews with Yale and Harvard already. Of course, this says nothing about the waitlist game.

You know what area?

I've received similar offers from my programs. I think it's okay to live off of. The question is, how much do you live off of now? I make 10k at my part time job right now, and I get by as an undergrad just fine. So, 20k as a grad would surely be enough.

Yeah, that's true. The profs are understanding. But right now, I'm in my most difficult math class I've ever taken (time series analysis), which I need to pass to get my math degree. And I'm missing four straight weeks of it (it's on Thursday nights)... But it's okay. Good problem to have, I guess.

Those are awesome stories. I suppose my concern is that they'll think that since I got these other offers, they'll reject me and take on someone else who seems more likely to attend their school. But it'd be really weird to say, "no, I won't tell you," to a prof when they ask the question...

Have not heard anything from them. And by the way, it seems UMD finally made their decisions earlier today.

Sorry, nothing from them. Which is weird considering the info I've gathered from them. I don't think they've made final decisions yet.

Hey all, I just had a phone interview with a school, and they asked me where else I've been accepted/interviewed (and qualified with, you don't have to answer if you don't want to). In the moment, I just told them. What are people's thoughts on this?

Did you get an interview?!